John Curtice warns of local election embarrassment for the Tories in May

England and Wales will head for the polls in 25 days’ time, when a plethora of local elections take place. They are likely to generate difficult headlines for Rishi Sunak. The Tories could

lose up to eight of the 16 councils they currently control – along with half of the 1,000 council seats they are trying to defend.

One reason why these elections will be difficult for the PM is simply that the Conservatives are so far behind in the national polls.

The party’s average rating is just 24 per cent, 19 points behind Labour. And although not everyone votes in local elections in the same way they would in a general election, parties that are

behind in national polls usually perform badly in local ballots.

Unfortunately for Mr Sunak, most of the local positions being fought over on May 2 were last contested three years ago, in 2021, when Boris Johnson was riding a wave of popularity after an

early rollout of the Covid vaccine.

Six points ahead of Labour in the polls, the Conservatives took Hartlepool off Labour in a parliamentary by-election and made a net gain of 13 councils and a little over 200 council seats.

Governments rarely do that well on local election day – but it means Mr Sunak is left with the task of trying to defend those gains now.

The most high-profile contest is in London, where Labour’s Sadiq Khan is seeking a third term as Mayor. The capital’s voters willalso be electing members of the London Assembly.

Elsewhere, there are elections for six metro mayor positions – including existing positions in Merseyside, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands – together with three newly created posts,

including Tyneside.

At the same time, all of England, apart from some of the areas electing mayors, together with all of Wales will have the chance tovote for the Police and Crime Commissioner for their local

police force. And a parliamentary by-election is also taking place in Blackpool South.

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The Conservatives currently hold two of the existing metro mayoral positions. However, Andy Street’s grip in the West Midlands is far from secure, though perhaps the mostly widely lauded

local government leader in Conservative circles, Ben Houchen, the Mayor of Tees Valley, might survive on the back of the substantial personal vote he registered in 2021.

In London, whatever hopes the party might once have had of unseating Sadiq Khan have melted away. Rather, it would appear at risk of recording its worst ever result yet in the election for

the London Assembly.

The Conservatives are defending no fewer than 29 of the 39 Police and Crime Commissioner posts being elected. The party could lose ten of them if the party does as badly as the polls

suggest.

Exceptionally, only around 70 per cent of the local council seats up for grabs were last contested in 2021. Most of the remainder were previously elected either last year or the year before,

when the Conservative performance was much weaker than in 2021.

Moreover, many of the councils where elections are taking place are in urban England, where Labour already has local control.

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In the Blackpool South by-election, the swing Labour need to take the seat from the Conser-vatives is at just over five and a half per cent, far less than the 15-point swing in the national

polls, let alone the swings of over 20 points recorded last autumn in Tamworth and Wellingborough.

At present much of the damage to the Conservatives’ standing in the polls is being inflicted by the anti-EU, anti-immigration, Reform party.

Although they could pose a threat to the Conservatives in Blackpool South, where two- thirds of voters backed Brexit in the EU Refe-rendum, outside London at least, it is uncertain how

widely the party will fight the local elections.

It is thought Reform will not fight the Police and Crime Commissioner elections, while the only metro mayoral election where they have a declared candidate is in Greater Manchester – their

standard bearer, Dan Barker, was originally meant to be standing for the Conservatives.

In last year’s local elections Reform fought just one in 13 wards. Mr Sunak will be hoping for a similar pattern this time – and that, as a result, many Reform supporters will back their

local Conservative candidate and ensure the headlines are not quite so bad for him after all.

● John Curtice is Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University

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