The Conservatives are on track to lose nearly 550 seats in the local elections in the worst performance since Sir Tony Blair led the Labour party in the Nineties, a survey predicted.
Labour will hold 3,500 council seats, a gain of more than 800, whilst 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 its flagship councils of Wandsworth and Westminster, as well as Barnet, Southampton, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Thurrock. Labour, however, could gain 16 councils in a six per cent swing to the party away from the Conservatives.
The findings, if replicated on Thursday, will be seen as a backlash by voters over “partygate”, for which Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have already been fined, as well as 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 Sue Gray’s report on “partygate” as the moment they could renew their push to force him from office.
Martin Baxter, the 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.”
The predicted vote share of 24 per cent for the Tories and 39 per cent for Labour would be the largest in local elections since 1996, when Sir Tony Blair led Labour.
It would be the first time since 1996, when Sir Tony led the Labour party and John Major was prime minister, 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 Liberal Democrats – giving Labour a lead of 15 per cent – would be the largest in local elections since the mid-Nineties before Sir Tony’s landslide victory in 1997.
However, the pollsters cautioned that both Lord Hague of Richmond and Lord Howard of Lympne, who secured big leads over Labour when they led the Tories at the 2000 and 2004 local elections respectively, failed to translate them into victories at subsequent general elections.
Prof Sir John Curtice, the veteran psephologist, said that the damage for the Tories could be reduced by the limited number of seats being contested in traditional heartlands outside London. He forecast the Conservatives would lose fewer than a handful of councils.
The controversy over allegations of pacts between Labour and the Liberal Democrats deepened on Monday night as an analysis by The Telegraph found Labour have stood aside for the Liberal Democrats 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 Liberal Democrats in 131 council wards in England, up from 14 wards in 2018. The data show that more than half of these wards were in the South East and South West.
Both Sir Keir Starmer and Ed Davey, the respective party leaders, have denied that there is any pact between the two parties, with the latter saying on Sunday: “There’s no pact now. There’s not going to be a pact in the future.”
The Liberal Democrats were also shown to have not put up candidates against Labour opposition in 711 wards, up from 617 in 2018, according to The Telegraph’s analysis.
It came after data show that Labour had cut its candidates in the Liberal Democrat target region of the South West by a third since 2018.
The number of council seats on offer on Thursday has also risen since 2018, with 21,352 this year when the country goes to the polls, according to Democracy Club.
Ed Davey denied that his Liberal Democrats entered into a pact with Labour to prevent the Tories from winning some seats.
In 91 of these seats, only one candidate has put themselves forward, depriving tens of thousands of voters of having their say.
Oliver Dowden, the Conservative Party chairman, told The Telegraph: “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 Liberal Democrats spokesman said that the suggestion that they were standing down candidates was “total nonsense”, claiming that the change in wards contributed to three per cent of seats. “Parties always allocate resource in pragmatic ways to win as many seats as possible,” he added.
Good
Good for us
[removed]
A sample of 1749 people from 201 councils? That’s less than 9 people per council, how can any conclusions from that not have massive error bars on them?
> The Conservatives are on track to lose nearly 550 seats in the local elections
Just FYI, there are roughly 20,000 local councillors in England alone.
They are just managing expectations down so that the losses won’t seem so catastrophic.
The telegraph is just the propaganda wing.
Let’s hope so
No way are the tories losing Westminster City Council (alas)
I hope so. I am cynical that people have learned their lesson yet and will keep voting for these scumbags…
Forget the headline; who the fork let Boris Johnson hold their baby! I wouldn’t even trust the buffoon to hold his breath!
Could it be the country is finally starting to wake the fuck up to smell the corruption?
[removed]
This is a biased survey intended to drum up the Conservative voters. Meh.
These articles exist to drive up turnout for the conservatives, if you want to get rid of your local tories then don’t get complacent and make sure to vote.
You fucking love to see it!
What happens if we vote all conservatives out of local councils but the central govt is still conservative controlled?
As in: why should they care? Doesn’t all the meaningful power lie in Westminster?
Not enough
I’m doing my part
Meanwhile the government will continue to gut council budgets (except, mysteriously, the Tory ones) and then blame those newly elected non-Tory councillors for the failure of local services.
The tory council candidate for one of the Sandwell wards came to campaign on our doorstep the other day. First lines out of her mouth were “Sandwell council is super corrupt and that’s the cause of all the areas problems”. To which I had to ask was that really that line she was leading with given the ridiculous number of scandals and cover ups in government and nearly 20 billion quids worth of tax payer money walking out of the country in fraudulent PPE or furlough scheme payments and she’s trying to complain one of the most deprived councils in the country is corrupt because they had their central grant payments cut?
Like the tories genuinely seem completely out of touch and delusional at the minute. Far more than normal.
Voting Greens in my area, they seem to actually give a hoot about the community.
I knew it would be the Telegraph or the Mail.
The Conservative propaganda sheet prophesies a catastrophic apocalypse. So when the actual, awful result comes in, it can be spun as a “better than expected” positive.
Honestly I’m still skeptical, Johnson could straight up poison the water supply and people would still turn out to vote for the Tories.
One can be so hard…
This gives me a very warm feeling
Boris there, with one of his many, many children
Do council seats even matter?
