Reform UK storms to victory in Lancashire
The party won 53 of the county council’s 84 seats as it swept to power, unseating both Conservative and Labour local leaders.
Reform, which performed strongly across the country at Thursday’s local and mayoral elections, stormed to victory in Lancashire, taking control of the county council.
Reform had no seats on the council prior to the polls opening but has already won more than the 43 required to form a majority. At the time of writing, Reform has won 52 seats, the Tories have eight and Labour has five.
The Conservatives held 48 of the council’s 84 seats ahead of the election, with Labour occupying 27 of the remaining 36.
Among those to lose their seats is leader Phillippa Williamson, who narrowly lost out to Reform’s Graham Dalton by just 29 votes.
Earlier in the day Reform candidate Sarah Pochin edged out her Labour party opponent in the Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election to become the party’s fifth MP.
Reform also swept to victory in the Greater Lincolnshire by-election and also has full control of Durham, Staffordshire, Lincolnshire and Derbyshire county councils.
At least these are likely to be the last ever Lancashire CC elections before it is abolished hopefully limiting the amount of damage that Reform can do to the county.
By Dom
Well done Lancashire
By Anonymous
Can’t rest on your laurels now, not when you’ve got none.
By I. Curtis
Congratulations to the people of Lancashire for bringing Trumpian-style nonsense to the UK. I didn’t know Lancastrians hated their country so much?
By Anonymous
All credit to Reform. The Tories’ relentless drift leftwards and both their and Labour’s seeming disregard for voters has finally come to bite them both.
By More Anonymous than the others
Reform has been elected by promising the unachievable so it should be interesting to see how they deal with the reality of delivering local services within strict budgets.
By Anonymous
Fantastic news
By Anonymous
“So… we’ve promised to bring down our share of council tax by cutting inefficiencies. What’ve we got?”
“Well… 72% of the budget is spent on adult social care.”
“Ok, there must be some under utilised care homes gathering dust and costing us money.”
“Well, er, no. The last lot sold them off. Actually turns out we need more care homes than we’ve got.”
“What about saving money by outsourcing home-care services to the private sector?”
“Already done. It now costs 230% of what it used to, after you adjust for inflation.”
… etc. etc.
By Realist
Reform policy going into the election was to call for a referendum on the local government reorganisation/devo plans. Given the scale of their win, which possibly they weren’t expecting, it seems incredibly unlikely they would want to lose their new powerbase.
Question is really therefore whether the County Council could pull out of the devolution/mayoral, and if they could, whether they would now bother with a further public vote. They might even get some cross-party support from the districts that still don’t want to be abolished…
By Hounty Call
Definitely going to be an interesting devolution journey for Lancs now, just glad that the Cheshire and Warrington electoral cycles don’t arrive till 2027 and 2028, and they can negotiate a settlement without Reform.
By Rich X
Disaster for Lancashire, the county is already falling behind the rest of the country . Reform out of self interest will feed the self interest of district councils to try and stop devolution and much needed local government restructuring . So the chaotic structures may continue stopping economic development and damaging the future of young people
By George
Reform is interested in reform, so will now use Lancashire County Council as a political football to create headlines. Their interest in the people of Lancashire is questionable.
By Anonymous
Reform’s first move in power is to ban flags. That gives you a flavour of the type of leadership they will bring to places like Lancashire – wasting taxpayer’s money on vanity performative nonsense because they have no real solutions to anything.
Good luck Lancashire – you’ll need it. But if Reform is what your people have voted for then sorry but you deserve every bit of economic damage that decision will cause.
By Anonymous
Got to be better than the Labour Party..promise everything then simply lie because they actually despise the people who vote for them. Tories are no better…it’s been a uni party for years. Nice change.
By Anonymous