UK politics feels like it's in a holding pattern: a prime minister widely regarded as hopeless but who nobody wants to replace, a divided left and a divided right none of whom can break out enough to unite the pack, and little energy to change anything.
It's quite interesting how the Starmer project has failed where its anglosphere centrist counterparts - the Carney and Albanese projects - are both proving very electorally successful right now, with Albo still winning the 2pp 55-45 even as Labor's first preferences slide and Carney on a staggering 46% of the vote with a widening lead over the Conservatives. A large part of this is the perception of energy and success/failure at basic politics: Starmer has not successfully pigeonholed his opponents, doesn't have the centrist-favouring voting system Albanese has, and has largely failed to look muscular on the international stage. I think a resurgent Labour in the UK could happen if Starmer goes, but he seems unwilling to go and nobody wants to wield the knife yet.
Anyway, it's local elections week! Including the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and a bunch of English counties, this is the last election cycle since the Conservatives were last looking like a viable party (seats that were up in 2022). The vote is going to be all over the place, but basic likelihoods:
- Labour and the Tories will both lose a lot of seats. I'd guess there could be 300-400 Tory losses and 700-800 Labour losses (Labour have more local seats up for election, though generally smaller ones, so the Tory county seats are in a sense more "valuable" per loss).
- SNP and Plaid Cymru will make gains thanks to Labour's failure. Both will be aiming to govern.
- Reform will win pretty big, 500-700 seat gains probable, but maybe not as big as last year. A good night for them would involve coming first in Wales, second in Scotland, and gaining at least three English counties as outright majorities. I suspect they might fall short of that.
- The Greens will be looking to make big gains from Labour. They only have 170 seats to defend in this round, and they will probably be targeting another 300 or so I'd guess. I think 250-350 would be a good night of gains for them given their national polling.
- The Lib Dems will mostly be focusing on the southern counties, though I've heard rumblings about unexpected advances elsewhere being possible. East Sussex, West Sussex, and Hampshire are all places where the party should see significant gains, though I doubt they'll be enough to take majority control in any of them. Suffolk and Essex will be more a matter of holding on against Reform, though Norfolk might provide some opportunities for pickups in the north and if the right-wing vote is more split than expected the it could let more liberals sneak in here and there. I think 250 seats of gains would be a good night for the party, though closer to 100 seems more likely to me.
So, I miscalculated some of the above numbers quite badly (as in I actually miscalculated because I got the number of seats up for election wrong) - so for what my estimates should have been basically double all the numbers above.
Anyway the actual results:
- Reform 1452 gains. If we do the aforementioned doubling this is fairly on par for expectations for them. They hit a few more speed-bumps than the previous year but still made huge gains.
- Labour 1498 losses, again probably around expectations but also ooft that is a big loss.
- Lib Dems 155 gains. Given my "double all the numbers" I'd say this was below par. The party won 170+ gains in areas where it held the parliamentary seat and took net losses elsewhere, so the LD "fortress" strategy is retaining its strongholds but the party is doing poorly elsewhere.
- Tories 563 losses. Actually towards the low end compared to what might have happened, they held onto a bunch more seats than they might have done in certain places and did surprisingly well in London. But still a horrible result for them.
- Green 441 gains. Good, but again, doubling my estimates, that's a bit below par.
Or in other words: Reform took about as many seats off Labour as expected but didn't flatten the Tories as hard as expected, the LDs held fairly steady, and the Greens made advances against Labour but not on the scale that they might have done.
And now everyone is looking to see if Andy Burnham can return to parliament and whether that will turn things around at all for a wildly unpopular Labour government.