Why Labour won all those council seats

I've been trying to get my head round the seemingly contradictory national and local election results. How, I wondered, could Labour have been hammered at the polls but still have gained 420 councillors and won control of some high profile councils?

In my part of London, for example, a Tory authority that was rated as the Best Achieving Council by the Municipal Journal, and which even some local lefties quietly conceded had been doing a good job, was re-taken by Labour. It was a similar story in many other London boroughs.

It wasn't until I was sitting in the pub last night that the penny dropped. Labour did even worse in the 2006 local elections than it did on Thursday.

All the London councils and many of the metropolitan ones were elected in 2006 when the share of the vote was:

Conservative - 39%

Labour - 26%

Lib Dem - 25%

These elections took place a year after the Labour government's re-election, by which time hostility to Tony Blair had reached a peak. David Cameron, on the other hand, had only been Tory leader for five months and was still very much in a honeymoon period with his party and the electorate. As a result Labour lost 319 councillors and 17 councils.

In comparison, Thursday was nowhere near as bad for Labour and not as good for their opponents. Labour's share of the vote was three points up, the Tories' three points down and the Lib Dems' two points down. Some of the Labour voters who, in 2006, abandoned their party for the others, or simply stayed at home, turned out for Labour again last Thursday. It was this that saved Gordon Brown from total disaster and helped Labour to regain many of its lost council seats.

It would be dangerous to read too much into these results. People vote differently when they know they are choosing a government and that then influences how they vote in any local elections that are held at the same time. Even so, neither the Tories nor the Lib Dems did as well last week as they did in May 2006.  

One thing is certain, though, Labour is down but it is not out. It might be a bit early to say that the Labour fightback has begun but local election successes are a good platform from which to rebuild the party's morale and its cadres of local activists. I said last weekend that writing off the Labour Party was premature. Lib Dem fantasies about replacing it as the main opposition to the Tories have proved to be just that.

Reading some of the discussion threads on Conservative-leaning websites, I get the impression that many Tory supporters think that a second election in a year or so will be a done deal, finally providing the party with its overall majority. I wouldn't be so sure. While it is true that the Conservatives can easily out-spend their rivals that might not be enough to guarantee victory. By then, Labour will have elected a new leader. That alone will attract back some of its lost support. The nightmare scenario for David Cameron would be an early election, called in the hope of securing a Tory majority, delivering yet another hung parliament.

Comments

[Richard]

Ethnics!!!

[Tom]

Yeah i agree with you here, the local election result in Barking where the Labour party wiped out the BNP is a prime example.
The gain in local seats is encouraging, it shows the party have strong grass roots.

If only the party can elect someone like Cruddas, who is surely a more electable option than John McDonell it would ensure that the New Labour project is finished for good and the party actually try to renew themselves. My concern is Milliband would just continue the New Labour project.