Exeter City Council leader Phil Bialyk’s consolation after Labour’s wipe-out in last year’s Devon County Council elections was that his party had fallen foul of the First Past the Post electoral system – to which it remains committed despite its destructive disproportionality.
It is this system which gave Labour a 174-seat majority in the 2024 general elections on a vote share of just 33.7%, the lowest of any governing party on record and the least representative outcome in British history.
However, Labour lost all its seats in last year’s Devon County Council elections despite receiving a much larger share of the vote in Exeter than any other party. It finished more than 1,000 votes ahead of Reform UK and nearly 2,500 votes ahead of the Greens, a result he took to mentioning in city council meetings as this year’s elections approached.
He now seems unlikely to raise the issue again. First Past the Post produced a better outcome for his party than it earned this week, as it often has before, even though it lost half the eight seats it was defending. Labour’s ballot share across the city was just 0.15% larger than Reform UK’s (after the effect of Heavitree voters being able to cast two votes is addressed – see methodology note below). Yet it won in four wards while Reform UK only won in two.
Labour ballot share fell in every ward in the city, compared with the 2024 city council elections. Factoring in last year’s by-elections in Mincinglake & Whipton and Topsham (see methodology note) nevertheless offers some hope for the party in the form of a small ballot share increase in Topsham – but only faintly, after the fall in its support there in 2025.
Conservative ballot share also fell in every ward, reflecting the continuing decline of the party’s popularity in Exeter, although it did so by less than half as much as Labour’s overall.
The Conservatives lost the only ward they were defending to the Liberal Democrats, whose vote share there increased more than fourfold to propel it from fourth place in 2024 to first this year. The Liberal Democrats also held the only seat they were defending.
At the same time the Green Party’s ballot share increased in every ward, in several cases producing huge swings in its favour. It won six seats in five wards, holding three and gaining three, all at Labour’s expense.
Reform UK, which did not contest any of the city’s wards in 2024, held the seat it won in last year’s by-elections and took another from Labour this year. Its vote share in both the seats it contested last year fell, but not by much.
Very close contests took place in two wards. Postman Paul Richards won in St. Loye’s for the Liberal Democrats after emerging from a recount just five votes ahead of Reform UK’s Chris Owen. Joan Collacott, who had hoped to hold the seat for the Conservatives following Peter Holland’s retirement, ended in third place, just five votes behind Chris Owen in turn. Labour finished far behind in fifth.
In Priory, the winning margin was only slightly larger. Ski instructor Nick Williams beat Labour executive portfolio holder Marina Asvachin there by just twelve votes for Reform UK.
Labour lost another executive portfolio holder in Newtown & St. Leonard’s, Matt Vizard, where Bernadette Chelvanayagam, who works for a local fuel poverty support organisation, won by a margin of nearly 600 votes for the Green Party.
And Labour deputy council leader and executive portfolio holder Laura Wright lost her seat in St Thomas, where environmental scientist Jack Reed increased the Greens’ vote share by more than 26% to leap from fourth to first place. She finished fourth behind the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK.
The Greens won by even bigger margins elsewhere. In Pennsylvania Gill Baker, who works at the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital, received nearly 700 more votes than second-placed Liberal Democrat Will Aczel to take the seat from Labour, which again finished fourth, a single vote behind Reform UK.
In St. David’s, Labour finished nearly 1,200 votes behind criminology professor and trade unionist Brian Rappert, and only two votes ahead of Reform UK.
And in Heavitree, where the Greens held both seats, archaeologist and heritage consultant Stella Smith and project manager Helen Terry finished more than 1,200 votes ahead of the third and fourth place candidates, both of whom stood for Reform UK.
The Green Party also got striking results in several seats it did not win. It leap-frogged Labour to come second in Mincinglake & Whipton, which Tony Payne held for Reform UK, and did the same in Duryard & St. James, where long-serving Liberal Democrat Kevin Mitchell won and Labour again came fourth.
Labour can nevertheless find some solace in the four seats it held. Executive portfolio holder Duncan Wood finished 200 votes clear of Reform UK in Pinhoe while planning committee chair Paul Knott finished 120 votes ahead of Reform UK in Exwick despite Labour’s vote share falling by 17%.
Lucy Findlay won for the party in Alphington, also by a margin of 120 votes, to replace retiring executive portfolio holder Bob Foale. Reform UK, which has not previously contested any of these wards, again took second place.
