What do the local elections mean for the Tories?

Conor Boyle (Political Officer, Queen’s) and Alex Elliott (Communications Director, Brasenose) debate what the local elections mean for the Conservative Party below.

We cannot delude ourselves about the picture painted by the local election results.

Note: Localist parties have the annoying habit of including the term “independent” in their names. True independents are referred to with a lowercase “i”, with registered political parties in capitals. 

One positive from the local elections is that a challenge from the party’s right seems to be dead in the water. UKIP lost their twenty-five remaining seats, with just one incumbent vying for re-election. Reform UK, riding high in the polls under the guise of the Brexit Party in the 2019 locals, the last time these seats were contested, failed to make significant gains, winning just two more seats. As for Reclaim and the wide array of other populist right-wing parties, this election cemented their irrelevancy.

The good news, I’m afraid, stops here.

The loss of the 1997 general election is often attributed to the issue of Europe, with Eurosceptics blaming the not openly hostile stance of Major towards the Euro, and Europhiles considering divisions over Maastricht as the main factor. But, this doesn’t square with the fact that Eurosceptics like Bob Spink and Europhiles such as Jim Lester suffered equally poorly. 1997 swept away MPs across the nation – the 2023 local elections, while not on the same scale, look similar.

In absolute seat terms, the 2019 election was worse for the party – 1,330 seats were lost, as opposed to 1,063. But, comparatively, the 2023 election shows a bleaker picture. Corbyn’s policies repulsed many moderate voters away from Labour towards other left-wing and pro-remain parties (despite having no effect on the Brexit process, voters treated the 2019 election as if it were a general election). Thus, the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats made gains totalling 898 seats – this figure does not include countless other left-of-centre localist parties and independents, like the Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern (more on them later). The loss of Conservative votes, therefore, could reasonably be attributed to the nebulous Brexit policies of May and Corbyn, contrasted to the no-nonsense remain-at-all-costs attitude of the opposition – undemocratic, of course, but effective.

If it were a simple matter of Labour regaining previously lost voters, then an argument could be made that the results are to be expected. But, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens made further gains totalling 648 seats, on top of Labour’s 537 gains. This is not merely voters receding to the norm. While it is possible that movement between Labour, Liberal Democrats, and Greens has occurred over the four years, the biggest movement of voting is from the Conservatives to these three parties; further voters have been lost since 2019. Rather than cannibalising the votes of the other 2 left-wing parties, Labour have drawn Conservative voters over. As much as we like to mock the grey persona of Sir Keir Starmer, it does appear to be working.

In terms of councils, the result is even worse than 2019. The Conservatives lost control of 44 councils then; the figure this year is 48. Labour have gained 22 (losing 6 in 2019), the Liberal Democrats have gained 12 (winning 10 in 2019), and the Greens gained their first council. Again, there is no evidence of disaffected 2019 voters moving back into the Conservative column – quite the opposite. Of the 230 councils up for election, the Conservatives gained control of just two. However, in both, gains were not made against viable election opponents. In Torbay, the Liberal Democrats gained seats alongside the Conservatives, with independents faring the worst. In Wyre Forest, both Labour and the Conservatives gained at the expense of Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern. And in North Kesteven, Labour won seats for the first time in almost 20 years – the council was won on the backs of independents and Lincolnshire Independents. Given the Conservatives will be facing Labour and the Liberal Democrats, rather than these local phenomena come the next election, it seems misguided to celebrate these victories.

The Conservatives need to lose forty seats to fall below an absolute majority. Of the constituencies which voted Conservative and held general elections this year, forty-four returned a majority Conservative vote share, out of a possible eighty-four seats. This loss of forty does not include the countless Conservative constituencies which did not hold elections this year. Much is made about losses in the so-called “blue wall” being offset by gains further north, but this is not evident in the data. Losses range from southern constituencies, like Bracknell and Dover, and northern seats, like East Riding of Yorkshire and Ribble Valley. There is no real pattern to how council losses are occurring. One might point to gains in councillors made in places like Slough. While any gain of councillors is a good thing, for a general election these seats will be decided as one unit on vote share alone; as long as absolute votes remain below Labour, seat gains do not reflect general election results.

But what about mayoralties? Yes, it is true that the vote share increased in all the mayoralties. But again, look at where these gains came from. In Mansfield, the Labour candidate’s majority shot up – the Conservatives gained from Mansfield Independents. In Middlesbrough, the same story occurs, with independent Andy Preston losing out. The gain in Bedford, a former Conservative constituency, may look promising, but it hides a procedural change. Since 2022, the voting system was changed from an alternate vote system to first past the post for all mayoralties. Tom Wootton won 33.1%, unlikely to win under a two-round system. Had the previous system been in place, would we really be celebrating a 0.8% increase on first round votes? Leicester is the only real success story in mayoralties, and even then it was not enough to win.

Another comfort is that the projected national vote shows a hung parliament is likely, in which the Conservatives could mathematically form a government. To this, I point out that mathematically possible and actual possibility are two separate things. The Liberal Democrats and the Greens have made it clear that they will not enter coalition with the Conservatives. Even if they did not want to with Labour either, the only way out of a hung parliament is a general election through a no confidence motion. Are we really expecting the Liberal Democrats to vote against Starmer and risk a Conservative victory? Labour managed to survive five years in 1974 with a majority of one by riding off Liberal fears of a Conservative victory. A minority Labour government is likely to hold for at least two years, if not longer. If Theresa May could manage with nine seats short of a majority, surely Labour also could?

