Woke up this morning to find that as expected Labour have lost seats and councils in this local election. This was to be expected as was Reform gaining seats and 2 councils. At the time of writing the Conservatives have lost 170 seats and 1 local authority. The Lib Dems gains so far are 247 seats up 39 and the gain of 2 councils.
Not all the counting is done yet and I expect from what I’ve seen that some big cities and some London boroughs will report their result later. No point in going too much into the numbers at this stage as counts are still going on.
What’s becoming clear though is that Labour are taking a battering in terms of seats lost. They’ve been afflicted by incumbent party syndrome where voters punish a party in national government at local elections. This has been compounded by public disgust at the entire Labour leadership class and their perceived contempt for ordinary working Britons. Whether this will force a change of leadership is difficult to predict but Labour’s problem is that they’ve got a dearth of top talent waiting in the wings. Unlike in the 60’s and 70’s there are no political titans left in Labour who could take hold of the tiller, now the potential leadership pool is shallow and the public don’t seem to like many of the alternatives to Starmer.
From what I’ve seen of the results so far we may be looking at a situation where Reform become the primary party for working class Britons with the working class abandoning Labour. That’s to be expected as Labour have for too long been a party of the wealthy, the public sector grifter, the members of the ‘lanyard classes’, the doley and Islam. If an entire class can be abandoned by the party that was set up expressly for them, then it is to be expected that that class will abandon their former party.
I’ll try and write more if I can during today about the results and I’ll attempt a longer form article on this issue on Sunday morning.