The Rundown Podcast: What Can We Learn From These Local Elections?

5 min read3 hr

With much of England set to go to the polls next week, in this episode we’re previewing a highly anticipated set of local elections, with more than 1,600 council seats up for grabs, as well as six mayoral contests and a high-profile by-election in Runcorn and Helsby.

On the panel to discuss some potential electoral struggles for the unpopular incumbent Labour government, Reform UK’s high hopes, whether the Tories will take another pasting at the ballot box, and whether the Liberal Democrats are going under the radar, is Jonathan Ashworth, chief executive of think tank Labour Together and a former shadow cabinet minister.

Joining him is Max Wilkinson, Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham and his party’s spokesman on culture, as well as Scarlett Maguire, pollster and founder of Merlin Strategies, and Jack Sellers, a former Conservative special adviser who worked for former prime minister Rishi Sunak in Number 10.

With some council elections cancelled after Labour's shakeup to the way local authorities are governed, the remaining contests are largely in non-urban Tory-held areas, with Ashworth admitting “this is not the most competitive set of elections for Labour”.

But he added: "Nonetheless, any set of elections has an impact on a party's morale, it has an impact on their parliamentary troops.

“And the political significance of these elections will actually be what impact they have and what reverberations there will be amongst the Conservative Party.”

With Tory leader Kemi Badenoch herself already predicting the party could lose control of all the councils they currently hold, Ashworth said: “Although Tory politicians will spin that away on election night in the same way I used to spin on election night coverage back in the day, in their hearts, they will know they're in trouble.”

Sellers agreed that heavy Conservative losses has already been “baked in” to the coverage of next week’s elections, adding: “But I expect on the night the headline will be Conservatives get a demolishing, Labour pretty much stand still, and maybe Labour's bigger story will be the Runcorn by-election, if the polls go the right way there.

“The big opportunities on the night are for the Lib Dems and Reform and how much they actually deliver on what everyone is expecting.”

Nigel Farage’s right-wing party is expected to do well across England, having been top of several national polls this year, and is eyeing major victories in the Runcorn by-election and Lincolnshire mayoral contest.

Polling expert Maguire warned “the bar is actually quite high” for Reform to get a win both there and in the Hull and East Yorkshire metro mayor race, but added: If they were to get elected mayors, that actually does make a massive difference.

“If you think about the sorts of people that these metro mayors are, they have the potential to become real figureheads, with a very high media profile and a rallying point as well for local campaigning in the area, as well as a sort of new face for the party.”

She said Reform’s candidate in Lincolnshire, the former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns who defected to the party last year, could become a “female figurehead” for them, adding: “I do think it would actually make quite a big difference to the party, its projections, as well as its chances going forward in those surrounding areas.”

But while much of the focus is on Reform, there has been less coverage of the Lib Dems, who after their most successful general election result last year, are expected to make further gains in Tory-run councils next week.

Wilkinson was sanguine about the focus being elsewhere, saying his party is happy to rely on their strong local campaigning.

“All politics is local, as the old adage goes, and these are elections where on the doorstep people are talking about those local issues,” he told the podcast.

"Because where Lib Dems are incumbents as councillors and where we've got MPs, people quite like us, and we should be in a position where these elections are going to be pretty good for us.”

The Cheltenham MP said the party has an opportunity to do very well in his home county of Gloucestershire, as well as other traditional “shire” counties in Southern England where the Conservatives have historically been dominant.

Wilkinson joked that Badenoch had “brought us into the debate accidentally” with her comments last month that his party “want to be nice” but have “foolish ideas”, such as: “Oh, he fixed the church roof, you should be a Member of Parliament.”

He said: “I've never fixed a church roof myself, but I'm in favour of church roofs and of course, that is what's on the ballot paper, this election is what's going on in your local community.

“She also said we didn't spend enough time on Twitter. Well, I personally feel better off for having ditched Twitter a few months back, it’s good for my mental health, and it means I'm probably better able to be an effective MP for Cheltenham as well.”

The Rundown is presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot