Analysis: Local election results

Now have a look here. Here we have the scoreboard where we are with all of these results so far. As you can see on the bottom left there, 51 so far of these councils counted quite a lot of red there. And remember, at the start of this process there were rather a lot of blue, rather a lot more blue than you can see there. In particular. Let’s have a look at a couple of these councils here. For instance, Rushmore and Heinburn. So Heinburn. That was Labour gaining control there. But just look at the numbers. So Labour up for the Conservatives down five and the Green Party up one as well. It’s another one of these narratives here beneath the surfaces, the Green Party really doing quite well and perhaps outperforming the Lib Dems for instance. I mean we haven’t really seen we’re we’re gonna, you know in the in the next few hours actually get some of those southwest seats where it’s gonna be very interesting to see how the Lib Dems do. But then in Rushmore, just look at this. I mean this was not somewhere which actually in the last 50 years the Labour Party have had control of Rushmore. We’re talking here about a seat down on the M3, so in the South and kind of Farnborough area and look at this red line. OK, so we’re going back to 1995 here and just look throughout that period, even in that post late Tony Blair, New Labour period, this red line, the Labour share here was always low and it’s just climbed up in the last few elections and there it is now with the Labour majority in Rushmore, Rushmore. So it’s just, you know, we’re seeing here actually kind of unprecedented results and that is showing you underlining the national swing. But there are other stories going on at the same time. For instance in some of these councils where it looks on the face of it, like Labour have obviously continued to control Blackburn, the number of Labour seats has gone down and Labour have lost in Oldham as well. And part of the explanation there might be or it does look like if you look at the share of the votes, OK, and the change in the share of the votes based on the percentage of Muslim population within the different wards. So the higher the Muslim population in each ward, the further we go along here. And if you look in areas where there’s relatively low Muslim population, Labour are gaining in areas where there’s high Muslim population, So over 5% Labour are losing. And part of what you’re seeing there looks like a backlash against the Gaza policies that Keir Starmer and David Lammy have been espousing. But when you look at the big picture here, so taking all of those results, this is really the thing to to to remember here all those numbers that you’re seeing at the bottom of the screen, they are comparing the results that we’ve got this time around with 2021. That’s when most of these seats were being contested last time around. OK, and so compared with that, that was a really strong election, strong local election for the Conservative party. Compared with that, the Conservatives down very sharply indeed. Labour up. But here’s the interesting comparison. Compared with 2023, the Conservatives are down a bit, so it’s not good for Rishi Sunak at all. And remember 2023, that was a good election for the Labour Party, not good for the Conservatives, terrible for the Conservative Party, but the Labour Party down a little bit as well. And that’s going to be something that might concern Keir Starmer. That was actually in positive territory the last time we looked at it. So that’s going to be an interesting one to see just how that evolves. Because it’s not just a comparison with 2021, is it? It’s the comparison with last time when Labour was polling at, you know, with a 20 point gap on the Conservatives.