Across London, Labour is losing ground to the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and Reform. In Wandsworth, the picture is more complicated still — no overall control for the first time in six decades, and nobody quite sure what comes next.

This has never happened before in Wandsworth’s local election history: for the first time since 1964, when the inaugural borough election was held, the Council has returned no overall control. The Conservative Party won the greatest number of seats, securing 29, while Labour took 28. The remaining seat was retained by councillor Malcolm Grimston, standing once again as an independent candidate.

The Conservative Party was quick to declare victory, with the local party posting on social media:

We got our Council back 💙 pic.twitter.com/pzIgyUkPXI

— Wandsworth Conservatives (@wandsworth) May 9, 2026

In the Standard, Conservative leader Aled Richards-Jones said he was “really delighted” with the results, which he said would see the Tories “take back control” of the Council.

For Labour, the result is a bitter disappointment. The party has lost control of the Council after just one term. In 2022, Margaret Thatcher’s self-proclaimed “favourite council” turned red, with 35 Labour councillors elected against 22 Conservatives, ending 44 years of unbroken Conservative rule.

Then, the Conservatives sought to attribute their defeat to the travails of central government and Boris Johnson’s deep unpopularity. Yet the results spoke plainly enough: residents wanted change in how their borough was run, and they delivered it convincingly with a majority of 13.

Four years on, however, it is clear that national politics played a significant role in Wandsworth. Yet the margin is equally telling: a majority of a single seat is, by definition, the most precarious possible. As events have already demonstrated, it can evaporate quickly. A single by-election could change everything, or a defection could turn a working majority overnight (in August 2025, Conservative councillor Mark Justin, who represented Nine Elms ward, defected to Reform UK).

Aydin Dikerdem, the former Labour cabinet member for Housing, re-elected on Thursday in Shaftesbury & Queenstown, still has a vivid memory of the count:

“It was a tense moment — one of the worst in my living memory. By the end it was neck and neck, and we finished with St Mary’s and West Hill.”

• Read his interview: Aydin Dikerdem on council homes, rent control, the funding squeeze and why there is still so much more to do in Wandsworth

With a majority of one, every vote in the Council chamber and in committees will count. An absence through illness, a holiday or a disagreement in the ranks could, at any moment, prove decisive.

Wandsworth Labour was hit by national context, but less than other parts of London

Local Labour has grounds to feel aggrieved, but its performance compares favourably with what was seen nationally, or indeed in other parts of London.

Wandsworth Labour did not suffer the same dramatic fate as its counterparts in Westminster. That historically Conservative stronghold — long Wandsworth’s rival in the race to keep Council tax at its lowest — was also taken by Labour four years ago and has now swung back strongly. The Conservatives won a commanding 32 seats against Labour’s 22, almost the inverse of 2022’s outcome of 23 versus 31.

Nor did Wandsworth Labour endure the disaster that hit Lambeth. Since its creation, Lambeth has been predominantly Labour-run, save for a brief period of Conservative control between 1968 and 1971 and several spells under no overall control. A Liberal Democrat–Conservative coalition governed the Council from 2002 to 2006, before Labour regained uninterrupted control for two decades. As recently as 2018, Labour held 57 seats, compared with just five for the Greens and a single Conservative councillor.

Last Thursday, they lost more than half their seats. The Council fell into no overall control after all 62 seats were declared, with the Greens emerging as the largest party on 29 seats, ahead of Labour on 26 and the Liberal Democrats on eight. The Greens topped the borough-wide vote share with 35.5% (up 13.1 points), while Labour collapsed to 33.1% — a fall of 21 points. The Liberal Democrats rose to 15.5% (up 4.1 points), the Conservatives fell to 7.6% (down 4.3 points), and Reform UK entered the contest on 6.2%. It was a devastating result for a party that had held uninterrupted control for twenty years.

In Wandsworth, the picture is considerably more nuanced. Labour won the largest share of the vote (34% against the Conservatives’ 31%) yet for all their talk of having “their Council back“, the Conservatives’ vote share is actually five points lower than it was in 2022, when they lost control. Looking further back, the Conservatives have not won the majority of votes in the borough since 2018.

