Reform 27 (+27)
Conservative 12 (-33)
Green 8 (+5)
Liberal Democrat 6 (+2)
Labour 2 (-1)
Independent 2 (nc)

As with much of the rest of the country, a dramatic change, but since Labour have been weak in Worcestershire for many years the Tories took almost all of the damage. They were overwhelmingly dominant on the council until now, but now Reform are only two seats short of a majority. The interesting question is whether Reform will try to run a minority administration or attempt to find agreement with the Conservatives. I can't see the Greens, Lib Dems or Labour even considering it, even though coalitions and more tacit agreements are much more common at local level than in the House of Commons.

Looking at the results map, it's clear enough to me as a local that Reform (light blue) did best in the struggling ex-industrial towns, Kidderminster and Redditch. This doesn't surprise me at all, as neither the last (UK) government nor this one has shown much sign of actually doing "levelling up" beyond repeating it as a slogan. My own ward of Bewdley stayed Conservative (dark blue) but not by a huge margin. Other than an odd Lib Dem enclave in Bromsgrove, they and the Greens did best in the posher parts of Worcester and in the rural south of the county. Indeed, in several of these the Greens won more than half the vote.

It looks to me as if there's now something of a three-way split. The, for want of a better word, "nicer" parts of the south are inclined to liberal views, so voted Lib Dem or increasingly Green. (Both parties also did very well in Gloucestershire, immediately to Worcestershire's south.) The electorate in the "left-behind" towns in the north have become fed up with everything and everyone, and so a lot of them voted Reform. The central swathe of the county with more middling experiences stayed Tory -- though even here many seats were only won with small margins over Reform.

How Reform run Worcestershire will be interesting to see. In spite of the party's success, I don't think there's a huge appetite in this county for performative nonsense of the "we will block every renewable development everywhere" sort we're seeing in Lincolnshire. Generally I think the previous Conservative administration ran the county reasonably steadily, even though I don't like the party at national level. (Many things people get angry about are not actually the county council's responsibility, for example bin collections and leisure centres are down to the district/city council, not the county.)

The strong Green showing ought to be a warning shot to Reform that the likes of Nigel Farage or Richard Tice from the national party making stupid "all the climate change workers need sacking" style comments is not necessarily going to be a vote-winner in Worcestershire. Alan Amos, who defected to Reform from the Tories, has fallen into this trap and I suspect he may come to regret it in time. I think the electorate is very volatile at the moment, and the next time these seats are contested there could be just as dramatic a change in the other direction. Anyone who says now they know what will happen then is a liar or a fool.