Democracy is among the proudest of human achievements. But politics and journalism are unsentimental. It is the fate of the 2017 UK council elections to be largely ignored as the local democratic events they actually are. Instead they are already being viewed largely through the prism of the general election that is due a month from now. That’s a pity, because the 2017 elections mark genuine innovations in English local government, notably in the arrival of six “metro-mayors” – better understood as regional chief ministers. They also saw some striking changes of control across the UK in counties such as Derbyshire, Lancashire and Warwickshire – all regained by the Conservatives – and in cities like Glasgow, lost by Labour, and Dundee, lost by the SNP. In another year, such events would be pored over in loving detail. This year, it is inevitable that the elections are being treated simply as pointers to the bigger election on 8 June.
Everything that happened on Thursday suggests that Theresa May’s Conservatives are on course to win a very substantial victory in a month’s time. There is no serious counter-evidence. Government parties normally do badly in midterm local elections. Not this time. The Tories finished 11 points ahead of Labour. Yet before everyone assumes the general election is a done deal, it is important to understand that Mrs May’s putative landslide can be explained at least as much by the first-past-the-post electoral system as by the persuasiveness of her arguments or by her personality.
After each year’s local elections, the BBC’s “projected national share” tries to estimate what the UK-wide result would have been if the whole country had been voting in the locals (London, for example, was not). According to this useful measure, the Conservatives were on 38% national support on Thursday, Labour 27%, Liberal Democrats 18%, Ukip 5% and others 12%. That does not mean that this will be the result on 8 June too. Many voters will switch parties. There will be a larger turnout. Margins will change.
Yet these figures suggest that the main parties of the right (the Conservatives and Ukip) have broadly the same level of support across the UK, 43%, as the main parties of the left (Labour and the Liberal Democrats) on 45%. The gulf in their general election prospects is explained by the difference in the balance of power within the two sides. On the right, the Tories have harvested votes from Ukip, which is in eclipse. On the left, Labour and the Lib Dems are more evenly divided, with the Greens in the mix too. The country has not fallen in love with Mrs May. Instead it is the combination of Tory ascendancy on the right and Labour eclipse on the left that points to a big Tory win in June.
Currently the only things that threaten Mrs May are a Ukip revival, of which the chances are vanishingly small, or complacency in the face of Labour’s weakness. The Tories did exceptionally well on Thursday, gaining more than 500 seats, making potentially very important inroads against the SNP in Scotland, and capping it with Andy Street’s victory in the West Midlands metro-mayoral contest. But the springboard of the Tory success was the capture of the Ukip vote. Ukip looks a dead party. Barely a councillor survived. Today Douglas Carswell dubbed himself as Ukip’s first and last MP.
The Lib Dems put up some isolated good performances, and did better than for some years, yet this was a disappointing night for them in general. A projected national share of 18% is their best for years, but they lost councillors overall. The most serious setbacks, though, were Labour’s, down nearly 400 seats, mainly to the Tories and the SNP, losing heartland authorities, and failing to win mayoral contests in the West Midlands and Tees Valley. Some less bad, but not good, performances in Wales and Greater Manchester suggest Labour retains local credibility. But that may not survive the general election in which, if history is a guide, Labour is likely to do worse than in the locals.
Four main conclusions follow from all this. The first is that the Tories are on track for a large, but not necessarily landslide majority. The second is that everything should be done to minimise that possibility. The third is that Labour must raise its campaign game from its current complacency and avoid premature infighting. The fourth is that pro-European voters on the left of centre will have to bury their tribalism. Without these changes, the opposition in the next parliament will not have anything approaching what is needed to prevent Mrs May from launching this country into a disastrous hard Brexit.
