Early England election results make it clear: we are in an era of five-party politics

English local election results require careful interpretation. Not all places have them at the same time, a relatively small proportion complete their counts overnight and the early headlines may not reflect outcomes later in the day. But the headline number on Friday morning – that Labour has lost more than 250 councillors - will only grow as the day progresses. While Labour will want to stress that these “mid-term” elections often go badly for the incumbent Westminster government, they rarely go quite as badly as this. The main beneficiary has been Reform UK, which began from a standing start, having not contested the previous elections for these councils, and now has almost 400 councillors with undoubtedly many more to come. The size of losses and gains will change, but these early headlines are unlikely to. However, with results still to come from large parts of England , including many London councils, and with votes for the Scottish parliament and Welsh Senedd still to be counted, further nuance will be added to this picture, if not in terms of the Labour losses, then in terms of who has benefited. Some caution is required in extrapolating from the headlines to voter behaviour. We cannot assume that because Labour has the most losses and Reform the most gains that voters switched directly from Labour to Reform. Even if Labour has lost a seat directly to Reform this may not be because of direct switching. …