Conservatives can still win the next election
These local election results are bad, but not fatal if we deliver on the pledges that won us a historic majority
Iam always struck by the number of politicians and ex-politicians who are willing to claim that they know for certain what local elections tell us about the next general election. With one or two exceptions, most of this commentary attempts to draw a straight line from one event to the other, as though nothing could change in the meantime.
While that has occasionally been so – such as in the run-up to the 1997 Labour landslide election – more often than not, it is far from the case.
One only has to look back at the 2019 locals, which were very bad for the Conservatives, and then see that the party went on to a landslide victory a few months later.
This time around, I took a team to a number of seats over a few weeks, to help out but also to try to get a sense of what was happening to the mood of the voting public. The purpose of canvassing in the run-up to elections is to confirm where your vote is and whether those who had voted for Conservatives in previous elections were still likely to vote Conservative again.
The overall impression I got was that there was a sullen sense to Conservative voters. They did engage, yet mostly it was to tell me how angry they were with the Government, with the huge increase in cost of living and to say they were not prepared to vote for a Conservative Government which now seemed to be punishing them with high taxes and interest rates. A surprising number now found themselves paying upper rate tax, understood that we were responsible and were keen to tell me.
Most also complained that overall migration was far too high, and that the Conservatives had promised to get control of it after Brexit but were failing. A number forcibly considered it a broken promise.
Most of the small business owners we talked to felt the Conservative Party was losing its historic position as the party of small business. A number spoke about VAT rates, pointing out how the thresholds were too low and that they weren’t prepared to grow their business if it meant being sucked into VAT and all that it entailed.
It didn’t matter that I tried reminding them about the support the Government has provided to help with the cost of living; they just shrugged or said they hadn’t noticed. In my experience, this is normal. Voters pocket the money and then promptly forget about it. They assume that the Government had to help, but also blame it for having got into the mess in the first place.
This result is bad for the Conservatives. That is a simple fact that cannot be spun away. Not just bad in terms of national numbers, but also bad because councillors are often the key part of local campaigns for the general elections. Their absence will make it more difficult to deliver, particularly in the critical marginal seats.
Yet comparisons with the locals in 1996 are wrong. I was campaigning then, and I all too clearly remember the mood. Conservative voters were so angry that they didn’t engage on the doorstep; they just said it was time for a change. They were openly prepared to vote Labour, not to protest but to bring in a new government.
This time, I didn’t find any great sense that voters want a Labour government led by Keir Starmer. In fact, I don’t recall him being mentioned once. Instead, they felt that high taxes, high Government spending and high immigration meant there was little difference between the two main parties. A number also talked of failing to deliver on Brexit.
In other words, Conservative voters may be angry, but they are also clear that they could return to the party if the Government delivers on their priorities: lower taxes, lower cost of living, lower immigration and, most of all, growth.
It is utterly wrong to extrapolate from Thursday’s results and declare that the Conservatives can’t win next year’s general election. Instead, what it tells us is that the jury is still out. Keir Starmer’s Labour hasn’t achieved the cut-through it might have expected. We can still succeed.
But to do so, we need to deliver on our promises.