Labour councillor James Cookson also held Topsham, the only ward in which the party’s ballot share increased after it came within 28 votes of losing to the Conservatives in the by-election held there last year. The Conservatives finished second with Reform UK third.
Labour now holds eighteen of the city council’s 39 seats after losing them first gradually, then more quickly, in the ten years since it won 30 when the whole council was exceptionally elected at the same time.
It remains the largest party in the chamber but is two seats short of the majority it has held since it regained control of the council in 2012. The council’s five other political groups now hold 21 seats combined.
This year it is Labour’s turn to hold the position of Lord Mayor – and council chair. Gemma Rolstone was nominated in March. Her election is expected on 20 May at the council’s annual meeting.
From then on, according to Article 5 of the council’s constitution, she should “remain impartial in all matters of policy and should not be involved in the direction of affairs” and must be “non-political” during her term of office. Among other things, in other words, she should not vote.
It is also at the council’s annual meeting each May that the council leader and deputy leader, its executive committee portfolio holders, and the members of all its other committees, including their chairs and deputies, are appointed.
The loss of Labour’s majority became clear in the early hours of yesterday morning, as this year’s Exeter election results were being declared.
Phil Bialyk nevertheless said he regarded them as “a vote of reasonable confidence” in his party, which he said would propose its own portfolio holders, council leader and deputy leader at the council’s annual meeting in ten days’ time.
Whether a deal will be struck between Labour and one or more of the council’s other political groups between now and then remains to be seen.
There are much bigger political prizes on the horizon which might encourage opposition councillors to give Labour plenty of room to carry on exposing its leadership failings while the consequences of its decisions over the past fourteen years continue to come home to roost.
Elections for the new, larger and much more powerful unitary authority which is due to replace Exeter City Council in April 2028 as part of local government reorganisation are expected to take place next May. Councillors who aspire to election then might want to avoid harming their electoral chances by doing a Labour-enabling deal now.
Then there are the general elections which must be held by August 2029 and may well take place sooner. It is clear from this year’s local elections results in the council wards which comprise the constituency – let alone the national outcome – that Exeter is no longer a safe Labour seat.
Methodology note
As the 2016 city council elections were held using the multiple non-transferable vote system each voter was allowed to cast up to three votes which were not ranked in any order of preference.
Because not all voters cast all three of their votes a precise vote share for individual candidates cannot be derived from the recorded results.
This limitation also applies to elections held in the city’s Priory ward in 2019, in Mincinglake & Whipton in 2021, in Exwick, Heavitree, Pennsylvania and Priory in 2022 and now in Heavitree this year. In all these elections voters were invited to cast up to two votes to elect two councillors at the same time.
Calculating comparative party vote shares in Exeter City Council elections over time is further complicated because the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats stood aside for independent candidate Jemima Moore in Newtown & St Leonard’s in 2019, then formed a cross-party alliance which led to them standing aside for each other in a total of six wards across the city in 2021.
In all these cases a proportional share of the ballots cast for the leading candidate in each party in each ward in which the party stood has been used to compare major party support and derive party vote share change comparisons between the principal city council elections that have taken place since 2016.
We believe this is the best available method to enable statistically meaningful comparisons between the major parties in the city. Mid-year by-elections have been excluded, but by-elections held at the same time as other elections have been included, in particular in 2025 when two were held at the same time as elections to Devon County Council.
Because of Reform UK’s significance in this year’s elections, and because it did not stand any candidates in 2024, both these by-elections have been included in the city council series despite elections not taking place in its other eleven wards at the same time.
Candidates from other parties, as well as independent candidates, have also stood in each of these elections.
UKIP contested most, but not all, of the city’s wards in 2016 and again in 2019, but not in 2018. The Women’s Equality Party also contested city council elections in Duryard & St James in 2018, 2019 and 2021. Candidates have also represented other small parties in some years.
All these minor results have been grouped together to simplify comparison, except a single Reform UK candidate who received 57 votes in St Thomas in 2023. Where more than one non-major party stood in a multiple non-transferable vote election the best performing candidate has been included in the analysis.
Independent candidates, when they have stood, have been presented separately, except in 2019 when two stood at the same time and have been presented together, and in 2024 when candidates stood in eight of Exeter’s wards as the Independent Group. These candidates have been differentiated in the data and presented alongside the major parties.
