MAY’S PARTY DOES BETTER THAN EXPECTED IN LOCAL POLLS
Conservative Party holds on to key London councils despite push by Labour
PRIME Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party fared better than expected in local elections in England as the final results were announced early yesterday, in her first test at the polls since losing her parliamentary majority last year.
The centre-right party held on to key London councils despite a big push by Labour, the main opposition, which failed to live up to its own hype.
The ruling party scored highly in areas that voted in favour of Brexit in the 2016 referendum, while losing some ground in more pro-European Union heartlands.
The United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip), which has seen its support collapse since cheerleading the 2016 vote for Brexit, was all but wiped out, while the pro-European Liberal Democrats made the biggest gains.
Labour ’s leftist leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had sought to build on momentum from last year’s June general election, when an unexpected surge for his party deprived May of her majority.
But Labour admitted “mixed” results despite a tough week for May, who has been plagued by cabinet divisions over Brexit as well as a row over immigration that toppled one of her top ministers.
“We’ve done better than expected,” Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis told Sky News television.
“We have seen Labour, who thought they would be sweeping the board in London, not gaining a single council in London.”
Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Politics said: “Opposition parties are supposed to do well in mid-term contests, and these aren’t the results of one that’s about to storm the next general election.”
The final count over 150 councils showed Labour gained 62 seats and the Conservatives lost 32, with the Liberal Democrats gained 75 seats and Ukip lost 132. The Green Party were up eight council seats. The votes equated to a 35 per cent national vote share for both Labour and the Conservatives, though such projections are an inexact science.
A BBC projection suggested that such results at a general election would mean a hung Parliament, with Labour on 283 seats compared with the Conservatives’ 280, both well short of the 326 needed for a majority.
The Conservatives appeared to have benefited from the collapse of UKIP, which was instrumental in the Brexit vote, but has since lost its way.
On a victory tour here, May said Labour “threw everything at it, but they failed”, while adding: “We won’t take anything for granted.”
Labour’s goal to win Conservative strongholds here, like Wandsworth or Westminster. always seemed a stretch, though it did gain seats in those councils.
Its failure to take Barnet, a suburb with a large Jewish population that was Labour’s top target in the capital, is likely to be more heavily scrutinised in the context of an row over anti-Semitism in the opposition party.
“I think there are lots of voters, Jewish people in London, who don’t feel comfortable voting Labour,” London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan told the BBC.
“Labour has won even more council seats than at our high watermark of 2014, and we are on course to secure our best results in London since 1971.”
Two results for Labour stood out: Labour lawmaker Dan Jarvis won a mayoral election in Sheffield in northern England, while the party retained control of Birmingham council in Britain’s second-biggest conurbation.
The Conservatives held Kensington and Chelsea, where the council had faced severe criticism over last year’s devastating Grenfell Tower fire that killed 71 people, with a slightly reduced majority.