Tories battered in local elections

As local election results continue to pour in, they seem to offer one inescapable conclusion: the Tories remain in deep electoral trouble and will soon be the party of opposition.

“We’re looking at certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, Conservative performance in local government elections for the last 40 years,” declared polling guru John Curtice today. 

While final declarations are not expected until Sunday, overnight counts indicate that the Tories have lost around half of the council seats they were defending. 

Meanwhile, Labour has regained control of many of its key council targets, including Redditch, Thurrock, Hartlepool and Rushmoor. The latter two hold particular significance. Hartlepool was where Starmer suffered a bruising by-election defeat at the last local elections three years ago. And a victory in Rushmoor, which has been Tory-controlled for 24 years and is home to the British Army, suggests Starmer’s attempt to rebrand Labour as the “true party of patriotism” is paying off.

Labour has also won the Blackpool by-election with a swing of 26.3 per cent from the Conservatives – the third biggest swing to Labour at a by-election since the Second World War. Equally worrying for the Tories is the fact they only narrowly scraped second place in Blackpool, withjust  177 votes more than Nigel Farage’s Reform party. Reform secured 17 per cent of the vote share – the party’s best result yet in a by-election. 

“We’re becoming the real opposition in the north to the Labour,” Reform’s leader Richard Tice confidently deduced from the outcome. These local elections will also understate the scale of the threat Reform poses at the general election since the party didn’t have a big presence in the locals. It only stood in one in six wards. 

Amid these calamitous losses, one man has offered Sunak a lifeline: Tory mayor Ben Houchen. The high-profile Tees Valley mayor has secured a third term in power, albeit with a reduced majority. 

The Conservatives are clinging onto this one good news story, unsurprisingly. If even Houchen had lost power, it would have been the most damning indictment of all. The charismatic northerner has become a poster boy for the government’s levelling up agenda and secured a stonking victory of over 72 per cent under a Boris-led Conservative government in 2021. 

Yet the Conservative party’s attempts to claim credit for his victory is unconvincing. Houchen’s win is a testament to his personal popularity and efforts to improve Teesside’s economy. As The Hound writes today, he has not been re-elected because of Sunak’s Tory Party but, rather, in spite of it. 

The same is almost certainly true for West Midlands mayor Andy Street. Like Houchen, he too appeared to tactically distance himself from the Tory party during his campaign. We are still waiting on the results of this mayoral election but preliminary evidence suggests Street will narrowly retain power. 

There are a couple of caveats to Labour’s successes in the locals. There is some evidence of its stance on Gaza hurting the party in pockets with a large Muslim population. In Oldham, where two Labour councillors quit the party over Gaza earlier this year, Labour lost control of the council. And, on average, the party’s support is down by eight points since last year in wards where over 10 per cent of the population identify as Muslim.

What’s more, an interesting and seemingly contradictory forecast has emerged this afternoon from Sky News elections analyst, Prof Michael Thrasher. From looking at local elections results so far, it projects that Starmer’s Labour is on course to be the largest party in parliament but, it could fall short of a Commons majority by 32 seats.

It feels safe to say that the Tories are heading for opposition. But it may still be too soon to feel confident of a landslide Labour victory. 

Nonetheless, Starmer has reason to feel jubilant today. The last time local elections were held in 2021, a bruising set of results for Labour had Keir Starmer contemplating resignation for having failed to revive his party’s electoral fortunes. Three years is a long time in politics. 

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