Rafael Behr: The Tories haven’t yet plummeted to inconceivable depths – but they’re not far off
Looking for a national picture in local council and byelection results always calls to mind the old joke about two drunkards scouring the pavement under a streetlamp. “Are you sure this is where you dropped your keys?” says one. “No,” says the other, “but this is where the light is.”
In the zone of partial illumination things look bad for the Tories. They have already shed scores of council seats. The loss of Blackpool South, with a 26-point swing to Labour (the third biggest ever), is consistent with a pattern of byelection batterings that has put Keir Starmer on a safe trajectory towards Downing Street.
Since there was speculation that the Reform party could come second in Blackpool, the Tories might eke dismal consolation in having avoided third place, but only just – by 117 votes. Reform’s 17% vote share is its best byelection performance to date but not the upset it was hoping for in a seat that looked hospitable to a hard-right challenger.
If Reform doesn’t have the infrastructure to mobilise its potential support on the ground, it will be less of a force in a general election than its media boosters imagine.
Perversely, the impact may be felt more in the flight of moderate Tories who tire of Rishi Sunak’s Reform-oriented populist postures. That might be a factor in some remarkable swings away from the Conservatives in places such as Rushmoor in Hampshire, and in the police and crime commissioner ballots in Cumbria and Somerset.
There is no method for disentangling motives in an aggregate shift in voting behaviour, although that never stops people trying. Ideologues and partisans will always project their prior beliefs on to any result and see vindication of whatever it was they were calling for before the votes were counted.
That is true for Labour’s performance, too. Defenders of Starmer’s strategy will say the results prove his method is working. Critics, especially those who are unhappy with the opposition leader’s stance on the war in Gaza, will point to a few Green gains in Tyneside and Labour underperformance in areas with high Muslim populations (Oldham, for example) as evidence that the party’s left flank has been neglected.
Even Sunak loyalists will find wispy straws to clutch at. Ben Houchen holding Tees Valley mayoralty (with much reduced majority), and just about clinging on to Harlow in Essex – a Labour target. The big metro mayoralties are yet to declare, so there is time for the spotlight to fall on some other part of the electoral terrain. Then some different, similarly incomplete narrative might emerge.
To the extent that Conservative HQ can muster hopeful spin, it relies on baked-in assumptions that the party is on course for defeat and that things can only get worse. In that context, the steady continuation of things being very bad indeed, while not plummeting abruptly to inconceivable depths, is tenuously presented as a kind of achievement. But continuity down the road to disaster is not recovery, no matter which way you hold it up to the light.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
Katy Balls: Sunak may have just enough of a story to hang on to his post
There will be relief in Conservative campaign headquarters this lunchtime following the news that Ben Houchen has secured a third term as Tees Valley mayor. This was the contest that even Rishi Sunak’s inner circle believed could spell curtains for the prime minister if Houchen lost. “It was the nuclear option,” explains a senior Tory.
Instead, Houchen – who has the nickname “patron saint of the red wall” – won fairly comfortably, albeit with a reduced vote share. However, he did fire a warning shot, with the metro mayor using his victory interview to suggest the central Tory government needs to give the public a reason to vote for them.
That aside, this victory – along with briefings from Labour sources that they believe the West Midlands Tory mayor, Andy Street, could also hold on (that count is due on Sunday) – should give Sunak a reasonable defence in the face of disappointing council losses. No 10 believes it ought to be enough to dissuade the Tory party from another bout of regicide.
However, this is not to say that Sunak is out of the woods entirely. The silence from many backbenchers since the results started to roll in is telling. Many are keeping their powder dry and want to take the full bank holiday weekend to assess what the results mean. “It’s the vote swing that will be the problem,” says a Tory MP. “That’s what tells us if we are going to keep our seats – and for a lot of us the answer is no.”
While any Tory mayoral victory gives Sunak a story to tell, it provides little comfort when it comes to a likely general election result. Both Houchen and Street have run on their personal brands and at times distanced themselves from the Tories in Westminster. While Houchen did have Sunak campaign with him, he is also willing to criticise the Tories when needed. That level of independence is much harder for a Tory MP to replicate in a general election.
Katy Balls is the Spectator’s political editor
Nadeine Asbali: Labour’s stance on Gaza cost the party Muslim votes – and will do so in the future
All the Muslims I know have either become apathetic about voting altogether owing to the presumption that all parties are offering the same thing, or they have backed the Green party or independent candidates for the first time – in some cases because their position on Gaza was stronger, and in others simply to punish Labour for its own stance.
