Tories braced for worst local election result since 1990s

THE Conservatives are on track to lose almost 550 seats in local elections in the worst performance since Tony Blair led the Labour Party in the 1990s, a survey predicts.

Labour will hold 3,500 council seats – a gain of more than 800, while the Tories will retain just under 980, a fall of 548, according to the survey of 1,749 adults in the 201 councils going to the polls on Thursday.

The Tories could lose control of their flagship councils of Wandsworth and Westminster as well as Barnet, Southampton, Newcastle-under-lyme and Thurrock. Labour could gain 16 councils in a six per cent swing.

The findings, if replicated on polling day, will be seen as a backlash by voters over partygate, for which Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have already been fined, and anger over the Government’s handling of the cost of living crisis.

The results could fuel further speculation over Mr Johnson’s leadership although rebels plotting to oust him have targeted the publication of senior civil servant Sue Gray’s report on partygate as the moment they could renew their push to force him from office.

Martin Baxter, chief executive of Electoral Calculus, which conducted the survey with Find Out Now, said: “The renewed partygate focus has made a poor situation for the Conservatives even worse by persuading even more Conservative supporters not to turn out at the local elections.

“The results could now be bad for Boris Johnson, especially if the Conservatives lose many hundreds of council seats and key flagship councils like Wandsworth or Westminster.”

It would be the first time since 1996, when Mr Blair led Labour, that Labour will have won more than three times as many council seats as the Conservatives. The predicted vote share of 24 per cent for the Tories, 39 per cent for Labour and 15 per cent for the Lib Dems

‘The renewed partygate focus has made a poor situation for the Conservatives even worse’

– giving Labour a lead of 15 per cent – would be the biggest in local elections since the mid-1990s before Mr Blair went on to win a landslide victory.

However, the pollsters cautioned that Tory leaders Michael Howard and William Hague, who both secured big leads over Labour in local elections, failed to translate them into victories at the subsequent general elections.

Veteran pollster Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said the damage for the Conservatives could be reduced by the limited number of seats being contested in Tory heartlands outside London. He forecast the Tories would lose fewer than a handful of councils.

The controversy over allegations of pacts between Labour and Lib Dems deepened last night, as an analysis by The Daily Telegraph found Labour has stood aside for the Lib Dems in 10 times as many wards for the local elections as in the last poll.

Both parties have denied formal pacts but an analysis of candidate lists provided by Democracy Club showed that for Thursday’s elections Labour has not fielded a candidate against the

Lib Dems in 131 council wards in England, up from 14 in 2018. The data showed more than half of these wards were in the South East and South West.

Both Sir Keir Starmer and Ed Davey have denied there is any pact between the two parties. “There’s no pact now. There’s not going to be a pact in the future,” said Mr Davey on Sunday.

The Lib Dems were also shown to have not put up candidates against Labour in 711 wards, up from 617 in 2018, according to Telegraph analysis.

It comes after data showed Labour had cut its candidates in the Lib Dem target region of the South West by a third since 2018.

The number of council seats on offer on Thursday has risen since 2018, with 21,352 this year, according to Democracy Club. In 91 of these seats, only one candidate has put themselves forward.

Oliver Dowden, the Conservative chairman, said: “This is yet further damning evidence of a murky backroom deal between Labour and the Lib Dems, quietly trying to stitch up certain seats behind closed doors and deny voters a democratic choice. Labour and Liberal Democrat councils deliver worse local services and some of the highest council tax in the country, so it’s little wonder they are resorting to these tactics.”

A Lib Dem spokesman said the suggestion that they were standing down candidates was “total nonsense”.

“Parties always allocate resources in pragmatic ways to win as many seats as possible,” he added.