After the local election results, how confident should Labour feel about the next election? Our panel responds
Rafael Behr: The Tories haven’t yet plummeted to inconceivable depths – but they’re not far off
Looking for a national picture in local council and byelection results always calls to mind the old joke about two drunkards scouring the pavement under a streetlamp. “Are you sure this is where you dropped your keys?” says one. “No,” says the other, “but this is where the light is.”
In the zone of partial illumination things look bad for the Tories. They have already shed scores of council seats. The loss of Blackpool South, with a 26-point swing to Labour (the third biggest ever), is consistent with a pattern of byelection batterings that has put Keir Starmer on a safe trajectory towards Downing Street.
Since there was speculation that the Reform party could come second in Blackpool, the Tories might eke dismal consolation in having avoided third place, but only just – by 117 votes. Reform’s 17% vote share is its best byelection performance to date but not the upset it was hoping for in a seat that looked hospitable to a hard-right challenger.
If Reform doesn’t have the infrastructure to mobilise its potential support on the ground, it will be less of a force in a general election than its media boosters imagine.
Perversely, the impact may be felt more in the flight of moderate Tories who tire of Rishi Sunak’s Reform-oriented populist postures. That might be a factor in some remarkable swings away from the Conservatives in places such as Rushmoor in Hampshire, and in the police and crime commissioner ballots in Cumbria and Somerset.
There is no method for disentangling motives in an aggregate shift in voting behaviour, although that never stops people trying. Ideologues and partisans will always project their prior beliefs on to any result and see vindication of whatever it was they were calling for before the votes were counted.
That is true for Labour’s performance, too. Defenders of Starmer’s strategy will say the results prove his method is working. Critics, especially those who are unhappy with the opposition leader’s stance on the war in Gaza, will point to a few Green gains in Tyneside and Labour underperformance in areas with high Muslim populations (Oldham, for example) as evidence that the party’s left flank has been neglected.
Even Sunak loyalists will find wispy straws to clutch at. The Tories just about clung on to Harlow in Essex – a Labour target. The big metro mayoralties are yet to declare, so there is time for the spotlight to fall on some other part of the electoral terrain. Then some different, similarly incomplete narrative might emerge.
To the extent that Conservative HQ can muster hopeful spin, it relies on baked-in assumptions that the party is on course for defeat and that things can only get worse. In that context, the steady continuation of things being very bad indeed, while not plummeting abruptly to inconceivable depths, is tenuously presented as a kind of achievement. But continuity down the road to disaster is not recovery, no matter which way you hold it up to the light.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
Sarah Longlands: Dissatisfied local communities turned to Labour. Does it have a plan to keep those people onside?
Local elections are about everything that matters to us. They’re not just a judgment on the quality of the services that councils provide, but also a reflection of how people feel about the state of their communities.
These results show growing support for Labour, but more fundamentally they highlight just how dissatisfied people are that the last 14 years of austerity have seen local services driven into the ground and local governments driven to the brink of bankruptcy.
This poses a significant challenge for any future Labour government, with (self-imposed) fiscal constraints that will prevent them from being able to offer a much-needed immediate and substantive funding boast to local public services. For while Labour has committed to providing a longer-term funding settlement for local government, there is as yet no promise of any extra money. Any substantive increase in funding would be contingent on growth in the economy that would boost tax revenues.
Labour has a plan for growth, but again there are challenges here. Growing the economy in a way that is fair, equal and sustainable will require strong intervention and the help of local leaders. This can’t be done on a shoestring – and our councils in particular will need time and resources to rebuild the capacity that has been significantly eroded over the course of the current government’s tenure.
The mayoral results won’t be fully known until Saturday, but these too will pose a challenge for Labour in government. They need to look closely at devolution arrangements. The narrow framing of the current deals severely limits the way in which combined authorities can use their resources to forge economic futures that recognise the individual strengths and aspirations of their regions. We can read plenty into these results about what Labour will need to tackle should Keir Starmer make his way to number 10.
Sarah Longlands is the chief executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies
John McDonnell: Labour won big – but Gaza is an issue it must address before the general election
First, the scale of Labour’s victory in Blackpool South demonstrates overwhelmingly that people want the Conservatives out. Keir Starmer is right to call a 26% swing “seismic”. Neither retail offers of tax cuts or other pre-election sweeteners, nor claims that the Rwanda policy is stopping the boats are doing anything to turn things around for Rishi Sunak.
Second, beware: although the Tories changing leader yet again will appear ludicrous, the fast installation of a middle-of-the-road, media-friendly face such as Penny Mordaunt could limit the damage and reduce Labour’s majority at the general election. Although the view on most doorsteps – even among many Conservative voters – was that it is time for a change, there is still a loyal Conservative base that will want to come out to buttress the party. Labour needs to be fully prepared for this possible scenario now.
Third, the hurt and anger felt by many in the Muslim community about Starmer’s response to Gaza is real and deeply felt. Time and time again, Keir’s LBC interview defending the Israeli use of siege tactics is raised on the doorstep. Even though this was corrected a week later, the correction was late coming – and the failure to back a ceasefire in the first parliamentary vote is also brought up.
Labour must not run away from the fact that unless significant action is taken by Keir, Gaza will have an impact on the general election results in those constituencies where there is a sizeable Muslim community. With humility, Labour’s decision-makers need to accept that they got it wrong. A symbolic act of a public apology by Labour, expressed by Keir, to the Muslim community is needed to start the process of reconciliation.
John McDonnell has been the Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington since 1997. He was shadow chancellor from 2015 to 2020
Peter Kellner: It’s not quite ‘97, but Tory voters are staying home in all the right contests for Labour
Is Labour doing as well as it did in the run-up to Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997? The question is being asked with increasing frequency. The answer is no; but it doesn’t need to do so in order to win a comfortable victory.
This weekend, when all the results are in, Labour’s vote looks like being the equivalent of around 36% across Britain. In 1996, the last local elections before Labour returned to government, the party won 43%.
Six months before the 1997 election, Labour’s average poll rating was 51%. It is now 44%.
Against that, Labour has been doing even better in recent byelections than it did in 1994-97. But that is largely because many more Conservatives have been staying at home this time. In the last eight seats the Tories have been defending, the turnout has averaged 40%. In Blackpool South yesterday it was just 32.5%. In the four equivalent contests in 1995-97, the average was 65%. The scale of Labour’s recent stunning gains is flattered by Tory abstentions.
However, below the surface of the overall numbers, almost everything is going Labour’s way. It has made big advances in Scotland. Polls and byelections confirm that anti-Tory tactical voting is back with a vengeance. And last night, Labour was achieving some of its biggest swings where it will need them most in the general election: in areas that voted leave in the Brexit referendum eight years ago, and which went on to back Boris Johnson at the last general election.
Ben Houchen’s victory in Tees Valley offers some relief to the Conservatives. But Rishi Sunak should take care. Houchen’s victory is more for the person than the party. Labour is well ahead when people are asked how they would vote in a general election. Recent polls suggest a similar pattern in London and the West Midlands tomorrow: a significant number of voters simultaneously wanting a Labour prime minister and a Conservative mayor.
Peter Kellner is a former president of YouGov