Within 14 points of Labor in national polls, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives go to local elections today knowing they will lose seats. The question is how big this loss will be – the worst forecasts point to less than a third of the approximately three thousand positions they now hold – and what it says about the prospects for the parliamentary elections that should take place next year. On the Labor side, the expectation is to return to the largest party at the local level – they haven’t been for 20 years – with Keir Starmer in hot water if victory is not expressive.
At stake are over 8,000 seats in 237 local governments, mainly in rural England. The Conservatives currently have 3365 seats (being a majority in 82 local governments), while Labor has 2131 (governing in 49). The Liberal Democrats have 1223 (17), after making significant gains in the last election of 2019, with still 817 independents. In 74 local governments, no party has a majority.
The worst forecast for the prime minister, who faces his first major electoral challenge in this election since taking power in October, is to lose a third of the seats he now holds and half of the majority in local governments.
The party is getting ready to let voters express their displeasure over last year’s various scandals, from the party gate from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss’ disastrous budget. In addition, the rising cost of living weighs on voters’ pockets. By preparing for the worst-case scenario, conservatives could take advantage of a less significant defeat to conclude that the national situation may not be as bad as the polls predict after all.
On the labor side, Starmer needs a good result to continue in the right direction for the general election. The best-case scenario would be to win more than 700 seats, but the party knows there will be difficulties as neither London nor Wales go to the polls – areas where Labor is strongest. The ambition would be to reach the number that paved the way for the vast majority of Tony Blair in 1997 in the mid-1990s.
However, the Liberal Democrats hope to take advantage of the Conservatives’ bad time to repeat or improve on the results of the last election. For their part, the Greens hope to continue winning seats and finally get their first majority in one of the local governments. These governments run a variety of public services, from waste collection to schools or programs for the elderly.
Voters called to the polls today will for the first time be required to present photo ID (there is no ID in the UK) in order to vote. The Conservatives say the aim is to fight possible fraud – despite figures revealing only 1,286 complaints over the past five years – but the opposition speaks of an attempt to make voting more difficult (namely for younger voters) to to benefit the party in power.
Source: DN
