Sheffield is still red — but should Labour have done better?

“Apparently we’ve lost Darnall,” came the message on my WhatsApp from a Labour source on Friday morning. This came as a surprise, to put it mildly. The east Sheffield ward has long been considered an ultra safe Labour seat, and didn’t even come up as a concern for party insiders when I spoke to them for our election preview piece last week.

However, when the Darnall result finally came through on Friday afternoon, my contact’s prediction proved right. Qais Al-Ahdal, an independent candidate backed by the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) had won with a massive 53% of the vote. Labour candidate Sajid Ghaufur trailed more than 1,000 votes behind with just 27%. In a press release sent to The Tribune in March, TUSC said they were backing Al-Ahdal on an “anti-war, anti-cuts” agenda. 60% of Darnall’s population are Muslim, perhaps suggesting one key factor shaped the result: the Labour Party’s stance on the war in Gaza.

If the Darnall result came out of the blue, the rest went largely as expected. Starting the day on 31 seats, Labour ended it on 36, having won six and lost one. The Lib Dems lost two seats and the Greens stayed on 14. The results leave Labour seven seats short of all overall majority and mean they will have to rely on other parties to govern in Sheffield.

On the face of it, picking up six seats after almost a decade of decline is a decent result. However, three of the seats they gained were the ones which could be considered ‘low hanging fruit’. Two of these were where they were up against their former colleagues in the Sheffield Community Councillors (Birley and Southey) — who were unlikely to be able to compete with the might of the Labour machine. Another seat was vacated by another former Labour councillor who had left the party to become an independent candidate (Park and Arbourthorne). All these seats are traditionally Labour strongholds and have effectively returned to the fold.

Better results for the party were seen in Stocksbridge and Upper Don, where they took back the only Conservative-held council seat in Sheffield, and in Walkley, where they beat the Greens. Plus the party won unexpectedly in Graves Park, beating the Lib Dems in a seat party insiders had told us they weren’t really targeting. They also fought off Lib Dem challenges in Crookes and Crosspool and Mosborough. However, hopes they had to pick up Nether Edge and Sharrow from the Greens and East Ecclesfield from the Lib Dems failed to materialise. Overall for Labour, it felt like a case of three steps forward, one step back.

Surprisingly, the big losers on the day were the Lib Dems. As well as failing to win two Labour seats they had in their sights in Crookes and Crosspool and Mosborough, they unexpectedly lost to Labour in Graves Park and in Ecclesall to the Greens. They fought off a Labour challenge in East Ecclesfield but overall they will see it as a disappointing set of results. For the Greens they will also be relieved to have just lost one seat to Labour and absolutely elated to have picked up Ecclesall from the Lib Dems. 

Labour fights back — but many plump for smaller parties

According to the metric that ultimately matters, Labour are happy. While they lost one seat in Darnall, they gained six elsewhere, giving them five more councillors. It was less of a good night for the Liberal Democrats, who lost two seats, as did the Sheffield Community Councillors (SCC) group. The Conservatives lost one — the only seat they had. The Greens ended up with the same number of seats as they started with: 14 (they won a seat and lost a seat). 

If we look at the overall make-up of the council pre- and post-election, you can see this result moves Labour closer to where they want to be. With 36 councillors, they are comfortably the largest party on the Council. But they’re still some way off what they’d need for overall control (43 councillors) and the gains they’ve made haven’t offset the losses from the breakaway SCC grouping.

How does 2024’s result look on a map of the city? It’s a pretty familiar pattern for those who have looked at these things before — yellow on the fringes, green in the middle, and red everywhere else. One difference this year is a victory for an Independent in Darnall.

But data on seats can hide the deeper trends in people’s voting behaviour. If we look at the change in vote share vs 2023, a different picture emerges. We can see that Labour’s vote share actually fell by a smidgen. The Lib Dems were the biggest losers — their fall of 4.2% of the vote offsetting the 4.1% swing towards them last year.

Of the main parties, it’s actually the Greens who have seen the biggest vote share increase, of 2.5%. While that hasn’t translated into a net gain in seats, it will encourage those who think Sheffield Central constituency has the potential to go Green at the next election. But perhaps the biggest story is the swing towards other, smaller groupings. Of those not voting for one of the “big four”, 45% plumped for Independent candidates, and 31% voted for the TUSC. The SCC group and Reform took most of the remaining votes.

