It was “the jewel in Thatcher’s Crown”, as the British media nicknamed him: Wandsworth, a district in south-west London known for parks like Battersea and Tooting Common. The Conservatives won the council in 1978, a few months before Margaret Thatcher became UK Prime Minister. For nearly five decades it has been the conservative flagshipembracing his policies of low local taxes and privatization of some municipal services.
That bastion of the party is now in the hands of Labor after Thursday’s local elections. The Prime Minister’s Party Boris Johnson lost some 500 council seats in England, Wales and Scotland, including two other landmarks Londoners: Barnet and Westminster, the parliament district and Downing Street itself, which the Conservatives have controlled since 1964.Do these gains mean that Labor could take the next national election scheduled for 2024, after more than a decade in opposition and despite the fact that Johnson achieved an absolute majority in 2019?
Opposition Leader Sir Keir Starmerwho replaced Jeremy Corbyn in 2020, think they are on the comeback, which is “a big turning point” after “the rawest of 2019”. “We are back on track for the general election, showing that the hard change we have made in the last two years has made a big difference,” he said, speaking to some party members who applauded him at Barnet.
Nevertheless, Analysts question whether Johnson’s punishment has sufficiently benefited Starmer in the middle and north of England to guarantee him a victory at national level. Many voters have also chosen the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. LLabor has lost the important Hull council to Liberals in the North West of England. “For a party trying to regain ground in so-called Red Wall seats… these results were not exactly the progress they wanted,” John Curtice, professor of political science at the University of Strathclyde, told the BBC.
Even in the Barnet neighborhood, winning Labor councilor Barry Rawlings acknowledged that: “It’s not about us being great. Many conservative voters have not voted this time. They feel alienated from Number 10.”
Many Conservatives blame Johnson and other MPs from his party for poor local results. In Wandsworth, despite a drop in local tax, voters have expressed outrage at scandals such as MP Neil Parish watching porn in Parliamentsaid former consistory leader Ravi Govindia.
Before the local elections, Johnson received a ticket from the police for a party in Downing Street against the Covid laws that he himself introduced. “It’s not just ‘partygate’,” concluded John Mallison, Conservative Leader of the City of Carlisle. “It is a matter of honesty. Basically I don’t think people have confidence that the Premier can tell the truth.”
The result is a shift of seven percentage points to Labor since December 2019, calculates an analysis of votes made by The Sunday Times. The Labor Party won 35% of the vote; the Conservative 33% and the Liberals 17%, estimate Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, associates at Nuffield College in Oxford. “If these results were uniformly repeated in general electionsthese figures would leave a Parliament without a majority”, they point out.
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