Thursday 7 May will see voters across England, Scotland and Wales head to the polls for the biggest set of elections since the 2024 general election.

In England, voters will elect around 5,000 councillors across 136 local authorities, and crown six directly elected local mayors. All 32 London borough councils, 32 metropolitan districts, 18 unitary authorities, six county councils (delayed from 2025) and 48 district councils are up for grabs.

Scotland will elect 129 members to Holyrood (Scottish parliament), while Wales will elect 96 Senedd (Welsh parliament) members via a closed proportional list system for the first time following the 2024 Senedd Reform Act.

This year’s elections are widely viewed as a referendum on prime minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government, which began tanking in the polls pretty quickly after it won a loveless landslide in 2024.

Most of England’s seats up for election were last won in 2022, when Labour made gains during the fallout over the partygate scandal, presided over by Boris Johnson. Back then, Labour was polling around 35% in opposition and benefiting from voter anger towards the Conservative government.

Now, things look very different. Starmer’s premiership has been beset by scandals, U-turns, increasing authoritarianism and a lack of moral leadership over Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The party is polling at a woeful 17% nationally and while a Labour wipeout could likely spell a leadership change, it’s unclear who would be willing to accept the poisoned chalice.

Reform is also contesting wards for the first time, and although it is now polling around 23% – six full points down from highs of 29% last autumn – Nigel Farage’s party is projected to take control of county councils in England’s rural heartlands of Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, as well as dominating the Senedd elections, along with Plaid Cymru.

Meanwhile, the Greens are on the rise, with 50 Labour councillors defecting to the party in the last six months, and high hopes for the upcoming elections from leader Zack Polanski.

Here are ten seats you should be watching ahead of 7 May.

1. Newcastle (all out).

The minority Labour administration on Newcastle city council is under pressure from Greens and independents in this round of elections.

All 78 seats are up for grabs on 7 May, and the former North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll is standing for election as a Green party candidate in Monument ward – a councillor position he previously held for Labour before taking the mayoralty in 2019.

Reform has enjoyed success in the north east already, sweeping the board in the Durham county council elections last year with a gain of 65 seats from zero. But Newcastle could be where Reform runs into trouble in the region. Driscoll told Novara Media that “we’re being told Reform is unstoppable – but that’s not what we’re seeing”, and predicted last summer that an alliance of Greens and independents could take control of Newcastle city council.

A local source told Novara Media that if Labour is wiped out, the real test will be how a Green, Lib Dem and Reform council grapples with local authority staff and processes to successfully work together.

2. Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni (Senedd).

The Senedd Reform Act in Wales means 16 new super-constituencies have been created for the Senned elections, sitting alongside the 32 preexisting constituencies that elect MPs to Westminster. Each new super-constituency will elect six members of the Senedd (MSs) – 96 in total.

YouGov polling in January had Plaid surging ahead of Reform as the predicted largest party, with 37% of respondents saying they’d vote for the Welsh nationalist party (a seven-point increase since September 2025), the Greens in third (having never had an elected MS), and Labour in fourth – its weakest position in history. In February, a Beaufort Research poll had Reform on 27%, however – just two points below Plaid – while a More in Common poll projected Reform would get an overall majority.

One seat to watch in particular is the new south Wales super-constituency of Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni (Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly and Rhymney), where Plaid is projected to elect three MSs, Labour two and Reform one.

Caerphilly was won by Plaid in a stunning by-election victory in October, with Lindsay Whittle taking 47% of the vote and ending over 100 years of Labour dominance in the seat. Whittle spent decades fighting to secure the seat, and now must battle for it again, less than a year later.

3. Galloway and West Dumfries (Scottish parliament).

In Scotland, polling has the Scottish National Party (SNP) taking between 33% and 37% of the vote, as Reform surges into second place. A February Find Out Now poll commissioned after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called on Starmer to resign over the Peter Mandelson scandal had the SNP winning 36% of the constituency vote, with Reform second on 21% and Labour polling a trailing third on 12%.

The Scottish parliament elects via a mixed additional member system (AMS) across eight regions which are then divided into 73 constituencies. Each constituency elects one member of Scottish parliament (MSP) by first-past-the-post, and each region elects seven MSPs via D’Hondt PR. New constituency and regional boundaries will come into play this time around, with 21 seats changing shape or name. A party needs 65 seats for a Holyrood majority, and PollCheck predicts the SNP will win 61, although the SNP would do less well if pure PR was used rather than an AMS mix.

The southern constituency of Galloway and West Dumfries, where the Tories comfortably won 47% of the vote in 2021, is predicted to be an SNP gain.

The seat was created in its current form in 2011, cobbling together parts of the Labour-voting Dumfries and the Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Tory vs SNP) constituencies. According to MPR polling for the Times in February, the SNP will knock the Tories firmly into third place, with Reform snapping at the nationalists’ heels in second.

4. Birmingham (all out).

Birmingham city council currently has a massive Labour majority, with the party winning 65 seats and securing more than half of all votes cast in 2022. Labour has run the council – either in overall control or in coalition – for most of the past two decades.

With 101 council seats up for grabs, it’s projected that Labour will lose control. Voters are likely to punish the government over long-running disputes like the city’s bin strike, which has still not reached a conclusion.

