The people of the United Kingdom took to the polls by the millions on Thursday, 7 May. The Members of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd, as well as over 100 local Councils across England were selected.
In Wales, the Labour Party—the political group of incumbent Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom—lost their majority in the Senedd that it had held for 27 years. Labour’s Eluned Morgan has been serving as First Minister of Wales since 2024, but now failed to retain even her own seat. As a result, she has announced that she is stepping down as the leader of Welsh Labour.
The localpatriot Plaid Cymru Party (which is Welsh for ‘Party of Wales’) is projected to win the most seats, 43—however, that is short of the 49-seat majority in the legislative body.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party is projected to come in second with 34 seats. That is a major accomplishment for the right-wing populist party, as the right-wing Conservative Party did not manage to win a single seat in Wales in the last general UK election in July 2024. This time, the ‘Tories’ are expected to win seven seats in the Welsh Senedd.
In the last cycle, the Senedd had 60 seats, which has since been expanded to 96 through the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Act of 2024. The Labour Party held 30 seats out of those 60—now, they appear to have been relegated to just nine out of 96…
Gareth Lewis wrote this in his brief opinion piece for the BBC about Labour’s results in Wales:
‘What adjective adequately describes the sheer and utter scale of Labour’s collapse in Wales? The symbol of the party’s defeat might well be the failure of First Minister Eluned Morgan to win a seat, but it is bigger than that…Labour themselves have not been short of words. “Disastrous”, “catastrophic”, and “devastating” have all been thrown around.’
In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is projected to keep its control of the Scottish Parliament as a minority government, securing 55 out of 129 seats. Reform UK did not make massive gains in this part of the UK, getting only about 15 per cent of the popular vote and failing to win a seat.
However, as of the time of writing this, the results of the Scottish Parliamentary elections are only around 55 per cent reporting.
UK Elections 2026: Labour Loses over 1,000 Council Seats in England
As for the local council elections in England, Reform UK is projected to gain a whopping 1,196 Councillors across England, up from just two seats held before the election to 1,198, as per the latest vote counts.
The incumbent left-wing Labour Party has also seen a massive swing in local Council seats, only in the opposite direction. They have lost 1,045 seats, and are now down to 751. The environmentalist–progressive Greens, meanwhile, have made gains, picking up 269 seats, bringing them up to 384.
The around 1,000 Council seats lost by the incumbent party are roughly the same result suffered by the Conservative Party under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in May 2023. Then, the Tories lost 1,063 council seats nationwide, and went on to lose the general election in a landslide the next year.
This year, they are set to lose an additional 466 seats, bringing their total in England down to 627.
UPDATE: Reform Gains in Councillors up to 1,450; Calls for Starmer to Resign Heat Up
As the vote-counting process continued, the results kept getting better and better for Farage’s Reform UK.
As per the latest counts, they are up to 1,451 in picked up councillor seats in England. Meanwhile, Labour has lost 1,446 seats. Consequently, calls for PM Starmer to step down have intensified within his own party. Labour MP Catherine West has vowed to start the ‘leadership contest’ process on Monday, 11 May.
As for the final Scottish Parliament count, the SNP finished with 58 seats, Labour with 17, and—despite not being projected to win any seats in the initial phase of the counting—Reform has captured 17 seats as well.
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