Good morning. A big election day ahead for all political parties and their staffers. What’s at stake? Thoughts below. Plus, we have a bumper Ben Walker preview of the locals – he predicts how badly tonight will go for the Conservatives.
Then, the former Nato secretary general George Robertson recounts his meetings with Vladimir Putin, discusses triggering Nato’s collective defence clause after 9/11, and defends his comment in 1997 that devolution would “kill the SNP stone dead”. It is a fascinating interview.
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No council is an island, entire of itself
Every part of England and Wales has an election today: 2,600 seats are being contested across 107 council areas. Nine regional mayors face the ballot. The East Midlands, the North East, and York and North Yorkshire will all elect mayors for the first time – a landmark moment for devolution. Then there are 25 London Assembly members (I’m told the Lib Dems are optimistic they’ll land their first ever constituency Assembly member in the South West area); and 37 police and crime commissioners.
Watch out for whether Labour takes Hartlepool and Harlow councils. Both are totemic areas and key targets for Keir Starmer’s team. Keep an eye on the North East mayoral contest and its independent candidate Jamie Driscoll, the former Labour mayor for North of Tyne and darling of the left who was barred by the party from standing in the newly configured North East mayoralty. His result will shape the Labour left’s long-term strategy. If you’re awake, note whether the Lib Dems progress in Wokingham and Tunbridge Wells.
The mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram in Manchester and Liverpool, respectively, should sail to victory. The less certain battles are in the West Midlands and the new East Midlands mayoralties. Andy Street, incumbent in the former, has become a well-known Tory who is, like Burnham, disdainful of the politicking and short-termism that defines Westminster. Mayors provide areas with a figurehead who lends gravitas to these elections, partly because the media, and voters, think in terms of personalities.
Which is one reason why if Street, and the Conservative Ben Houchen in Tees Valley, can hold on to their regions, Sunak will claim that defeat at the general election is not certain, that a fightback remains possible. Because even though these elections are really about town halls, bin collections, planning departments and tram lines, they will be viewed through the Westminster lens. A battle over the narrative will erupt tomorrow night; press officers will brief to make the narrative as favourable to their party as possible; No 10 will brace for a parliamentary revolt; the publication of the Projected National Share – which extrapolates the results on to a national scale – will instantly become a proxy for whether Keir Starmer is really heading for Downing Street.
But why is the “narrative” important to those who don’t see politics as pure theatre? Because it will shape the media coverage the parties will receive, which voters will absorb, and dictate the risk of internal revolt. In Labour, the chances of this are negligible. In the Conservatives, the local elections have been talked up as a springboard for a party coup for months. Depending on the results, some Tories could push the line that MPs face annihilation unless a fourth leader since 2019 is installed. Such rebellions have failed to materialise so far. But let’s see how bad it gets. Sunak will be praying that Street’s election strategy to distance himself as far as possible from the Prime Minister pays off.
Follow the New Statesman Podcast on Apple Podcasts for all the latest politics news:
Freddie’s picks
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Paul Auster died this week at the age of 77. Erica Wagner’s obituary recalls his significant literary legacy.
The historian Arash Azizi explains why it’s not true that authoritarian rule in the Arab world is necessary to maintain peace with Israel.
Interesting column from Katy Balls on the prison system and the fate of the Criminal Justice Bill (Times).
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George Robertson: why Russia fears the European Union
George Robertson was at Nato’s Brussels headquarters when the second plane hit. By 9.30pm on 11 September 2001 he would become the first, and only, Nato secretary general to trigger Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states an attack on one is an attack on all. But his first thought after watching 9/11 unfold was that the Nato headquarters lay beneath the flight path to Brussels Airport. All non-essential staff were sent home.
Then, his mind turned to the perpetrators. He first suspected US domestic terrorists; the Oklahoma bombing had happened six years before. “You began to realise that if it was an external source, then this was huge,” he said when we spoke in his Westminster office. “America had been attacked for the first time since Pearl Harbor. Here, in many ways, the world had changed.”
His staff drafted a statement while he phoned the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to discuss triggering Article 5. Robertson said they were initially sceptical about whether it would work. “It was high-risk because if you do it and it fails – it has the opposite effect.”
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