Local elections 2023: Labor looks to power after crushing losses to the Conservative Party

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By Joshua Nevitt, BBC Politics May 5, 2023

Updated 1 hour ago

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Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer says his party is on course to win the next general election after defeating the Conservatives in local elections across England.

The Conservative Party lost 48 councils and more than 1,000 councillors, exceeding their worst forecasts.

Labor says it is now the largest party in local government, overtaking the Conservatives for the first time since 2002.

A Labor Party spokesman said: “British public opinion sent a clear rejection to a prime minister who did not have a mandate in the first place.”

The election to England’s 230 councils was the first major test of Mr Sunak’s electoral popularity since winning the Conservative Party leadership contest and becoming prime minister last October.

The Liberal Democrats got what their leader Sir Ed Davey described as their “best result in decades”, taking control of 12 Houses, most of them in the Conservative core.

The Greens secured 241 seats – their best ever result in a local election – and secured their first majority in the English assembly, in Mid Suffolk, although Labor overtook them as the largest party in Brighton and Hove.

Sunak admitted the results were “disappointing”, but said he had not seen “a significant wave of movement towards the Labor Party”.

Sir Keir claimed the “impressive” results showed his party was well placed to oust the Conservatives from government at the general election expected next year.

“Make no mistake, we are well on our way to achieving a majority for Labor at the next general election,” he told jubilant campaigners at Medway in Kent, one of the councils his party wrested from the Tories.

“a bit of a disaster”

Labor won control of councils in areas that would be crucial battlegrounds in the general election, including Medway, Swindon, Plymouth, Stoke-on-Trent and East Staffordshire.

The BBC’s projected national vote share puts Labor on 35%, the Conservatives on 26% and the Liberal Democrats on 20%.

Labor’s projected nine-point lead marks its biggest lead over the Conservatives on the measure since the party lost power in 2010.

Pollster Sir John Curtis said this year’s results were “little short of disastrous for the Conservatives”.

But the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, said the results suggested it would be difficult for either the Conservatives or Labor to be confident of winning a majority in the next general election.

He said there appeared to be no desire to move against Sunak, after the Conservative Party forced two prime ministers – Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss – out of office last year.

However, some conservatives are still reeling from the results, with ousted assembly members and critics of Sunak expressing their anger at the prime minister.

As the big picture became clearer, there was disagreement among the Tories over who was to blame for the loss of so many councilors.

The election came amid a dire economic backdrop in the UK, where high inflation has contributed to the worst cost of living crisis in decades.

A pro-Johnson and Truss figure told the BBC that Sunak “has no choice but to own these results”.

In an angry statement, the person said: “He has been a chancellor or prime minister for almost the last three years and it was he and his supporters who forced Boris and then Liz out of office in order to install him in Downing Street.

“The old saying goes that the economy, you idiot, determines the choice of voters at the polls.”

In Swindon, where Labor took control of the borough council for the first time in 20 years, ousted Conservative council leader David Rennard blamed “the cost of living and the government’s performance in the past 12 months” for his party’s troubles locally.

Reynard said that although the Prime Minister had “started to settle things”, for voters in Swindon, “what happened before that was something they didn’t like”.

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David Rennard, former Swindon council leader, who lost his seat

Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houshin said the Tories’ poor performance was partly the result of “the turmoil and upheaval of the last 12 months”.

He said that the Labor Party had “managed to make this a referendum on the government”, adding that “people don’t feel they can vote for us”.

“I think we can safely say” that the Conservatives will lose the next general election, said Nigel Churchill, a former Conservative who lost his seat on Plymouth Council – another Labor target.

“The general public does not trust them at the moment,” he said.

But Education Secretary Robert Halfon said this year’s local elections “will always be difficult” for his party.

He said internal partisan divisions “didn’t help”, but claimed the losses were due to external factors, such as the cost of living crisis and problems with the NHS.

“Every government during the mid-term period, especially the government that has been in power for 13 years, always suffers losses in local elections,” he said.

Other Tory MPs told the BBC that apathy – Conservative voters staying home – was also a big problem for the party.

Key results at a glance:

Labor gained 536 councillors and 22 councilors – including key battlegrounds in Swindon, Plymouth, Medway and Stoke-on-Trent, where the party hopes to succeed at the next general election. The Conservatives lost 1,061 councillors and 48 councilors, but won control The Liberal Democrats gained 12 councilors and 405 councillors, including former Conservative strongholds of Windsor, Maidenhead, and Stratford-upon-Avon, and nearly 250 Green councillors were elected, and the party secured its first-ever outright majority in the council. in Mid Suffolk

The Conservatives tried to manage expectations ahead of Thursday’s election, with party chairman Greg Hands suggesting they could lose 1,000 seats in the council.

In contrast, the Labor Party sought to downplay its chances of success, projecting a gain of around 400 seats.

Most of the seats were up for the last election in 2019, at a time when the UK was reeling from political turmoil over Brexit.

The seats available were mostly on the county councils, which are responsible for services including bin collections, parks, public housing and planning applications.

The rest of the election was for a mix of urban and unit councils – one local authority handling all local services – and for four mayors.

The election was the first in England in which voter identification was checked at polling stations. Some voters told the BBC they were refused entry to polling stations, prompting critics to call for the ID rules to be dropped.

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