Sir John Curtice: Reform's sweeping election wins shake Tory and Labour dominance
BBCThough some of the results are still to be reported, Reform are clearly the winners of Thursday's local elections.
Across the 23 councils where a ballot was held, the party won more votes and more seats than any of its opponents by a clear margin. The party is probably heading for around 700 seat gains and won two mayoral contests.
Meanwhile, it has won overall control of no less than seven councils, including the once Labour fiefdom of Durham and the two largest counties, Kent and Lancashire.
The party performed best in wards which voted heavily for Leave in the 2016 referendum. Yet even in places which voted to remain in the EU, the party was still routinely able to win as much as a fifth of the vote.
The party seemed able across the country to tap into voters' widespread dissatisfaction with the Conservatives and Labour.
In the BBC's projection of what would have happened if a nationwide election had been held on Thursday, Reform were credited with 30% of the vote. That easily beats the 23% that Ukip scored at the height of their popularity in 2013. It is the first time that a party other than Conservative or Labour has been placed first.
Meanwhile, Reform also won the Runcorn by-election, albeit by the narrowest of margins. Never before has a pro-Brexit party candidate won a by-election, other than two local Tory MPs who defected to Ukip in 2014.
For both the Conservatives and Labour the result was worse than their spokespersons feared. The Conservatives lost two in three of the seats they were defending and at best are likely to be left with control of just one council, Buckinghamshire.
In a clear indication of the Conservatives' vulnerability to the challenge from Nigel Farage's party, its vote fell most heavily in places where the Reform advance was strongest. Their score in the BBC projection is by far a record low.
Labour also lost two in three of the seats they were defending, though it had the consolation of winning three mayoral elections, albeit only by a narrow margin. Their projected share is the lowest since 2008, when the party suffered from the financial crash and the MPs' expenses scandal.
In contrast, the Liberal Democrats were able to withstand the Reform tide, recording over 100 net gains. The party was particularly successful in councils that it had targeted, most notably Devon and Shropshire. Overall, however, the party's performance in votes was largely in line with that of other recent local elections. Much the same was true of the Greens, who made a modest gain of 38 seats.
Before Thursday, commentators were asking whether the local elections would herald the end of Conservative and Labour's joint dominance of British politics. We certainly cannot rule out the possibility that this proves to be the case.
John Curtice is Professor of Politics, University of Strathclyde, and Senior Fellow, National Centre for Social Research and 'The UK in a Changing Europe'.
Analysis by Patrick English, Steve Fisher, Robert Ford, and Lotte Hargrave.
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