Seasoned observers of London politics weren’t surprised when Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch rolled up at Westminster Council’s 20-storey, 1960s, Victoria Street headquarters on the day after May’s London local elections, declaring “the Conservatives are coming back”.
The prestigious borough’s Tories had won nine seats from Labour, enabling them to recapture the 54-seat council, which they held continuously from its very first elections in 1964 until losing control to Labour in 2022.
Regaining this council as a Tory flagship while also keeping hold of Bexley, Bromley, Harrow, Hillingdon and Kensington & Chelsea, increased the number of Tory-controlled boroughs from five out of 32 to six. They have also formed minority administrations in Enfield and Wandsworth and retained the mayoralty of Croydon. However, a closer look at the results contradicts first impressions of Tory progress.
In Westminster, the Conservative vote share actually fell to 35.1 per cent, down 3.5 per cent from 2022. The swing to the Tories across the borough resulted from Labour’s vote share falling more steeply – to 30.2 per cent, a 16.1 per cent decrease. This pattern was repeated across London, with the overall Tory vote share falling in 30 of the 32 boroughs.
Citywide, Labour won 25.6 per cent of the popular vote (down by 16.9 per cent from 2022), followed by the Greens on 22.3 per cent (up by 10.5 per cent), the Conservatives on 20 per cent (down 4.8), Reform on 13.0 per cent (up 12.8) and the Liberal Democrats on 12.4 per cent (down 1.9).
That Tory share was its lowest in all 17 sets of full London borough council elections ever held. It was also smaller than every vote share won by the Conservatives in the Greater London administrative area – formally created in April 1965 – in the 16 general elections held since that year.
It was smaller, too, than the Tories achieved in all six elections to the Greater London Council (GLC), held between 1964 and 1981, and all seven subsequent Greater London Authority elections for a Mayor and members of the London Assembly (four-yearly since 2000).
May 2026 was the first time the Tories had finished in third place as a whole in the capital in any of those nearly 50 election events of various kinds. Notably, the Tory vote share fell compared with May 2022 despite those elections being held at the height of the “partygate” scandal, just 66 days before Boris Johnson’s resignation as Prime Minister.
The party’s London council seat total rose by only six – from 403 to 409 out of 1,817, once a delayed ward contest in Hillingdon had taken place. This statistically insignificant increase, from 22.2 per cent of all London councillors to 22.4 per cent, falls well short of outcomes in previous periods of Tory national opposition, when the party has made significant gains in local and regional elections and gone on to recover nationally.
In 1968, 1,438 of the 1,863 London borough councillors elected were Conservatives. That was 77.2 per cent of the total, as the party chalked up 60.1 per cent of the popular vote. In that landslide year, Tories won control of 28 of the 32 boroughs, putting them in charge of Town Halls as unlikely as those of Camden, Hackney, Islington, Lambeth and Lewisham. The party’s runaway success in London foreshadowed 1970’s general election victory under Edward Heath, which saw Tories win 49 of London’s 102 parliamentary constituencies of that time.
In 1978, the Tories had another good year, winning nearly half of all the votes cast (48.7 per cent), 960 of the 1,908 London seats (50.3 per cent) and control of over half the boroughs (17 out of 32). Again these successes set the stage for a national victory. The Tories won the following year’s general election, their first under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, helped by prevailing in 50 of Greater London’s 92 parliamentary constituencies (54.3 per cent).
In 2006, London again saw a Tory recovery of sorts as the party attracted just over one third of the London vote (34.9 per cent) and got 785 councillors elected out of 1,861 (42.2 per cent). This was enough for them to take control of nearly half of the boroughs – 14 out of 32. In the subsequent general election of 2010 – held on the same day as the next set of borough contests – Tories won 28 of London’s 73 seats, 38.4 per cent of the total. This was a weaker comeback than in 1968 or 1978, but it contributed to the party being in a position to oust Labour and lead the coalition government formed with the Liberal Democrats.
The Tories’ performance in London’s boroughs in 2026 not only falls far short of strong showings in comparable periods in the past that have signalled wider Tory recoveries, but also suffers by comparison with previous elections held during Tory wilderness years.
In 1998, one year after Labour’s landslide first general election win under Tony Blair, the Tories, by then led by William Hague, and still seriously underwater in national polling, won 32 per cent of the London borough vote –12 percentage points higher than in 2026 – and 538 councillors out of 1,917, or 28 per cent of the total. That’s rather more than this year’s 409 or 22.4 per cent. It was followed by the Tories winning only 13 out of 74 London parliamentary seats (17.6 per cent) in 2001. This suggests that the 2026 borough results are not exactly a great omen for the next general election.
