Conservatives lose approximately 1,000 council seats in local elections

London: After all the hullabaloo surrounding the local elections, the results can be described as dreadful for the Conservative Party, but not as bad as they could have been. Roughly 8,000 council seats were up for grabs; at the time of writing, results are not complete, but Labour has gained 532 seats so far, and the Tories are down 1,060. They have also lost control of some councils that they have held for 25 years. Keir Starmer and Labour are jubilant, but the real gainers are the Liberal Democrats, with a gain of 409 seats, and the Greens, with an increase of 241, although their overall seats are still few. Voter turnout is expected to have been low, between 20-30%, which is disappointing for all parties. It is too early to tell if the voter ID requirement, implemented for the first time, made any difference to turnout.
Sunak and his team are playing the results coolly; the blame is being passed to the damage done to the Tory brand by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Greg Hands, the Conservative Party Chairman, blamed the cost of living/fuel and the background situation in Ukraine. Sunak is resolutely not changing his tack on delivering his five pledges: halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing debt, cutting NHS waiting lists, and stopping illegal immigration boats crossing the Channel.
These results are not a forecast for the 2024 general election. Both the Conservatives and Labour have a mountain to climb before next October. Local elections are just that and dominated by local politics. In a general election, Red Wall and Blue Wall first-time voters who voted for Boris Johnson will likely revert to Labour. Voters who are against Rishi Sunak’s high taxes, slow growth, and net-zero policies, and who are still smouldering about how Johnson was removed from No. 10, will have voter apathy. Southern Brexiteers who were charmed by Johnson’s liberal qualities will probably go the Lib Dem way. That is unless Boris Johnson pulls a rabbit out of a hat following the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) conference on May 13. The CDO conference is the brainchild of Lord Cruddas, Tory donor, supported by Priti Patel, Jacob Rees Mogg, and Nadine Dorries, who are aiming to “take back control,” presumably from Sunak, whom they see as having no people’s mandate.
The CDO conference will be a curtain-raiser to the National Conservatism conference on May 15-17, where a bevy of distinguished conservatives will gather to define and debate the challenges facing British conservatism.
All the local election celebrations and commiserations will soon be forgotten as King Charles III and Queen Camilla’s coronation gets underway on Saturday.