Will absence of Farage party give the Tories a local election lifeline?
THE Tories might escape a hammering in today’s local elections because of a lack of options for Leave supporters, a polling expert said last night.
Sir John Curtice said the night would be a disaster for Theresa May only if Conservatives stayed at home. He said the absence of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and a shortage of Ukip candidates was a ‘silver lining’ for the Prime Minister.
The Tories have been tipped to lose as many as 800 seats in what would be their worst result for 20 years. The losses are expected to be particularly high because the Conservatives did very well last time – in 2015 – when they also won a majority at the general election.
Sir John, who is professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said: ‘We have to remember that the Brexit Party is not on the ballot paper tomorrow and Ukip are only fighting around one in six of the seats.
‘So those Leave voters who are unhappy
‘Was always going to be difficult’
with the Conservatives over Brexit frankly face the choice in most of the local elections of either turning out to vote and still voting for the Conservatives – because I doubt that they’ll consider voting for Labour or the Lib Dems – or staying at home.
‘Therefore, probably, the results won’t be quite as bad for the Conservatives as perhaps some of the impression you might have from the headline opinion polls.’
There are 8,374 council seats up for grabs in England and 460 in Northern Ireland. The Tories hold 4,628 and are contesting 95 per cent of all the seats up for grabs.
In contrast Ukip, which has been hit by a slew of defections to the Brexit Party and controversy over its links with English Defence League co-founder Tommy Robinson, is contesting just 16 per cent of seats. Mr Farage’s party is standing only in the European elections later this month.
An analysis by Tory election expert Rob Hayward predicted the party was on course to lose more than 800 council seats, and some senior figures privately fear they could lose more than 1,000.
A heavy defeat is likely to set off a fresh wave of demands for Mrs May to name a date for her departure. Lord Hayward, a former Conservative MP, said the Tories appeared to be on course for their worst drubbing since 1995 when Tony Blair crushed John Major’s divided government.
He said: ‘This was always going to be a difficult election because the seats the Conservatives are defending were won on a very good night for them in 2015.
‘But the results are unquestionably going to be worse because of the current situation.
‘People don’t know who the leader of the Tory Party is going to be and there is anger amongst Tory Brexiteers that the party has not delivered.
‘There was a noticeable dip when the Prime Minister agreed to delay Brexit. That has calmed down a bit because there has been less debate about Brexit in the last fortnight. But at best, the Tories are at the crest of a trough.’
If the results are as bad as forecast it will be the worst result for any governing party since 2003 when Mr Blair lost more than 1,100 seats following a backlash over the Iraq War. In 1995, the Tories lost 2,000 seats.
Professor Curtice pointed out that many of the seats being contested were in Tory ‘shire’ areas.
Many councils holding elections have been affected by a major restructuring of the local authority landscape. Five new authorities will be holding polls: Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole, Dorset, East Suffolk, West Suffolk and Somerset West & Taunton.
WITH disastrous timing, the hapless Tories have managed ( once again) to blast themselves in both feet.
Shortly before 6pm yesterday – on the eve of punishing local elections – Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson was sacked for leaking secrets about Chinese firm Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s 5G network. Could the Government get any more dysfunctional? Today, millions of voters have their first chance to express their anger at the dismal failure to deliver Brexit. Theresa May is braced for a seismic revolt – and the loss of hundreds of councillors.
Even dyed- in- the- wool loyalists are incandescent with rage and exasperation at Tory incompetence. Grassroots members and readers of this newspaper are understandably baffled to see the Prime Minister holding talks with Jeremy Corbyn and flirting with a customs union, which could shackle us to Brussels.
Meanwhile, other important issues affecting the country go begging. Housing, social care, law and order, energy security… all sucked into the Brexit black hole.
And yet, the Tories do have a good story to tell. Employment is at a record high, joblessness is at its lowest level since the early 1970s and wages are strong (while the eurozone flounders). Why is nobody shouting this from the rooftops?
Instead, demeaningly, Mrs May is caught having a girls’ night out with the wife of an ex-Vladimir Putin crony who has shovelled £1million into Tory coffers. And Transport Secretary Chris Grayling admits squandering £ 83million of taxpayers’ money in the No Deal ferries fiasco.
Where on Earth is the party that once listened to voters’ concerns, standing for hope, aspiration, thrift and hard work? With sadness, the Mail accepts a ballot box backlash would hardly be undeserved.
Yet we beg all Tory voters not to lose faith. First, there is no other party with which to register a Brexit protest (Ukip’s racist rabble are beyond the pale). And while withholding a vote may give a scintilla of satisfaction, it would be an act of enormous self-harm to take out frustration with vainglorious and inept MPs on hardworking and effective Tory councillors.
Tempting as it is to give the Conservatives an electoral black eye, the ultimate winner would be Labour. As we reveal today, Mr Corbyn’s advisers are already planning a class war on home ownership – introducing a crippling new tax on every house sold.
Yes, the Tories are a mess. But inadvertently allowing the unreconstructed Marxist and his motley crew of hard-Left sycophants, terror sympathisers and antiSemites to inch even closer to No10 would be a catastrophic – and historic – blunder.