It’s difficult to grapple with the idea that withdrawing my vote from Labour could bolster the Tories. But ultimately, for many, the “lesser of two evils argument” no longer stands, and it has become entirely unthinkable to lend a vote to Labour. Despite the fact that Labour may be on course for a landslide general election victory, it needs to face accountability over Gaza, and seeing its Muslim vote drop will force it to consider that. These local losses in Oldham and the West Midlands should act as a warning.
On a personal – even moral – level, I simply couldn’t put an X next to the name of any candidate who remains part of a party whose leaders condoned Israel cutting off food and water to Gaza. While they claimed they were misinterpreted, they did so too late. There is also their behaviour around the SNP ceasefire vote and the wave of Islamophobia unleashed as a result.
We are already seeing Muslims who are voting with Gaza at the forefront of their minds dismissed as Hamas supporters or as being more loyal to their faith than to Britain. A Labour source even told the BBC that Hamas was the real villain (though the party officially condemned that remark as racist).
Domestically, Labour offers little difference to the Tories – think of its backing of the two-child benefit cap, which plunges millions of children into poverty (and Muslims are one of the most highly represented groups when looking at social deprivation). Besides, Gaza isn’t just a niche Middle Eastern politics issue: it has become a human question, and many Muslims like myself simply cannot look past Labour’s support of what appear to be war crimes committed against people who could be us.
Nadeine Asbali is a secondary schoolteacher in London
Dal Babu: These elections highlight the politicised nature of policing. That needs to change
One set of results today that won’t get as much attention as the metro mayors and local councillors are the police and crime commissioners (PCCs). But at a time when only 40% of people in England say they trust their police force, we should be paying attention.
The PCCs were first elected in 2012, with a pitiful turnout of just 15%. Turnout has risen somewhat since then, but the results so far today suggest a turnout of around 20%. Over the past 10 years the whole process has become more explicitly politicised, with fewer independents being returned. In 2024, we look to the results essentially as bellwethers of wider political fortunes.
This is not the right way to approach policing. I recall, in 2010, sitting at a dinner at Bramshill police college with a number of chief constables and the then justice minister, Nick Herbert MP, who was explaining the proposed introduction of PCCs to cynical police leaders. They suspected that politicians would interfere with policing. Sadly these concerns were well founded; today we tend to see support for, or opposition to, government policing policy from PCCs predicted entirely by political allegiance.
It is time for a rethink. Louise Casey’s report into the Metropolitan police (London does not have a PCC, because it has the mayor) recommended creating a policing board, chaired by the mayor, to help with oversight and accountability. The old system – police authorities – included local people who understood local communities. Perhaps it is time to go back to the drawing board.
Dal Babu is a former chief superintendent in the Metropolitan police
Sarah Longlands: Dissatisfied local communities turned to Labour. Does it have a plan to keep those people onside?
Local elections are about everything that matters to us. They’re not just a judgment on the quality of the services councils provide, but also a reflection of how people feel about the state of their communities.
These results show growing support for Labour, but more fundamentally they highlight just how dissatisfied people are that the last 14 years of austerity have seen local services driven into the ground and local governments driven to the brink of bankruptcy.
This poses a significant challenge for any future Labour government, with (self-imposed) fiscal constraints that will prevent them from being able to offer a much-needed immediate and substantive funding boast to local public services. For while Labour has committed to providing a longer-term funding settlement for local government, there is as yet no promise of any extra money. Any substantive increase in funding would be contingent on growth in the economy that would boost tax revenues.
Labour has a plan for growth, but again there are challenges here. Growing the economy in a way that is fair, equal and sustainable will require strong intervention and the help of local leaders. This can’t be done on a shoestring – and our councils in particular will need time and resources to rebuild the capacity that has been significantly eroded over the course of the current government’s tenure.
The mayoral results won’t be fully known until Saturday, but these too will pose a challenge for Labour in government. They need to look closely at devolution arrangements. The narrow framing of the current deals severely limits the way in which combined authorities can use their resources to forge economic futures that recognise the individual strengths and aspirations of their regions. We can read plenty into these results about what Labour will need to tackle should Keir Starmer make his way to number 10.
Sarah Longlands is the chief executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies
Peter Kellner: It’s not quite ’97, but Tory voters are staying home in all the right contests for Labour
Is Labour doing as well as it did in the run-up to Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997? The question is being asked with increasing frequency. The answer is no; but it doesn’t need to do so in order to win a comfortable victory.
The BBC estimates that Labour’s support in this week’s local elections was equivalent to 34% across Britain. In 1996, the last local elections before Labour returned to government, the party won 43%.
