The local elections in 2025 coincided with a by-election and 6 flagrantly unnecessary mayoral races, and so we can get an idea of maximum voter participation without trawling through pages of local council pdfs.

The quick reaction is this: while you’ll see headlines about “Reform’s surge”, or the old “seismic change” chestnut, what you’ve witnessed again is the continuing legitimacy crisis for Westminster.

If Reform UK can’t win 3 out of 4 contests (so far) to appoint the symbolic head of a theoretical EU sub-region whose existence makes no real crucial difference to anything, and wins one on a turnout of 29.9%, then clearly there is no great desire in the country for a Reformation commissioned and approved by UK Government.

Moreover, we see a continuation of the great collapse in Tory support, and the not-so-great but still significant one in support for Labour. The legitimacy crisis won’t end. Naturally, Professor Sir John Curtice – so called polling expert (expert, in fact, in hiding dangerous truth in plain sight) – tells us differently, but then he would:

Turnout in Runcorn and Helsby has been confirmed at 46.3%, down 13.4 points on last year.

Of course, turnout was low in the general election in general but it looks as though this by-election has, as compared with other by-elections, managed to engage the electorate to a significant degree.

See, what the “expertise” is failing to mention is that this by-election was heralded as significant for both Labour and Reform UK: an early test for Starmer, an indicator of the challenge to be posed by Farage. In the end, people didn’t bother.

They could’ve sent the UK Government approved message, either way (and these days and at this stage, it seems, UK Government doesn’t care which way as long as people vote), but they didn’t.

Instead they sent the message that Curtice and rest of the concerted perception management operation won’t talk about: there is no consent to be governed. You are illegitimate.

At a later time I’ll be posting a number of “legitimacy crisis” series articles from FBEL to this site so that some context can be established for new readers. And, of course, I’ll be adding the new illegitimate MP for Runcorn and Helsby to the list.

Mayoral election turnouts (4 out of 6 counted so far):
Doncaster, 32.1%
Lincolnshire, 29.9%
North Tyneside, 33.6%
West of England, 30.0%.