FTI Consulting Public Affairs Snapshot: England’s Local Elections 2023 – Conservatives suffer major local election losses

In one of the last major polls before Election Day, Labour held an 18-point lead over the Conservatives with around 20% of 2019 Conservative voters indicating they had changed their allegiance to Labour in the interim.

Billed as the first major test of Rishi Sunak’s premiership, and the last gauging of public opinion before the next General Election, the Conservatives were hoping to demonstrate to the nation that, despite recent challenges, they could still deliver economic stability and enough social awareness to remain in government at the next election. While polls suggest Rishi Sunak commands a more positive public assessment than his two immediate predecessors, it remained to be seen as to whether his personal brand was enough to deliver a secure foundation on which the Conservatives can build towards the next General Election.

The Conservatives knew they would lose seats – but the real test for the government was how it would fare with its traditional base in the South East, and the 2019 converts in the Red Wall. If, Tory strategists hoped, it could show a degree of resolve in the latter, this could be used to generate momentum and messaging to emulate Boris Johnson’s 2019 election win.

Labour was determined to show exactly the opposite and targeted its traditional heartlands in the midlands and the north many of which were electoral casualties of 2019.  Starmer knows that the trust and support of Labour’s base in these regions will be crucial if he is to have any chance of walking into Downing Street in 2024, and these elections were a litmus test for how successful he has been in coaxing them back to the party in the post-Corbyn period.

While much of the opposition focus was placed upon Labour as the party that poses the strongest chance to removing the Conservatives from government, significant attention was also paid to the prospects of the Liberal Democrats. It is fair to say that the past decade has not been electorally benevolent to the Lib Dems, as they hemorrhaged support to both the Conservatives and Labour both during and since the coalition government.  This election offered the party and its leader Ed Davey an opportunity to regain ground – particularly in the south of England.

The results

Those who closely follow local elections will be used to parties trying to play the expectations game when it comes to their performance.

The formula is clear: a senior figure, usually a party chairman, goes on the media to posit an almost implausibly high number of potential losses in any local election, followed by a concerned-sounding hat-tip towards a “challenging political landscape”. These losses are rarely realised, instead allowing parties to hail a “stronger than expected performance” when the votes are ultimately challenges.

For that reason, the claim of the voluble Tory Chairman Greg Hands last week that his party would “lose 1000” seats was taken with a substantial pinch of salt by most observers.  While votes are still being counted and the final number of Conservative losses won’t be finalised for several more hours, Hands’ prediction appears to be close to spot on.

Labour has made inroads in precisely the areas it needed to; seizing control – among others – of Swindon, Stoke-on-Trent, Plymouth and Medway councils.  Stoke-on-Trent is home to three hyper-marginal constituencies that Labour would win on even a modest swing to the party at the next election.  Medway, however, is a different case with the Conservatives having won the parliamentary constituencies of Gillingham, Rochester and Strood and Chatham and Aylesford with healthy five-figure majorities at the 2019 election.  Based on these results, Labour isn’t simply winning the margins, it’s dominating the field.

Since Boris Johnson’s thumping election win in 2019, political analysts have placed an almost obsessive focus upon the Red Wall, a set of seats in the Midlands and Northern that had historically backed Labour yet broke for the Conservatives at the last election.  The Conservatives had hoped its pro-Brexit, immigration-sceptic outlook may engender a lasting political realignment in these areas. On the basis of yesterday’s results, that was not to be.  Aside from Stoke-on-Trent, it recaptured control in Blackpool and made inroads in Bolton, North Warwickshire, Hartlepool, Darlington and across County Durham.

The Liberal Democrats will also be elated with the performance that they have put in. Ed Davey has already taken to the airwaves to hail the fact that, when King Charles and Queen Camilla return to Windsor Castle tomorrow, they will live in the newly minted Lib Dem Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. The Lib Dems have also picked up Stratford-on-Avon council, as well as making sweeping gains from the Conservatives across the Home Counties and the affluent south Manchester borough of Stockport, home to the marginal Cheadle and Hazel Grove seats.

Conclusion

These elections represent an electoral bloodbath for the Conservatives. They were, in short, shot by both sides – defeated in the ‘Red Wall’ by Labour and put on notice by the Liberal Democrats in the affluent south. This is an exceptionally dangerous position for the party to be in.

We saw voters wishing to punish the Conservatives back Labour in larger cities, the Midlands and the North and opt for the Liberal Democrats in affluent suburbs and the south. If this same voter behaviour is emulated at next year’s general election, an anti-Tory voter coalition based upon tactical voting could see the party reduced to rump in the House of Commons.

Conservative woes aside, this is Labour’s day. A BBC projection issued in the last hour suggests that Labour would have won a nine-point lead over Conservatives yesterday, had the whole country voted. The party will, for the first time in two decades, be the largest party in local government. But more importantly, the range and scope of Labour’s gains have demonstrated it is securing the type of political traction necessary to win the next election.