Last year, 2024, was a big deal for elections in London – the Mayor and Assembly in May and the General Election in July. But there was also a steady stream of by-elections for seats on London borough councils, which gave us a continuous although not always easy to interpret commentary on London’s electoral temperature. These will continue in 2025.
The first contest will be on 13 February, when Barnet Labour defend their seat at Burnt Oak. Over the following weeks there will be by-elections in Brent, Hammersmith & Fulham, Barking & Dagenham and Westminster too. It is therefore a suitable moment to pause and look back, and see what the results and polling have to say about how Londoners are feeling now – and how they might vote in the near future.
There were by-elections for 25 borough seats between the general election and the end of 2024. Labour defended 24 of the vacancies, holding 21 of them, losing two (one in Greenwich, one in Westminster) to the Conservatives and one (in Hackney) to the Greens. The other seat was a Conservative vacancy (in Ealing) that was lost to the Liberal Democrats.
The 14 by-elections that took place on the same day as the general election showed a fall in the Labour vote since he full borough elections of May 2022, mostly to the benefit of the Greens and Independents. The Conservatives’ overall share was up slightly, largely because of one exceptional performance (Hackney’s Cazenove ward).
The 25 held since then have seen a significantly larger fall for Labour, with Independents and others again gaining and Reform UK (which did not contest any borough seats on 4 July) joining in while the Green gains have stopped. The Conservatives are nearly flat – a poor outcome given that 2022 was by some measures (total seats, vote share margin against Labour) their worst ever set of London borough elections.
The fall in Labour’s share might be exaggerated because the seats being defended, both on and since 4 July, were disproportionately Labour-voting and, as demonstrated in the general election, Labour support is down most in previously strong areas.
London Labour can take some comfort from the by-election results, in contrast to the party’s fortunes in the rest of the country. Labour lost 12.5 per cent of the vacancies they were defending in London, while in the rest of the country the loss rate was a startling 48.4 per cent (31 losses out of 64 defences). The swing is generally lower in London and the seats are safer, meaning they can withstand adverse swings – particularly if the gains at their expense are shared between several different opposition candidates.
Left wing and localist opposition, even in its stronger areas like Newham and Islington, seems insufficient to actually win seats – a contrast with the pre-general election performance of the Newham Independents. Labour even advanced in Tower Hamlets Bow East, in the absence of a candidate from Aspire, the longest-established local/left/Islamic party in London.
However, a warning sign is that in the six Labour wards where the Conservatives had won a semi-respectable vote share of over 20 per cent in 2022, the swing of 11.1 per cent was well above the London average of 6.5 per cent and sufficient to deliver two Tory gains in marginal wards.
There is a limited amount to conclude from the by-elections about the position of the Lib Dems – in the two wards they seriously contested (Ealing, Hanger Hill and Greenwich, West Thamesmead) they advanced strongly but they made little impact elsewhere. Their efficient distribution of the vote was key to their victories in the general election – and in past local elections – and there is no reason to doubt their campaigning skills in their best areas.
London remains an area of weakness for Reform. Their performance in borough by-elections has been poor, in contrast to beyond the M25. The party’s highest share of the vote was 16.9 per cent in what should have been the favourable territory of Belvedere ward, Bexley.
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A different measure of the capital’s political mood was made in December by the polling organisation More in Common, when it published the first MRP since the general election. The MRP method uses a large-sample opinion poll and sophisticated statistical and demographic analysis to model what the results would be in each parliamentary constituency.
The poll provides additional evidence that London, having swung in a restrained fashion to Labour between 2019 and 2024, has moved away from the party less than voters in other regions have since the general election. The London swing is only 3.7 per cent compared to six per cent nationally. Satisfyingly, this is very similar to the swing being picked up in borough by-elections between July and now (3.4 per cent).
According to the poll, another general election would see Labour lose only five London constituencies out of 59, and those by tiny margins that tactical voting could probably bridge: Bexleyheath & Crayford, Hendon and Uxbridge & South Ruislip to the Conservatives; Dagenham & Rainham to Reform UK and Ilford North to an Independent. London MPs would form just under a quarter of the 228-strong Parliamentary Labour Party, a similar proportion to what it was following the 2019 election.
The MRP gave more detail than scattered local by-elections could about the advance of Reform. Their support in London was up from 8.7 per cent in July 2024 to 12 per cent in December, well below their national share of 20.7 per cent. The gain was fairly evenly spread, with their vote up in every constituency and above deposit-saving levels even in their weakest constituencies in cosmopolitan inner London.
