It was not an opinion poll. These were local elections about local issues. The results tell you only about where we are now, not where we might be come the autumn, or whenever it is that Rishi Sunak finally submits himself to the judgment of the country.
You know all the caveats, to which we can add one more: some of the biggest results, namely the mayoral contests in London, Manchester and the West Midlands, won’t come until Saturday. And yet, taken together, the votes cast on Thursday form an increasingly clear picture. It is a bleak one for the Conservatives – while for Labour it contains both cheer and a perhaps unexpected warning.
Make no mistake, the core story contained in these numbers is yet more confirmation of the disastrous standing of the Conservative party. As loudly and clearly as they can, voters are telling the Tories that their time is up. Nowhere was that message more deafening than in the Blackpool South byelection, where – yet again – the Conservatives suffered a colossal swing to Labour: at 26%, the third biggest such swing in history. (The second biggest came less than three months ago, in Wellingborough.) Those results can’t be written off as midterm blips or one-off protest votes. These are tremblings of the seismograph, saying an earthquake is coming.
For this is now a repeating pattern, recurrent across time and across the country. The Tories’ parlous vote share in the council elections of 2024 is an echo of their dismal showing in 2023. Meanwhile, the Tories lost councils to Labour from Redditch in Worcestershire to, for the first time, Adur in West Sussex, watching as Labour also took charge in Thurrock in Essex and Hartlepool in the north-east.
As always, there are consolation prizes a beleaguered governing party can point to, including a third term for Ben Houchen as mayor of Tees Valley and an expected win for Andy Street in the West Midlands. But as the election guru John Curtice rightly told LBC, those “tell you more about the popularity of the gentlemen concerned rather than anything about the prospects of the Conservative party”. Both ran on their individual brands, as virtual independents: when his victory was announced, Houchen was the only candidate on stage who did not wear a party rosette. But even so there is cause for Tory alarm: the swing away from Houchen to Labour would be more than enough to switch all the parliamentary seats in his patch from blue to red.
All of which comes as sweet vindication for Keir Starmer and what we might call his receptacle strategy. His aim has been to turn Labour into the acceptable vessel of national discontent with the party that has governed Britain for 14 years. Voter fury, at first Boris Johnson and the partygate revelations and next Liz Truss’s sabotaging of the UK economy, saw trust in the Tories plunge – but it was never automatic that that would translate into support for Labour. Starmer’s central objective has been to remove every obstacle that could stand in the way of a disaffected Conservative contemplating a move towards the main party of opposition.
He has set about that goal methodically, even ruthlessly – seeking to reassure potential Tory switchers that Labour is just as patriotic, just as strong on defence and crime, just as prudent with the public finances and just as competent as they once believed the Conservatives to be. That approach has turned off, even repelled, some of the Labour core, but this latest round of results – and its large swings, direct from Tory to Labour – suggests it’s working.
In 2019, there was talk of a post-Brexit realignment of British politics, with a “red wall” of seats permanently lost to Labour. What happened in Blackpool, Hartlepool and even Tees Valley allows Starmer to say he arrested that shift – and is now reversing it. Even if the truth is that it was less Starmer than Johnson and Truss who, between them, rebuilt the red wall.
And yet the receptacle strategy comes with risks. Spooked by the antisemitism rows of the Jeremy Corbyn period, and keen to look like a hard-headed foreign policy realist and sound like a prime minister in waiting, Starmer adopted a stance on the Gaza conflict – including vocal backing for Israel after the Hamas attacks of 7 October – that has clearly cost Labour support among Muslim voters. That played a part in the loss of Oldham, but it also saw independents surge in Blackburn and in the West Midlands, where Labour believes Akhmed Yakoob, who campaigned last week with George Galloway, drew enough support to split the anti-Tory vote and hand victory to Andy Street. Gains for the Greens tell a similar story, and it is the same problem that confronts Joe Biden in the US. Like Biden, Starmer badly needs the Gaza conflict to be over, or sufficiently calmed, so that it is out of the news when polling day comes.
But strategic caution carries other risks, too. Playing safe, saying nothing that could frighten the floating voter, might bring victory – but it doesn’t deliver a mandate. Starmer is right to ensure he rides the anti-Tory wave, and if these local results were repeated it would carry him into Downing Street. But once there, it helps if you can claim the electorate’s backing for your planned programme in government. As things stand, Labour could not quite do that.
There is a subtler problem, more in the realm of vibes than policy. So keen to seem like the adults in an increasingly chaotic room, Starmer and, say, Rachel Reeves do now look the part of PM and chancellor. Indeed, they look like incumbents. But the trouble with looking responsible is that people hold you responsible. The left challengers to Starmer act as if he is to blame for the absence of a ceasefire in Gaza, as if Benjamin Netanyahu – who has happily defied a US president – would have crumbled before a demand from the leader of the UK opposition. But this problem could endure even in government. Voters will be impatient for results from Starmer and Reeves, because of the vague, albeit irrational and indeed unfair, sense that they have been around for years. They will be cut little slack.
Which brings us to the scariest aspect of these results for Labour. They confirm an electorate that is unhappy and angry, frustrated by all that does not work as it should – whether it be the NHS or the buses, the courts or mental health services, schools or the local police. The Tories are so unpopular because so much is broken and there is not enough money to fix it. Right now, that is the Tories’ problem, one that promises to sweep them out of power. But once it has, it will become Labour’s problem. And it could hardly be more daunting.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
