Labour wins the local elections and no one wants Sunak's job (yet)
Labour won where it needed to win
Over the weekend, we received the results of Thursday’s local elections. In short, Labour won, and the Conservatives lost. The Lib Dems did well but didn’t get the cut through to make that reality known, while Reform UK still remains very much a phantom party haunting the Conservatives’ polling numbers.
Our view:
Labour won the local elections. They gained 8 councils (51 of the 107 up for election) and 186 councillors (1,158 of the 2,658 up for election), won all the mayoralties bar one, and won the Blackpool South by-election by a near historic vote swing
The Conservatives lost the local elections. Their sole victories were to divert media attention to Teesside mayor Ben Houchen’s victory and a Sky News report predicting a hung Parliament to soften the ground for their future attacks on Labour and Reform.
No one wants Rishi Sunak’s job. Most rival Conservative MPs do not think that there would be enough time to rally support, defenestrate Sunak, and turn the polls around ahead of this year’s election. Most of the vocal Sunak critics e.g. Suella Braverman, are campaigning to become party leader after the next election, which PM Sunak is widely expected to lose and thereafter vacate his post as leader of the Conservative Party.
Lib Dems overperformed on results and underperformed on media attention.
Reform UK only contested 12% of council seats and remains without candidates (PPCs) for most general election seats. They are still very much a phantom party.
Our broader views:
Labour succeeds in maintaining political momentum and party unity.
In the run up to the local elections, several Labour councillor candidates suffered minor scandals, but this had little effect on the overall result. Labour now controls nearly 40% of UK councils outright, a post-war high for the party. If Labour ends up in power at the national, mayoral, and local levels later this year, as most polls currently predict, many of their eventual election manifesto policy proposals will be much more credible and deliverable, assuming they have a coherent working majority in Parliament. Labour has been consistently reticent about its governing intentions (here), but early indicators so far suggest higher taxes, higher spending, a less flexible labour market, and greater emphasis on government involvement in the net zero transition.
Conservatives fail to stall Labour’s political momentum, but succeed in message discipline
In the aftermath of the polling results, which saw the Conservatives lose over 1,500 local councillors over the past two local elections, the Conservatives did manage to divert media attention to Ben Houchen’s victory in Teesside and a Sky News poll that pointed to a potential hung Parliament, if the local results were replicated at the general election. The poll had numerous flaws, including ignoring Scotland, where Labour has been polling very well. Nevertheless, the PM and his allies repeated the message of hung Parliament enough that many pundits and experts spent the weekend explaining at great length how the poll was inaccurate, indirectly amplifying the idea of a hung Parliament. The electorate has likely not tuned into the general election campaign yet, so the effect of this approach is to both get the concept of a hung Parliament on the electorate’s radar as a way of undermining Labour’s polling momentum and to take up oxygen that would otherwise be focused on Labour’s and the Lib Dems’ strong results. The approach is likely an early indicator of how the Conservatives will campaign against Labour later this year, where “a vote for any party not the Conservatives, is a vote for Labour.” This tactic will be deployed relentlessly in an attempt to woo Reform supporters back to supporting the Conservatives (here).
The Lib Dems continue to outperform at the local level and underperform in attracting media attention.
The Lib Dems gained more local councils (2) and councillors (522) than the Conservatives. Early indicators suggest they will focus on presenting themselves as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in much of the South East and South West. The Lib Dems traditionally struggle to appeal to voters due to their dysfunctional manifesto writing process. The Lib Dems’ manifesto must be agreed to by party members at their Party Conference, where members can also put forward their own policy proposals (here), both of which lead to sometimes niche policy proposals that struggle to land with the wider national electorate. Nevertheless, the Lib Dems will continue to target soft Conservative voters that are turned off by the Conservatives’ bent towards social conservatism.
Reform still remains a phantom party, haunting the Conservatives’ polling numbers
Although Reform performed well in the Blackpool South by-election, coming third by a mere 117 votes, the party fielded candidates in only 12% of council seats and only managed to win two council seats, fewer than the Workers Party of Britain’s four. The Conservatives will increasingly campaign on Reform’s lack of readiness and viable candidates closer to the election in an effort to win back wavering supporters.