Morning Call: The Tories are trapped
Local election results put Labour on course for government.
Good morning, it’s a happy one for Labour and a rather less happy one for the Tories. Below, I explore what the early local election results tell us about the mood of the country.
Then, David Gauke considers how the SNP’s “contradictory coalition” is fracturing.
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Three years is a very long time in politics. Back in 2021, as the Conservatives triumphed against Labour in the Hartlepool by-election, Boris Johnson was eyeing a decade in power. Keir Starmer, having failed to revive his party’s electoral fortunes, was contemplating resignation.
Today, the party’s positions have been diametrically reversed. The Tories have lost Hartlepool council to Labour (which won nine of the 12 seats contested) and it is Starmer who can look towards a decade in power.
The local election results so far confirm the conclusion that the national polls have long supported: Labour is on course for government, the Tories for opposition. In the Blackpool South by-election – a contest which Labour had talked up as the most important – Starmer’s party achieved a swing of 26.3 per cent from the Conservatives. This is not only far in excess of the 12.5 per cent swing that Labour needs for a general election victory, it is the third-largest swing in history.
The only consolation for the Tories in Blackpool was that Reform UK fell 117 votes short of beating them into second place. Once again, Nigel Farage’s franchise has failed to justify the hype. The same cannot be said of Labour.
In advance of polling day, the Tories sought to manage expectations by suggesting that they would lose around half of the 989 seats they were defending. But as the psephologist John Curtice has observed, the results so far support this deliberately grim projection. “We’re looking at certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, Conservative performance in local government elections for the last 40 years,” he said.
With 35 of 107 councils declared, the Tories have lost 96 seats while Labour has gained 58. As well as Hartlepool, Starmer’s party has taken control of Redditch, Thurrock and Rushmoor – the latter, covering Farnborough and Aldershot in Hampshire, is the home of the British Army and had been Tory-controlled for 24 years. (Labour did, however, fail to gain the bellwether that is Harlow in Essex by one seat.)
The Tories, as they have all along, will hope that they can shift this early narrative: if they hold the Tees Valley and West Midlands mayoralties, Rishi Sunak will insist that defeat is not inevitable. But these contests, which Ben Houchen and Andy Street fought as quasi-independents, should be viewed with due perspective. Large swings towards Labour in both would still signal a coming Conservative defeat.
Sunak and his ministers cannot dismiss their losses as “midterm blues”. That term, beloved of struggling leaders through the ages, denotes an electorate that is prepared to forgive the government. There is no sign that British voters are so minded: come the general election, they fully intend to punish the Conservatives. And the Tories lack anything resembling an escape plan.
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George’s picks
Ben’s essential guide to the local election results.
Finn McRedmond on why Ireland can’t blame its anti-immigration turn on Rishi Sunak
Chris Deerin on whether John Swinney can be more than a caretaker SNP leader.
Soumaya Keynes on whether remote work is good for women (Financial Times)
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The SNP’s contradictory coalition is fracturing
A couple of weeks ago, I delivered a lecture at a university about populism. I focused on the rise of right-wing populism throughout much of the West and argued that the left’s increasing focus on cultural issues rather than economic ones had alienated some of its traditional supporters.
These voters – culturally conservative but economically interventionist – drifted away from social-democratic parties. In the UK, they voted for Ukip, Brexit and – in 2019 – Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. In the US, they voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 and will do so again in November. In France they back Marine Le Pen, in Germany Alternative for Germany. The European parliamentary elections next month will see parties of the populist right flourish in most EU member states.
The pattern varies: in some countries the populists take over the existing centre-right party (most obviously in the case of the US Republicans but also – at least at times – the UK Conservatives) or new populist parties emerge and achieve electoral success. Either way, large numbers of voters are supporting parties standing on an agenda of being tough on crime, immigration, “wokery” and the “liberal elite”.
All of this is true and not exactly an original observation. But I realised that this account would not reflect the experience of most of my audience. My host was the University of Stirling – for its annual Williamson Lecture – and while it is certainly true that right-wing populism has become a major force in most Western countries (including England and Wales), it is a very different story in Scotland.
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