This article is not intended to find solutions to the issue at hand – plenty of ink will be spilled over how to win back voters. It is merely to highlight the scale of the job at hand if we want a Conservative victory at the next election. It is no use kidding ourselves that the local results are anything but a severe loss. Facing up to the scale of the problem is the first step to tacking it.

Alex Elliott (Communications Director) is a 1st Year undergraduate reading PPE at Brasenose College.

Stop with the despair. No-one claims the local election results were good for Conservatives, but claims of doom and disaster are premature.

On Thursday 4th May, the latest annual instalment of local elections took place. Of the roughly eight thousand seats up for grabs in England, the Conservatives won just shy of 2,300 seats; a loss of 1,063. There is no sense in which this is a desirable result for the party. However, those who have emerged - often our opponents in the mainstream broadcasters, with a glint in their eye - to tell us with certainty that this has us on course to lose the next general election, are putting the cart well before the horse, and their smugness will be served back to them by the British public next year.

It is worth looking back at the context in which these local elections have occurred. Our party has been in government for thirteen years now, and the rule of thumb has long since been that governments lose seats in local elections. Thus, combining the natural tendency of governing parties to shed seats with the fact that we’ve been thirteen years in power, we could not avoid doing poorly in these elections. I want, however, to make two fundamental points. Firstly, big losses sustained in local elections do not equate necessarily to a poor general election performance and, secondly, the electorate is so different in local elections from general elections that drawing comparisons is a fool’s game.

Turning firstly to the result we were handed last Thursday, a loss of over 1,000 seats is not a result we welcome. On these same boundaries, in 1999 Tony Blair lost over 1,100 seats and our party won 1,300 more (compared to Labour’s gains of only 537 this year). By any standard this was similarly a disastrous result for the then-government. However, as we all know, in the subsequent general election, Blair’s Labour Party retained its landslide majority and the Conservative Party only moved forward by 1 seat. Similarly, in 2003, when these seats were next up for election, Blair lost a further 833 seats and tied for second place with the Liberal Democrats. But again, he went on to win the 2005 General Election with a handsome majority. Again, when these seats were next contested, the Labour Party in 2007 fell to third place and the Conservatives gained 932 seats, but the 2010 general election produced a hung parliament rather than a clear Conservative victory. In addition, much comparison has been made to John Major’s tenure in preparation of a 1997-style victory for Sir Keir. A year before he faced a general election, John Major’s conservatives did have a result remarkably similar to this year’s one. The Conservatives lost 1,035 seats, and Labour gained 584. Only it was in 1991, and Major went on to stun everybody to win a general election twelve months later.

On different boundaries too, there have been great performances by parties in local elections who went on to have embarrassing performances in general elections. In both 2011 and 2012 Ed Miliband led the Labour Party to gain over 800 seats on each occasion. Again, the 2015 general election saw another unexpected Conservative majority. Another embarrassing occasion would be the May 2017 local elections when the Conservatives gained 11 councils and over 500 seats just a month ahead of a local election, but as we all remember, the Conservative majority was lost in a spectacularly humiliating way. It is also worth noting that, even though my mother used to tell me that second place was for the first loser, at least we’ve not fallen into third place after such a long period in government. In 2004, 2007, 2008 and 2009, the Liberal Democrats outpolled the Labour Party in local elections. We’ve not fallen into this situation yet, which would suggest to me that the situation isn’t half as dire as people have been trying to make it seem. It is also worth noting that, yes, we are no longer the largest party in local government. I am sad to see us lose our place as the largest party among councillors nationwide, but the fact that we remained in that position for twelve consecutive years in government is nothing short of impressive. For context, this position as top-party in terms of councillors was lost by the Labour Party in 2002, only five years after taking government in 1997 (and eight years before they would be turfed out of office); only half as long as we’ve managed to be the party of government while holding this accolade.

In this election though, the comparisons are based on May 2019. And having dealt with changes in seats, its important to note that the Labour Party’s vote share is unchanged since then, and the Conservatives have shed 4%. Now if we were to replicate that, and retain all-bar 4% of our vote in the general election we would win roughly 40% and an unchanged Labour share would keep them t 32%, giving us an eight point lead and in a good position to form another government.

However, I want to focus on local elections as an electoral event in itself. The calendar for council elections is such that we never have a fully national snapshot. Furthermore, the enhanced performance of the Liberal Democrats at local level is well-documented, and therefore unlikely to be replicated in a general election. For instance, while the Lib Dems’ poll ratings have improved since the last election, they are unlikely to win 20% like they did in this years local elections. This is also the case for other smaller parties such as the Greens. It is also true to point out that voters who either support the status quo, or are broadly content with the performance of the government (i.e. conservative voters) are more likely to stay at home because they are not as strongly motivated into casting a vote. This also leads into another reason why drawing comparisons from local to general elections is unreliable. Turnout is usually very low. Given that we cannot be sure that the abstaining voters are not directly representative of the electorate as a whole, translating one from the other is an unreliable exercise.

Thus, the comparisons from local to general elections are akin to comparing apples to oranges. Not to mention that governments, since the beginning of time, have suffered mid-term rebukes in local election, but that doesn’t necessarily mean their destined to for electoral wipeout in a general election. For these reasons, while no one could commend this result as a success or endorsement, using this result to predict a Labour government at the next general election is half-witted.

Conor Boyle (Political Officer) is a 2nd Year undergraduate reading PPE at Queen’s College.

Image Credit: SecretLondon123 on Flickr under Creative Commons License