Six months before the 1997 election, Labour’s average poll rating was 51%. It is now 44%.
Against that, Labour has been doing even better in recent byelections than it did in 1994-97. But that is largely because many more Conservatives have been staying at home this time. In the last eight seats the Tories have been defending, the turnout has averaged 40%. In Blackpool South yesterday it was just 32.5%. In the four equivalent contests in 1995-97, the average was 65%. The scale of Labour’s recent stunning gains is flattered by Tory abstentions.
However, below the surface of the overall numbers, almost everything is going Labour’s way. It has made big advances in Scotland. Polls and byelections confirm that anti-Tory tactical voting is back with a vengeance. And last night, Labour was achieving some of its biggest swings where it will need them most in the general election: in areas that voted leave in the Brexit referendum eight years ago, and which went on to back Boris Johnson at the last general election.
Ben Houchen’s victory in Tees Valley offers some relief to the Conservatives. But Rishi Sunak should take care. Houchen’s victory is more for the person than the party. Labour is well ahead when people are asked how they would vote in a general election. Recent polls suggest a similar pattern in London and the West Midlands tomorrow: a significant number of voters simultaneously wanting a Labour prime minister and a Conservative mayor.
Peter Kellner is a former president of YouGov
Archie MacKay: Labour’s Kim McGuinness bested Jamie Driscoll in the north-east mayoralty, but voters want her to be more than a party politician
It was a more comfortable Labour win in the end than the Jamie Driscoll campaign expected. The incumbent North of Tyne mayor, who ran as an independent after being frozen out by Labour, stood for head of the new north-east mayoral combined authority on his record in office – and the promise of additional investment for the newly added regions of the combined seven counties.
But it appears the looming general election played a more significant part in voters’ minds. Whether that’s what a “devolved” authority needs remains to be seen.
The question now will be, will Labour’s London-based HQ allow its north-east mayor autonomy, or will it claim the greater say in the running of the devolved regions? And if the latter, how will the new mayor – considered a safe Starmerist choice – respond?
County Durham initially rejected membership of the combined authority before reluctantly coming on board at the 11th hour. For residents here, jaded by a generations-long abandonment since Thatcher won her war against the coalminers, platitudes from the incoming mayor about being here before and knowing the solutions won’t really cut it. There’s a reason the “red wall” collapsed – and it’s not because Labour previously had the answers.
With a general election coming, McGuinness will need to demonstrate that Labour is willing to invest in the former Durham coalfield’s immediate and long-term recovery. Reopening the disused Leamside rail line is seen by many community leaders as a catalyst for economic revival in the county, reconnecting the area with the great cities on the Tees, Wear and Tyne.
It’s a project McGuinness had championed. Yet in the week leading up to this election, Labour was already managing expectations of that investment, casting a shadow over the core manifesto promise of a “fully integrated public transport system”.
So, is it McGuinness’s decision to make or London’s? The answer may go some way to determining how much red is repainted on the north-east wall.
Archie MacKay is managing editor of South West Durham News
John McDonnell: Labour won big – but Gaza is an issue it must address before the general election
First, the scale of Labour’s victory in Blackpool South demonstrates overwhelmingly that people want the Conservatives out. Keir Starmer is right to call a 26% swing “seismic”. Neither retail offers of tax cuts or other pre-election sweeteners, nor claims that the Rwanda policy is stopping the boats are doing anything to turn things around for Rishi Sunak.
Second, beware: although the Tories changing leader yet again will appear ludicrous, the fast installation of a middle-of-the-road, media-friendly face such as Penny Mordaunt could limit the damage and reduce Labour’s majority at the general election. Although the view on most doorsteps – even among many Conservative voters – was that it is time for a change, there is still a loyal Conservative base that will want to come out to buttress the party. Labour needs to be fully prepared for this possible scenario now.
Third, the hurt and anger felt by many in the Muslim community about Starmer’s response to Gaza is real and deeply felt. Time and time again, Keir’s LBC interview defending the Israeli use of siege tactics is raised on the doorstep. Even though this was corrected a week later, the correction was late coming – and the failure to back a ceasefire in the first parliamentary vote is also brought up.
Labour must not run away from the fact that unless significant action is taken by Keir, Gaza will have an impact on the general election results in those constituencies where there is a sizeable Muslim community. With humility, Labour’s decision-makers need to accept that they got it wrong. A symbolic act of a public apology by Labour, expressed by Keir, to the Muslim community is needed to start the process of reconciliation.
John McDonnell has been the Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington since 1997. He was shadow chancellor from 2015 to 2020
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