{"id":61375,"date":"2026-05-15T14:34:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T14:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/?p=61375"},"modified":"2026-05-15T14:43:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T14:43:39","slug":"the-rise-of-reform-in-sheffield-shows-sheffields-move-the-political-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/15\/the-rise-of-reform-in-sheffield-shows-sheffields-move-the-political-right\/","title":{"rendered":"The rise of Reform in Sheffield shows the city’s move to the political right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week\u2019s elections saw Reform gain 12 new seats, indicating a shift to the right in Sheffield and its council.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheffield\u2019s local elections are held in a four year cycle. Every year for three years, an election is held to vote in a third of the council and in the fourth year of the cycle no election is held.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, 30 seats out of 84 were up for election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reform won 12 seats, gaining 12 since 2022, bringing them to a total of 13 councillors overall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Green won 10 seats, a rise of 6 since 2022, seeing them reach 20 councillors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Liberal Democrats won 5, losing 5 since 2022, leaving them with 22 seats overall and Labour won only 3, which means they have lost 13 seats since 2022, leaving them with 25 seats in the Sheffield City Council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a clear shift to the right for the city that has previously been nicknamed \u2018The People\u2019s Republic of South Yorkshire\u2019 due to its \u2018radical\u2019, left wing Labour council during Margaret Thatcher\u2019s Tory government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has remained this way for many years with Labour and the Liberal Democrats being very popular parties while Conservatives struggled to gain seats in the council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, Sheffield City Council was made up of 36 Labour seats, 27 LibDem seats, 14 Green seats and 7 Independents. From this it is clear that the city is typically left wing or centrist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon hearing the results of the election, one student said they were \u2018disappointing, polarising but not surprising\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evie Ikin, 18, a student in Sheffield said: \u201cPeople are saying that others are being dramatic but this election is an unfortunate reflection of the future general election, I think. So, it scares me for our future and young people need to go and vote.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A week on and one Reform councillor has already been suspended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nathaniel Menday, councillor for Woodhouse, was suspended after the Sheffield Star discovered that he had shared pictures of swastikas and Mein Kampf on a deleted X account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Menday is one of many Reform councillors to have already given up their seats in the last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week\u2019s elections saw Reform gain 12 new seats, indicating a shift to the right in Sheffield and its council. Sheffield\u2019s local elections are held in a four year cycle. Every year for three years, an election is held to vote in a third of the council and in the fourth year of the cycle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":315,"featured_media":61376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61375"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61785,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61375\/revisions\/61785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}