The prospects for political parties in the region ahead of a big election day
WHEN VOTERS head to the ballot boxes next month – or, due to the pandemic, pop their vote in the postbox – they will be voting in one of the biggest election days in modern history.
Coronavirus put paid to local elections last year, meaning this year is a bumper crop where voters will be choosing a mixture of councillors, local mayors, regional mayors and police commissioners, as voters in Scotland and Wales choosing new parliaments.
And in Yorkshire, each party has their eyes on a different goal.
Tory peer and independent elections expert Robert Hayward told The Yorkshire Post that elections in 2017 had been a precursor for the fall of the Red Wall seen in the 2019 General Election.
And he said this time around, the Tories would be looking to build on those gains.
“The local elections in 2017 gave us the first indications of what might happen and therefore it’s reasonable for [the Conservatives] to remind people that actually they’ve got some stiff defences on their hands, but equally the Labour Party is going through the same process,” Lord Hayward said.
Aside from a handful of council byelections in recent months in Scotland and Wales, no polls have been held anywhere in the UK since March 2020 – a gap unprecedented in modern history.
And that, combined with the impact of coronavirus, made the polls very difficult to call.
Lord Hayward said: “It’s made electioneering very difficult. It’s even made preparation for elections difficult.”
And he added: “The broader issue is that for all the political parties, because there have been no elections, people really don’t know for certain where their support is.”
Like all parties, Conservative Party co-chairman Amanda Milling said the Tories had very little indication of how voting would go due to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic.
“A lot of these seats are ones which we gained in 2017, where we gained 550 seats in those local elections, we have got a very big job to do to defend those because at that time we were 18 points ahead in the polls,” she told The Yorkshire Post after a visit to the region last week.
“Whilst we’re currently ahead in the polls we’re not by any kind of stretch close to that and over the last couple of weeks when I’ve been visiting councillors who are defending in some instances a majority of one, and it only takes a handful of votes to go in the other direction.”
Ms Milling spent time last week with new MPs Miriam Cates in Penistone and Stocksbridge, Alexander Stafford in Rother Valley and Nick Fletcher in Don Valley.
Lord Hayward said: “It’s an indication of the shift of attention for the Conservative Party. I wouldn’t expect massive Conservative gains, but that clearly the Tory party will be disappointed if they don’t make some gains.”
But Ms Milling said: “This is a very big defensive election for us.”
She said there had been successes for the Conservatives nationally “but actually what you find is that they do not have a very high local government presence”.
However Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner said: “We’re coming from a base of ‘if you take our 2019 results, we’d lose 300 seats in May’, so I’m realistic about where we started.”
She said: “I think it’s really important to recognise the leadership that our local councillors and local representatives and our mayoral candidates and our Police and Crime Commissioners have offered. Quite frankly, the Tories had a great talk in Yorkshire about levelling up, but the reality is that the words haven’t matched the actions. And if I was Amanda Milling and the Tories, I’d be nervous about that as well.”
Lord Hayward said Labour “probably are more defensive in Yorkshire than elsewhere because they haven’t got anything in 2017 to attack, and because they don’t know what to defend, and they don’t know where the Lib Dems are going to be stronger or not”.
Amid the uncertainty, one race that seems a near-guaranteed win for Labour is the West Yorkshire
Councillors, mayors, and police commissioners will be on the ballot sheets, but there are few indications about who will win. Geraldine Scott reports.
mayoralty, where Tracy Brabin has long been the bookies’ favourite, and Lord Hayward said he would be “astonished” if she did not become mayor.
Ms Rayner said: “If I was the candidate against Tracy I’d be incredibly nervous because regardless of what political stripes Tracy has, she’s Yorkshire and she cares about her community and she’s down to earth.” She also pointed to the work of Labour councils in Bradford pioneering local contact tracing, and
Sheffield giving out laptops to children for home learning.
“The point is that they didn’t have to be told or embarrassed by a
Premiership footballer to do it, because they were in the community and they got it and they were doing it,” she said.
She added: “It’s about making sure that we first of all, send a huge message to the Conservatives in power in London, and that’s do not underestimate or take advantage of the people of Yorkshire. You haven’t levelled up, you’ve levelled us all down, and we’re not stupid, we see that.”
Declarations will be spread out across the days following May 6 due to Covid-safe measures for counting.
For all parties, because there have been no elections, people don’t know for certain where their support is.