Preface

For years, Chris Game’s pre-election column in the Birmingham Post has followed a familiar, almost reassuring rhythm – beginning with Birmingham, moving across the wider West Midlands, and ending with a measured national overview. But this year breaks decisively with that tradition. The forthcoming local elections are anything but routine: they are unusually volatile, strikingly unpredictable, and potentially transformative in ways rarely seen in modern British politics. What might once have been a steady survey now demands a wider lens, as voters across the UK head to the polls in contests that could reshape not only local councils, but the broader political landscape itself. This post was first published in The Birmingham Post on 30th April 2026 and is available here: https://pressreader.com/article/281835765304023

Chris Game

The Post’s annual local elections column: it used to be, if not easy, at least formulaic, especially in a ‘Birmingham year’ – in the past three years in four, but now just one: which happens to be this year.  I’d start with ‘the Biggie’ – the City Council itself; then the other metropolitan West Mids councils with elections, focusing mainly on any that might possibly see a change in political control.

On then to any interesting-looking adjacent counties or districts, before concluding with a couple of national ‘round-up’ paragraphs. Informative, I’d hope; exciting, possibly less so. 

In total contrast, this year’s Thursday May 7^th locals, both individually and collectively, are quite simply the most fascinating, intriguing, and, above all, potentially most consequential since, some reckon, the 1970s. There’s no remote chance of doing them justice in this single column, so my main aim is to stimulate your interest and thereby encourage you to catch the results as they’re published at various times during the ensuing couple of days.

You could stay up, but the only West Mids results you’re likely to catch are Redditch (est.1.45 a.m.) and Dudley (3.30 a.m.). The rest are mainly later Friday afternoon: Solihull 3.00 p.m., Sandwell and Walsall 5.00, Walsall and Birmingham, last maybe but absolutely NOT least, 6.00 – recounts permitting!

This column, therefore, will start by illustrating the exceptional scale and importance of next Thursday’s ‘big picture’, providing hopefully at least a sense of the hundreds of momentous electoral battles happening across England, before gradually ‘homing in‘ on some of those in the West Midlands.

Over 7 million voters in England, Wales and Scotland will elect over 5,000 councillors  – including almost a third of so-called ‘principal’/top tier council representatives – and are widely expected to produce a set of results the like of which the UK has rarely, if ever, seen before.

The English results could collectively, as Proportional Representation campaigners Make Votes Matter put it: “be the most chaotic yet, with power won on tiny vote shares and whole swathes of the country left unrepresented”.  Sounds bad, if exciting. However, serious students of these things reckon the Scottish and Welsh national results could “open the way” to the break-up of the whole UK, so it seems right to start with them.

All 129 Scottish Parliament members are up for re-election, 73 representing constituencies, 56 their respective 8 regions. Each voter casts two votes on separate ballot papers, deploying two different electoral systems, designed to make it harder for one party to secure a majority. The Nationalists just managed it in 2011, paving the way for the 2014 independence referendum (55% ‘No’, for those with short memories), and they’re going for a more successful ‘breakaway’ repeat.  

The Welsh Senedd elections are, potentially at least, equally consequential. In the biggest parliamentary change since powers began being transferred to Wales in 1999, Senedd Members will increase from 60 to 96, with parties able to list up to eight candidates per constituency. Voters choose a single party or Independent candidate.

In contrast to Scotland, though, no party has ever won a Parliamentary majority, and the new system seems unlikely to change that. Currently, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru are neck-and-neck on an estimated 36/37 seats, with Labour some way adrift, prospectively ending a century of dominance in Welsh politics.

And so to the 5,000+ seats across England’s unitary, county, district and London councils – and, of course, the 6 directly elected mayoralties. Always difficult to summarise, this year’s hundreds (of contests) and thousands (of candidates) are clearly impossible. PLUS, this year – surely the most exciting, and utterly unpredictable, bit – many contests will have candidates from no fewer than five parties currently polling between 10% and 29%, and therefore in with least a chance.

Oh yes, and just a few weeks ago, 30 councils whose elections had been postponed to 2027 due to forthcoming local government reorganisation – including Cannock Chase, Redditch, Rugby and Tamworth – were told, following Reform UK’s legal challenge, that they must reinstate them on their original schedule. Affecting 4.6 million potential voters, if you were wondering – you could hardly make it up! 

And so, in this reverse-order column, we’re back in the metropolitan West Midlands, with room left for only the briefest of numerical overviews of PollCheck’s most recent (March 30th) seat projections; 2022 comparisons, though some were elections by thirds; as many as space permits. They are, I hope you’ll agree, fascinating.

Birmingham  101 seats. Current – Lab (2012- ); Projected – No Overall Control (NOC)

Cons 23 (+2); Reform 20 (+20); Greens 16 (+14); Lib Dems 13 (=); Lab 10 (-42)   Others 19 (+6)

Coventry  54 seats.  Current – Labour (2010- );  Projected– NOC

   Reform 22 (+20); Lab 21 (-18); Greens 6 (+4); Cons 5 (-5); Others 0 (-1)

Dudley  72 seats.  Current – NOC: Cons minority admin. Projected – NOC

  Cons 26 (-7); Reform 24 (+21); Lab 14 (-9); Lib Dems 5 (=); Others 3 (-5)

Sandwell  72 seats.  Current – Lab (1979- );  Projected – Lab

  Labour 53 (-7); Reform 17 (+17); Cons 2 (-2); Greens 0 (-1); Others 0 (-7)

Solihull  51 seats.  Current – Cons (2011- );  Projected – Cons

  Cons 27 (+16); Greens 13 (+10); Lib Dems 7  (-1); Reform 4 (+4)

Walsall   60 seats.  Current – NOC: Cons minority admin. Projected: Reform

   Reform 33 (+33); Cons 17 (12/20); Lab (5/20); Others (3/20)

Wolverhampton  21/60 seats  Current – Lab (2011- )   Projected: Labour

   Labour 38 (-6), Cons 11 (-1); Reform 8 (+6); Green 1 (+1); Others (2).

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.