The distorting effect of the First Past the Post electoral system means that, in reality, Labour still gathered the largest number of votes (3 points ahead of the Conservatives). In Wandsworth, the Conservatives have not so much won back the residents as won back their seats.

229 votes that could have changed entirely the face of the council

The ward-by-ward data also tells a much more unsettling story.

While in many wards the last seat was either comfortable or — in Balham, Battersea Park, East Putney and Wandsworth Town — an internal fight between candidates of the same party, five produced a genuine cross-party contest for the last seat. The closest came in St Mary‘s — home to the new riverside developments along York Road — where a Labour candidate fell just 15 votes short of election, followed by West Hill (Conservative over Labour by 49), Thamesfield (Conservative over the Liberal Democrats by 50), Tooting Broadway (Labour over the Greens by 51) and Trinity (Conservative over Labour by 64).

Those margins are extraordinarily tight. Fifteen votes, in a ward of roughly 5,000 registered voters, represents 0.3% of the electorate. In practical terms, it means eight people who voted Conservative in St Mary‘s could have voted Labour instead — a net swing of sixteen — and the seat would have changed hands. Eight people. A single block of flats on York Road. West Hill is similar: 49 votes, or 25 people switching. Thamesfield at 25 switches, Tooting Broadway at 26 and Trinity at 32 are the same order of magnitude.

Had St Mary‘s last seat gone to Labour, they would have become the largest party, pointing the borough in a very different political direction. Had West Hill‘s Conservative seat also flipped, the result would have been Conservatives 27, Labour 30 — an outright Labour majority. Just 64 votes across two wards separated a hung Council from Labour in overall control.

The Council could also have looked very different in composition. Had the Liberal Democrats taken the last Conservative seat in Thamesfield and the Greens taken the last seat in Tooting Broadway, neither main party would have held a lead — creating genuine multi-party pressure on whichever group attempted to form an administration.

While some local Labour members have blamed the Greens for their loss, Glyn Goodwin, policy lead for Wandsworth Green Party, told CJI:

“Their constitution does not allow them to stand down in favour of other parties, but at the same time Labour has accused us at each single election of taking votes from them. They think they are entitled to our votes. I got so much abuse in the past when I stood for Earsfield, but I watched the counting and the split votes were affecting the Conservatives far more than Labour.”

Goodwin argues that Labour has only itself to blame:

“At the start of the last century, Keir Hardie [the founder of the Labour Party] was already advocating for proportional representation, and for all those years in power since, they did nothing to change it. You can’t have your cake and eat it.” He added: “With proportional representation, Labour would have been in power most of the time!”

In 2022, the Labour Party conference backed a manifesto commitment to proportional representation for general elections. However, Keir Starmer said he would not make it a priority for the 2024 election.

Dikerdem insisted that he did not blame the Greens, pointing instead at Starmer’s government:

“I’m incredibly proud of the progressive agenda built over the last four years. Wandsworth Labour Council was a genuine progressive project with a progressive party culture. We were short of 15 votes due to the perception of central government.

If Gorton and Denton [the constituency lost by Labour to the Greens last February — Ed.] was a wake-up call, the result in Wandsworth should act as a warning. I don’t blame the Greens — I blame the national party. It is incumbent on us as progressives to collectively work out how we navigate First Past the Post in order to ensure the success of progressive policies.”

A change of opposition forces in some wards and some very tight contests

Looking at their results, the Greens in Wandsworth had every reason to celebrate: they more than doubled their score of four years ago. Yet the unforgiving nature of the British electoral system meant that, despite winning 17.3% of the vote, they failed to return a single councillor.

Glyn Goodwin told CJI:

“We came very close. It was quite a moment when Tooting’s results were read out at 3.30 in the morning and it was a huge disappointment when we missed by just a few. It was a bit gutting. It was a massive effort and we thought that one or two [Green councillors] could have been elected. “

In Labour strongholds, however, the Greens frequently emerged as the main challengers and, in several wards, pushed Labour candidates into third place.

Their strongest performance came in Tooting Broadway, the party’s target ward, where just 51 votes separated them from a breakthrough seat (as discussed above), cementing their status as a genuine challenger locally.

