State of Play #14: The Long Goodbye
The breakdown of the 2023 local elections
The conclusions that should be made about the 2023 local election results have been lost in a web of caveats and falsities. The simple take is this: the night was bad for the Conservatives and good for Labour (and the Liberal Democrats and Greens), confirming Labour’s trajectory towards government bar a miraculous economic recovery for Sunak in the next 18 months.
In politics, the bigger picture usually makes for better analysis. Quantitative methods are key, and cannot be ignored, and the same goes for detailed arguments as to why results should be interpreted in different ways to the headline numbers or fundamentals. However, these explanations have not been used thoughtfully, instead deployed lazily and melded with narrative-fuelled lines by journalists (and others) attempting to conceal the political truth. In an attempt to put a clear full-stop on the results of the 2023 locals let's begin with the basics.
Context check
Here is the comparison of the same seats with gains / losses after the 2019 (top number) and 2023 local elections (bottom number).
(NB: seat tallies are slightly different due to boundary restructure, by-elections and cycle changes etc, but show broad performance comparison – BBC Data):Â
Numbers wise, the Tories have had a catastrophic election – and it should not be understated. The low performance last time these same seats were elected in 2019 led to May’s resignation just a few days later. However, the Conservatives still retained 3564 seats in that year, as well as 93 councils – amounting to majority control of local government across the country. Labour in 2019, remarkably, went backwards – then the sign of Jeremy Corbyn’s voter coalition unravelling.Â
It therefore makes no sense that, in comparison to 2019, this local election capitulation was seen as a ‘given’ for the Tories, and Labour’s recovery a damp squib. Having a 1000+ loss in two consecutive elections is, in no uncertain terms, horrific, and the performance of a party rapidly losing power. In the British system, if one of the two parties performs very badly, the other necessarily benefits – either from those switching their vote to them or simply not voting. The destruction of the Tory vote is a direct, and obvious, benefit to Labour – our voting system of First Past The Post ensures it. Commentary that ignores this basic fact is too involved in certain data or too interested in the nuanced low-probability (usually partisan) arguments. The main culprits, to name a few, being: The Sunday Times ‘All is not lost for Sunak’, Sky News’ Beth Rigby’s factually incorrect ‘Starmer went backwards’ or The Telegraph’s ‘Rishi Sunak is the unexpected winner from the locals’.
A defining night for Labour
It may be bold to say that this was a very good night for Labour, but it genuinely was. Labour are now the most powerful party in local government and their 2023 gains (at 536) were good, however, not considered ‘great’ according to Westminster. Why? Because Westminster is stuck fighting the last war of 1997 election, with everyone expecting incredible gains – anything less is considered a failure. Fighting the last war is a key mistake for generals and politicos alike. By viewing the whole political battle for power through the warped prism of a 1992-1997 politics, many are missing alarmingly clear facts.Â
The scream of Labour ‘underperformance’ – only achieving a 9 (Curtice) or 7 (Thrasher) point lead is an intriguing line. Locals are not General elections, although they are the closest you get to one. If anyone believes that Labour would, in reality, get 35% while the Lib Dems achieve 20% and the Greens high single digits are kidding themselves. The squeeze effect of First past the post means that, rationally, voters of progressive parties will – to a certain extent – vote for a progressive candidate rather than a Tory. After 14 years and the acrimony of 2022, this feeling is stronger than the past four elections in this cycle. If the Tory vote disintegrates, as it is already starting to, then the threshold of tactical voting that's needed to inflict serious losses on the Conservatives is lower (see Ben Ansell’s work below).
As Sam Freedman correctly argues:
‘The difference now is a much bigger share of the anti-Tory vote is going to the Green party and independents [and Lib Dems]. The main shift between 1995 and 2023 is in the distribution of the anti-Tory vote, not its existence. Sunak is in just as bad a position as Major was then, and without even a once-in-a-generation political talent like Blair to blame it on.’
Compared to 1997, Starmer is climbing a mountain, needing 121 seat gains to get a majority of just 1. Tony Blair made 145 gains to get a majority of 179. These are different political landscapes. Flawed Westminster analysis argues that because the challenge is difficult then any sort of Labour progress, bar the Tories effectively disintegrating below 20% of the vote, is never enough. It's what TPI and others (by different names) call in politics the ‘impossibility paradox’ where certain portions of the Westminster bubble and media become convinced that something is impossible, argue it constantly until they effectively ensure it through their influence on the narrative – thus reinforcing their incorrect perceptions. The cycle continues until they are catastrophically wrong.Â
As David Aaronovitch states:
‘Sometimes pundits invoke iron laws that, on examination, turn out to be rubber.’
The current Labour underperformance line is just that: rubber. Maybe it's best to revert to the public school origins of many of these pundits and invoke some Cicero: ‘Cui Bono?’ (who benefits?) There are many motivations for chunks of the media, and academia, to take weird conclusions of Labour failure from this. The academics, understandably because their industry has been unfairly tarnished or politicised by recent mistakes, are more interested in reserved, ‘informatic’ takes using basic numbers – such as the national equivalent vote (NEV). A lot of the methodologies, and subsequent conclusions, are currently not able to grasp the voter coalition change which is rumbling under the surface – apart from some analysis like Will Jennings.
