Political Betting: Will it be ‘Starmageddon’ for Labour in the Local Elections?

Political Betting is a new weekly column by Mark Littlewood aimed at people who like gambling on politics.

The polls and the pundits are broadly agreed on the outcome of today’s elections – the only issue in doubt is exactly how great the earthquake will be. If we map the Richter scale onto our domestic politics, a rating of around five would be expected to “cause some damage to well-designed structures” and a number higher than eight to lead to “total destruction in communities near the epicentre”. Applying such descriptions to the established political parties (as opposed to the voters themselves), I am firmly in the camp that we will be rather closer to eight than to five.

Looking first at the English local elections, the Conservatives and Labour could find themselves battling it out for the wooden spoon, with one of the grand old parties finishing fourth and the other fifth in terms of council seats won.

Reform will comfortably win the day both in terms of NEV (the national equivalent vote share, which maps the results onto a putative General Election) and in terms of councillors. With regard to the latter, the party is currently defending just 78 of the approximately 5,000 seats up for grabs and will likely emerge with more than 1,500. You might still just find odds of 1/50 on Farage’s teal army taking first place if you fancy a 2% return on investment over just a few days.

The scale of the apocalypse facing Labour is almost unimaginable. Last year the party lost two thirds of the seats it was defending and it may fare even worse this time. In absolute rather than relative terms, the position is bleaker still. In 2025, it had fewer than 300 councillors up for re-election as the areas voting were largely the Tory shires. This time, over 2,000 seats start in the Labour column and it could be reduced to 600 or even fewer. Swathes of the party’s campaigning infrastructure will be overwhelmed as a turquoise tsunami engulfs the Red Wall. Outside London it may struggle to maintain majority control in any area at all with ‘all out’ elections – although it has sufficiently impregnable majorities to remain in power in a good number of places which elect in ‘thirds’.

You can still just about get 1/2 on the betting exchanges that Starmer will be replaced as Labour leader this year, and I believe that represents good value – as does the 5/2 that a new leader will be in position at some point between July and September. (I see the biggest danger to this latter bet being that the thus-far-hapless coup leaders get their act together and somehow manage to manufacture a coronation before the end of next month.)

The Conservatives have apparently decided to adopt an unflinching, phlegmatic demeanour in the face of near-Armageddon. They are looking at a truly wretched set of results – probably losing about half of the more than 1,000 seats they’re defending. The Tories will be swept away in the East of England, with Reform set to take majority control of the previously true-blue Norfolk and Suffolk alongside Essex. Mapping this week’s results onto a General Election will show a swathe of Shadow Cabinet ministers losing their seats, almost certainly including Kemi Badenoch herself. The Tories will fare a little better in London, likely retaking Westminster and possibly Wandsworth. I am also a little tempted by the 2/1 available on the Conservatives beating Labour in the mayoral election in Croydon – this is the stomping ground of Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, who spectacularly defied the national swing to hold his seat in 2024. A very bad night for the Tories will be compounded by the fact that for an unprecedented fifth electoral cycle in a row they will have gone backwards. Any victory photo ops for Kemi in the coming days are likely to be in Greater London.

The Greens will perform well but have had a very awkward final week. Zack Polanski’s criticism of police action in Golders Green has seen his personal approval ratings tumble. He is now surpassed only by Sir Keir Starmer in the ‘unpopularity contest’ of party leaders. This might just provide an opportunity for the Liberal Democrats to come second in the overall seats tally. They are fighting on less fertile ground than last year. Nevertheless, if they can hold what they have – and incumbent Lib Dem councillors are notoriously difficult to remove – and pick up perhaps 100 or so gains, they could just end up as runners-up on the night. You can get about 5/2 on this outcome on the betting exchanges.

We seem certain to see nationalist-led administrations in both Scotland and Wales. The SNP is 1/100 to be the largest party in Holyrood and could win an outright majority due to a divided Unionist vote in the constituency-based seats. The bookmakers are convinced Reform will come second north of the border, but if you are sceptical that the teal tide runs as strongly beyond Hadrian’s Wall, you might want to take the 9/2 that Labour somehow salvages a very distant second place.

It is a two-horse race in Wales between Plaid Cymru and Reform; Labour will come a desperate third in one of its previous heartlands. In practice, though, there is no pathway to Reform forming an administration. The nature of the electoral system – theoretically proportional, but operating in blocks of regional seats – makes it possible, albeit unlikely, that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will fail to secure any seats at all. If you think the polls are somewhat understating Reform support, you might find the 5/1 on it winning the most seats in the Senedd an attractive option.

The overall story of this week’s results will be something that is not easy to gamble on. It will become crystal clear that Britain is going through a realignment in party politics on a scale unseen for a century. Where that finally ends up is unclear. What is now certain, however, is that it will produce a party system very different from anything we have been used to for generations.

Mark Littlewood is a former director of the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Director of PopCon.