In Tooting Bec, the Greens also surged into second place ahead of the Conservatives, though Labour retained a comfortable lead. In Furzedown, Green candidates nearly doubled their vote totals, but still finished around 1,000 votes behind Labour.

In Falconbrook, the Greens climbed to 13%. Simon Hogg, the Labour group leader, saw his vote share fall sharply, from 36% in 2022 to 24%. In this ward adjoining Clapham Junction, Reform UK also ate into the Conservative vote, taking 5% as the Tory share dropped from 14% to 8%.

In Shaftesbury & Queenstown, all three Labour candidates were returned, though the sole Green candidate came notably close, polling 1,129 votes — not far behind the last Labour candidate elected on 1,417.

Reflecting on the overall result, Glyn Goodwin added:

“If Wandsworth had a full slate of Green candidates, we would have been close to 20% and pushed the other parties even further down.”

The Liberal Democrats also recorded several notable performances. Their strongest result came in Thamesfield, where they fell agonisingly short of a seat by just 50 votes. The last Conservative elected polled 2,083 votes against 2,033 for the leading Liberal Democrat candidate. Labour, meanwhile, was pushed firmly into third place, losing roughly half its vote share in the process.

In Southfields, long viewed as a target ward for the Liberal Democrats, they again finished ahead of Labour, averaging 13.5% against Labour’s 10%, though both remained behind the Conservatives on around 18%.

Elsewhere, the Conservatives held firm in some of their traditional strongholds. Unsurprisingly, Northcote stayed safely Conservative, with Aled Richards-Jones increasing his raw vote total from 2,168 in 2022 to 2,583, although his vote share remained broadly stable due to higher turnout. The ward proved disappointing for the Greens: Joe Taylor, who had been the leading third-party candidate four years earlier, saw his vote fall from 754 to 577 and was overtaken by the Liberal Democrats.

In Lavender, the result broadly mirrored 2022, with both Conservative candidates re-elected; this time, however, by a far more comfortable margin: nearly 600 votes ahead of Labour, compared with roughly 100 previously.

Malcolm Grimston has become the kingmaker

The fate of the Council now rests with one man. Malcolm Grimston, 68, has served as a local councillor since 1994. Initially elected as a Conservative, he defected in 2014, citing the party’s plans to close the library in his ward. In 2018, he was re-elected with 4,002 votes (this was the highest individual result recorded for any candidate in Wandsworth and in Greater London). In 2022 he led the field with 3,689 votes and 25% of the West Hill ward vote in Putney; last Thursday he increased that to 4,081 votes and 26%, more than double the total received by the runner-up, Angela Ireland, the outgoing Labour cabinet member for Finance.

Grimston had predicted the change of control in Wandsworth four years ago. On the eve of the 2022 election he spoke to Daniel Zylbersztajn-Lewandowski, the UK correspondent of the German newspaper Taz, pointing to demographic change: “Many younger people have moved into the new developments, and they tend to lean left politically.” He added: “When I was still a Conservative and responsible for housing, I watched my predecessor make major decisions while ignoring residents’ views. What local people thought simply didn’t matter to her.”

Grimston is now, willingly or not, the kingmaker — determining the council’s direction by siding with one party or the other. Should he side with Labour, in a perfectly balanced hung council, the first Council meeting after the election can determine who takes power. In Wandsworth, Jeremy Ambache, former Labour councillor for West Putney and outgoing Mayor, will initially chair the meeting and, if the vote for the new Mayor is tied, can use a casting vote to choose his successor (which in practice means favouring the existing administration). The newly elected Mayor then takes over the chair and oversees the vote for Leader of the council. If that vote is also tied, the Mayor can again use a casting vote — effectively deciding which party forms the administration and runs the council.

So I was reelected with 4081 votes and now hold the balance of power at Wandsworth Council. Funny old world.

— Malcolm Grimston (@MalcolmGrimston) May 8, 2026

The day after the results were declared, he wrote to his ward residents:

“I will not be joining any political Party, nor forming a coalition. I won’t be sitting in the ‘Cabinet’ of top Councillors (though I may hope to play a fuller role in challenging the new Cabinet). I’ll remain in opposition. My focus over the last 12 years since extricating myself from party politics has always been West Hill Ward and this won’t change.”