Thursday night viewing with a juicy chicken leg and a bag of popcorn
29 comments
The Conservatives are on track to lose nearly 550 seats in the local elections in the worst performance since Sir Tony Blair led the Labour party in the Nineties, a survey predicted.
Labour will hold 3,500 council seats, a gain of more than 800, whilst 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 its flagship councils of Wandsworth and Westminster, as well as Barnet, Southampton, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Thurrock. Labour, however, could gain 16 councils in a six per cent swing to the party away from the Conservatives.
The findings, if replicated on Thursday, will be seen as a backlash by voters over “partygate”, for which Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have already been fined, as well as 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 Sue Gray’s report on “partygate” as the moment they could renew their push to force him from office.
Martin Baxter, the 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.”
The predicted vote share of 24 per cent for the Tories and 39 per cent for Labour would be the largest in local elections since 1996, when Sir Tony Blair led Labour.
It would be the first time since 1996, when Sir Tony led the Labour party and John Major was prime minister, 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 Liberal Democrats – giving Labour a lead of 15 per cent – would be the largest in local elections since the mid-Nineties before Sir Tony’s landslide victory in 1997.
However, the pollsters cautioned that both Lord Hague of Richmond and Lord Howard of Lympne, who secured big leads over Labour when they led the Tories at the 2000 and 2004 local elections respectively, failed to translate them into victories at subsequent general elections.
Prof Sir John Curtice, the veteran psephologist, said that the damage for the Tories could be reduced by the limited number of seats being contested in traditional heartlands outside London. He forecast the Conservatives would lose fewer than a handful of councils.
The controversy over allegations of pacts between Labour and the Liberal Democrats deepened on Monday night as an analysis by The Telegraph found Labour have stood aside for the Liberal Democrats 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 Liberal Democrats in 131 council wards in England, up from 14 wards in 2018. The data show that more than half of these wards were in the South East and South West.
Both Sir Keir Starmer and Ed Davey, the respective party leaders, have denied that there is any pact between the two parties, with the latter saying on Sunday: “There’s no pact now. There’s not going to be a pact in the future.”
The Liberal Democrats were also shown to have not put up candidates against Labour opposition in 711 wards, up from 617 in 2018, according to The Telegraph’s analysis.
It came after data show that Labour had cut its candidates in the Liberal Democrat target region of the South West by a third since 2018.
The number of council seats on offer on Thursday has also risen since 2018, with 21,352 this year when the country goes to the polls, according to Democracy Club.
Ed Davey denied that his Liberal Democrats entered into a pact with Labour to prevent the Tories from winning some seats.
In 91 of these seats, only one candidate has put themselves forward, depriving tens of thousands of voters of having their say.
Oliver Dowden, the Conservative Party chairman, told The Telegraph: “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 Liberal Democrats spokesman said that the suggestion that they were standing down candidates was “total nonsense”, claiming that the change in wards contributed to three per cent of seats. “Parties always allocate resource in pragmatic ways to win as many seats as possible,” he added.
Good
Good for us
[removed]
A sample of 1749 people from 201 councils? That’s less than 9 people per council, how can any conclusions from that not have massive error bars on them?
> The Conservatives are on track to lose nearly 550 seats in the local elections
Just FYI, there are roughly 20,000 local councillors in England alone.
They are just managing expectations down so that the losses won’t seem so catastrophic.
The telegraph is just the propaganda wing.
Let’s hope so
No way are the tories losing Westminster City Council (alas)
I hope so. I am cynical that people have learned their lesson yet and will keep voting for these scumbags…
Forget the headline; who the fork let Boris Johnson hold their baby! I wouldn’t even trust the buffoon to hold his breath!
Could it be the country is finally starting to wake the fuck up to smell the corruption?
[removed]
This is a biased survey intended to drum up the Conservative voters. Meh.
These articles exist to drive up turnout for the conservatives, if you want to get rid of your local tories then don’t get complacent and make sure to vote.
You fucking love to see it!
What happens if we vote all conservatives out of local councils but the central govt is still conservative controlled?
As in: why should they care? Doesn’t all the meaningful power lie in Westminster?
Not enough
I’m doing my part
Meanwhile the government will continue to gut council budgets (except, mysteriously, the Tory ones) and then blame those newly elected non-Tory councillors for the failure of local services.
The tory council candidate for one of the Sandwell wards came to campaign on our doorstep the other day. First lines out of her mouth were “Sandwell council is super corrupt and that’s the cause of all the areas problems”. To which I had to ask was that really that line she was leading with given the ridiculous number of scandals and cover ups in government and nearly 20 billion quids worth of tax payer money walking out of the country in fraudulent PPE or furlough scheme payments and she’s trying to complain one of the most deprived councils in the country is corrupt because they had their central grant payments cut?
Like the tories genuinely seem completely out of touch and delusional at the minute. Far more than normal.
Voting Greens in my area, they seem to actually give a hoot about the community.
I knew it would be the Telegraph or the Mail.
The Conservative propaganda sheet prophesies a catastrophic apocalypse. So when the actual, awful result comes in, it can be spun as a “better than expected” positive.
Honestly I’m still skeptical, Johnson could straight up poison the water supply and people would still turn out to vote for the Tories.
One can be so hard…
This gives me a very warm feeling
Boris there, with one of his many, many children
Do council seats even matter?
Thursday night viewing with a juicy chicken leg and a bag of popcorn