Could Reform UK take control of the city council next?

STOKE-ON-TRENT has its first Reform UK councillor following Luke Shenton’s victory in the Birches Head and Northwood by-election.

- Phil Corrigan

Nigel Farage’s party has now secured a beachhead on Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which they will be hoping to build on in future elections.

The seat was previously won by Labour in the 2023 council elections, with the result showing a major swing to Reform.

While it would be wrong to read too much into a single by-election result, Cllr Shenton’s win can clearly be seen as part of a pattern.

Just two weeks ago Reform won an historic landslide victory in the Staffordshire County Council elections, taking 49 out of 62 seats.

Labour councillors, who have been in control of the city council since 2023, are rightly concerned that something similar could happen in Stoke-on-Trent.

While most of the headlines following the Staffordshire elections focused on Reform utterly smashing the Conservatives’ grip on the county council, it must be remembered that they also gained four seats from Labour, reducing them to a single representative on the authority.

And the scale of councillor Shenton’s win in Birches Head and Northwood, with 59 per cent of the vote on a relatively high turnout, suggests the Reform surge is as real in Stoke-on-Trent as it is in Staffordshire.