No amount of sugar-coating can disguise how bad the local and mayoral elections, along with the Blackpool South by-election, were for the Conservative Party. In fact, it was the party’s worst local election performance since 1995.
The Blackpool South by-election saw the third biggest swing against the Conservatives since the second world war, and the party came within 117 votes of being knocked into third place by Reform UK.
Ben Houchen may have been re-elected as the Conservative mayor for Tees Valley, but he didn’t campaign as a Conservative, relying instead on his own profile and track record. For the Conservative Party it doesn’t get much worse than this.
And yet, strange as it may sound, there are one or two straws for Conservative Party strategists and for No 10 to cling onto. Mighty thin straws mind you, but straws nonetheless.
While this month’s elections were disastrous for the Conservatives, further analysis may offer them a glimmer of hope
Two statistics in particular struck me. First, based on the results from these elections, had the whole country been able to vote then the “national equivalent vote” put Labour on 34% — well below what the opinion polls are suggesting.
The Conservatives were at 27%, much closer to Labour than the polls are recording, although this is this is still 18% lower than the party’s vote share in the 2019 General Election. Second, Labour gained only 186 councillors, surely well below its target, because the minority parties collectively outperformed expectations, together gaining an extra 282 councillors.
Labour certainly had some notably successes, but failed to take control of some councils which were clear targets — Harlow being a stand-out example — and the party struggled to match its by-election successes, and indeed its poll ratings, at the local elections.
Hung parliament?
Based on these results, and on that “national equivalent vote”, a number of analysts are saying that Sir Keir Starmer would find himself leading the largest party after a general election, and by some margin, but just short of an overall parliamentary majority.
We would be in hung parliament territory, much to the benefit of the Lib Dems who, as in 2010, might well find themselves holding the balance of power and working in a coalition government once again!
So, it may well be that the Conservative Party isn’t facing that landslide defeat, that extinction event, that the polls and some political commentators have been suggesting for some time now.
It’s worth pointing out too that turnout was depressingly low both for the local elections and the by-election.
Labour may have secured 58.9% of the votes cast in the by-election, but just 32.5% of the electorate bothered to vote and its actual vote fell, albeit marginally, compared to the 2019 General Election.
These low turnouts are making it hard to predict with any real accuracy how people might vote in the only election that really matters when our future government is being elected.
Indeed, in the West Midlands mayoral election where Conservative Andy Street was surprisingly narrowly defeated by Labour’s Richard Parker by just 1,500 votes,
Labour’s vote share actually dropped marginally compared to the last mayoral election in 2021 courtesy of a Muslim independent candidate who siphoned off a fair amount of Labour’s vote.
Indeed, in many council wards where there is a high Muslim population, Labour saw its vote drop, in some cases quite significantly, and even lost control of Oldham Council. The Muslim factor could yet hurt Labour, although perhaps not as badly as Reform UK looks set to seriously damage the Conservatives.
Election timing
Meanwhile, all talk of Sir Graham Brady, the Chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee, receiving the necessary number of letters to trigger a vote of no confidence in Rishi Sunak’s leadership seems to have evaporated, and with it any prospect of a June or July general election — a prospect that in recent weeks has been increasingly seen as in play.
But the only reason No 10 could possibly have been pondering a summer general election was if Mr Sunak did indeed have to face a no-confidence vote.
He would almost certainly have won it, but would probably have been sufficiently damaged to have to stand down — so to avoid that, his response would surely have been to call the parliamentary party’s bluff and call a general election and thereby avoid the no-confidence vote, putting his fate in the hands of the electorate rather than his parliamentary “colleagues”.
Bus franchishing looks to be on the agenda in the North East after a Labour mayoral win
I’ve heard some Conservative commentators say that a summer election should happen as the longer Mr Sunak clings on, the worse things could get for the party, and that nothing will turn up to change the party’s fortunes.
I have some sympathy with that point of view, but for my money a November general election remains the most likely prospect — with 14 or 21 November being the dates I would put money on if I were a betting man — as Mr Sunak would surely want to use the party conference in October as the launch pad for the election campaign.
Franchise priorities
Closer to home, what does all of this mean for the bus industry?
We have a new Labour mayor in the West Midlands who has said introducing bus franchising would be a priority. Existing Labour mayors of the other combined authorities were all re-elected while we have three new Labour mayors for the North East, York and North Yorkshire, and East Midlands. I would be amazed if bus franchising was not top of their lists of policy priorities, or at least very close to top.
As the dust settles from these elections, I have little doubt that we will see the government come forward with a raft of policy initiatives designed to show it has a “plan” to grow the economy, to continue to bear down on inflation and all the rest.
Whether this has the slightest impact on an electorate which seems set on kicking the Conservatives out, even if it is yet to be fully persuaded by Labour’s offering and may yet clip Mr Starmer’s wings by failing to give him a landslide, or even a parliamentary majority, remains to be seen.
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