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Crisis or Renewal for Democracy? Reading the 2025 UK Local Council Elections
This research blog article focuses on understanding the political message emerging from the ground realities of the UK local council elections in 2025. It critically examines political party institutions to consider how they can ensure and sustain democracy in the country. The Westminster model of electoral democracy, though historically shaped by masculinist and ethno-nationalist politics, still presents itself as a space for rights, liberty, equality, and fraternity.
To unpack and explore the core message of these elections, this blog article is divided into three sections. The first section provides an overview of the UK local government results and examines how power is expressed and claimed through these outcomes. The second section analyses the message embedded in the results and considers whether it serves to reinforce or undermine democracy in the UK. Finally, the third section offers a conclusion that looks forward, reflecting on possible future directions.
For the local council elections across 317 councils in 14 counties, 8 unitary authorities, 1 metropolitan district, and the Isles of Scilly- the UK's unique governance structure were put to the test on 1st May 2025. The final electoral outcome revealed significant gains for Reform UK, which secured 677 councillor seats. Following them were the Liberal Democrats with 370 seats, the Conservatives with 319, and Labour with only 98 — a result that poses a serious challenge to the Labour government at present. This outcome reflects growing public dissent, particularly in response to ongoing welfare restructuring, as well as the prolonged political crisis over the management of both legal and illegal immigration.
A closer reading of the election results also highlights the growing influence of the Green Party, which won 79 seats, along with 89 seats claimed by independents and other smaller parties.
These electoral results are not only about Reform UK’s significant gains; they also signal the rise of alternative political forces. The success of the Greens and independents suggests that the public is moving beyond the traditional two-party framework, seeking new and alternative political actors who promise radical democratic solutions to their everyday struggles — solutions they recognise and believe in as real change.
The current economic decline is no sudden event but the outcome of neoliberalism's long downturn, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Disruptions in production, shifts to virtual labour, and intensified consumerism have deepened the crisis. This shift is transforming neoliberal politics, opening space for ethno-nationalism through elections, while the public now actively seeks change.
The change implied by the electoral consciousness of the general public is the effort to make their everyday struggles visible within the political structure—an idea that aligns with the Marxist principle that economic conditions determine political structures. However, the critical question is whether this anticipated shift in electoral consciousness has become an antithesis to the prevailing structure, creating an entirely new political order, or whether the existing order will revert to its old, ethno-nationalist, masculinist, and fractured form.
In local council elections, this change connects directly to governance policies — particularly the demand to strengthen welfare and social care for those in need, rather than sustaining welfare expenditures seen to benefit people arriving irregularly from overseas. As one ex-Conservative voter shifting to Reform UK remarked: “It is unfair while our people sleep on the streets, immigrants stay in hotels, and their interpretation fees are paid by us.” This political expression reflects a deeper binary — of us versus them — further layered with masculinist beliefs about migrant men’s capacity for risk and survival. However, the shift in electoral consciousness is not expected to mirror the "Make America Great Again" project in the USA, as much of the political consciousness in the UK rejects the Trump model (Channel 4, 2024).
Thus, while there is a rejection of the overtly male-dominant Trump model, the vote for change still reflects a search for stable, strong leadership — one that affirms ethno-national identity in a "fair" way while claiming to uphold rights, equality, and liberty for non-British or non-white communities. This is the paradox now visible in UK electoral politics and requires deeper investigation.
The next layer of understanding this demand for change is to ask: Who is calling for it? Is this change demanded by the working class alone, or is it an inter-class consciousness cutting across working, middle, and upper-middle classes — or even elite factions? Looking at the voting base, the majority of the working class voted for change, suggesting that working-class consciousness is reasserting itself. Yet, as Chancellor Rachel Reeves observed, while working-class power is significant, we must ask: “who claims to represent that class today? Is this category simply universalised, veiling the intersectional complexities of gender, race, and migration within it?”
If the demand for change ignores these complexities, it risks creating an assimilated political consciousness that builds hierarchical structures within an already divided establishment. By critically unpacking these points, the reality of this demand for change — and the nature and scope of what this change truly represents — can be more fully understood.
In conclusion, let us revisit the theme of change and its connection to the local council election results. These results indicate that change has the potential both to deepen the crisis in democracy and to open pathways toward its renewal. By engaging with the tensions and contradictions inherent in this crisis, and generating an antithesis through public political movements, a new synthesis—a renewal of democracy—may emerge. While we must exercise caution, it is evident that the public is still grappling with key questions: Who can deliver meaningful change? What should that change entail? The growing support for the Green Party and independent candidates reflects a search for alternatives. However, this does not exclude traditional parties—Conservative, Labour, and Reform UK—from the potential to become agents of change, provided they critically reflect on the nature and direction of that change. Political parties, rather than being the crisis of democracy, can serve as renewable agents within the democratic process.