The local elections present challenges for all the UK’s political parties (read an article on the specific challenges Reform UK face here) so how can we interpret the results and extrapolate them into future elections?
With research support from Marta Miori, Professor Jane Green, Professor of Political Science and British Politics, and Director of the Nuffield Politics Research Centre, highlights several key areas to watch for each party.
Watch Jane speak about this on ITV News.
The Conservatives
In the last election, most voters simply wanted to get the Tories out of government. So will these local elections show that the new leader, Kemi Badenoch, has begun to turn things around? Reform UK has introduced a major split on the right of UK politics, and these elections will likely show that it’s continuing, and could even be getting worse for the Conservatives.
The last time these elections were held in 2021, the Conservatives were doing really well in the polls, so expect significant losses this time around. But could these results be even worse than last year’s general election?
The Tories now face growing threats from the Liberal Democrats on one side, and from Reform UK on the other, and both those parties look set to do well in May’s local elections. The Liberal Democrats are in contention in some of the Conservative’s most affluent seats, and Reform are in contention across the board.
Finally, new leader Kemi Badenoch hasn’t seen any improvement in her party’s polling since she became leader. Whilst local elections are fought more on local issues than national elections, they do also reflect whether voters will consider voting for the Conservatives again in any type of election.
Kemi Badenoch remains significantly less popular overall than Reform leader Nigel Farage, Labour leader Keir Starmer and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey. The only news that could provide any comfort is that Labour are now a bit less trusted on the economy.
Labour
Compared to the Conservatives success in 2021, Labour had relatively bad local election results, so are unlikely to suffer the same kinds of losses this time around.
However, Reform are set to challenge Labour in the Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election, and several metro mayor elections, and will want to show they can win contests against Labour across the local elections.
People remain very worried about their financial circumstances under this government, and that is a major risk for Labour, who are losing support among voters who feel most economically insecure. These feelings of economic insecurity are higher among voters who might consider voting for the Greens, Liberal Democrats, or Reform UK.
These voters are in mid-life – between around 35 and 59 – and are the very people who are also switching away from Labour in higher numbers. They are today’s swing voters, and they will matter in these local elections.
The Liberal Democrats / Greens
The Liberal Democrats and Greens tend to enjoy more success in local elections than they do in general elections. Success in these local elections is – as always – a good local base for these parties – but they still face huge challenges in a general election.
Their hope will be to convince people to vote for them tactically in a general election, where they have the best challenge of beating a party more unpopular with voters. That’s how they did well in July last year. However, whether this happens again for them will be determined as much by how people feel about the two largest parties as how they feel about the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. And a lot could change between now and the next general election.
This May’s local elections, the metro mayor elections and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election may confirm the things we already knew about the parties as of July last year, or they may show that the fracturing of our party system – the increasing support for smaller parties who can challenge the big two – is still on the rise and likely to be even more important in British elections in the years to come.