He nonetheless made clear that, in his view, the electorate has chosen a Conservative council, and he would not stand in their way:

“The Conservatives, as the larger party, have a right to try to form a new administration. The arithmetic is such that I would have to positively support Labour to keep them in office; if I abstain, or directly support the Conservatives, then power passes to them.”

Acknowledging that this position might disappoint some, he outlined what he described as a “confidence and supply” arrangement:

“I have in mind what is known as a ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement, whereby I will vote with the new Leader in any motion of no confidence and key issues such as the Budget, while retaining my right to vote against any policies which I believe are particularly damaging.”

Grimston has also set out a series of conditions the Conservatives must meet to retain his support, warning that failure to honour them will cause him to “withdraw from any arrangement we have come to“:

1. Honesty at all times with residents about the finances (and other matters).
2. Constitutional changes that will protect the rights of all councillors to contribute to debate – including of course the Labour group.
3. A more collaborative atmosphere.

His stated intention is to act as a moderating influence, navigating between the two groups. Yet his remarks leave little doubt that Labour will pay a price for the manner in which it treated him during the past four years. The latest example came at the full Council meeting last March, when he objected to the Labour Mayor’s decision to adjourn a debate, only for the chair to cut off his microphone mid-sentence. He protested, saying:

“This is quite outrageous that the majority power can use their majority to close down all debate because if there is a change of control and an incoming administration decides to close every debate down after two speeches, it will not improve life in this chamber. And I do think, Mr. Mayor, you have a duty to [… microphone cut …] you have under the whole nature of the standing orders, you have a duty to protect against an elective dictatorship. And I’m not convinced that you’ve done that.”

Unsurprisingly, this is exactly what he confirmed in his email:

“I have been very disappointed at several moves taken by the last Council to prevent debate and challenge, including stripping Independent councillors of an ancient right to raise matters during Council meetings via what was called an ‘adjournment debate’. It reached a peak during the final Council meeting of the last term when the Labour group, supported by a Labour Mayor, shut a debate down after just three speeches, apparently because they weren’t interested to hear what other councillors had to say.”

On Twitter, he also expressed his discontent with the Labour administration:

Interestingly only one of the Parties has approached me but in any case first refusal to form an administration falls to the larger or largest party. Labour fibbed about a Council tax freeze, burned through £90m in reserves and stripped me of the right to raise issues at Council.

— Malcolm Grimston (@MalcolmGrimston) May 8, 2026

The borough’s financial position looms large over what comes next. Labour had hoped to renegotiate a better settlement with central government, having seen a significant portion of their grant cut in the months before the election, but that path now looks considerably less straightforward. Grimston was unambiguous that the finances were one of his main concerns:

“I have also been annoyed at the frequent repeating of the untrue statement that the Council Tax has been ‘frozen’ when we can all see it hasn’t – it seemed to me like we were being taken for fools.

But most seriously, the Council has burned through £90 million of reserves over the last four years – to put it another way, we have been spending money as if we were raising Council tax by 15% each year but have actually only been raising it by 2%. That is simply unsustainable. When coupled with the central Government’s plans to slash our funding then there is a crisis in Council Tax coming and we need to be honest about it.

I fully understand the importance of low Council tax for many of us in West Hill and Wandsworth as a whole and want a Council Tax as low as possible that fulfils our spending needs. But it will be far worse if we let things slip by exhausting the reserves and suddenly have to hike taxes enormously to pay for it all.”

• Read also: A financial timebomb: what Wandsworth isn’t saying about Council tax

He added:

“It’s not that I have been happy with all that the Conservatives have done in opposition, for example walking out of a Council meeting, which struck me as rather churlish. But for the above reasons I intend to allow the Conservatives to take control of the Council at the Annual Meeting in a couple of weeks. “

The next four years at Wandsworth Council look set to be anything but straightforward — with a majority of one, a kingmaker in opposition and a financial crisis looming, the unexpected is never far away.

Full results on the Council page HERE.

Changes in local elections 2018 – 2022 – 2026