You may have noticed the political arena becoming a little more combative recently, what with the Home Secretary-consuming Windrush and Labour’s anti-Semitism row triggering impassioned arguments in the press and on social media. Whilst these issues certainly require urgent discussion and action, the flames of the debate will likely have been stoked further by the recent local elections in England. Labour had high expectations of making gains in deep Conservative territory, forming a solid foundation to spring for Downing Street from. So, what’s changed in these elections?
Predictably, the largest shift in power came from UKIP, who lost all but three of their councillors. They’ve not lost their positivity, however, as its general secretary compared the party to the Black Death (but in a good way). Elsewhere, there were few surprises – Labour gained control of Plymouth council and dethroned the Tories from their last North-Western council of Trafford, yet they failed to secure Wandsworth and Westminster as they had wished to in their campaigns, along with Barnet. The greatest surprise probably came in the relatively decent performance of the Liberal Democrats, seizing control of several councils and gaining almost as many councillors as Labour.
If this all sounds a little dull, that’s probably because it is. Bar one or two surprise results, nothing really happened in these elections. The governing Conservatives lost a bit of ground to the Labour opposition, yet this wasn’t exactly the surging success Labour members were hoping for. Short of putting the Conservatives on edge, many of the Tories will have woken up to the results breathing a sigh of relief – after all, looking back at Amber Rudd’s resignation over the Windrush scandal, things could have gone much, much worse. So why didn’t they?
Well, for a start these were only local elections in some regions of England, nowhere else. There were several mayoral elections happening as well as a by-election in Northern Ireland too, but for the most part people were going out to vote on local issues rather than nation-shaping events. It stands to reason that bin collections won’t have the same appeal as choosing the next PM, and that does seem to have been true for these elections – the average turnout was uninspiringly low. Third parties may have prevented a larger shift also, with UKIP’s collapse sending a disproportionately high portion of its voters to the Tories and the Liberal Democrats gaining votes at the expense of both Labour and the Conservatives.
Ultimately, however, the lack of drama is not too overwhelming. In these local elections, voters usually prefer to stick with the status quo – better the devil you know and so on. Despite the definite preference for Labour in Remain-voting areas and Tories in Leave, Brexit was likely not on most people’s minds as they were marking their papers. Immigration (the heart of the Windrush scandal) is hardly relevant to many councils, who are more suited to fixing potholes than border control. Labour’s struggles with anti-Semitism, whilst certainly an influencing factor (especially in Barnet, the council with the most significant Jewish population) would not have affected voters in every council. At the end of the day, these elections were talked up by both Labour and the Tories for little reason other than noise, it seems.
There’s talk of Corbyn’s appeal hitting a ceiling, of a Lib Dem resurgence and even of Theresa May making it through her premiership. The political landscape may not have shifted much at all, yet the conversations certainly have. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see, as per usual.