Scotland should be watching England's council elections closely

Come Thursday, in England, more than 8000 seats in 230 local councils will be up for grabs, as well as the positions of four elected mayors. Is it curtains for Rishi Sunak and hello

Sir Keir Starmer? Or will Labour funk it again?

The majority of the seats up for grabs on Thursday were last contested in May 2019, in the middle of Brexit. Back then, Labour were polling at an abysmal 28% but the bitterly divided Tories were doing no better.

As a result, almost half of the English electorate said they were backing the smaller parties.

And so it proved. Come election day, the Conservatives (under Theresa May) dropped more than 1000 seats – a third of their English total. But the Labour Party (still led by Jeremy Corbyn) lost out too.

The biggest winners were the normally hapless LibDems, who doubled their seats, while the English Greens garnered nearly 200 new councillors. Intriguingly, Ukip – the party of Brexit – was also hammered, suggesting the electorate wanted to move on.

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Where are we today? The political landscape now looks very different. May and Corbyn are ghosts of the past. Labour enjoy a poll lead of around 16 points. Better still, Starmer’s party has a poll share of 45% – almost as good as in days of yore.

However, Starmer’s reasonable personal approval ratings are being challenged by our new, technocratic Tory Prime Minister. Sunak is better liked than his party and has halved the Labour poll lead since he replaced the appallingly inept Liz Truss. Meantime, the smaller parties have been squeezed. Conclusion: two-party politics has made a comeback south of the Border.

This should not come as too much of a surprise. Brexit has receded as the main political issue, even if a majority of English voters are suffering from referendum regret.

If the 2016 referendum was re-run, recent polls suggest there would be a different result. But that is not going to happen any time soon. As a result, the factors most influencing Thursday’s English elections are likely to be the Tory government’s handling of the cost of living crisis and a UK inflation rate that stubbornly refuses to come down.

True, the Tories are still stoking up voter fears in the backwoods over immigration but the economic situation seems to be trumping this as a concern for the electorate in much of England outside the decaying seaside towns.

All this adds up to the prospect of a big Labour triumph when the votes are counted on Friday. Or does it? Could the colourless Sir Keir pull (relative) defeat from the jaws of certain victory? Could the Sunak save the Tory bacon?

What does past history tell us? Looking back over the past two or three decades of English local elections, the norm has been for the main Westminster opposition party to make gains at the expense of the governing party.

This is because local elections in the social media era have been dominated increasingly by national rather than town hall issues. In short, local elections are a midterm referendum on the ruling Westminster administration.

In numbers, English local elections usually lead to the official opposition party netting around 6.5% of the seats contested. If that occurs on Thursday, then Labour are due to pocket at least an extra 500 council seats. Cheers for Sir Keir, then.

But there’s a wee problem. If Starmer only picks up an extra 500 councillors, it actually represents an under-performance given Labour’s current 16-point poll lead.

In previous electoral cycles, the party with such a double-digit lead has normally made really big gains. On this scenario, Labour should be netting more than 1000 seats, not 500. Such a decisive victory would make Labour the biggest party in England’s town halls.

This would give Starmer a strategic vantage point – in council troops and local political initiatives – to launch a successful bid for Downing Street next year. Above all, it would give Labour that magic political advantage – momentum.

Here is why Thursday’s local elections in England are not just a minor media episode. If Starmer gains around 300 seats on Thursday, Labour will still have fewer local councillors in England than when he took over as leader in April 2020.

In effect, 300 net gains for Labour will be a de facto defeat for its leader. A win of around 500 is therefore the minimum necessary to establish momentum – but at a snail’s pace. Labour, with their current

double-digit poll lead, have to show gains of 1000-plus to declare a solid victory over the Tories. Anything less is an ambivalent result and will show Sunak he can still close the gap with Labour at the coming General Election. Can Starmer make the grade? Presently he is trying to curry favour with marginal and lost Labour voters by positioning Labour to the right of even Tony Blair (who was liberal on non-economic issues at least until he invaded Iraq).

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One consequence is that Starmer & Co are assiduously expelling from Labour’s candidate roster anyone even hinting at being a socialist. Witness the formal complaints lodged by Labour constituency parties in Rutherglen and in Hamilton, Lanark and Stonehouse regarding the “integrity” of the candidate selection process and the threat that they “cannot continue campaigning until this matter is resolved”.

This decision of Starmer and acolytes to effectively expel the Labour left has led to a catastrophic fall in Labour Party membership – and with it the loss of the people who do the door-knocking and hard campaigning.

Paid-up Labour membership has dropped from 480,000 in 2019 to 380,000 this year – a collapse of 100,000. That fall has also impacted dramatically on Labour’s finances. The party now has a deficit of nearly £5 million compared to a surplus in 2019. Not a good time then to be telling the trades unions you don’t back their wage claims. And to win an overall majority at Westminster, Labour needs a bigger swing than achieved by Blair in 1997 – itself a post-war record.

This doubtless explains why Labour are busily discounting Thursday’s election results. Amazingly, they are blaming the coronation for robbing them of electoral coverage.

Nevertheless, current polls suggest the Tories will lose a third of their seats and control of half their current councils. Labour will certain recapture some of their Red Wall town halls in the north. But if the LibDems do well in the English south, Sir Keir may look like the loser come Friday morning. This would certainly make Rishi Sunak feel there is everything to play for next year.

Which is why here in Scotland nobody should be feeling complacent. There is no guarantee the UK will be done with a Tory government next year – think John Major’s victory in the General Election after Thatcher’s political demise.

Staying in the Union is a permanent guarantee of Tory rule. Scottish Labour prefer a Conservative hegemony to an independent, Tory-free and socialist Scotland. Remember that if Starmer fails to deliver on Thursday.