A glut of local and mayoral elections rarely offers relief for parties which have been in power for a long time. With omens of general election doom clustering over the Conservatives like ravens in Macbeth, this Thursday looks especially murderous. There is a “dash of the disillusioned” — Dan Poulter’s exit lambasting the state of mental health provision providing a useful Labour acquisition as the “party of the NHS”.
A broader stampede of ministers and MPs is heading at speed for the extra-parliamentary job market after the general election. A spate of idiotic and demeaning scandals makes the party seem unduly partial to weird conduct — and the polls are glued 20 points apart.
Rishi Sunak will prepare to perform the ritual fugue-pattern of argument after poor local elections: this is not the “real” election, the plan is working, voters do let off steam and then come back to the Tory devil-they-know and so on. It is, however, quite possible that in terms of languishing Tory turnout, a landslide of council seats to Labour and possible signature mayoralties from the West Midlands to Tees Valley, Sunak simply loses the final shreds of authority which keep an embattled leader in place.
On that scenario, rather than stagger through another change at the top without a mandate, I reckon Sunak would give in to pressure to call a June election — even though his preference remains to stick it out till autumn. The possibility has Labour’s top team in a frenzy of expectation — even when travelling abroad, aides and campaign teams have been instructed to be constantly available in case the WhatsApp pings with the “Go” signal.
Sunak loyalists mock the sudden frenzy about a summer vote as ‘premature media ejaculation’
Sunak loyalists mock the sudden frenzy about a summer vote as “premature media ejaculation”, as one veteran campaigner in Kent puts it. “If it is a really bad night for us on Thursday, with Labour surging in the ‘right’ places (for Starmer), there’s even less reason to rush an election until something changed.” Sunak is sending internal signals that he does not want to — hastening to appoint a successor ambassador to the US (which has ended up in an awkward stand-off with Labour) and new national security adviser to signal continuity.
That gesture, as well as more substantial exertions to enact the Rwanda removals of failed asylum seekers this summer, is intended to send the message that he is in this until the bitter end. But luck and the lack of it also has a role to play. Events in Scotland, where the hapless Humza Yousaf has resigned after breaking up his alliance with the Scottish Greens without the wherewithal to secure a working majority elsewhere, will unleash further chaos in the SNP. The party is already writhing in the embarrassment of the financial mismanagement allegations which cost Nicola Sturgeon her job and have seen her husband charged with embezzlement of party funds.
Labour sources are jubilant. One of Starmer’s lieutenants in the Scottish campaign noted that while the party was “struggling to dig the SNP” out of its key turf in the central belt of seats the Labour leader needs to win, the Nats’ fall from grace and internal divisions over the abrupt leadership vacancy is a valuable opportunity to win over voters.
Potentially, there are ways in which Thursday May 2 might be less cataclysmic. Expectations are low for the Tories — which might mean they could be exceeded. London has a strikingly weak Tory candidate in Susan Hall. Even so, Sadiq Khan is running a tired show in City Hall with vulnerable flanks with different groups of voters over knife crime, the housing shortage, Ulez expansion and transport strikes. It is hard to see Khan not emerging as Mayor — but a healthy-ish London result would give Sunak something to talk about in the “it could have been worse” stakes.
Labour also needs huge wins across key areas of the country to show it is on course for a majority: Richard Holden, the steadfast Tory chairman who sits in a classic “Red Wall” seat of North West Durham, emboldens drooping colleagues with the prospect that Labour will not show enough of a swing in the Tees Valley and West Midlands to point to a victory lap. The downside is that if Labour does start to nail on defeats of symbolically powerful Tory mayors — Ben Houchen in the North, Andy Street in the West Midlands — and much of the electoral map looks to be shifting red-wards, the PM will need to enunciate a reason why hanging on is more than a vanity project. That is looking harder by the week. By the early hours of Friday morning, it may well look even more forbidding.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor at Politico