A deeper dive reveals that the party is now a significant force in less than half of London’s 32 boroughs, finishing first or second in vote share terms in just 14 of them. In seven boroughs, they returned only between one and five councillors and in 10 the Tories won no seats at all, which was even worse than their seven zeroes in 2022. On average, London boroughs have 57 seats up for grabs.
Tory-free zones now include outer London boroughs as varied as affluent Richmond in the south west, which is now completely dominated by the Lib Dems, Havering, which borders Essex and is now controlled by Reform UK, and the poor and strongly Labour Barking & Dagenham. These can be added to the inner or “middle London” boroughs of Haringey, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham and Southwark, where the Tories have long struggled.
May 2026 also saw no sign of a Tory recovery in the five boroughs with directly elected Mayors. Precise comparisons with 2022 aren’t possible, because in that year the Supplementary Vote (SV) system was used and in 2026 those contests were determined by First Past The Post (FPTP). Nonetheless, a comparison between 2022’s first preference votes under SV and this year’s FPTP outcomes points to the Tory vote share falling in all five London borough mayoral contests.
The party’s candidate narrowly retained the Croydon mayoralty with a 30.7 per cent of the vote, but that was 4.1 percent less than 2022’s first preferences. Their next best mayoral result was coming third in Hackney with 8.4 per cent (5.2 per cent less) and their candidates in Newham, Lewisham and Tower Hamlets all finished fifth, with 7.6 percent (down four per cent), 5.3 per cent (down 3.8 per cent) and 4.1 per cent (down one per cent) respectively.
Alongside the Tories’ decline in London’s boroughs, the party has fewer MPs in Greater London area than ever before. A defection to Reform has brought the number down from just nine at the last general election to only eight out of 75, or 10.6 per cent. The party’s number of London Assembly members is also at a record low. It currently holds only seven of the 25 Assembly seats, a number again depleted by one due to a defection to Reform. Of those remaining, five owe their positions to the proportional representation part of the Assembly elections and only two represent constituencies.
Plainly, the Tories have their work cut out if they are to become a citywide political force again. On current form, there is a real risk of them finishing third in the May 2028 mayoral election, behind Labour and the Greens, having finished first or second in all the previous ones. However, that contest also represents the next opportunity for a Tory comeback.
For three successive elections the party has chose intellectually limited candidates with views that lie outside the London mainstream and lacking the experience required for running a £22.7 billion-budget organisation like the Greater London Authority. Party members unrepresentative of London voters have chosen from among candidates drawn from the dwindling band of London Tories at Westminster and in local government.
Failure at the ballot box has been then rewarded with a seat in the House of Lords or, in the case of Susan Hall – who achieved a swing against the Tories in favour of two-term Labour incumbent Sir Sadiq Khan – leadership of the Tory London Assembly group.
Breaking the Tories’ losing London streak requires addressing candidate quality for the next mayoral election in two years’ time. A mandatory “experience floor” should be introduced, requiring candidates to have completed a four-year term as a London borough council leader (or Mayor) or being able to demonstrate similar large organisation executive experience. For the future, the party could support introducing directly-elected mayors in every London borough, increasing the potential mayoral candidate talent pool long-term.
The Tories nationally should also allow their London mayoral candidate to differ from national policy so as to more closely align with London’s interests, opinions and political culture. Sixty per cent of Londoners voted to remain in the European Union at the referendum 10 years ago, and recent YouGov polling found that 66 per cent of Londoners want to rejoin versus 28 per cent who wish to stay out, Despite this, the Tories have reliably selected hardline leavers as mayoral candidates in the past.
A mayoral candidate interested in attracting votes beyond the core minority could support the forthcoming Youth Experience Scheme, which will allow young Londoners the right to work, volunteer and study in the EU27 on a time-limited basis, something the national party opposes.
Rebranding the Tories for London also entails focusing on issues that matter most to Londoners. Ipsos polling finds that housing affordability is Londoners’ top concern, yet the party’s only pledge on this issue – stamp duty abolition – would primarily benefit the home-owning minority.
For the renter majority, the party positions itself as the landlords’ friend, opposing the Renters’ Rights Act and thereby defending London’s despised high-priced, low-quality rental market. By championing mayoral development corporations – a model anticipated by the Tories’ 1980s initiative in Docklands – the party could commit to unlocking development of the near one-million new homes London needs on brownfield and “golf belt” land and at transport hubs.
There are also opportunities to develop policy where the Tories could own the issue, as they did when pioneering council home sales in the 1970s under the GLC. According to the Tories’ own polling, nearly half of Londoners – more than double May’s Tory vote share – back banning Tube strikes in return for compulsory binding arbitration. That would be a policy the union-backed Labour and the union-friendly Greens couldn’t match.
If the Tories in London are to recover from their record low, third party status, it will take more than their leader declaring victory in the midst of defeat.
Barnaby Towns was a campaign strategist for Steve Norris when he was the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London in 2000 and 2004.
