Blackpool verdict looks like electoral death sentence for Tories

Rishi Sunak may face a daunting toll of council seat losses that nevertheless understates his problems. Photograph: Tejas Sandhu/Sopa Images/Rex/Shutterstock

It was a grim night for the Conservatives and the pain seems likely to extend over the weekend, even if there may be moments of consolation from some mayoral elections.

The Blackpool South byelection was not a routine mid-term setback for the party of government. For a start, it comes well into the fifth year of the parliament and is therefore late-term. The swing is also much higher than normal for mid-terms. We have become used to swings of more than 20 percentage points and Blackpool South is the fifth Conservative seat to fall to Labour on such a large movement in the last year.

No previous parliament since 1945 has had more than two such wins for the main opposition. Blackpool’s verdict looks like an electoral death sentence for the Conservative government. While it is true that the turnout was very low (32.5%) this makes the disappearance of the Conservative vote all the more remarkable. Fewer people voted Tory in 2024 (3,218) than comprised Scott Benton’s marginal majority in 2019 (3,690). Labour polled well over half the vote; its victory owed nothing to the rise of Reform UK to threaten the Tories’ hold on second place.

Labour did extremely well in most of its direct contests with the Conservatives, gaining Redditch and Thurrock on big swings but falling agonisingly short in Harlow. The party is well ahead in a clutch of seats where the Conservatives were miles in front in the 2019 general election, racking up a 21-point lead in Plymouth Moor View and an 11-point lead in the new seat of Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

The swing so far seems to have been particularly high in leave-voting towns, confirming the message of Blackpool South and building on the progress Labour made in the 2023 local elections. It is very likely that the full results will point to Labour being able to win an overall majority in a general election.

In places where elected mayors were well established, the results deviated from the national swing, as they had done in 2021. Andy Burnham was triumphantly re-elected in Greater Manchester three years ago even while Labour languished; now it was Ben Houchen’s turn to win comfortably despite the bad news for the Conservatives, which included the defeat of his party running mate in the police and crime commissioner (PCC) election in Cleveland.

In the newly established mayoralties of East Midlands and North Yorkshire, the Labour victories were what the polls would suggest, as were several of the PCC elections, such as Lincolnshire and Norfolk. The voters take these regional and metro mayoralties seriously enough to vote on personal lines, a tribute to how quickly this new innovation (outside London) has taken hold.

These elections are mostly fought on generic party lines (unlike mayoral elections with high-profile incumbents, or indeed council elections). Cumbria, where the Conservatives defend several marginal parliamentary seats against Labour, swung by 22 percentage points to Labour between 2021 and 2024. The swing in Lincolnshire was 16 points, which is in line with the national polling numbers.

However, the local elections were not unalloyed good news for Labour. There were three types of contest where the party fell back. The most striking was among Muslim communities, which cost the party’s overall majority in Oldham and looks set to do further damage as votes are counted in places such as Rochdale and Pendle. Independents, Greens and minor parties (including George Galloway’s Workers party) picked up inner urban seats on huge vote shifts since last year, rather as the Lib Dems had done in the 2003 local elections after the invasion of Iraq.

The potential is there not only for a challenge in hitherto safe Labour seats with large Muslim populations, but also to chip away at Labour’s voting coalition in target seats including some of the famous “red wall” seats such as Dewsbury.

It is also not encouraging for the Labour mayoral candidates in West Midlands and London awaiting their results. Labour also lost ground in some highly educated and liberal areas, such as Exeter where the Greens gained; another piece of the Corbyn coalition is unwinding alongside the Muslim vote. The third set of disappointments for Labour came in several councils where the party was the long-term incumbent and was blamed for local mismanagement (a bin strike in South Tyneside was associated with one of the worst results) or for the effects of austerity. One can see these fissures widening if Labour were to form a government.

The results demonstrate how we no longer have the same party system for different levels of election. In Blackpool South, Labour dominated the centre-left vote, the Lib Dems and Greens both losing their deposit. The rightwing vote was divided almost evenly between the Conservatives and Reform UK, giving Labour a massive margin of victory. In the local elections. the pattern is different, with Lib Dems and Greens having local strongholds and dividing the centre left, while Reform’s limited participation in the local elections meant the Conservatives did not have to worry about vote splits outside a few localities such as Hartlepool and Sunderland.

The toll of local government seat losses for the Conservatives, daunting though it may be as the day’s counting proceeds, is understating the potential for a general election drubbing.