The headlines from last Thursday have largely been written around Reform’s gains. Understandably so. 1,453 seats, 14 councils, a projected 284 Westminster seats if those numbers were applied to a general election. The narrative writes itself.
But buried inside those same results is a different story, one that matters rather a lot for Liberal Democrats. It is not a story of comfortable reassurance. It is, if anything, a more useful thing: a reasonably clear picture of what works against Reform, where it works, and where we are still exposed.
The short version is that incumbency beats protest. Almost every time. The places where we held or advanced against the Reform tide were places where we had built something durable: years of casework, local campaigns, a face people recognised on the doorstep. The places where Reform made inroads into what should be our territory were, almost without exception, places where that groundwork was thinner.
It is also worth noting that Reform’s position is softer than the seat count suggests. Their vote share actually slid between 2025 and 2026, and when voters were asked to choose someone to actually govern in Thursday’s mayoral contests, Reform’s support fell to single digits in several races. Their 1,453 gains tell you as much about Labour’s implosion as about Reform’s own growth. That means there is something to work with.
Where the model worked
Portsmouth is the cleanest example. The Liberal Democrats won outright control of the city council, 22 of 42 seats, with Reform coming second on 12. The local party’s response was telling: they said Reform had “thrown everything they had” at Portsmouth and lost. That is what a well-organised, deeply rooted local party looks like under sustained pressure. It holds.
Stockport is arguably more significant, because it punctures the lazy assumption that the Lib Dem model only works in southern, Remain-voting, leafy England. Stockport is Greater Manchester. It voted for Brexit. It is the kind of place people tend to write off when they talk about “the north.” The Liberal Democrats won a majority there on Thursday, 33 of 63 seats, the first majority any party has held on that council since 2011. Reform picked up two seats in wards with paper-thin margins and went no further. The difference was fifteen years of patient rebuilding since the coalition years knocked us back, and a local team that had genuinely reconnected with the community.
Closer to home for me, in Eastleigh where I’m a triple hatted councillor, a borough that voted modestly Leave in 2016 and sat squarely in Reform’s sights, they fielded candidates everywhere, came second in ward after ward, and won no county or borough council seats. Thirty-one years of unbroken Liberal Democrat control, built on the oldest and least glamorous of political activities: being present, being useful, being known. Reform did pick up a handful of town and parish seats. But at every level that involves real power, the model held.
Where it did not
West Sussex County Council: Liberal Democrats and Reform tied at 23 seats each. That is the southern home counties. That is supposed to be our terrain. It is worth sitting with that for a moment before moving on to the comfortable parts.
The Isle of Wight tells a harder version of the same story. Reform took 19 seats. The Liberal Democrats took four. Gosport: Reform won nine seats to our six, with Labour wiped out entirely. Havant: Reform the largest group on ten seats, the Liberal Democrats on five.
The pattern in each of these is the same. Our local presence is thinner, our incumbency advantage weaker, the community roots shallower. Reform’s protest vote has room to breathe. The conclusion is not that Reform is unbeatable in these places. It is that we have not yet done enough in them to make ourselves the obvious alternative.
What this adds up to
For Liberal Democrats, there is a valuable takeaway from the above. The incumbency model is not just a southern phenomenon. It travels. It works in Greater Manchester. It works in a Leave-voting Hampshire constituency. It works wherever we have done the patient, unglamorous work of being present.
The question Thursday poses for us is not whether the model works. It is whether we are building it in enough places, quickly enough, for what comes next. In West Sussex, in Gosport, in Havant, in the Isle of Wight, the answer is not yet. That is not a reason for pessimism. It is a reason for urgency.
* Tanya Park is a Lib Dem County, Borough & Town councillor in Eastleigh, Hampshire and writes at A Just Society, a liberal policy project making the case for radical progressive policies grounded in liberal principles.
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20 Comments
Interesting goings on in Worcestershire today.
The Reform minority administration has fallen – to be replaced at least temporarily – by a Tory/Lib Dem/Green/Independent coalition.
