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Most results are still to come but already there have been substantial Conservative losses. Last night Lord Hayward, the Conservative peer and elections guru, predicted Conservative losses of “upwards of 400 seats.” Others have talked of the Conservatives losing around half of the 919 seats won last time they were contested in 2021. The BBC scoreboard so far suggests a reverse on the scale, the Conservatives are on 116 seats from the Council that declared overnight, down 122.
Rallings and Thrasher’s National Equivalent share of the vote will be keenly awaited, especially this year given a General Election only a few months away. In 2021 the Conservatives were ten points ahead of Labour on that measure. The initial indications are that this time Labour will be ahead by that sort of margin. Substantial but not as great as the opinion polls indicate.
Labour gained Redditch, Hartlepool, Thurrock and Rushmoor councils. It also won the Cumbria Police and Crime Commissioner election with a 22 per cent swing from the Conservatives.
Congratulations to Cllr Dan Swords, the Leader of Harlow Council, on the Conservative victory there. This was significant for two reasons. Firstly, it was a key Labour target. Sir Keir Starmer went to campaign there. The Essex town is a classic marginal constituency. Winning Harlow means the Conservatives can keep hope alive. Secondly, it suggests that people will vote for you if they have a reason to do so. Harlow has frozen Council Tax. They have pledged to keep it frozen. This has been achieved by rigorous financial management and running services efficiently. If Conservative councils just join Labour and increase the Council Tax by the maximum possible without a referendum then it is harder for the electorate to spot the difference.
But Harlow is an exception. In most of the results so far Labour are winning where they need to. Yet while we are seeing an emphatic retreat for the Conservatives the advance for Labour is uneven. As mentioned the Conservatives are currently down 122 seats. But Labour are only up by 52. In South Tyneside, Labour lost ten seats, mostly to independents promising to cut back on the number of councillors. Labour lost control of Oldham, which is understood to be due to Gaza rather than local issues. In Peterborough, Portsmouth and elsewhere most of the Conservative losses went to independents rather than Labour. Some of Labour’s advances in Sunderland and Hartlepool reflected there being a division between Reform UK and the Conservatives for the anti-Labour vote – rather than real enthusiasm for the Labour Party. The low turnout in many areas also reflects this.
There was also, of course, a Parliamentary contest with the Blackpool South by-election. This saw Labour win by a huge margin, though the Conservatives will have a sense of relief at not being beaten into third place by Reform UK.
The circumstances of the by-election were clearly difficult as Scott Benton, who was elected as the Conservative MP last time, had the whip withdrawn and then resigned after a lobbying scandal. But there is a deeper concern that despite substantial spending on “levelling up” projects prosperity has not returned to this seaside town. Perhaps a free enterprise approach of a low tax zone would be more effective. Or lifting the ban on shale. Or a more robust approach to welfare reform. But spraying around money on “regeneration” schemes does not seem to have done the trick. At any rate, the voters there do not seem very appreciative of such Whitehall largesse.
The post Local elections live blog: Labour gain Redditch, Hartlepool, Thurrock and Rushmoor. But the Conservatives hold on in Harlow. appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Harry Phibbs
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