In terms of an electoral exercise, Thursday’s local elections in England were a massive and confusing medley of overlapping contests. Some 2,600 councillors were to be selected to serve on 107 English councils; there were 11 directly elected mayoralties to be filled and 25 members to be chosen for the London Assembly; the elections for 37 police and crime commissioners sprawled over the border into Wales; and, to top it all off, there was a Parliamentary by-election in Blackpool South.

No wonder even seasoned commentators were stretched to draw definitive conclusions from such a variety of contests. It has long been accepted that many voters have differing priorities in varying types of elections. However, as expected, one incontestable conclusion could be drawn from the multifarious results: they are a disaster for Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party.

The headline takeaway from these elections is that the historic coalition that Boris Johnson created in 2019 has been fragmented beyond repair. The Conservatives knew in advance that they were in trouble, so they fetishized the outcome of the mayoral contest in Tees Valley – George Osborne described its putative loss as “Armageddon” – simply because it was where they had the best chance of holding on, due to the personal popularity of Lord Houchen. In this expectation they were vindicated, as Ben Houchen, after a contest that sedulously avoided reference to the premiership that dare not speak its name, held Tees Valley with a comfortable, if reduced, majority. 

The Tories are also making much of having held onto Harlow council. That sounds a bit desperate, considering the scale of Conservative losses across the country. The Conservatives are losing almost as many seats as they are retaining. At the time of writing, they have lost 256 council seats and held 258, losing seven councils. The use of the title “Local Conservatives” by candidates demonstrates their recognition that the Tory brand is now toxic.

But the most significant result, which cannot be ameliorated by any consolation prizes among northern mayoralties, was the Blackpool South by-election, lost by the Conservatives to Labour. The swing of 26.3 per cent from Conservative to Labour was the third largest since the Second World War, the biggest being at Dudley West in 1994 which presaged the annihilation of John Major’s Conservatives by Tony Blair.

But even the gargantuan swing was not the most alarming aspect of the Blackpool South contest for the Conservative party. Hours before the result, a national opinion poll had put the Conservatives at 18 per cent and Reform UK at 15 per cent. Commentators continued sceptically to claim, in disregard of recent by-elections, that Reform could not translate its high polling into actual election results. At Blackpool South, Reform outdid even its latest poll rating, coming just 117 votes behind the Conservatives.

That narrowly saved the Tories from the embarrassing headline of being beaten into third place by Reform, but in terms of electoral portents, that cosmetic detail was irrelevant. Professor Sir John Curtice was not slow to expound the lethal significance of Blackpool South for the Conservatives: “The party’s vote fell by 32.1 points in Blackpool South, making it the party’s third worst ever performance in a parliamentary by-election. With 16.9 per cent of the vote, its best performance yet, Reform appears to have done much of the damage.”

No opinion poll has ever recorded Reform as high as 16.9 per cent, but now an actual election has done so. Professor Curtice added: “Moreover, in the local elections the Conservative vote fell most heavily in those wards where Reform fielded a candidate.” He said the only silver lining for Tory HQ was that Reform only contested one in six wards across the country.

Normally, a Tory disaster on this scale would see the television studios full of Liberal Democrat spokesmen crowing about their party’s victories. This time, however, the Lib Dem Party was the dog that did not bark in the night. Inevitably, in the circumstances, the Lib Dems picked up seats (43 at the time of writing), but for them, this was a somewhat subdued election and they even lost two seats in Sheffield. The explanation may be that they and the Greens are competing for broadly the same votes. The wholemeal-sandals and knit-your-own-yoghurt tendency of the Liberal Democrats has largely migrated to the Greens.

Yet the Greens, similarly, though improving their position, also had a relatively muted success. The question arises: are the Greens, on a smaller scale, doing to the Liberal Democrats what Reform is doing to the Tories? Since the Lib Dems are making credible gains, the comparison is not exact; but, in the long term, it seems likely that the Greens and Lib Dems may mutually act as a drag-chain on each other. But the overarching narrative is of a straight switch by voters from Conservative to Labour.

