Local elections 2023: Labour eyes power after Tory poll drubbing

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says his party is heading for Downing Street after the Tories were hammered in local elections across England.

The Tories have lost 48 councils and more than 1,000 councillors, exceeding their worst predictions.

Many Conservatives were furious at the scale of the losses, with some blaming Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Labour is now the largest party in local government, surpassing the Tories for the first time since 2002.

“The British public has sent a clear rejection of a prime minister who never had a mandate to begin with,” a Labour spokesperson said.

The Liberal Democrats had what leader Sir Ed Davey said was their “best result in decades”, taking control of 12 councils.

The Green Party gained more than 200 seats – their best-ever result at a local election, and gained control of their first English council, in Mid-Suffolk, although they were overtaken as the biggest party by Labour in Brighton and Hove.

Mr Sunak admitted the results were “disappointing” but said he did not detect “a massive groundswell of movement towards the Labour Party”.

Sir Keir claimed the “fantastic” results showed his party was well placed to oust the Tories from government in a national poll, due next year.

“Make no mistake, we are on course for a Labour majority at the next general election,” he told cheering activists in Medway, one of the councils his party has wrestled from the Tories.

Labour won control of councils in areas that will be crucial battlegrounds in the general election, including in Swindon, Plymouth, Medway, Stoke-on-Trent, and East Staffordshire.

The elections of 230 councils in England were the first big test of Mr Sunak’s electoral popularity since he became prime minister last year.

The BBC’s projected national vote share put Labour on 35%, the Tories on 26% and the Lib Dems on 20%.

Labour’s projected nine-point lead represents its largest over the Conservatives on this measure since the party lost power in 2010.

Sir John Curtice, the polling expert, said this year’s results were “only a little short of calamitous for the Conservatives”.

But the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, said the results suggested it would hard for either the Conservatives or Labour to be confident of winning a majority at the next general election.

He said there appears to be no appetite to move against Mr Sunak, after the Tories forced two prime ministers – Boris Johnson then Liz Truss – out of office last year.

Still, some Conservatives are reeling from the results, with its ousted councillors and critics of Mr Sunak venting their anger at the party’s performance.

As the big picture became clearer, there was disagreement among Tories over who was to blame for the loss of dozens of English councils and more than 1,000 councillors.

The elections came amid a dire economic backdrop in the UK, with high inflation contributing to the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades.

A figure loyal to Mr Johnson and Ms Truss told the BBC that Mr Sunak had “no option but to own these results”.

In a seething statement, the person said: “”He has been chancellor or prime minister for virtually all of the last three years and it was he and his supporters who forced Boris and then Liz out of office in order to install him in Downing Street.

“The old saying goes that ‘it is the economy, stupid’ that defines the choice voters have at the ballot box.”

Conservative Mayor of the Tees Valley, Ben Houchen, said the poor Tory performance is a partly a result of “the turmoil and upheaval of the last 12 months”.

He said Labour had been “successful in making this a referendum on the government”, adding “people don’t feel like they can vote for us”.

Nigel Churchill, a former Conservative councillor who lost his seat on Plymouth Council, said “I think we can safely say” his party would lose the next general election.

“The general public do not trust them at the moment,” he said.

But Education Minister Robert Halfon said this year’s election was always “going to be difficult” for his party.

He said internal party divisions “didn’t help” but claimed the losses were down to external factors, such as the cost-of-living crisis and problems in the NHS.

“Every government during the mid-term, especially a government that has been in power for 13 years, always suffers losses in local elections,” he said.

Other Tory MPs told the BBC that apathy – Conservative voters staying at home – was also a big problem for the party.

The Conservatives attempted to manage expectations before Thursday’s elections, with party chairman Greg Hands suggesting they could lose 1,000 council seats.

In contrast, Labour sought to downplay its chances of success, predicting gains of about 400 seats.

Most of the seats were last up for election in 2019, at a time when the UK was gripped by political turmoil related to Brexit.

The seats up for grabs were mostly on district councils, responsible for services including bin collections, parks, public housing and planning applications.

The rest of the elections were for a mixture of metropolitan and unitary councils – single local authorities that deal with all local services – and four mayors.

The elections were the first in England to see voter ID checks at polling stations. Some voters told the BBC they were turned away from polling stations, prompting critics to call for the ID rules to be dropped.