Perhaps most interesting is the Conservative party response: “The chairman [of the local party] was very clear on a number of occasions that the Conservative Party was totally opposed to the proposed arrangement at Worcestershire County Council.” and “The Conservative group leader did not make our opposition clear to his fellow Worcestershire councillors and has been suspended pending investigation” and “Conservative campaign headquarters has made clear to our councillors that this arrangement must not go ahead.”
The former Reform leader of the Council had just been suspended from the party because of an internal row about something or another.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgpyxw7l5no
I think Tanya is on to something very important here.
If she is right – and I think she is -it means that in a “stop Reform” general election the Lib Dem MPs should be pretty safe merely by being the incumbent.
A couple of other comments:
Tanya will correct me if I am wrong, but Eastleigh was always a railway town – like say Swindon. Perhaps the closest thing Hampshire county has to “red wall” though I would not want to over do the analogy.
West Sussex would be relatively poor – poor transport links make harder to get to the well paid jobs in London than (say) Surrey. One would hope that in a “stop Reform” general election the “stop-Reform vote” has to decide whether to vote Lib Dem or vote Tory. In my North Kent seat the Tories are already saying it is only they who can stop Reform at council level – and even Labour members are thinking about voting blue on that basis.
What at Tanya’s analysis shows is that in “true blue”seats in (say) Surrey the stop Reform” vote comes to us.
it follows we must:
1 show the voters the Conservative party would put Reform into power after a general election; and
2 not frighten the anti-Reform Tory voter by being too “left wing”. Liberalism is OK. Socialism is not. Full on Social Liberalism they will find a bit suspect.
“If she is right – and I think she is -it means that in a “stop Reform” general election the Lib Dem MPs should be pretty safe merely by being the incumbent. ”
Ah yes. The power of incumbency that worked out so well in 2015….. If there is an evidence based to look it it works Ok in relatively benign elections (2001/5/10) but when things turn it won’t save you.
Stockport is definitely in “the north”, but I wonder if you look at the demographics how similar it is (at least the bits the Lib Dems win in) are to “the south”.
@ Hywel
“The power of incumbency that worked out so well in 2015”
Recall that the post coalition Liberal Democrats now have 72 seats only 10 years on.
It is now 2026 and politics has changed hugely since 2015. Consider Tanya’s data. If you are right and incumbency is now no protection – why were Lib Dems in control not swept away last week like Labour and (to a lesser extent) the Tories (who lost 41% of held seats and 6 councils?)
You have a point about demographics, but we need to find out what wins and keep doing it and if that means doing it in a demographic that does not suit some people’s self image so be it – stopping Reform is worth it. .
For us to allow a Reform-led coalition to take charge after the next general election by reason of a wish to have Lib Dem MPs elected only in suitably poor constituencies on “radical” policies would be a dereliction of duty.
Hi @Tanya, thank you for your analytical article! Stockport voted to remain in the 2016 referendum, albeit only by a 4% margin. Stockport is also one of the most polarised boroughs in England: leafy suburbia like Bramhall and Cheadle Hulme are only miles away from some very strong pockets of localised deprivation like in Brinnington for example, where Reform got elected.
In areas in-between, the Labour vote completely collapsed, and from what I got on the doors, irritation with Labour nationally meant that people looking for change trusted us because they saw the strong record of local action by the Stockport Liberal Democrat group. Stockport has been on a programme of much needed ongoing redevelopment and investment which has positively transformed the town.
Here is why I would gently disagree with this: “punctures the lazy assumption that the Lib Dem model only works in southern, Remain-voting, leafy England.” I would argue some parts of wealthier, leafier Stockport are in fact a microcosm of the South. We did strongly in these areas. However, in order to tackle populism head on, we must talk much more openly about wealth inequality.
We have been able to make localised gains against populism in areas where we work hard and deliver. But unless our party can highlight how we tackle the root causes of the inequality in our society, these gains are merely superficial.
Demographics of current strong areas is one. I’ve argued for some time that the Lib Dem strong areas are a much better fit for the party’s position than in 2010 and much more homogenous. There is some evidence of a demographic that is not amenable to either Reform or the Greens and is strong territory for the Lib Dems (white, remain voters, degree educated, previously socially liberal Cameron Tories, Lib Dem or tactical Labour/pre Polanski Green,, relatively prosperous – I stereotyped it as people who check their energy bills but can still afford direct debits into their ISAs and to donate to charities.
