The Conservative Party has recaptured Westminster City Council, winning 32 of 54 seats to end Labour’s historic four-year control of one of Britain’s most symbolically significant local authorities — a result that stands out as a rare bright spot for the Tories in an otherwise punishing night for the party nationally.
The Conservatives made gains in Bayswater, West End and Lancaster Gate wards, while support for Labour declined, mirroring broader results across the capital. Labour finished with 22 seats, having entered the election holding 28. Reform UK had also held two seats on the council going into Thursday’s vote, but no party other than the Conservatives and Labour won representation in the final count.
Labour held on to seats in its traditional strongholds but lost hundreds of votes to the Greens in several wards including Queen’s Park, Church Street and Harrow Road — a pattern repeated across London where the Greens were among the beneficiaries of Labour’s difficulties with its progressive base.
Voter turnout in Westminster reached 36 per cent, up from 31.9 per cent at the previous election in 2022.
The result reverses one of the most striking outcomes of the 2022 cycle, when Labour had taken Westminster for the very first time since the council was established in 1964 — ending 58 years of unbroken Conservative rule in the heart of central London. By-elections in West End ward in September 2024 and Vincent Square ward in February 2025 had already seen Conservative gains from Labour, progressively eroding the majority Labour had built, and Thursday’s vote confirmed the full reversal.
Although short of the Conservatives’ 2018 result — when the party held nearly two thirds of seats — the outcome is nonetheless a landmark gain for a party that also reclaimed Wandsworth Council on the same night. The Conservatives also made gains in Barnet, Bromley and Richmond, reflecting a broader shift in the capital’s outer and central London boroughs.
For Labour, losing Westminster compounds an already painful set of national results, with the party facing pressure from Reform UK in traditional heartlands and, in London, now unable to hold ground it had won for the first time in living memory just four years ago.
