Thursday 25th was a Bad Night for Labour. Is it going to get worse?

There were six council byelections held on Thursday 25th September. Readers of these pages will have been most interested with the Plaistow South result.

However, the results in the other ballots are informative. (Graphics from Election Watch)

Labour were defending four seats. The Greens were defending one and the Tories were defending another.

In Bournemouth the Lib-Dems took a seat from the Tories.

In Warwick, Labour held one seat (with a majority of 15) and the Greens held a second.

In Brighton and Hove Labour lost to a Green candidate.

In Cardiff, Labour lost to a Reform candidate.

And Labour lost to an Independent candidate in Plaistow.

It seems that both Labour and Conservatives are losing votes to whoever is the strongest local opposition. Nobody likes Labour or the Conservatives, but they don’t seem to be agreed on who should replace them.

Looking at the national picture, in the 2025 Mayoral elections, Labour fared reasonably well, losing only one seat in Cambridgeshire to the Tories and retaining three mayoralties in urban areas.

Reform, however, were the big winners, taking the mayoralty in two new areas and a swathe of council seats. (Graphics from BBC and here)

It was in the race for council seats that Reform had its most stunning success, gaining 677 seats and control of 10 councils. In the elections, held in mostly rural areas, Labour lost 198 seats and the Tories lost a staggering 674.

The Liberals picked up an additional163 seats, and the Greens took a further 44.

Since the May 2025 council elections, Labour have had a net loss of 28 seats; the Tories have had a net loss of 13; the Lib-Dems and Greens have had net gains of 8 and 4 respectively; but the big winners are Respect with an additional 35 council seats, (as of September 2025).

Anyone who is not Labour and not Tory can be pleased with the results. But Reform must be delighted. And here we have an interesting twist. Currently Reform are the most popular party nationally. To the media and the Labour Party, Reform are dangerous extremists. Those who attended the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally were branded “far-right” by Sadiq Khan.  John McDonnel asserted that “Reform are a protest fascist organisation”. 

Rather than tackle the issues that the voters (as opposed to party activists) think are important, Labour luminaries have indulged in name calling and smearing.

We wondered, has this happened in another English-speaking country in the recent past? And of course it has. Labour in the UK seem doomed to repeat the failures of the Democrats in the USA where the people elected, let’s be kind and say, a man with a very chequered past to the presidency. Not because he was good, intelligent or even competent, but because he spoke to the issues that they felt were important.

In our own small corner of the capital, Reform are unlikely to take over the council or a parliamentary seat. But they may well upset some expectations and take one or two wards in 2026.

And what does all this mean for Newham? Clearly, a national swing against Labour (and the Tories) is benefitting a range of opposition parties, though not equally. In Newham the main beneficiaries are clearly the Independents.

The byelections at the time of the general election seemed to halt the momentum of Newham Independents. But these were byelections when Labour was at the height of its popularity and people wanted rid of the Tories. 

Over a year has passed and Labour’s national popularity has evaporated.

In Plaistow South the swing was 45%. This is comparable to the swing to Mirza in Boleyn (43%), a poll held before Gaza and before the election of the Labour government. Sophia Naqvi took Plaistow North with a swing of 46%, six weeks after the October 7th massacres.

Clearly the unpopularity of the Labour government is not helping Newham Labour. However, when the Independents have won, they have consistently done so with swings in the mid-40s. This suggests that in their target seats they can expect very significant swings to them from Labour. And here is where local issues may be important; there is very little to encourage the voters to remain with Labour. The questions that might have caused voters to vote on local issues do not tell a good story for Labour and they have been highlighted by the Independents.

Which leads us to ask, who wants to be a labour candidate in 2026? And which seats are safe Labour seats now? In 2018, pretty much the whole of Newham consisted of ‘safe seats for Labour candidates.

Now we are not sure where the safe seats are. In addition to the Independents, the Greens are nibbling at Labour’s hold of the northern wards and Reform are doing the same in the south.

We anticipate something of an internal struggle in Labour, as potential candidates vie for seats they consider ‘winnable’ and we would not rule out defections between now and May 2026.

Labour’s mayoral candidate Forhad Hussain must be thinking what he has got himself into. Fiaz has taken one of the safest Labour councils in the country and made the borough a series of marginals. She may have achieved what all of the opposition parties failed to do, to bring down Newham Labour.