This was most noticeable in the result from Rushmoor, the home of the British Army, the Aldershot garrison, true blue for more than half a century, and now Labour. Since 14 years of Conservative rule have seen the Army reduced by one-fifth, with the number of infantrymen cut by 26 per cent, this backlash is hardly surprising. It illustrates the fact that the Tories, holding power for so long, have alienated many varied interest groups, some of which are concentrated in particular electoral units, as in the case of Rushmoor.

In every interview, Labour spokesmen hammered like a drumbeat the phrase “Keir Starmer’s changed Labour”; it was one of those annoying mantras that politicians, self-consciously staying “on message” like to parrot – like the Tories “hard-working families” and “build back better”. In the Starmer context, “change” is just a synonym for “new”: this is the same ploy as “New” Labour. 

The Gaza issue has acted as a brake on Labour’s otherwise victorious chariot in certain areas. But, since Labour is generally strong in areas where the Muslim vote is concentrated, it is suffering only limited damage and has resisted the temptation to secure its position by adopting a Middle East policy likely to alienate the wider population. That said, rumours have been generated, apparently based on remarks by Wes Streeting, that Labour may not be performing as well in London as polls predicted. While this seems unlikely, we shall know by Saturday whether there is any substance to this claim.

In the event of a Labour landslide at the general election, however, which, in the light of these results, appears highly likely, it remains to be seen if Changed Labour remains as disciplined as New Labour in its day, or whether neo-Corbynista elements, with Gaza as their totem, emerge to disrupt fragile party unity. It is also worth noting the seemingly contradictory forecast made today by Sky News elections analyst, Prof Michael Thrasher. Using the latest figures from the more than two million votes cast in the English council elections, he projects that Starmer’s Labour is on course to be the largest party in parliament but, far from the predictions we have become accustomed to of a landslide victory, it could fall short of a Commons majority by 32 seats.

Either way, the most significant message to emerge from these elections is directed at the Conservatives. While Tory Pollyannas chirrup about Tees Valley and Harlow, a nightmare reality has emerged from the complexities of these latest results. Even a Tory wipe-out will not be a repeat of 1997: it will be much worse for the Conservatives. This is because a completely new and unprecedented electoral situation has arisen.

In 1997, after a major defeat at the hands of New Labour, the Conservatives gritted their teeth and endured a long haul of successive leaders and three general elections, over a period of 13 years, to crawl painfully back up to the limited prize of coalition government. But throughout that gruelling time, they had a monopoly on the label “conservative”: no rival was splitting their vote and challenging their legitimacy.

That is no longer the case. As the Blackpool South result demonstrated, Reform UK is now effectively challenging not only for the conservative vote, but for the conservative identity. When a party with no ground organisation comes just 117 votes behind the governing party in a major by-election, something seismic is occurring. In the various mayoral elections, tens of thousands of people voted Reform – more than 40,000 in the North East. Even in the council elections, in one Sunderland ward Reform gained 32 per cent of the vote.

Although Richard Tice’s party which, it is worth noting, has achieved this surge even without its secret weapon, Nigel Farage, is likely to emerge with only a handful of seats, it is now hugely significant electorally. On this week’s showing, it will cost the Conservatives many seats at the general election. Beyond that, success attracts donors. If Reform were to attract serious financial backing, build up an organisation on the ground and take a leaf out of the Liberal Democrat playbook by creating a presence in local government, it could become a permanent fixture on the political landscape.

There is no point in the Tories clutching at Harlow like a security blanket, they are facing a threat of their own making, of a kind never encountered before. Many thousands of English voters have had the experience of going to a polling station and voting for Reform: how do the Conservatives propose to reclaim them? 

The issue now is less the forthcoming general election, whose outcome appears to be writ large in these comprehensive results, but the struggle to craft a conservative challenge during five years of Labour government, at the end of which a volatile electorate is likely to be as disillusioned with Keir Starmer as it currently is with Rishi Sunak. And all the while, time is passing without Britain exploiting its Brexit opportunities or even creating adequate conditions for economic growth and geopolitical coherence. 

This is a very dangerous time and the public’s having recourse to a shapeless Labour party fertile in PR slogans, but barren of a coherent vision for an entrepreneurial nation, is not a promising development on the road to recovery. 

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