There’s no doubt that Friday’s local election results belonged to Reform. Nigel Farage’s party has picked up hordes of councils, councillors and mayoralties at the expense of the two major parties.
However, it won’t only be Farage and co. who are heading into the bank holiday on a high. The Lib Dems have made meaningful gains, and these should worry the Tories as much as anything Reform have done. They hint at an almost total collapse of the moderate, “one-nation” voter base that used to be so crucial
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, whose elections day stunt was to hand out ice creams in Shrewsbury (his party is hoping to scoop control of Shropshire County Council…) has declared the Lib Dems ‘the new party of middle England’. It is hard to argue with that.
With 18 of 23 councils declared, Sir Ed’s party had picked up a total of 320 councillors, a gain of more than 120.
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