What the 2022 local election results tell us so far – the panel’s verdict

What the 2022 local election results tell us so far – the panel’s verdict

Polly Toynbee: Does Boris Johnson survive this? Labour must certainly hope so Circular byline for Polly Toynbee.

Symbols matter, so Labour’s victories in Westminster (wow!), Wandsworth (ha!) and Barnet (speaks to progress on antisemitism) give a fine fillip to the party’s fortunes. Wins in Cumberland and Southampton augur well. It’s too early in the day to know how close Labour is to becoming the biggest party at the next election, but the Liberal Democrat revival gnawing at Tory votes helps.

Conservative councillors went over the top defenceless, lambs to the slaughter. But they deserve every loss, after tolerating intolerable 50% cuts to their council budgets without rebelling against their Westminster party. They blame their leader’s collapsed ratings and the cost of living crisis, but don’t pity Tories reaping their own whirlwind: their MPs and local parties cynically chose a rogue prime minister, knowing his egregious unfitness for office. Now he’s their loser, Tory ex-council leaders line up to call for his head.

If final results suggest Brexit divides still lurk, especially in the north, the Tories may keep Johnson hoping he can rekindle old passions. Labour should hope they do, as his negatives far outweigh the dying embers of Brexit passions. However, fire in the belly is what the official opposition lacks right now: time to let the frontbench off their tight leash of disciplined messaging for more forthright speaking from the heart.

James Johnson: The Tories are in denial about the scale of the problem they face.

Circular byline for James Johnson

Faced with the results today, some Conservatives are saying all is well. This is wrong. Of course, these results are not a sign of a seismic Labour recovery, or a Blair-like storming to power for Keir Starmer. Though Labour made gains, they were not enough to win back areas like those it lost back in 2005 and 2010, like Nuneaton and Peterborough.

But Labour does not need a Blair-sized victory to deprive the Conservatives of power: it can do so while being behind on votes, come a general election.

The Conservative vote is in trouble on two fronts. Most stark is the serious attrition in London and the south, especially in areas with more educated and middle-class voters: to go backwards by so much in these areas spells serious trouble for southern marginals at the next election. To simply write off a Labour advance with the middle classes as Starmer being a “metropolitan elite” – as one Tory source has – is to misunderstand the Conservative victory in 2019, where the party was able to carry southern seats as well as northern ones. And there are plenty of middle-class voters in the “red wall” too.

Nor were the results good for the Conservatives in the red wall. Again, key here are the 2018 council elections, not the 2019 general election. Labour standing still (as it did in Hartlepool), making gains (Dudley), or even going slightly backwards (Sandwell) is a good result for the party. Why? Because in 2018 it held the northern and Midlands seats that Boris Johnson went on to win a year later. In other words Labour is currently doing as well as it did before it “lost” the red wall in 2019.

Today, some Conservatives – whether wilfully or not – are in denial about the scale of that problem, especially those most loyal to No 10.

But since January, the interests of Boris Johnson and the Conservative party have become disconnected. If Conservatives want to win again at the next general election, they will need to come to that realisation – or risk sleepwalking into national defeat.