Labour’s revival under Andy Burnham has reached Rodborough, where the party held off the Greens in one of Stroud’s fiercest battlegrounds. Former county councillor John Bloxsom won 47% of the vote, up 13.2 percentage points on 2024, with the Greens on 31.7%.
The victory was particularly sweet for Bloxsom, who lost his Gloucestershire County Council seat to the Greens by just 12 votes in May 2025. Five months later, amid the Burnham bounce and Labour’s Holborn and St Pancras by-election victory, he is back in elected office.
Result (2023 in brackets):
Labour: 697 (47.0%, +13.2)
Green: 470 (31.7%. +1.5)
Reform UK: 191 (12.9%, New)
Conservative: 103 (6.9%, -3.9)
Liberal Democrat: 23 (1.5%, New)
Changes are in percentage points. Comparisons with 2024 are complicated by the absence of independent candidates.
LABOUR HOLD: Labour retains both Rodborough seats on Stroud District Council, denying the Greens an opportunity to strengthen their minority administration.
A traditional Labour stronghold refuses to turn Green:
Rodborough has voted Labour at every district election since 2011, despite Stroud’s reputation as an early Green stronghold. Yet the Greens came within 37 votes of a seat in 2024, before narrowly winning the larger county division, which includes Cainscross, in 2025.
Green candidate Robin Layfield was a former Labour councillor who stood as an Independent in 2024 before joining the Greens. The contest pitted two familiar local figures against each other, with Labour retaining a ward the Greens have repeatedly threatened to capture.
Is the Burnham bounce turning the tide:
Could the Burnham bounce be reversing Green advances into Labour territory? Since becoming Prime Minister in July, Andy Burnham has overseen a significant recovery in Labour’s national polling, with Rodborough providing further encouragement.
Labour secured 45% in Holborn and St Pancras against Green leader Zack Polanski and 47% in Rodborough against a former Labour councillor. Both contests highlight the battle for voters on the progressive left.
Local circumstances matter, particularly the absence of independents who won almost a quarter of Rodborough’s vote in 2024. Despite Burnham’s personal popularity, Labour remains weaker nationally than at the last general election. Nevertheless, Green advances into traditional Labour territory are far from irreversible.
Could Labour reverse Stroud’s Green revolution?:
The 2024 district elections transformed Stroud’s political landscape, with the Greens winning 22 seats to Labour’s 20, although several Green victories were remarkably narrow.
In Nailsworth, Labour finished just 43 votes behind the successful Green candidate; the equivalent margins were 90 in Stonehouse, 153 in Amberley and Woodchester, and 157 in Stroud Slade. Small shifts in these four Green-held seats could decide the council’s leadership.
Since 2024, the Greens have risen to 24 councillors, against Labour’s 16 before Rodborough. A hypothetical net transfer of five seats from Green to Labour would reverse that balance, although local government reorganisation may affect future elections.
The Greens retain rural strongholds in the district where Labour is weaker, but Labour’s recovery adds another dimension to their rivalry.
Reform finds a foothold as the Tories fade:
Reform UK won 12.9% in its first Rodborough district contest, overtaking the Conservatives on 6.9%, but remained well below its 23% in the larger county division in May 2025.
The Conservatives’ decline is equally striking, having attracted around a quarter of the ward’s vote in 2021.
A look ahead for the development industry
Stroud’s next political battleground may be its emerging Local Plan. After withdrawing its previous proposals, the Council must accommodate at least 846 homes annually, sharpening debate over where development should go.