The Tories and Labour are braced for a battering as campaigning for local elections gathers pace today.
Tension is building ahead of the crucial votes on Thursday, with Reform expected to make sweeping gains.
Kemi Badenoch’s party is braced to lose 500 councillors, with the seats up for grabs dating from Boris Johnson’s peak performance in 2021.
Meanwhile, experts have warned that Labour might not make any progress despite coming from a very low base – after suffering the worst poll plunge for any newly-elected government.
Keir Starmer has been mocked by Nigel Farage for staying away from the Runcorn & Helsby by-election, where Reform is hoping to take the previously safe seat.
Polls are being held in 23 areas across England on May 1 to choose new councillors.
The Runcorn & Helsby by-election is being held on the same day, as well as six mayoral contests across devolved regions of the country.
Polling guru Professor John Curtice said the council results are highly uncertain because five political parties – including the Lib Dems and the Greens – are ‘serious competitors’.
He stressed that the Conservatives are defending the most seats, and were likely to be hardest hit by Reform.
However, he suggested that it would be down to fine margins whether Mr Farage’s candidates won contests or merely opened the door for other parties.
‘If Reform are going to pick up a lot of seats they are going to pick them up from the Conservatives rather than Labour,’ Sir John told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
But he also laid out a dire plight for Labour, highlighting the speed of Sir Keir’s fall after winning the general election with the lowest vote share of any majority government in the post-war period.
‘Despite starting from such a low baseline by my reckoning no previous newly-elected government has seen its support fall more heavily and more rapidly in the polls than has happened to this Labour government,’ Sir John said.
Ms Badenoch has been dismissing suggestions of a deal with Reform, amid alarm that the parties are splitting the right-wing vote.
Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain she said her party would ‘fight for every single vote’ and ‘remind people about our record and how well we have done at local government level, that this is not a referendum on national issues, but local ones’.
‘I’ve been travelling all around the country, and one of the councillors I was with, we were on a doorstep, and he showed a leaflet of Reform, saying ‘we’re going to stop the boats’. That’s not what people are voting on on Thursday,’ she said.
Mrs Badenoch added: ‘We have said that we are going to tackle immigration, but this week’s elections are about who’s going to fix the roads, pick up the bins.’
Lord Robert Hayward, a Conservative peer and top pollster, expects the Tories to lose between 475 to 525 councillors on Thursday.
Lord Hayward forecast Reform would pick up around 400 to 450 council seats, which he expected to be heavily concentrated in the Midlands and the North.
Labour should in theory be picking up councillors after a dire showing in 2021, but some fear they could even go backwards.
Sir Keir is being tipped to unveil an immigration crackdown later next month as he tries to counter the apparent advance by Reform.
Runcorn is facing a by-election because former MP Mike Amesbury stood down rather than face a recall petition after he received a 10-week prison sentence, suspended on appeal, for punching a constituent last year.
Polls have suggested Andrea Jenkyns, the former Tory minister, is set to romp home in the vote to become Reform mayor of Brexiteer-heavy Greater Lincolnshire, thrashing the second-placed Tories by as much as 15 points.
In neighbouring Hull and East Yorkshire, former boxer Luke Campbell is ahead of his Labour challenger in one of Sir Keir Starmer’s party’s heartlands, according to YouGov research last week.
Labour is on course to lose the mayoralty of the West of England to the Green Party, although the gap is just four points.
In the fourth mayoral election taking place on May 1, in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire, former Tory MP Paul Bristow is 12 points ahead of Reform.
Ms Badenoch has ruled out a national-level deal with Mr Farage but told Sky News yesterday that she would trust local Tory councillors should they form coalitions with his party.
‘They have to do what’s right for their community,’ she said, after pointing to existing Conservative coalitions at local level, like the Lib Dems and independents.