Sir Keir Starmer walked into the Labor Party headquarters on London’s South Bank on Friday to cheers from staff after the party’s local election victories. “Does it feel good to win?” he was beaming.
As for the general election, some in the room would have no idea: Work last won power in a nationwide contest in 2005, when some party apparatchiks were still in primary school.
As the dust settled on a dramatic run of English council results, two big questions remained unanswered: Is the Labor leader now on his way to Downing Street after homegrown victories stretching from Middlesbrough to Plymouth?
And will the results deal a serious blow to Rishi Sunak’s bid to restore the Conservative Party’s fortunes, sparking a new round of factional infighting and tense political debate over issues such as taxation and housing?
Starmer’s allies were greatly reassured by Labour’s success in securing a more “efficient” distribution of party votes, which had previously accrued to secure parliamentary seats in London, Manchester and other major cities.
The fact that Labor took control of councils in the south of England, such as Medway in Kent and Swindon on the M4 corridor, was a sign of progress in areas that had voted overwhelmingly for the ‘new’ Labor by Tony Blair in 1997.
Victories in the ‘red wall’ areas of northern England such as Stoke-on-Trent, High Peak and Blackpool were proof that Starmer was also pushing his way into former Leave support seats won by Boris Johnson in the 2019 general election. Indeed, Labor best performance belonged to the working class, former strongholds of Brexit.
But Star needs a seismic electoral shock in a general election – on a scale of winning Clement Attlee in 1945 or Blair in 1997 – next year to even win a majority of one in the House of Commons.
The BBC’s “projected national share” in the vote – based on the local election results – gave Labor 35% and the Tories 26%, the biggest Labor lead since 1997.
But Tory officials have pointed out that Blair in 1996 and Tory leader David Cameron in 2009 performed much better in local council ahead of national elections a year later.
Labor has 196 MPs but needs 326 seats for an overall majority in the House of Commons. Based on Friday’s results, that remains a tall order. “We all know there is no place to give up,” Starmer told Labor staffers. “Never confuse trust with complacency.”
A Labor revival in Scotland at the expense of a crisis-stricken Scottish National Party would help Starmer, but he may still need the Liberal Democrats to tear down parts of the Tory ‘blue wall’ in the south to help him cross Downing’s threshold Street. .
A hung parliament, with Starmer the leader of the largest party, is an obvious possibility based on the results of the local council. But such polls, with their low turnout, are not always a good guide to future national elections.
Lord Peter Mandelson, an architect of Blair’s first election victory, agreed the mood was “not yet 1997”, but said he believed the country was ready for change.
“I think the Tories presented Sunak as ‘clean skin,’ someone voters can look back on, forget about the Tory record and get things done,” he added. “There’s no evidence that voters are swallowing that.”
For SunakThe council’s results were a stark reminder of the task ahead if they are to win a fifth straight Tory general election victory and the extent of the damage done to the party’s brand by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.
“It was quite predictable,” said a cabinet minister. “In six months you cannot undo the embarrassments of the 18 months before the Prime Minister took office.”
Sunak faces criticism from the conservative right for failing to implement a program of tax cuts and planning reforms of the kind that Truss tried and failed to implement. That criticism will now escalate and some Tory MPs would like to see Johnson returned to No 10.
However, Sunak faces no serious threat to his leadership: polls suggest he is more popular than his party, running neck and neck in some surveys with Starmer on who would be the best prime minister.
But the results raise questions about the future direction of his government, with Tory MPs suggesting the Prime Minister will be asked to move to the right to rebuild public support.
The fallout will test his ability to keep the Tory coalition split, with Tory MPs in the south wanting lower taxes and fewer homes and their counterparts in the north demanding higher government spending and more homes.
A Tory backbench MP said the ‘difficult and disappointing’ results meant ‘many colleagues would be worried about their seats’ in the general election and would encourage Sunak’s critics to speak out.
The MP drew attention to an international conference involving right-wing politicians in London later this month, at which prominent Tory figures including Home Secretary Suella Braverman and former cabinet ministers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lord David Frost are keynote speakers.
“It’s quite significant,” the MP said. “What this shows is that there is a lot of energy in this part of the right. There has always been the libertarian right and then a conservative social right. The latter will grow in strength and noise.
In a sign that the battle for the soul of the party could turn resentful, moderate Conservative former cabinet minister Tobias Ellwood insisted a turn to the right would be ‘political suicide’ for the Tories, saying: ‘We we already see whispers from the right of the party seeking to exploit the poor results, in the hope of reviving its program.
Johnson’s name has been invoked wistfully in some quarters. David Campbell Bannerman, a former Conservative MEP, said the party should make gains rather than losses in local elections.
“You can change things with the right leadership and the right political offer and Rishi didn’t,” he added. Mocking Sunak as “robotic, a John Major 2”, he called for Johnson’s return to the helm.
Campbell Bannerman is chairman of the Conservative Democratic Organization, a group formed after Johnson was ousted from Downing Street and led by his allies.
Tory recriminations on Friday were also directed at frontline politicians who allegedly made unnecessary interventions that offered sound bites to headlines, including Veterans Affairs Minister Johnny Mercer, who said the results of the “terrible” local elections for the Conservatives.
But a Tory official said the party had simply run a lousy campaign, with Sunak and other cabinet ministers virtually invisible. “Workers just seem hungrier. I think we got used to winning,” they added.
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