What the hell just happened? A look at the local election results to try and find out
Wow. You kind of have to start there, with a simple “Wow”.
Yesterday, we witnessed a seismic event in the history of British politics. Before yesterday, no one could be quite sure if Reform’s polling numbers were for real, for a start. At least, not real in the sense that they would translate into seats in a First Past the Post system. We got our answer on that: from zero seats in the contended areas, Reform picked up 677 new councillors. They won two mayoral contests and the Runcorn by-election. All of that put together as a package was beyond expectations.
To put this into perspective: Reform now run 10 councils across England while having 805 councillors nationwide. The Green Party, who have doggedly churned away at this sort of thing for the last couple of decades non-stop, have 895 seats at local level across the country, while controlling one council. This sort of stuff is traditionally hard - Reform just made it look piss easy.
Meanwhile, the Lib Dems did better than expected as well, gaining 163 seats at local level. The Greens did their usual muddle along, gaining 45 seats in total but leaving people asking again why they can’t ever seem to make a proper breakthrough, particularly in times that should favour them doing so.
Of course, it was an abysmal day for both of the main parties - but much worse for the Tories. Labour lost Runcorn and 186 seats, but at least there are mitigating factors for the governing party. They hung onto three mayors - not bad under the circumstances. Also, they are in government, and you don’t tend to do well in local elections when you’re in government as a rule. Labour can also tell themselves that they are taking the “tough decisions early” and thus will have to pay an electoral price for that.
Meanwhile, there are no excuses for the Tories. Against an unpopular government, they should have done reasonably well - or at least not apocalyptically poorly. The Conservative party lost a whopping, eye-watering 676 seats at local level this week. That’s unspeakably brutal for an opposition party. Will they learn from this? Early signs indicate: hell no, are you kidding? Kemi Badenoch was her usual graceless self in the face of defeat, rabbiting on about how Starmer will be a “one term prime minister”. Perhaps on a day when her party got buried, she could have been a bit more humble, me thinks. But that does not seem to be in the Badenoch playbook.
I explore all of these ideas further in the video above. Please check it out, like and subscribe to the channel, it all helps me and this Substack out a lot when you do. Thanks for reading and listening.
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RefUK's economic policies have become even more insane. They have backed a call to link the Pound to a Gold Standard, not as part of any international scheme but as a stand alone.
This was not as bad when the Empire had South African mines producing huge amounts of the stuff, but now Gold would have to be purchased in hard currency and imported to prop up the pound in isolation. It would cause a serious depression and would bankrupt the government.