Routed Tories may not have a path back from this

Contents

Steep climbs

First, these were disastrous results for Labour and the Conservatives. Neither party has ever lost as many of the seats they were defending at a local election before: the Tory party lost 68 per cent of its seats, Labour lost 65 per cent. The only parties with a worse outcome in local elections were Ukip in the years following the Brexit referendum, when it had achieved its central aim and had lost its talismanic leader in Nigel Farage, and the SNP immediately after the 1979 Scottish devolution referendum, a reverse that appeared to have set back its cause indefinitely.

The local elections were several orders of magnitude worse for the Conservatives than Labour, in part because local elections are always trickier terrain for governments than they are for the opposition.

Yes, the Tory party’s standing with the public is bad. But so was Labour’s in 1980, the Conservatives’ in 1998 and Labour’s in 2011, and they all managed to gain some council seats. Its remaining voters are older and more affluent than anyone else’s, which makes them more likely to turn out and vote.

In terms of the projected share of the vote (essentially, what the result would have looked like had the whole country voted), Labour was second with 20 per cent, after Reform’s 30 per cent. Frankly I would never discount a government that finishes second in its first set of local elections. Indeed I would essentially expect it. I have doubts about whether Labour’s policy agenda or its analysis of what it needs to do to get re-elected is the right one. But that is a separate issue from whether I think this, on its own, is an electoral performance of a government that can, with the right choices and right amount of luck, be re-elected. It can.

The challenge facing both Labour and the Conservatives is, bluntly, they need to increase their popularity. Labour can become more popular by governing well and/or by being in office and taking advantage of some favourable event that happens to take place under its watch. It might not do either but it has options.

The Conservatives, however . . . what path remains for them to gain popularity? Labour, their traditional rival, is already governing poorly and is already struggling with a dreadful inheritance. Reform is eating their lunch — really what we saw in these elections was not just Reform defeating the Tories but actively replacing them in large swaths of the seats up for grabs. Its leader, Nigel Farage, has already embraced Donald Trump and has views on the Ukraine war and other issues that are out of step with UK public opinion.

How are the Tories going to regain this lost ground? I suppose Ed Davey could decide to stop doing eye-catching stunts when he visits places that make him look like an affable liberal dad and instead start setting fire to orphanages and punching old ladies, but I have to admit that doesn’t seem all that likely.

They could change leader, but it is not obvious to me that “the same pitch, but with a more energetic and competent leader called Robert Jenrick” is going to do all that much better than Kemi Badenoch. It is also not obvious that the Conservative party wants to change how it positions itself to offer something genuinely different from either Labour or Reform by picking a James Cleverly or a Jeremy Hunt. (One thing to watch, though, is that Tory party activists, at least if my contact book is any guide, are joining Reform in large numbers, so the Conservative grassroots may be better ground for a moderate candidate than it has been for some time.)

Labour’s route to recovery runs through governing well or getting lucky, and however unlikely those may seem they are at least possible. The Conservative path to recovery looks considerably steeper, perhaps impossible.