There is, inevitably, an element of playing haruspex when it comes to divining the political significance of local election results – especially when not all the chickens’ entrails are in yet. But as it stands, the Conservative have had a very bad night.
Harry Phibbs, our local government editor, will be bringing the details of the results later this morning and across the next two days in our live blog, but suffice to say Labour are so far performing very well in the council elections that are in so far, with losses to the Greens and others in safe seats more than offset by victories in Thurrock and Hartlepool – the sort of areas they’d need to win at the general election in order to secure a majority government.
All that capped off by the Blackpool South by-election, which saw Labour recapture the seat with a 26-point swing, turning Scott Benton’s 2019 majority of 3,690 into a Labour one of 7,607. Worse still, from CCHQ’s perspective, Reform UK managed their best by-election performance to date, polling almost within 100 votes of the Tory candidate.
Now it might be that come Sunday, once the ashes have settled, the picture looks different. Rob Ford points out that the early-counting wards have “a lot of Reform candidates”, despite the party only contesting one in eight seats overall, which might see the Conservatives posting better results as today’s counts progress.
Earlier this morning the party retained control of Harlow, a Labour target. (Rob Halfon has branded this the “biggest comeback since Lazarus”; did he think the Party was dead?)
It may also be that the mayoral elections, by dint of both their later counting and higher profile, end up playing a much larger role in shaping the final narrative around the results. Ben Houchen holding on at least muddies the waters (“If Labour can’t win Teesside…”). Andy Street securing a third term in the West Midlands even more so – and that is one contest where Labour losing support to the Greens over Gaza could make a difference.
As for Susan Hall winning London, well… we might not be talking about anything else for a while.
Even if all those stars align, of course, the haemorrhage of local councillors matters. They (along with the friends and family they cajole into service) are the hard core of the Tory infantry, the essential cogs of the ground campaign machine. One of the strongest internal arguments for Rishi Sunak calling a May election was going to the country before a town-hall rout further thinned the ranks of those prepared to give their dark November evenings to the cause.
But they may not align. With the possible exception of Houchen, at the time of writing none of the happy possibilities limned above is anywhere close to a sure thing, or even a probability. We could reach Monday morning with the settled narrative of an extremely bad night for the Government, one that presages perhaps an existential defeat at the general election.
At which point, as Savanta’s Chris Hopkins touched on his piece yesterday, we may well see Conservative MPs reaching for the big red button which has not, in recent times, solved any of their problems: a change of leader.
There are several reasons such an attempt would be a bad idea, even if you do not personally support the Prime Minister: that there is scarcely a serious candidate who wants to take over this side of the general election, for example, or how ugly, destructive, and worst of all self-indulgent the process might look to voters who saw the Party consumed by Westminster infighting rather than focussing on their priorities.
To this, we can add another. Under the rules, unless the MPs could alight on a unity candidate and avoid a final round, it is the membership who make the final decision on the leadership. And our latest survey finds that a solid majority of them think that Sunak should remain in post – however bad the results look next week.
Almost two thirds, 63 per cent, say that the Prime Minister should not resign, whatever plays out over the next couple of days. Of the rest the majority, 20 per cent, think he should step down whatever happens. That leaves just 13 per cent who think his future ought to rest on the results of these elections.
This is consistent with last month’s survey, which found a near-identical percentage of panellists saying they thought a move against the Prime Minister was more likely, or certain, to harm the Conservatives’ prospects at the next election than improve them. It’s a useful corrective to the folk image of Tory members that seems to persist in parts of the media that they (who collectively backed Truss over Sunak in 2022) place the interests of the Party above their ideological preferences.
But it should also give any would-be mutineers pause for thought. The absolute worst outcome of a leadership challenge (and the dream result for Labour) is one which Sunak loses by winning, staving off the attempt but with the Government left to stagger into an election with even more self-inflicted wounds.
That election is likely no more an six months away; there is not room for the Conservatives to safely re-order the battle line, even if they wanted to. The membership realises this. So too should the MPs.
The post Our survey. Six in ten Tory members think Sunak should stay – regardless of the local election results. appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Henry Hill
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