Super Thursday – what’s at stake?

Which elections are taking place?

Voters in England will elect local councillors and, in some areas, police commissioners and mayors.

Welsh voters will elect members of the Senedd, and in Scotland voters will elect members to Holyrood.

A by-election will also be held in Hartlepool, after Labour MP Mike Hill stood down over sexual harassment allegations, which he denies.

How many elections are taking place in England?

About 5,000 council seats and 145 councils, with the Conservatives defending the majority of these. There will also be elections for 13 mayors and 39 police and crime commissioners including a handful in Wales. 

This year’s ‘Super Thursday’ elections are far bigger than normal because they include thousands of contests which were postponed from May 2020 due to the pandemic.

However, not all seats and mayoralties are up for election this year because different councils hold votes at different times – some elect all their councillors at the same time every four years, while others elect half or a third at each election.

What seats should I keep an eye on in England?

This election is the first real opportunity to gauge the public mood in England since Boris Johnson and the Conservatives demolished Labour’s ‘red wall’ in 2019.

Keep an eye on Northern metropolitan councils such as Barnsley, Doncaster, Dudley and Rotherham – big wins in these areas could be a sign that some of Labour’s star candidates, including Yvette Cooper and Dan Jarvis, could be in trouble come the next general election.

Other marginals to watch include: Northumberland, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Derbyshire, Barnsley, Bury, The Tees Valley, Wakefield, the West Midlands and Worthing.

And then, of course, there is the Hartlepool by-election.

Why is the Hartlepool by-election so important?

The by-election will see Johnson’s Conservatives go head-to-head with a Labour Party led by Sir Keir Starmer for the first time at the ballot box of a parliamentary election. 

Hartlepool’s status as a ‘red wall’ seat, which has been held by Labour at every election since 1974 and voted heavily for Brexit in the 2016 EU Referendum, means the by-election has been framed as the first test of Starmer’s ability to repair the damage from Labour’s devastating 2019 election performance.

But if the seat flips to blue, the result would be a significant blow to Starmer’s leadership – and show that the Conservatives’ drive to dismantle former Labour strongholds is far from over.

And as New Statesman’s Ailbhe Rea explains, even if Labour narrowly wins Hartlepool, that would still not be a good sign for the party’s future: “If Labour was in a position to win a majority at the next general election it would be comfortably ahead in Hartlepool.”

What’s at stake in the devolved nations?

In Scotland, voters will choose who will run the Scottish government for the next five years and lead the country’s recovery from coronavirus. The poll will be a vote on both First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s handling of the pandemic and the drawn-out inquiries into the Alex Salmond affair.

But more than anything else, the results in Scotland could have huge repercussions for the future of the United Kingdom. If Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP win a majority, she will use it as a mandate to argue for a second independence referendum.

Johnson is currently promising to reject any such referendum, but it would be hard for him to sustain this position should the SNP triumph tomorrow.

In Wales, opinion polls have shown that Welsh Labour, led by Mark Drakeford, is close to winning an overall majority. The Welsh Conservatives appear likely to make significant gains, knocking Plaid Cymru into third place. 

Drakeford has indicated he is prepared to form a coalition after the elections. His own seat remains under threat from Plaid Cymru, however.

What about the mayors?

Seven ‘metro-mayors’ will be elected using the supplementary vote system, where second-preference votes are taken into account unless a candidate gains a majority of first-preference votes. There will be mayoral votes in Greater Manchester (held by Labour); West Midlands (Con), Liverpool City region (Lab), Tees Valley (Con), West of England (Con), Cambridge and Peterborough (Con) and West Yorkshire (new mayoralty). Failure to win at least one of the West Midlands and Tees Valley mayoralties would be a significant blow for Starmer.

Five ‘city mayors’ will also be elected on the supplementary vote system in Bristol, Doncaster, Liverpool, North Tyneside and Salford (all currently Labour).

Key mayoral votes will take place in the Tees Valley (up-and-coming conservative star Ben Houchen is expected to extend his lead), West Midlands (where the re-election of Conservative Andy Street would show the party is cementing its place in former Labour heartlands) and London and Manchester (where Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham are on course for a comfortable majority – and viewed by some as future Labour party leaders).