Sometimes they do make it too easy. The news that one of the many, many Labour councillors so far elected is called Karl Peter Marx Wardlaw has been one of the rare sources of amusement from these local election results. Cue various suggestions that Labour haven’t changed.
Even if Karl Marx isn’t his real name, that one of Stockport’s newest representatives is a former Green is a sign of how far Keir Starmer has brought Labour in the last four years. He has purged his party’s left, recruited a new army of Starmtroopers, and convinced doubters he is on track for a substantial victory.
Yet even amongst the latest record-breaking by-election swings, pilfered councils, and dejected ejected Conservatives, there are a few underlying worries for Labour in the results so far. For one thing, Newcastle has just elected its first Conservative in 32 years. Oop the toon!
Labour’s failures to win Harlow and Walsall suggest Starmer’s charms aren’t universal. Still, one expects his stonking wins in Blackpool South, Thurrock, Hartlepool, and elsewhere across the country will balm any significant nerves. You can’t win them all, but he’s winning more than enough.
Nonetheless, I firmly believe that Labour will have a ghastly time in government. With no money to spend and a grim geopolitical inheritance, a whopping mandate will not help Starmer quieten backbenchers desperate to use the levers of power to implement socialism in one term.
Moreover, whilst Starmer might hope stripping his manifesto of anything that might upset Middle England will keep from spooking those apathetic or switching Tories currently delivering him gains, it will also alienate him from more left-of-centre of voters. Jamie Driscoll is a straw in the wind.
The Greens have more effectively wooed rural NIMBYs than converting voters en masse to Thunberg-ism, but are making steady progress, and can serve as an outlet for lefties currently upset with Labour. They had their worst South Tyneside result since 1978, losing seats to independents and Greens.
That was blamed on poor bin collections and children’s services. But Labour’s loss of Oldham to no overall control, via the election of seven new independents, has had a more Palestinian flavour. According to one outgoing councillor, “the Gaza issue” is losing Labour seats with Muslim voters.
The best-performing candidate was a first-time councillor who won two-thirds of the vote after branding herself “the voice for Palestine”. According to John Curtice, Labour’s support is down by eight points from last year in wards where more than 10 per cent of the population is Muslim.
That Labour’s Gaza policy was a problem for Muslim voters has been the case since October 7th and has seen a gradual softening of the party’s position on issues such as a prolonged ceasefire and arms sales. If a Labour government is forced to take a stand in the Middle East, history will repeat itself.
Britain’s Muslim population is much larger than at the time of the Iraq War. A political backlash would be much more significant, and much more worrying for the Labour leadership. As with discontented left-of-centre voters hoping for more spending, how will the Labour coalition cope with trade-offs in power?
Of course, the easiest way for a party to lose power is to do a bad job and be punished according to its record. For better or for worse, that is why the great Tory gains of 2021 are being turned into serious losses now. The corollary to that is that good leadership means re-election: paging Ben Houchen.
In the (still very unlikely) event that Susan Hall confounds the pollsters and beats Sadiq Khan, or at least runs him very close, it will show how easily an out-of-touch, tax-raising, and virtue-signalling-orientated Labour administration can be defeated by a clear and popular Conservative message.
As the man who took us to those stonking gains in 2021 once put it, “there an no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters”. In government, Labour will find surmounting Britain’s problems no easier than we have. How soon until the Tories are winning more Gosforths?