The city has a sizeable Muslim population (around 22% – five times higher than England’s average) and anti-establishment parties and independents stand to benefit from Labour’s void of moral clarity when it comes to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Indeed, over 1,250 councillors across the UK have signed a pledge for Palestine ahead of the local elections.

Reform is predicted to pick up seats in the double figures.

5. Lincoln (a third of seats).

The East Midlands city of Lincoln’s Labour-controlled council could be in real trouble. It was one of 30 councils that voted to cancel its 2026 elections before the government was forced to roll back and commit to holding all planned elections.

A third of the council’s 33 seats are up for grabs in the city’s usual staggered process that sees 11 seats voted on in each cycle. In 2024, Labour took eight seats out of 11 with 45% of the vote, but this year is expected to be very different, with Reform projected to make significant gains.

A source close to the matter told Novara Media that there’s a really good chance that Labour will lose overall control of the council – flipping it to no overall control – and lose in at least half of the eight wards it’s actively defending. The source added that Starmer would have to go, if so – but the problem in Labour is more systemic than just the prime minister.

6. Barnsley (all out).

Every Barnsley council seat will be up for election on the same day in May – a first in the authority’s 50-year history.

The South Yorkshire town used to follow a similar pattern to Lincoln, electing a third of councillors every year over a three-year period, but this time around, following a review of boundaries, all 63 councillors will be elected at once.

Labour – which has held a majority on Barnsley council since the borough’s formation in 1974 – is predicted to suffer a wipeout, with Reform taking control. But while Barnsley could be a barnstorming win for Farage’s party, it remains to be seen if the regeneration of the town centre will serve to shore up the Labour vote.

7. Hackney (council and mayor).

Hackney council has been won by Labour in every election (bar one, no overall control) since 1971. All council 57 seats and the position of Hackney mayor are up for election, with the Greens’ mayoral candidate councillor Zoë Garbett challenging Labour incumbent Caroline Woodley.

A Green party source told Novara Media that they’re getting lots more help on the ground thanks to an influx of volunteers. The Greens initially planned to only run candidates in five wards out of 21 – they’re now fielding candidates in every ward.

The source added that on the door, people who’ve voted Labour in the past are consistently saying they’re fed up with the party and are willing to to turn to the Greens.

Seven Labour councillors confirmed last month they will stand down on 7 May, and one councillor defected from Labour to the Greens mid-council meeting earlier this month over claims of “institutional racism” in her former party.

A local Hackney resident told Novara Media that the Greens coming out strongly against the NHS’s contract with US spytech firm Palantir could be a not-insignificant part of a potential Green victory in the area. Local campaigners are urging the Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust to reject using Palantir software that processes patient data via the NHS Federated Data Platform.

8. Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr (Senedd).

Former Welsh Labour MP Beth Winter is running in the new south Wales super-constituency of Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr as an independent after quitting Your Party.

With one person, one vote and six seats to fill, there are currently 23 candidates running in Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr, with Labour fielding the most candidates.

To date, Reform has not announced candidates, despite Farage choosing to launch Reform’s 2024 general election campaign in Merthyr Tydfil. Reform, Labour and Plaid are each projected to win two MS spots out of the six available.

9. Essex (county council all-out).

Essex county council’s elections, delayed from 2025, will be held on 7 May, with all 75 seats up for grabs. While PollCheck notes that projections for county councils carry more uncertainty due to the age of baseline data – and the fact that Reform hasn’t stood in all-out local elections before – it does predict a huge victory for Farage’s party.

The east England county council has been under Conservative control in every election bar one since 1973 and currently has 49 Tory councillors – one, Ongar representative Jaymey McIvor, announced his defection to Reform in October 2024.

If predictions are correct, the council could see a Tory wipeout, with Reform taking control with more than 40 seats. After being accused of “privately” seeking to cancel the elections by ex-Tory chairman-turned-Reform-member Jake Berry, council leader Kevin Bentley publicly denied requesting a postponement.

A local source told Novara Media that Essex has a similar demographic to Kent, and warned Essex residents to take note of what has happened at the Reform-controlled council there. In Kent, councillors voted to increase council tax despite Reform promising a cut. The flagship Reform council has also been accused of fabricating savings figures and cancelling net zero projects that “never existed”.

10. Lewisham (council and mayor).

The borough of Lewisham in southeast London is electing all 54 council seats and a local mayor. The area has a strong history of anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigning, and Labour has won control of the council in all but two elections in its 62-year history.

In 2022, Labour swept a massive 50-seat majority. However, Green mayoral candidate Liam Shrivastava, who defected from Labour as a councillor in June 2025 over Palestine, is hopeful for a rupture in Labour’s tight grip on the borough.

Shrivastava told Novara Media that a “spell has been broken” in terms of the Greens being seen as a wasted vote thanks to a “massive mindset shift since Gorton and Denton”. Green candidate Hannah Spencer beat both Reform and Labour to secure what had been a historically deep-red Greater Manchester seat in the February by-election.

“Labour has massively taken people for granted in Lewisham and the delivery of services is poor because they’ve had no opposition,” Shrivastava said. “It’s total Labour dominance that creates this sense of complacency where bad decisions get made and there’s a real lack of accountability.”

The Greens are predicted to gain 12 seats in Lewisham but Labour to remain in overall control of the council. Shrivastava is up against Labour councillor Amanda De Ryk and Tory candidate Sylbourne Sydial for Lewisham mayor.

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