Between 2018 and 2022, English urban councils became nearly twice as volatile. Median volatility rose from 12.0 to 22.5. But the party system did not fragment. That distinction became visible only after fixing a categorical data bug. Here, volatility measures how much vote share moved between party families. Fragmentation measures how many effective parties competed. A council can be highly volatile without becoming more fragmented if one major party collapses and another absorbs most of the loss. The effective number of parties increased in only 18 of 67 comparable authorities. The median change in the fragmentation index stayed slightly negative: -0.31. The vote moved sharply, but it mostly moved inside an already-consolidating party system. The first version of this analysis looked dramatically different. It suggested fragmentation had risen in 66 of 67 councils and that median volatility had tripled. That was wrong.…