Yesterday we contemplated the disaster that has overtaken the Australian Liberal Party as a result of its dalliance with the far right. But it’s not the only (nominally) centre-right party with this sort of problem. Last week’s local elections in Britain illuminated the troubles facing that country’s Conservative Party and, just possibly, may have given it some hope of finding a road out.
The headline result was grim. The far-right party, Reform, won 1,454 of the five thousand-odd local council seats being contested, well ahead of Labour’s 1,068. They were followed by the Liberal Democrats on 844, the Conservatives on 801 and the Greens on 587. But Labour still controls the larger number of councils: 28 (down 37), as against 15 for the Lib Dems (up three), 14 Reform (up 14), nine Conservative (down eight) and five Green (up five), leaving 65 where no one party has control (up 23).
Since it’s only a selection of wards or councils voting each year you can’t directly infer a national trend. (Wikipedia will give you a gloriously complicated explanation of just who was voting.) But the BBC’s extrapolation to national vote shares (not counting Northern Ireland) comes out at Reform 26%, Greens 18%, Conservatives and Labour each 17% and Lib Dems 16%. That’s very similar to the most recent opinion polling, although slightly more encouraging for the Lib Dems.
It hardly needs saying that results like that, if repeated at a general election, would produce a dog’s breakfast of a House of Commons – not to mention a bonanza for tactical voting. But since there’s no election due for another three years there’s no point fixating on the precise numbers. What matters is what they say about the predicament that the different parties face.
Labour’s problems have been getting most of the attention recently. Prime minister Keir Starmer is fearsomely unpopular and most pundits think that his days are numbered, although his replacement is not yet obvious. But leadership can only do so much. Labour’s main problem is structural: it is facing a future in which it cannot win a majority without help from the Lib Dems or the Greens, and it is in denial about that fact.
The Conservatives, however, have an equally serious problem. They have been trailing Reform in the polls since the beginning of last year and have yet to settle on a strategy to deal with the situation. They know, just like Australia’s Liberal Party, that the far right is out to replace them, but they can’t help trying to imitate its policies. As a result they are unable to answer basic but pressing questions about the relationship: Will they pursue some sort of electoral pact with Reform? Would they govern with it in coalition? What actual policy disagreements do the parties have?
First-past-the-post voting makes things more volatile, as a party’s vote can collapse suddenly if its voters decide it’s not in a winning position. (As happened to Reform, then called the Brexit Party, in 2019.) But it does give the Conservatives one advantage; they at least don’t have to have the argument about preferences that we’ve just seen in Australia. Preferences come down to the hard reality of marks on a how-to-vote card, but the questions about future co-operation with Reform can be fudged indefinitely – or at least until the election results are in.
Perhaps because of that greater capacity for ambiguity, the Conservatives can see some hopeful signs in last weeks results. They might be trailing Reform by nine points, but a year ago that was 15 points. For much of last year Reform was polling around 30%; while it’s still in the lead it no longer looks unstoppable. And Starmer’s woes inevitably reflect well on the Conservatives, who are, after all, the official opposition.
So Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, although she often looks out of her depth, seems to be in slightly better shape than Angus Taylor. But these days that’s a very low bar.
The World is Not Enough 