With striking gains made by the Labour Party in crucial battlegrounds across England and Wales, the Conservatives are facing one of their worst local election results in forty years. These results will determine whether they win the general election.
A former minister stated that there was “no such thing really as a safe Tory seat any more” as a result of the Conservative losses, but the prime minister seemed determined to hold onto office until election day because there wasn’t enough support from within his own party for him to be removed.
According to Strathclyde University polling expert Prof. John Curtice, the Conservative performance in the last 40 years has been “one of the worst, if not the worst.”
After all votes are counted, the party could lose as many as 500 seats, with Labour winning in both the traditional Conservative heartlands in the south and the “red wall” north that the Tories won under Boris Johnson.
Keir Starmer celebrated “seismic” outcomes, which included capturing mayoralties in the East Midlands, North East, and North Yorkshire, which includes Sunak’s own constituency, and winning a landslide by-election in Blackpool South with the third-largest swing since the Second World War.
Along with taking over at least seven new councils, including those in the southern English counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hampshire, and Sussex, Labour also removed several Tory police and crime commissioners.
By 10:45pm, Starmer’s party had secured over 200 additional council seats, bringing its total number of seats to over 1,000. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats gained 90 seats, bringing their total to 500, surpassing the Conservatives, who had lost over 370 seats to conclude with 468 seats.
However, the Green party, which won over 150 seats and just missed taking overall control of Bristol, and independent party candidates, who won 260 seats due to disenchantment with Westminster politics and Labour’s Gaza policy, also made strong showings, which should serve as a warning to the major parties.
The Workers’ Party of Britain, led by George Galloway, secured four seats, while the Women’s Equality party secured its first-ever councillor and residents’ associations secured 48 seats.
According to a national vote share prediction released by the BBC on Friday, Labour received 34% of the vote, the Conservatives received 25%, the Lib Dems received 17%, and other parties received 24%.
The Conservatives highlighted areas of success despite the government’s severe defeats, such as Ben Houchen, the Tory mayor of Tees Valley, and Andy Street, who is expected to retain his mayoralty in the West Midlands on Saturday. Both men had turned away from Westminster politics associated with the Conservatives.
Additionally, there were rumours that Susan Hall, the Tory candidate for mayor of London, had run Labour’s Sadiq Khan closer than expected, and that the Conservatives had very narrowly avoided losing Essex’s Harlow council, which had been a Labour target.
On Friday, Sunak and Houchen made an appearance in Tees Valley, but Sunak did not discuss the larger national picture. Despite a swing in the mayoralty that suggested the opposition would have won all parliamentary seats in the region, he accused Labour of attempting to “stroll back in” to Tees Valley and declared his confidence that the voters in the area would support the Tories in a general election.
In the event that Houchen and Street were defeated, Sunak’s team had prepared for the prospect of a challenge to his leadership. Tory MPs countered that the rebels had given up on trying to remove him and were instead putting the blame on him for the likely loss of this autumn’s general election.
David Campbell Bannerman, the former Tory and Ukip MEP and chair of the grassroots Conservative Democratic Organisation, was the only one demanding that he step down completely. Bannerman demanded that Sunak “step aside now and go to California where he will excel in AI” and called Sunak a “terrible prime minister: not a Tory, no vision, no charisma, no campaigning ability.”
