What does Hull City Council look like now?
What does Hull City Council look like after the local elections on the 7th of May?
The local elections in Hull on the 7th of May 2026 made history as the two-party system of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats was finally broken. It was Reform UK who broke it by winning ten out of nineteen available seats, breaking the majority Liberal Democrat administration. And we saw decreases in the vote share of all parties except for Reform and the Greens, marking a new era in voting intention.
Composition
After the election, this is what the composition of Hull City Council looks like:
Credit where it is due, Reform made waves, earning themselves 17,880 votes (+34.5%) whereas Labour and the Liberal Democrats swung -26.6% and -12.2% respectively. Meanwhile, the Green Party enjoyed a rise in votes of +9.7% but failed to get any seats on the council.
Swings and roundabouts
During election results, you will hear a lot about vote swings. With the way that our political system is set up, it's all about how many seats a party wins, loses, or holds. But for those among us who enjoy seeing how many people actually voted for a party, the 'swing' is a fascinating beast.
Below, you will see that just two parties had a positive swing, whereas the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and Labour swung negatively.
Votes per year
Below is a chart which shows the votes a party received over six local elections since 2019. The Liberal Democrats enjoyed a high in 2022, but their votes fell again in 2024 and only increased very slightly in 2026. The Labour vote has collapsed since 2024, whereas Reform surged by over 17,000 votes in just a two-year period. This, I believe, was helped along by the election of Luke Campbell MBE as the Mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire which saw him win the mayoralty with an 11,000 vote majority.
The Green Party also enjoyed a particularly healthy increase in votes in 2026.
Hypothetical proportional representation
As somebody who believes that proportional representation is absolutely necessary for a healthy democracy, I wanted to see what Hull City Council would look like had we used that system on the 7th of May. Now, I'm not an expert - so this may not be entirely accurate!
Hypothetical proportional representation in the 19 seats elected on the 7th of May 2026
My analysis
I am very biased. As somebody who stood as a Green Party candidate, of course I am going to say that the Greens did well. Although the party failed to win any seats, you can see that our vote share is up. We have seen a huge collapse in support for the Labour Party, and the Liberal Democrats are holding on to some of their loyal voters, but not exactly making waves.
We are less than a year away from the next set of local elections in Hull which I think will prove interesting once again. The things to look out for:
- Will Labour replace Starmer and earn their voters back?
- Will Reform start to fizzle out?
- Will Liberal Democrat voters look for something else?
More importantly for me, as a Green Party member, will we see history made in 2027, and elect the first ever Green councillor to Hull City Council?
