Britain’s two main parties are being melted down

The upbeat Conservatives put in a strong showing in the local elections, gaining councils and councillors, demonstrating that their party machine is in great shape. Meanwhile, it was a deeply disappointing night for Jeremy Corbyn and the useless Labour leader’s position is weaker than ever. The Lib Dems gained some seats. But that’s not what matters. Instead, it’s all about how well the Tories are doing under Theresa May.

Oh, hold on, that’s based on a cutting from two years ago explaining how the strong Tory performance in the local elections held on May 4th 2017 meant that May was on track for a landslide in the general election that was held a few weeks later. Oops.

Look what happened next. The local election success of 2017 was a false signal. The arrogant Tory party elite strutted out of the locals and into the national campaign. Expecting a landslide Team May blew itself up with its manifesto. May proved herself incapable of campaigning or communicating via anything other than stilted soundbites.

In only a month, the Tory leadership group under May went from thinking it was the cat’s pyjamas to acute embarrassment and rank humiliation. It even eclipsed the reversal in Gordon Brown’s fortunes in the autumn of 2007 when he was miles ahead, flirted with an early general election and then had to retreat.

A lot can change in a few weeks.

I attach this health warning about local election results simply because already a great deal that may turn out to be wrong – in just a few weeks – is being read into the 2019 local election results. Of course, local elections matter, because they suggest the direction of travel for the parties. But turnouts tend to be low. And weeks later voters – the same and different voters – can make very different sets of choices.

Still, the big picture this weekend looks pretty clear. The two main parties did appallingly badly. The voters hate them. The Conservatives have suffered a meltdown, losing (at the time of writing) 1,035 seats, a loss that exceeds by a couple of hundred seats their very worst expectations.

Labour, which nine years into a spell in opposition should be winning in these contests convincingly, actually lost more than 100 seats.

The Lib Dems are the main winners. They gained control of ten councillors and increased their total number of councillors by at least 561. The jubilant Greens did well too and have ordered in extra hummus to celebrate. They almost doubled their number of councillors (to 313 so far) and they have representation on 50 new councils.

UKIP – reinvented under its new leader as a northern European mid-1930s tribute band –  was defending  111 seats and lost 80% of them.

The Brexit Party and the Tiggers (the Change the UK Back To What It Was By Keeping us in the EU party) were not standing, so we’ll have to wait until the euro election to find out what impact they have.

Ahead of that euros contest, Sir John Curtice has urged jubilant Remainers to not get too excited. The anti-Brexit Lib Dems did well, but he points out that the evidence for voters motive is patchy. Again, turnout is low in these contests.

I must say, though, that to me it looks like a good set of results for the forces of Remain. If Remain voters get the idea that momentum is building with the Lib Dems then they could really start to motor in the run-up to the euro elections due on May 26th.

Sir John Curtice is the nation’s crack psephologist and a great man. I first worked with him in 1999 in the Scottish Parliament elections, at Scotland on Sunday, back in the days when Labour assured worried Unionists like me that devolution would not (don’t be silly!) deliver Scotland to the SNP. Er…

Twenty years ago this week Scottish Labour under Donald Dewar won the first election to Holyrood. STV produced a rather nice little documentary this week to coincide with the anniversary of the first devolved elections, which were quite exceptionally boring apart from several SNP press conferences that went badly wrong.

In the first, my friend the SNP’s economic guru had to calculate the deficit of an independent Scotland on the back of a napkin under pressure from the man from the FT. Then the SNP leadership decided that the media was against it and launched its own newspaper unveiled at press conference in Glasgow. “Is this,” I asked SNP chief executive Mike Russell at the press conference, “an elaborate practical joke?”

Anyway, back to now and the local elections. What are the implications?

It’s the weekend. You want a gin and tonic, I’m tempted by a glass of white burgundy, so I’ll make  it quick. I have three observations.

1) The Lib Dem comeback is real.

This matters in the longer term, obviously, because it points to the potential for more hung parliaments. A Lib Dem revival will make it much more difficult for the Conservatives – being pushed rightwards by the Brexit party – to build a wide enough coalition of interests to win outright at Westminster.

The Lib Dems will soon get a new leader, probably the punchy Jo Swinson, a tough campaigner used to fighting the SNP.

I feel your pain, if you (like me) regard the Lib Dems at their worst as disastrously wet on the economy and pious in a knit-your-own yoghurt way.

Journalists and non-Lib Dem politically engaged voters do like to mock the Lib Dems. But they’re resilient. For a while the coalition and student tuition fees (which in office they had campaigned against and then increased and owned) were their ruination. Students at university today have little memory of the student debt riots of that period. They have moved on and appear to be more worried by climate change. The Lib Dems, and the Greens, are in tune with their concerns.

Add Brexit to the the mix and the Lib Dems can become a serious force again for middle ground voters turned off by the ruined Labour and Tory parties.

2) The Tiggers should knock it on the head.

If the Lib Dems are coming back, the Tigger experiment (formed by breakaway Labour and Tory anti-Brexit MPs) is done for. Ask nicely, join forces with the Lib Dems. That’s where the English centrist party is at. Go join it.

3) Watch the desperate Tory and Labour leaderships try to close a Brexit deal next week.

Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral toxicity should be clear to even the most naive far left Corbynite. The voters, who are boss, cannot abide the bloke. Up against Theresa May he took his party backwards. What’s more, he’s trapped on Brexit, every bit as much as Theresa May is stuck. Corbyn wants to leave the European Union but most of his MPs don’t, and the Remainers are pointing at the rise of the Lib Dems. In Leave areas the Brexit party is about to smash both major parties, again. He can’t win either way.

To try and head off the euro elections, it looks as though there will now be a rapid push for a deal between the party leaderships. By May’s people (who know she is going and need a deal, any deal, to show for their efforts) and by Corbyn who can see his party being pulled in a Remain direction.

Nothing is impossible, but it is extremely hard to see how it could be done and delivered. A joint statement by May and Corbyn? Combined they are as unpopular a pair of leaders as any in British history. Would their deal – the May deal plus a Customs Union – pass the Commons? I doubt it.

The assurance from the whips, I’m told, is that there are 350 votes or so for such an arrangement. That is hardly a reliable margin, considering that last year they thought and said they had the votes – probably – to pass May’s deal. That didn’t work out.

The risk for Corbyn of agreeing a deal would be that anti-Brexit Labour MPs – sensing the argument is going in their direction – would combine with Tory Brexiteers (who are generally anti-customs union) to kill a compromise. Imagine if Corbyn did a deal and then it lost in the Commons. What a humiliation.

It all suggests no resolution on Brexit, with both main parties melting down this summer and autumn. The Tories with a new leader need to go more Brexity, but that means losing votes to the Lib Dems. If Labour tries to shut down the Lib Dems it betrays Brexity voters in its heartlands. All this playing out just in time for that deadline at the end of October when the Brexit extension is up and the EU wants an answer on what Britain wants to do. Oh great.

Have a good weekend!

And if you are in Britain have a good extra day off on Monday, which I plan to spend forgetting about British politics for 24 hours, as it is a bank holiday. Reaction returns full of beans on Tuesday. Thank you for reading and supporting Reaction. You being a member of Reaction helps a lot and it is appreciated. The support of our subscribers means our team can produce the site and these newsletters.