Overall turnout was up a little, from 127,291 votes in 2023 to 129,629 in 2024.

Five takeaways

Signs of life for Labour

You have to look back to the early days of the coalition government for the last time Labour picked up this many seats in Sheffield. Due to the defection of eight former Labour councillors to form the Sheffield Community Councillors group last year, the party was never going to win overall control of the council this time. Some of their gains were expected recaptures of seats lost to independents. But winning seats from the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and the Greens shows there are signs of life in Sheffield Labour. The one blot on their copy book was the shock loss of Darnall.

Disappointment for Lib Dems

The Lib Dems have been Labour’s main challengers in Sheffield Council for decades. This time they fancied their chances of winning seats back from Labour, especially in the ultra-marginal Crookes and Crosspool. However, to have failed to pick up either of their targets seats and suffered two unexpected losses to Labour and the Greens will be disappointing to a party that hoped to be within striking distance of Labour after these local elections. They also hoped a win in Crookes and Crosspool would bode well for the Sheffield Hallam seat at the general election. But don’t discount their chances there just yet.

Greens hold on

The Greens felt vulnerable this year, but they will see losing just one seat to Labour and picking up one from the Lib Dems in Ecclesall as a very positive result under the circumstances. After the “miracle of 2021” where they picked up five seats from Labour in one election, the party had been focused on keeping the group of seats they hold in central Sheffield rather than expanding their reach. Now, having stabilised around the low teens and kept hold of most of their “Green Wall” seats in Gleadless Valley, Nether Edge and Sharrow, Broomhill and Sharrow Vale, City and Hillsborough, their big win in Ecclesall could see them set their sights on other areas.

Gaza shapes local politics

The impact of the ongoing war on Gaza has had a significant effect on Labour’s vote in parts of the city. Many Sheffielders have concerns about events in the Middle East, but for the city’s Muslim voters, it appears to have been the key factor. Many clearly felt Labour at both a local and a national level had failed to call for a ceasefire early enough. Across the city, only 10% of Sheffielders are Muslim. However, they are not distributed equally across the city. In areas like Darnall and Nether Edge and Sharrow, the Muslim vote seems to have been decisive.

Sheffield: Tory free zone

After a brief hiatus of just three years, Sheffield once again has no Conservative councillors. Lewis Chinchen’s win in 2021 was achieved on the back of Labour unpopularity and a sense that a new kind of Tory party led by Boris Johnson was speaking to former Labour heartlands (the Red Wall) in a way it hadn’t before. However, as a result of the party’s national troubles since, it seems clear they have failed to capitalise on that moment. The result spells trouble for South Yorkshire’s three Red Wall Conservative MPs, including Miriam Cates, who now looks likely to lose Penistone and Stocksbridge.

In their words: Party leader reactions

Tom Hunt, Labour

“This has been a very positive day for Sheffield Labour. We’ve made five gains, winning seats from the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. These results show that Labour is winning support from a broad range of voters from across the city. We listened to what people told us and voters have backed our positive plan to improve our public transport by bringing our buses under public control, to build the new homes we need and to help people who are struggling with the cost of living crisis.”

Shaffaq Mohammed, Lib Dem

“We’re a bit disappointed. Graves Park came a bit out of the blue and in Ecclesall we had an 800 majority so we have to get to the bottom of what’s happened there. But these flukes happen in life. Labour lost in Darnall and the Greens have lost in Walkley. But despite being on 45% in the opinion polls nationally and having a Conservative government, the Labour Party still haven’t won back control of Sheffield Council and I think that is something to reflect on.”

Douglas Johnson, Green

“It has been a really good set of results for us. We had a really good set of results in 2021 so this time we were defending them and it was Labour’s chance to take seats off us. We’ve never had to defend this many seats before and we haven't lost any ground, we’re still on 14 councillors. Winning in Ecclesall is a really good inroad into traditional Lib Dem territory. It’s the first set we’ve ever taken off the Lib Dems and an indication we can win in both Labour and Lib Dem areas.”