The second is favourable vote splits. Reform taking enough votes from the Tories for them to lose but not enough to win. To some degree that happened in 2024 and I’ve seen people on here mention that being a thing in some areas.
Don’t get me wrong I think the Lib Dems will do credibly well in a putative 2029 election. In the sense of a +/- 15 seats type territory. i think they have fundamentally changed since 2010/15 and should focus their efforts on the sort of voters above for electoral success.
Now ask me whether I like that or am likely to vote for that party…..
@ Hywel. Richmond’s story confirms Tanya’s model that incumbency beats protest. She asks: ‘whether we are building it in enough places, quickly enough’. It takes a long time.
I followed Kew Ward start, which copied Liverpool success of community politics, by overtaking both Labour and Tory and winning Richmond Town’s by-election in 1973. Ten year’s later we took control of the Council after regular leafletting. In this year’s local elections, the Greens delivered vast numbers of leaflets in their target wards but failed to make any impact, showing that incumbency works.
In 1997 Vince Cable was elected MP for Twickenham, in the other half of the borough, where community politics had built a base. At the next General election, we must offer more that community politics but also a solution to the world’s climate and energy crisis.
I noted in today’s Guardian Ed Miliband has had one of the clearest policy agendas of any cabinet minister since entering government in 2024:
‘The energy secretary has long put the climate and achieving net zero at the centre of his politics, and has succeeded in persuading the prime minister to face down internal opposition to a ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences.’
Can our Ed add net zero campaigning to his proven caring campaigning? He was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change between 2012 and 2015.
I have a family member who watches GB News and all the YouTube vlogs from that end of the political spectrum but voted Lib Dem because the local candidate was active so they appeared to care about the local area far more than anyone else, listened rather than obviously spouted off party lines and had a history of doing good work in the local area.
Even voters who agree with Reform can be persuaded by a history of good work and caring about the local area, especially if Reform don’t show the same commitment and to talk too much about things going on outside the constituency. Or in other words, it takes a lot of effort to be more than just a leaflet through the door, but it can be worth it.
@ Tristan,
‘…….not frighten the anti-Reform Tory voter by being too “left wing” ‘
Lib Dems can pick up votes, in certain circumstances, from those who normally vote Tory in ways that Labour cannot. I think we’re all agreed on that. But why? I don’t believe it is much, if anything, to do with positions on the political spectrum. There are times, like now, when the Lib Dems are slightly to the left of Labour.
This doesn’t change anything too drastically. For many normally Tory voters it simply isn’t the done thing to ever vote Labour. What would the neighbours think if they found out, or even worse, saw a Labour poster displayed in their front gardens? Voting Lib Dem is far more respectable. Even voting Green would be more socially acceptable even though they are well to the left of both.
In the same way it isn’t the done thing to ever vote Tory for most normally Labour voters. There may be a few exceptions such as when they voted for Boris Johnson “just the once” on the Brexit issue but these are exceptions. However there’s not the same aversion to voting Reform even though they are normally considered to the right of the Tory party.
My recollection is that Peter Cheqwyn was campaigning in Gosport as far back as the late ’70s and before any visible signs of life in the next-door Portsmouth Party – so I am not convinced that “incumbency” is the sole factor leading to success. Given the demographic similarity between Gosport and Portsmouth – neither part of the “leafy” South – an analysis of the different outcomes would be interesting.
Lib Dem Stockport is Hazel Grove and Cheadle, far from the traditional Southern view of the North.
In reality we were hammered even in Preston and Barnsley, areas of strength.
However the article miss es the main point. Reform are not our predominant problem, leave them to Labour and the Tories, or even Andy Burnham! After all the Reform vote probably gave us 20 seats at the General.
It is the Greens they are re our greatest immediate problem, then a revived Tory party in a couple of years.
We ned a total review of strategy and approach.
I have been an councillor incumbent who benefitted from that incumbency, but we need to be mindful of where incumbency might end up producing stasis and abysmal gender balance.
Very few women (80% of women are mothers, and most combine motherhood with jobs) can take on a third life as a councillor for thirty years in a role with no formal maternity leave.