However, their vote is still concentrated in a small number of boroughs: Barking & Dagenham, Bexley, Bromley and Havering most of all, followed by Hillingdon and Sutton – with the exception of Bromley, these were the boroughs that voted in 2016 to leave the European Union. Reform’s gains in the 2026 borough elections is likely to be concentrated in these areas, plus perhaps a handful of wards in other outer boroughs which can be picked off through targeting.
Map: Reform UK percentage share of the vote in December 2024 MRP. Dark blue: over national share (20.7 per cent), light blue: 15-20.7 per cent; beige: 9-15 per cent (around the London average); pink: below 9 per cent.
The other Reform effect is on the prospects of the Conservatives, and the poll suggests that would be felt both directly and indirectly. The direct effect is the division of the right-wing vote that could enable Labour to survive despite a fall in its own support. This applies at parliamentary, mayoral and borough level (although one should remember that while there is an electoral crossover, far from all Reform and Conservative voters regard the other party as acceptable).
The indirect effect is on the Conservatives’ political strategy. Reform exercises political gravity on the Tories, encouraging the right of the party to see electoral benefit from heading ever further in that direction. The Tories polled 21 per cent at the general election and, with a Reform-lite candidate in Susan Hall, 33 per cent for London Mayor two months previously. The difference was largest in boroughs where Reform polled well in July.
The cost of veering to the populist right is that the Tories will alienate even more of what used to be their London core vote of educated centre-right professionals. There is no further to fall in parliamentary terms, although More In Common’s poll showed Labour increasing their majorities over the Tories in Chelsea & Fulham and Cities of London & Westminster.
However, a major plot strand of the 2026 London borough elections will centre around the Tories’ attempts to regain two of their most painful losses from 2022, Wandsworth and Westminster. If Kemi Badenoch’s party stays on its current trajectory it will have to rely either on a negative vote prompted by Labour unpopularity or on the ability of the local Tories to operate as a loosely-affiliated franchise rather than a branch of the national party. The Tories are still not offering much to the voters of Battersea, for instance.
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The MRP is less help with assessing the threat to Labour from the left. The general election demonstrated that there is a pool of votes broadly to the left of where Labour now stands. Many of these voters rallied to Labour’s banner when the party was led by Jeremy Corbyn, but looked elsewhere in 2024, particularly in the light of the war in Gaza. The left bloc, in contrast to the right bloc shed by the Tories in 2024, does not have a single home and is split between the Greens and various types of Independent and small party candidates.
The ceasefire in Gaza is unlikely to end the phenomenon of the Gaza Independents, although they may get another name. The future of Palestine is still perilous and both the scope and the willingness of the Labour government to take the sort of bold stand demanded by many Muslims and left-wingers are limited. There are also numerous issues on which Muslims, generally left-wing in economics, not always socially liberal, and with a particular angle on immigration, will continue to dissent from Labour’s line.
In contrast to Reform, which seems likely to organise a large slate of candidates in its better areas in for the 2026 borough elections, it remains uncertain how many candidates of the Gaza Independent type will come forward, and where and whether groups such as the Newham Independents and the Islington Corbynites can organise effective borough-wide campaigns.
It is also unclear whether there will be collaboration between the Greens and the Independents and left-localists. There appears to be a developing common front in Hackney, but there will undoubtedly be local variations. The politics of Tower Hamlets remain complicated, with the governing Aspire Party losing some councillors to Independent status but picking up defectors from Labour.
In its London heartlands, Labour could be set to face its biggest challenge since 2006, the borough elections after the Iraq war. But challengers have mountains to climb. In contrast to 2006, when they became the largest party in Brent and Camden and deprived Labour of a majority in Lewisham, the Lib Dems seem unlikely to make major inroads into Labour territory.
There are always local variations and counter-currents in London borough elections. The 2022 elections were, in general, a disaster for the Conservatives, but there were two places where they made good progress: Harrow, where they gained control, benefiting from trends within the Hindu community, and Croydon, where they won the first mayoral election held in that borough following a period of poor financial management under Labour.
On the precedent of the general election and the evidence of continuing fragmentation since then, the 2026 borough elections seem particularly likely to present a mixed picture, although in most places Labour were near their maximum in 2022 and can be expected to suffer losses. We shall see what emerges from the by-elections this year, and how they will alter our expectations.
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