Tice is not for turning – here he is this morning

It’s 5.30 am as I write, but the writing’s on the wall for the management of many local councils. A great night for Reform UK,and Liberals,  an ok night for the Greens but a stinker for Labour, Conservatives and the Independents.

At this point Labour had  lost more than half its seats and sits third, Conservatives are the fourth party in local elections.

Let’s roll forward to 5pm

For large parts of the day, Labour were third and Conservatives fourth.

Professor Sir John Curtice
Polling expert

The night is so far proving to be one of substantial success for Reform.

They are currently winning a third of the seats that have been declared. In contrast, Labour, who have been defending most seats this evening, have lost around a half of the seats that they have been trying to defend.

If Labour’s rate of seat loss were to continue to the end of tomorrow, they could be looking at losses of just over 1200 seats, rather less than some forecasts anticipated.

However much depends on what happens in London, where a large proportion of the seats they are defending are located.

The Conservatives are also losing ground; their vote is on average down by 14 points and the party is losing around half of the seats it is trying to defend.

The other challenger party, the Greens, are performing creditably; their average of 18 percent of the vote is up 8 points on average compared to 2022. However, under first past the post it not enough for them to be picking more than the occasional gain. So far, they have made just over 20 net gains.

The Liberal Democrats’ hopes of making notable net gains of seats are not being realised; they have made only a small gain in seats, by around 20. Moreover, the party’s share of the vote is down on average by 5 points since 2022.

The overall picture created by these party performances is one of Reform running at around 29%, while all of their rivals are below 20%.

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Here’s Chris Mason’s verdict two hours later

So far, we have a chunk of the results around the parts of England that have had contests and no results yet from Scotland or Wales.

But nonetheless, there are trends that we can take a look at.

Reform are ahead, winning the most votes, as they did in last year’s local elections.

And behind them there is the trailing pack of Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party of England and Wales.

The much talked about fracturing of our politics is there to see, with none of the parties managing a runaway popularity, but votes splintering in five or more different directions.

Here are my thoughts on pensions and especially Government and Council Tax Payer Funded Pensions

When the Pensions UK LGPS Conference happens in June, it will find that Reform UK have a very loud voice and that the pressure of a political party intent on ripping up the LGPS “woke” investment strategy, is not what this Conference is used to.

Will Reform UK be given a voice or will they be ignored as a brief flame that will be snuffed out as the SDP were snuffed out?

Richard Tice and those who support him (nearly a third of those of us who voted) will not be taking any such contempt lying down.

Last year, this blog warned against taking Reform UK as irrelevant to the long-term strategy LGPS is taking. I agree with that long term strategy but I don’t think that the LGPS has got its message out to the country and that if it keeps its head in the sand, it will have some nasty surprises in the months and years to come.

We have just seen changes to LGPS in the Pension Schemes Act and I hope that both in Westminster and town halls around the country, pensions put up a strong argument for pensions going forward. It would be a disaster for this country if Reform UK’s pension reforms, especially it’s proposed reforms to public pensions, followed.