As meetings of Your Party supporters take place around the country one of the immediate tasks we face is to get ready for the elections that will be held on 7th May next year – now just over six months away.
Having said that, working out exactly where there will be elections in 2026 is not as straightforward as it sounds! Yes, there will be contests for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd in May. But whereas every autumn for over a decade now, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has produced a directory of the council elections to be held the following spring as a planning resource for local campaigners, this time, however, no such certainty is possible.
That’s because Keir Starmer’s New Labour Mark II government is imposing ‘reorganisation’ plans on local government, in the biggest changes in England since the 1970s – to make it easier, they hope, to carry out their austerity agenda to cut and privatise local public services by weakening local democracy. They are pushing through the merger of district and county councils into larger and more remote single bodies and increasing the number of directly-elected ‘super mayors’. In doing so, 66 councils that have scheduled elections for May 2026 but which are affected by reorganisation, may have them cancelled.
The same thing happened this year with nine council elections that should have taken place cancelled just weeks before polling day. So for a second time in two years a full picture of where local elections will be held in England in May will not be clear until February or March. This casual attitude to democracy is in itself another example of the increasingly authoritarian character of the Starmer government, and how it tries to hide from a reckoning with the electorate.
What we do know, however, is that elections will definitely take place for all 32 London borough councils and 40 other Metropolitan district and district councils. And that also on the same day there will be Mayoral elections in Watford and the London boroughs of Croydon, Hackney, Lewisham, Newhamand Tower Hamlets.
So our estimate is that May 2026 will see, as a minimum, at least 3,452 councillors elected in 1,537 wards. And we have listed the councils concerned in what this year is a (very) Provisional Directory of the May 2026 Local Elections, available at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Provisional-2026-elections-directory.pdf
There may eventually be more elections than we have included here as definitely on, probably many more. But what there certainly will be is a significant enough electoral opportunity for Your Party supporters, trade unionists, anti-war protestors and working class community campaigners to organise to give their verdict on the Starmer government and put forward at the ballot box the socialist alternative that we need. ■
The TUSC all-Britain steering committee has also produced a briefing document, Ideas About The Next Local Elections: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Party in May 2026, available at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Ideas-about-the-2026-local-elections.pdf.
The main emphasis is on the enormous possibilities that are there. A new working class party could win seats in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd and councillors in almost every one of the English local authorities with elections in 2026 – a great opportunity but also a challenge. A substantial presence in local government for a new party could be a powerful bridgehead, a catalyst force, for a movement against the Austerity II agenda that the Starmer government is set on, including more attacks on local council services. But only if the new party and its candidates are clear on what needs to be done.
The TUSC discussion document is a contribution to the policy and campaign strategy debate that’s needed. Drawing on previous work on how to prepare no cuts People’s Budgets including the presentation of alternative budgets by TUSC-supporting councillors – and the experience of the different component parts of our coalition in the trades unions and in leading an anti-austerity council in Liverpool in the 1980s! – it outlines how councils still have the power to challenge the government. If, that is, the political will is there.
And lastly, but most importantly, how the work can begin now to prepare for May even before the name, structures and other details of Your Party are finalised. Through campaigning for community-led People’s Budgets to present to the council budget-setting meetings that will take place in January-February next year – regardless of whether there are elections then or not.