Lib Dem leader hails gains as Labour and Tories slump
Davey’s party took Portsmouth, Stockport and all 54 Richmond seats, then pointed to 151 English gains and 10 MSPs in Scotland as voters fled Labour and the Tories.
The Liberal Democrats finished the election with 834 councillors in England, up 151, and 10 seats in the Scottish Parliament, up six, after taking control of Stockport and Portsmouth and sweeping Richmond-upon-Thames. Ed Davey used those results to argue that voters tired of Labour and the Conservatives were still ready to back a centrist alternative when the Lib Dems had a credible local operation behind it.
The gains were concentrated in places where the party already had a strong organisational footprint. In south London, the Liberal Democrats held Sutton and Richmond-upon-Thames and widened their grip there, while Richmond became a clean sweep of all 54 council seats, including five taken from the Greens. Portsmouth moved from 18 Lib Dem councillors to 22 out of 42, giving the party outright control, and Stockport also fell to the Liberal Democrats after a contest in which Labour and the Conservatives both struggled to hold back challenger parties.
That pattern suggests the Lib Dem pitch is working best where local branding, anti-incumbent feeling and tactical voting overlap. YouGov found in February that tactical voting had become commonplace, with many Labour, Lib Dem and Green supporters willing to switch to stop Reform UK, and a 2024 analysis of the party’s comeback said tactical voting and rebuilding its councillor base were central to its success. The 2026 results look less like a sudden national conversion to Lib Dem ideology than a set of localised decisions by voters who wanted a stop sign in front of the bigger parties.
Even so, the wider map underlines how fragmented the country’s politics has become. Reform UK won 1,422 English council seats and 17 MSPs in Scotland, while the Greens took 508 councillors and 15 Holyrood seats, so the protest vote did not settle behind a single moderate home. Davey can claim the Liberal Democrats are converting fatigue with Labour and the Conservatives into real gains, but the harder test is whether wins in Portsmouth, Stockport and Richmond can become a durable national identity rather than a set of polished local strongholds.
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