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Local elections take place in 24 local authorities and six regional mayoralties across England on 1 May. A parliamentary by-election will also take place in the seat of Runcorn and Helsby after sitting Labour MP Mike Amesbury was sentenced to ten weeks in prison for assault. The last time these areas held council elections was 2021, when the centre-right Conservatives, in gov't under then-PM Boris Johnson, performed strongly on the back of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. This time around, the populist Reform UK is well-positioned to make gains at the expense of both the Conservatives and the governing centre-left Labour party.

• In the July 2024 election, Amesbury won the new Runcorn and Helsby seat with a majority of 14,696 on 52.9% of the vote. The Reform UK candidate came in second place with 18.1%. The (little) opinion polling carried out to date shows Reform UK with a narrow lead, while data from Smarkets shows bettors assigning a 75.8% implied probability that Reform UK wins the seat.
• The loss of Runcorn and Helsby would be a blow to PM Sir Keir Starmer, but not a significant one. Starmer's gov't retains a sizeable majority in parliament, and the likely poor performance of the Conservatives could dominate the news cycle after the vote, particularly given pressures on leader Kemi Badenoch.
• As such, while the results will be pored over in UK media, they are unlikely to impact gov't stability or lead to any major shifts in gov't policy in the short term. 

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