I don’t want to sound complacent, but the obvious (to me) feature of Reform is that they are not remotely interested in developing local roots. The number of defections, suspensions and resignations is going to be prodigious over the next few years, once they realise the responsibility and work involved in being a councillor. Those local Lib Dems who worked hard but lost this time have sown the seeds for real growth in four years’ time (or maybe earlier). Yes, morale may be low, but now is the time to get stuck in to real community action – because it doesn’t look like anyone else will.
One big element does not get enough attention. That is the number of places where a large number of people vote locally for Lib Dems but do not vote Lib Dem nationally because they either do not understand, have not heard or disagree with our national vision (in so far as we have one) or solutions to our current national problems. I live in one such area where we succeeded a long time ago by concentrating always on local issues for local elections and lacked sufficient activists to campaign in general elections; even members and local councillors refused to come out and help in general elections. Hence we have declined to almost nothing.
I must add that the Greens are gaining because of their national picture and media attention. It remains to be seen how long they can go on gaining but our lack of national vision and media attention counts against us in so many places.
I agree with Nigel Jones. The only point I would add is a major reason whey people vote for us in local elections, but not in a General Election is because they do not believe we can win locally. That is usually why we win great victories in by-elections in seats where normally we were a distant second or even third (Thank you Sarah, Helen, Richard and Sarah – and all the activists who poured in to help in their by-elections).
However, the other key element is those activists like Nigel, who keep the show on the road for years and years, so that if and when that by-election comes along, there is the kernel of local evidence and belief that we are the ones who can win. An even bigger thank you to each and every one of them.
Apologies for a mistake in my previous post. I should have checked it fully one more time.
What I intended to say was
I agree with Nigel Jones. The only point I would add is a major reason whey people vote for us in local elections, but not in a General Election is because they do not believe we can win in a General. That is usually why we win great victories in by-elections in seats where normally we were a distant second or even third (Thank you Sarah, Helen, Richard and Sarah – and all the activists who poured in to help in their by-elections).
However, the other key element is those activists like Nigel, who keep the show on the road for years and years, so that if and when that by-election comes along, there is the kernel of local evidence and belief that we are the ones who can win. An even bigger thank you to each and every one of them.
I agree wholeheartedly that elections are won through action: “years of casework, local campaigns, a face people recognised on the doorstep”. And I draw two other conclusions from that. The first is that in my experience a double yellow line is worth a million empty statements. Actually getting something done on the ground – often literally – and then telling people about it via literature – builds real trust, whereas leaflets saying so-and-so is a “local champion”, when they have done little or nothing, invites suspicion. More local effort should go into getting stuff done alongside residents and less into umpteen bits of paper. The second conclusion is that we cannot build those local foundations in enough places to stop Reform in 2029. and so we have to have a compelling national narrative as well as hard-working community activists.
There is a chart on vote 2012 (in the local elections thread) of the leading party in wards by age and occupation with 21-24 compared to 2026.
The LIb Dems in this May roughly command an equilateral triangle from ages 30-65 and the third point at about 40% in managerial/professional jobs. That is broadly the same as the predecessor graph but the area is now slightly larger and runs about 40-60 ages.
Which does point to a hypothesis that the Lib Dems have held their ‘segment’ of the voting populace whilst greens (younger) and reform (older * non prof/manageerial) swept through what the Tories and Labour had. And there are tonnes of those wards in south east England, Stockport etc
I may not have explained it terribly well but its here – https://x.com/OwenWntr/status/2054869340327993602/photo/1
That does point to a key driver of the Lib Dems success at the moment being that they do very well in the exact segment of the electorate that is not being appeal to by either the greens or Reform. Which is actually not a bad place to be and you should probably stop beating yourselfs up about it!
It’s not incumbency per se. Just that those people who were voting Lib Dem in large numbers before still are.
Incumbency gives a small boost in individual wards. Long term activism is probably more significant and has an obvious correlation with incumbency. In Croydon for instance we went from one to two councilors. Our sitting councillor topped the poll but failed to get two good but new colleagues elected. Our gain was on her fourth attempt beating a new Tory but her running mate (second attempt) failed to get elected with a long term Tory councillor topping the poll. This is in the context of a significant fall in our borough wide vote.