Kira Herdman

We have just had the local elections for 2025 earlier this month. Let’s look at the results then discuss what it means for the LGBT community as a whole.

Results

Here are the results by, broken down by party : –

Party	Total Won	Change
Reform UK	677	677
Liberal Democrats	370	163
Conservative	319	-674
Labour	98	-187
Independant	89	-20
Greens	79	44

As you can see, Reform UK won most of the seats up for election, as well as the by-election for the MP for Runcorn & Helsby by 6 votes, and overall control of 10 councils.

In second place came the Liberal Democrats with a total of 370 seats and control of 3 councils overall, making it 37 councils the LibDems now control.

Greens also did well, along with the Independents. The biggest losers where the 2 main political parties in the UK, Labour and the Conservatives.

The good and the bad

The good news is that many Labour voters are switching to the LibDems. The LibDems are very supportive of the LGBT+ community in the UK and, along with the Greens, seem to be the only party that consistently proposes left-leaning policies, not just on LGBT issues but also on climate change.

The bad news is that Reform UK is gaining the voters who are deserting the Conservatives in large numbers.

What a Reform UK government would mean for LGBT people in the UK?

In Reform UK’s election manifesto, the party states “transgender indoctrination is causing irreversible harm to children” alongside blasting multiculturalism and “divisive, ‘woke’ ideology”.

The party states in its education section that it will ban “transgender ideology” – a term widely considered an anti-trans dogwhistle – in both primary and secondary schools.

“No gender questioning, social transitioning or pronoun swapping. Inform parents of under 16s about their children’s life decisions,” the pledges read. It is not clear how Reform UK would enforce this policy and how it would stop people using certain pronouns.

Furthermore, another pledge of Reform UK would be to review the Online Safety Bill because “social media giants that push baseless transgender ideology and divisive Critical Race theory should have no role in regulating free speech”.

Critical race theory is an over 40-year-old academic field that holds that racial bias is inherent in many parts of western society, especially in its legal and social institutions, on the basis of their having been primarily designed for and implemented by white people

The Reform manifesto also pledges to eliminate The Equalities Act 2010, which offers significant protection for marginalised groups such as transgender people, adding that they will also “scrap Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DE&I) rules that have lowered standards and reduced economic productivity.” They have already stated their intention to implement scrapping the DEI initiatives in the 10 councils they control.

Although the Reform Party website’s policy section states that “social and cultural issues (i.e., abortion, gay marriage, end-of-life decisions, and similar topics) should not be our focus as a party,” Reform candidates have been caught on camera using homophobic and Islamophobic slurs.

Channel 4 went undercover within the Reform campaign in Clacton in June 2024, and revealed that a canvasser had made racist and Islamophobic comments to potential voters in the Essex constituency.

The undercover investigation by the broadcaster focused on a Reform canvasser named Andrew Parker, who went on the campaign trail with the Channel 4 reporter.

Within a conversation with the undercover reporter, he was found to use vile racist slurs, reportedly describing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as a “f**king p**”.

The Channel 4 News investigation also revealed that a campaigner for Reform had used homophobic language on the campaign trail. George Jones, who runs events for Reform, was caught on camera calling a Pride flag displayed on a police car a “f**king degenerate flag”.

“You see that f**king degenerate flag on the front bonnet? What are the old bill doing promoting that crap? They should be out catching nonces, not promoting the f**s,” he was reported as saying.

Thoughts

While Reform UK currently holds only 5 MPs (0.8% of the total 650 MPs) and approximately 4% of the total UK councillors, if the current trajectory continues, it could lead to a significant challenge in the 2029 general election between Reform UK, Labour, and possibly the Lib Dems.

One can hope that either Labour changes its ways, or people will hopefully start to wake up to what’s happening in America under Donald Trump and see how Reform UK runs the ten councils they currently control and slowly start to change their minds.

As mentioned above, the By-Election was won by only 6 votes with a very low turnout. Please make sure to vote in the next local election and the general election in 2029, as every vote truly matters.

Reform UK is nothing but the UK version of the current US Republican Party. That should worry all of us, not just the LGBT+ Community.