Local elections aren’t just about putting councillors into seats

LOCAL elections are strange beasts. Ostensibly they have one purpose – to elect councillors who can form a group to run services in a local authority area.

But everyone knows that if you invite voters into a polling station you are also likely get a verdict on the national government of the day – whether or not the way they vote has any direct bearing on the party in power.

So the outcome of tomorrow’s vote, which sees elections for city councillors in Exeter and Plymouth as well as for local authorities up and down the country, will be used to try to tell us all sorts of things about the state of the parties and what that means for a future general election.

There will, of course, be council candidates who win – or lose – their seats purely on their own merits. And there will be parties in power running some local authorities who keep control – or lose it – purely on the basis of how well or badly voters think they are performing.

But it’s not unreasonable to extrapolate from the overall results what voters think of Boris Johnson and ‘Partygate’ or Keir Starmer and his efforts to make Labour more electable. Voters may be putting a cross next to the name of a would-be councillor whose links to the Tories, Labour or the Lib Dems in Parliament extends no further than the colour of his or her rosette. But the party system is now so ingrained across politics at all levels and party leaders so heavily exposed that few electors will fail to make the connection between a council candidate and his party and perhaps vote for the party, rather than the candidate.

It is likely to be Friday or Saturday before the full impact of the elections will be felt. Best guesses so far suggest the Tories are on course for a bad night as the votes are counted on Thursday night and into the early hours of Friday. Whether Labour or a resurgent Lib Dems will be the beneficiaries of those lost Tory votes is far harder to judge.

And, of course, these elections are mostly taking place in cities or large towns; that skews our ability to draw any cast iron conclusions about what voters more broadly think about the major parties.

Nevertheless an election – even a local council election – is a far better guide than an opinion poll or the chattering on social media to the collective thinking of the electorate.

We should know with a degree of certainty whether or not ‘Partygate’ really has holed the Conservatives below the waterline and turned Boris Johnson from an asset to a liability for the Tories. We should know too whether Keir Starmer has been able to throw off his underwhelming personal appeal to give Labour a better chance at the next general election. We should know too if the Lib Dems’ successes in two recent by-elections is a trend, not a blip.

By next week, as the victorious councillors form themselves into groups and take control of their authorities, we should all have a better idea of the way the wind is blowing for our major parties. That is, of course, important. But so is putting councillors in place who can actually do a decent job where it matters. So, if you have one, use your vote wisely.