For the media’s motives, a small subsection simply like Sunak or want influential jobs in the Conservative party post-2024 (Seb Payne for instance, now confirmed on the Tory candidates list). However, most in the media benefit from this narrative because they are bored with Starmer’s mostly unsexy style – which proves for harder analysis and creates more boring columns, which editors also dislike. It is much easier for the media to push the narrative that Labour are failing, and it's because ’Starmer is boring’ or ‘has no vision or principles’ – while missing what's actually happening: a large resurgence in progressive voting, and a complete destruction of the Tory vote after nearly 14 years of troubled governing and polycrisis. The 1997 lens is as invasive as it is incorrect, as Rob Ford notes ‘Popularity of Blair in opposition is the exception not the rule.’ The equation put to us by this local election is simple and broad based. Many seem to miss it – or more likely choose to ignore it.
Most importantly, Labour, as some of the data has shown, may have a voter coalition capable of winning an election. They are winning back ‘red wall’ voters, specifically Leavers but also the key metric of education differential – where Labour recovery was most stark. While Labour are winning back this pivotal swing group of non-graduates, they (and the Liberal Democrats) are also making progress with the other part of the Tory voter coalition – the ‘blue wall’ set of voters who can be loosely described as economically conservative and socially liberal. These voters are increasingly disillusioned with the Conservatives, possibly turned off by Johnson’s scandalous legacy, Truss’ economic destruction or the Rwandan populist right-wing tilt of the government in recent months. Daniel Finkelstein astutely argues:
‘[to] antagonise others [in the south] by saying they’re in some metropolitan elite that has drifted away from the majority view of the country when they’re just middle class architects living in Heartsmere who haven’t got any political view at all is a suicidal electoral strategy’
The realignment of the ‘blue wall’ and home counties – driven also by the spilling out of graduates from London – has progressed silently, beginning in 2019 with a large increase in the Lib Dem vote which went unnoticed. These locals have shown that these seats could now be realigning at increasing speed. This ‘pincer movement’ which Sam Freedman talks of is a horrific scenario to face for the Tories. No longer united by the nightmare of Corbyn and the divisions of Brexit, the 2019 Tory voter coalition is in tatters, split in the north and south, and disintegrating from both angles. Out of its ashes Labour benefits.
The end of the party 2.0
Repeating for the umpteenth time, this was very bad for the Conservatives for several reasons. Firstly, their percentage vote matches the polls – possibly confirming their accuracy in measuring abject decline in Conservative voting intention and the corresponding levels of apathy. Not good. Secondly, there was no Reform party (or any other insurgent right wing party) to split their vote in both outright percentage or seats. This gives no ‘get out of jail’ free card for a Tory strategist – now forced with the prospect that the ‘unite the right’ strategy, so often used over the last decade, is looking increasingly dead. Voters are switching directly to progressive parties – with Labour picking up most of the remains of UKIP, see Thanet.
Tory plight continues when one looks at the nature of the gains for Labour, Lib Dems and Greens. Labour’s vote, on just 35%, was very efficient – seen most likely through levels of tactical voting. As talked about in our series on the next general election, the inefficiency of the Labour vote is one of the Conservative’s last hopes that they can deny a Labour government. If this is changing, as Ben Ansell’s new work on measuring levels of tactical voting possibly shows, then there is very little a Tory strategist can do to hold Conservative seats – especially when the anti-Conservative vote is very high. As Stephen Bush’s take reflects:
‘the reason to think it might surprise to the upside is that these local elections saw a huge amount of tactical voting between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, and that this will continue at the next election. I know whose shoes I would rather be standing in.’
To add insult to injury, these election numbers were, arguably, on more fertile ground for the Conservatives. There were no elections in Scotland, Wales, Manchester, Birmingham and London – all former or current Labour heartlands. 80% of the councils up for election also voted Leave. Quantitative methodology, like NEV / PNS, will of course take this into account, but it cannot fully contemplate the impact of shifts in these more Labour areas after the low of the 2019 general election, or shifting regions like Scotland (which remains an electoral mystery). Nor does the media narrative wait for deeper thought, already obsessed with hilariously futile coalition talk.
The multi-faceted failure raises many questions of Tory strategy, succinctly put by Robert Shrimsley:
‘These elections present a timely dose of reality for those who were getting dizzy with the novelty of a capable prime minister.’
Reality has hit the party. Contended in our wargaming 2024 piece, the recovery of the economy is key to any real hope for a Tory resurgence – simply not blowing things up is insufficient. Time is the only caveat worth noting, and that is the lifeline the Tories will cling to. However, the route to No.10 for Stamer has become evident in these locals and the winds look favourable for Labour’s return to government. The seeds of Tory destruction are set. In 18 months time, the results will be clear.  Â
