Green Party activists are celebrating a notable local win after taking a council seat from Reform UK in a Derbyshire by-election – a first in terms of directly flipping a seat from Farage’s party.
The Horsley by-election result will be seized on as a morale boost for the Greens, who have been edging upwards in national polling and want to prove they can turn that into real-world gains on the ground.
🗳️ Horsley by-election: Greens flip a Reform seat
According to figures shared by Election Maps UK, the Green Party won the Horsley (Derbyshire) council by-election with 43.6% of the vote, ahead of Reform UK on 35.5%. The Conservatives finished on 13.9%, with Labour on 3.8%, the Liberal Democrats on 1.4%, and an additional candidate listed at 1.9%. The post described it as a “Green GAIN from Reform”.
The by-election was triggered after the sitting Reform councillor resigned due to ill health, leaving an opening for opponents to test Reform’s resilience in a straight fight where turnout is typically smaller and local campaigning matters more than national brand.
For the Greens, the headline isn’t just the margin. It’s the symbolism: a clean gain from Reform, in a political moment where Farage’s party has dominated the national conversation and claimed momentum across English local politics.
📍 Why this result matters beyond one ward
By-elections are volatile and can be shaped by hyper-local issues – potholes, planning rows, bin collections, specific candidates – but parties still treat them like stress tests. A win can galvanise volunteers, unlock donations, and change the internal mood music going into bigger election days.
This one lands at a time when the Green Party is trying to shift from “nice national polling story” to “serious electoral machine”. Recent YouGov voting intention numbers shared publicly put the Greens on 17% in one measure – a level that supporters have pointed to as evidence that the party is no longer a niche protest option in parts of the country.
The Greens will argue Horsley shows that where they concentrate effort, they can leapfrog the traditional big two – and, crucially, beat Reform head-to-head.
📉 Reform’s ceiling question and the local elections factor
Reform will brush this off as a mid-cycle wobble in a single by-election, but it feeds a growing line of commentary: that Reform’s national support can be broad yet shallow, and that converting it into consistent local wins is harder than dominating the airwaves.
Local elections reward organisation: leaflets, door-knocking, candidate quality, and the ability to “bank” votes from people who like you well enough to turn out on a random Wednesday. Reform has made strides in building local slates, but the party is still expanding fast -and rapid growth often brings patchiness, especially when defending seats rather than simply attacking.
Horsley will also sharpen the wider tactical question on the centre-left: whether voters who want “anyone but Reform” begin clustering behind whichever challenger looks strongest locally – sometimes Labour, sometimes Lib Dems, sometimes Greens – depending on the patch.
🏛️ The wider context: a busy election calendar ahead
This by-election comes in the run-up to a major set of contests where every party wants a momentum narrative. English local elections are scheduled for Thursday 7 May 2026, with councils and official election guidance already pointing to that date.
That matters because by-elections like Horsley often act like rehearsal nights: parties test messaging, trial new organisers, and figure out what actually lands on doorsteps when national issues meet local reality.
For the Greens, the pitch is straightforward: they’ll present Horsley as proof they can win seats, not just headlines. For Reform, the counterpitch will be equally simple: that they remain the main anti-establishment force nationally and that isolated local setbacks don’t dent the broader trend.
🔎 What to watch next
If the Greens can replicate Horsley – targeting areas where Reform is competitive but not entrenched, and where Conservative support is soft – they can build a storyline that they’re the sharper grassroots challenger. If Reform bounces back quickly in the next batch of council contests, they’ll frame Horsley as an outlier and move on.
Either way, this result gives the Greens something they badly want in the current political climate: a clean, easy-to-understand victory line. Not “we held on” or “we improved our vote share”, but “we took a seat off Reform”.
And with national polling chatter already placing the Greens at levels that would have sounded fanciful a few years ago, Horsley becomes a convenient anchor point for the argument that the party’s rise is no longer just theoretical.
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