Today is a bleak day for the Labour Party.
Yesterday, England held one of its biggest ever batches of elections. Though ballots in races for local councils, police and crime commissioners and metro mayors are still being counted, the results for Labour look set to be even worse than the bad results that leader Keir Starmer was preparing the party for.
Most councils were electing only a third of their councillors yesterday, meaning dramatic shifts were hard to achieve. But the Conservatives have nonetheless seized control of councils that have been run by Labour for most of their history, in the North, Midlands and South. And Labour has also seen its vote eroded by the Lib Dems and the Greens.
The Tories took Harlow, which Labour had controlled for the past nine years, and most of the past 40, but where it lost six of the seven seats it was defending.
In Nuneaton and Bedworth, Labour lost 11 seats to the Tories, who took control of the council for the first time since 2008.
In Redditch, the Tories won all nine of the seats up for grabs. Until 2018 Labour controlled the council – the party now has just four councillors left out of 29.
In many of its heartlands, Labour saw its majorities eroded from all sides. In Sunderland, Labour lost nine of the 22 seats it was defending, five to the Tories and four to the Lib Dems on huge swings. In Oldham, where Labour controlled 15 of the 20 seats up for grabs, it lost three to the Conservatives, two to independents, and one to the Liberal Democrats. In South Tyneside, Labour lost seats to two Greens, one Tory and an independent. In Labour-held Newcastle-upon-Tyne the party lost two seats, including its leader, to independents.
In Stockport the Lib Dems overtook Labour to become the single biggest party. The Liberal Democrats also surged in Cambridgeshire, edging the Tories out of overall control. In Sheffield, where results have just started to come in, the Labour leader has been toppled by a Green candidate on a massive swing.
The Conservatives also won overall majorities in Dudley and in Northumberland, both of which they previously ran as minority administrations, and strengthened their minority-administration’s grip on Derby, which was Labour-run as recently as 2016.
The best news so far for Labour has come from Gateshead and Rochdale, both previously Labour-controlled, where the party has managed to hold onto all its seats and overall control, and in Colchester and Southend where Labour managed to hold onto its seats and deny the Tories the chance to retake either council from current Lib/Labour/Green coalitions.
But there were very few signs of gains anywhere, and Labour made no inroads in Thurrock, where it’d claimed to be eyeing the ‘Blue Wall’ council.
So what now for Labour?
Labour’s response to the dire results would appear to be more internecine battles, with arch-Blairite Lord Mandelson and shadow communities secretary Steve Reed rolled out on the airwaves as a bulwark against grumbles from the Left.
The biggest danger for the party might not be the loss of councillors and vote share – damaging though that is to its presence in communities and its ability to campaign and recover in future.
It’s that – as one party insider told me yesterday – “the movement has moved on”.
Activists are in despair, she added, at how the party has “wasted the last two years” on backwards-looking internal battles that are an “utter turn-off”, particularly given the urgency of the mounting, interlocking crises of climate, racism and policing, as well as the economic and social fallout from COVID.
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Caroline Molloy | Radio Free (2021-05-07T15:00:54+00:00) Is this the beginning of the end for Labour?. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2021/05/07/is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-labour/
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