FTI Consulting UK Public Affairs Snapshot: Down but not yet out: What will the Conservatives take from the local elections?

The net loss of Conservative councillors – 474 – was in line with expectations, albeit at the lower end, while prior CCHQ briefings had primed commentators for the potential loss of the Tees Valley as well as the West Midlands mayoralties, only one of which came to pass. That is probably enough to avoid a lurch into crisis mode and a snap election. But it hardly offers much hope for the Conservative Party going forward.

It is a truism of politics that local and national elections aren’t the same. For a start, turnout tends to be significantly lower at the local level. Local issues and personalities loom larger, sometimes to the point of dominating a contest.

In a lower-stakes environment, smaller parties can also do considerably better. And there are always results that buck the national trend – step forward West Putney, where the Tories made their first by-election gain in Wandsworth in close to 50 years. So there are many reasons to exercise caution when seeking to extrapolate from local election results.

However, it was undeniably a bad day for the Conservatives, with polling expert Professor John Curtice calling it “one of the worst, if not the worst” performances by the party in four decades.

Almost half of Conservative councillors who were defending their wards lost. Tees Valley saw a 16.5% swing to Labour, well above the 12.5% that conventional wisdom says is required for a Labour majority. In the Blackpool South by-election, it was 26%, the third largest in history, leaving the Conservatives neck and neck with the Reform Party.

Meanwhile, Yorkshire saw support drain away from the Conservatives in what was until recently prime Conservative territory, including in the Prime Minister’s own seat. In London, despite the controversies of recent years, a lacklustre Conservative campaign focused almost exclusively on the core vote saw Sadiq Khan comfortably re-elected for a historic third term. And not even Andy Street’s strong personal brand was enough to get him over the line in the West Midlands mayoral contest.

But no matter how much lip service is paid to councillors, or even mayors, the main game remains the General Election. Here, there are several arguments in circulation.

Optimistic Conservatives could point to the respective vote shares at this election – 34% for Labour, 25% for the Conservatives – and argue as polling expert Professor Michael Thrasher did over the weekend that, when these results are projected into a nationwide estimate, Labour’s lead is only a mere nine points, which at a General Election would result in a hung parliament.

They could further add that polls tend to tighten as the main opposition party is held to greater scrutiny during the run-up to a General Election.

They may also note that Labour’s stance on the Middle East is placing further pressure on them from the left, with the Green Party winning over 150 seats and pro-Palestine independent councillors forcing Labour out of control in Oldham. And they would certainly play for time in the hope of better news stories on migration and the economy.

That approach would be in line with Rishi Sunak’s comment yesterday that “independent analysis shows that whilst of course this was a disappointing weekend for us, the result of the next general election isn’t a foregone conclusion”.

However, the Prime Minister’s more downbeat colleagues would disagree for three reasons.

First, given the SNP’s woes, Labour is now far more likely to gain seats in Scotland. Second, the main parties fare better at national elections as their voters return to the fold, while the Reform Party fielding candidates everywhere will only damage the Conservatives further.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the distribution of the Labour vote is changing as a direct result of Keir Starmer’s move to the centre. Though the party may be losing some of its votes in urban areas, these tend to be seats where Labour already has very large majorities and consequently can afford some leakage.

Meanwhile, votes are being won back in smaller towns and even the countryside – that is, in traditional Conservative territory that is now in contention for Labour. Having more seats with smaller majorities is not the worst trade-off for Labour, but it creates some interesting structural problems down the line.  

A more practical and immediate question is whether there is anything the Conservative leadership can do to change things. Here, the situation is, if anything, more complicated, due to the multiplicity of factors driving the party’s current electoral difficulties.

Votes have been lost from people who think taxes are too high as well as from people who fear further cuts in public services; over both Boris’s reign and his defenestration; about doing both too little and doing too much to tackle climate change; from moderates as well as free marketeers.

In the absence of an alternative leader with the personal charisma to bridge these gaps, a track record of delivery to secure voters’ trust as the fifth leader in as many years, the economic nous to fire up the economy, as well as an unblemished private life, it is most likely that Conservative MPs will stick with Sunak. It is also most likely that Sunak will stick with Sunakism: economic stability with a dash of red meat on social issues.

Some lessons should have already been learnt: voters like delivery and dislike negative campaigns.  Within CCHQ, there is also the Micawber-like hope that something – anything – will turn up.

Meanwhile, for Labour, these are almost the perfect set of results. They secured largely everything they were expected to plus a little bit more. And while some interpretations of the results are now pointing to a closer General Election result than has so far been expected, this will help Labour’s strategy of driving out complacency among activists and candidates.

For all parties, it is now back to the long slog to the General Election.

FTI Consulting will continue the discussion on the implications of the local election results with our experts from across the political spectrum on Wednesday 8 May from 16:15pm at FTI Consulting’s London headquarters. There will be an hour of analysis, followed by networking and drinks. To register to attend, please click here.