Labour is bracing for a battering at the upcoming local elections in England despite signs that Sir Keir Starmer’s position in the party has improved.
While the party has long anticipated a difficult election, the scale of the expected losses has been laid bare by polling experts who told The i Paper Labour is set to shed thousands of seats in a “valley of electoral death”.
Reform UK is predicted by most experts to pick up hundreds if not thousands of council seats, with the Greens also making inroads at the expense of the ruling party.
Labour is even likely to make major losses in London, long the party’s safest stronghold, with every opposition outfit confident of making gains in the capital.
Starmer’s party is languishing in opinion polls which have shown Reform in the lead for more than a year while the Greens are now in second place according to some surveys.
Despite questions over the Prime Minister’s future, Labour MPs have recently signalled they are backing away from launching a challenge to Starmer – partly because of the global chaos sparked by the war in Iran.
But they are still preparing for a disastrous set of results at the elections on 7 May. Labour is widely expected to come third in the Welsh Senedd, which the party has controlled for as long as it has existed, and to fall far short of winning the election for the Scottish Parliament.
Labour also holds a majority of the roughly 5,000 seats on borough, district and county councils being contested across England – and is forecast to lose well over 1,000 of them, possibly as many as 2,000.
Veteran election-watchers warned that with both the traditional main parties scoring under 20 per cent in the national opinion polls, the political picture will be highly fragmented and it will be hard for Labour to make a last-minute push to take on both Reform and the Greens.
‘Valley of electoral death’
Rob Ford of the University of Manchester told The i Paper: “I have been calling it the valley of electoral death – cannon to the left of them, cannon to the right of them. They are going to get swept away. There is really no way of managing expectations down enough to stop it from being a massive shock for the party.”
He added: “In terms of the two-party system, this is going to be the biggest change election that we have probably ever seen.”
Chris Hopkins from polling company Savanta said: “Labour are going to take a pasting and that is not going to change. The last time these councils were up was 2022, Labour were polling significantly better if not twice as well as they are now. It really is like the grim reaper is going to be knocking on the door for hundreds, if not thousands, of councillors.”
Both Reform’s Nigel Farage and the Green Party’s Zack Polanski have managed to outshine the Conservatives and Labour with their populist messaging aimed at alienated voters, he added.
“These voters don’t necessarily want left-wing change or right-wing change, they just want change,” he said. “You have two opposition leaders who are able to promise the earth and they both say that things don’t have to be this way.”
Labour to take ‘one hell of a battering’
Robert Hayward, a Tory peer and election expert, predicted that “Labour are going to take one hell of a battering from Reform in the North”. In most of the seats up for election, Reform has never previously competed as a viable force – leading to forecasts that it will be able to pick up as many as 2,000 new councillors.
Last year’s set of local elections, largely in different areas to those which are up this year, saw Reform make major gains – mostly at the expense of the Conservatives.
Some Tories now see London as the unlikely springboard for a revival: the party is optimistic about winning control of Westminster, Wandsworth and Barnet, which it lost to Labour four years ago. One campaigner said: “You knock on people’s doors and they say ‘anyone but Labour’ – it used to be ‘anyone but Tory’!”
Hayward added: “Labour losses to the Conservatives in London, I think there will be some – I say as a Tory, touching wood.”
Reform is less focussed on the capital, although it could make gains in some suburban boroughs. But Labour is nonetheless expected to lose ground, thanks to the rise of the Greens and local campaigning from the Liberal Democrats in some areas.
Hopkins said: “London is looking more and more like a microcosm of the country. When Labour was in opposition and struggling, London was its glimmer of hope – now it is in government and struggling, it doesn’t seem to be a glimmer of hope.”
And Ford warned: “Everyone there knows that if we are not happy with the Labour Government – and a lot of people are not – they can just vote Green, and they are going to get swept away.”
Greens target London
The Greens are targeting control of councils including Hackney, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark, along with other urban areas outside London such as Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester and Norwich. The party is keen to show it can move beyond its previous base of liberal, university-educated voters and reach a broader audience.
Labour insiders privately expect that in London, where they currently hold 21 borough councils, they will end up with no more than half a dozen after this year’s elections – although the picture is muddied by the rise of multi-party politics which make results less predictable.
A Labour source said: “Local elections are never easy for governments mid-term. But we’ll be fighting for every vote, because we’re the only party with a proper plan to fix the NHS, help families with the cost of living, and restore pride in our communities.”
Hence then, the article about labour on course for pasting in may elections with reform its biggest threat was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Labour on course for ‘pasting’ in May elections – with Reform its biggest threat )
Also on site :