THE Tories are imploding. That is the story of local election results: hundreds of Conservative seats lost, and gains for Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens.
Keir Starmer says Rishi Sunak should take the hint and call a general election.
Pressure should be put on the Tories to do so, though many of their MPs may be keen to postpone, while they can, the reckoning they so richly deserve.
It’s traditional to talk of failing prime ministers as “lame ducks.” Sunak has more than once been compared to one, and there is no shortage of Tories saying the government has lost its sense of purpose.
Unfortunately that isn’t true. The Conservatives may be headed for disaster but they retain a big parliamentary majority, and they’re using it.
Repressive legislation has barely let up since 2019, as citizens’ rights to protest, strikes and free speech are ripped up.
More may be on its way: the unelected advisers on extremism and political violence have been lobbying for bans on protest outside Parliament, MPs’ offices and council chambers, and for tougher crackdowns on Palestine solidarity and non-conforming media. Time may be running low, but as we saw with passage of the disgraceful Rwanda deportations law, the government is not above fast-tracking highly controversial legislation. Even now a Bill to criminalise homelessness, as cruel as it is absurd, is making its way through the Commons.
So the Tories need to be stopped, and the sooner the better. The longer they are in office the worse things will get.
The case to do so is not weakened by the reality that Starmer’s Labour is on board with most Tory policy. Labour has been marching right in the wake of the Tories.
Its commitment to retain Tory anti-protest laws, its hints that it might even keep the Rwanda deportations, underline the need to stop the Tories passing yet more reactionary legislation Labour would simply keep. The attacks on British democracy are cross-party, and Starmer plays a key role in them, but he will find it easier to avoid reversing Tory laws than to pass new ones. So “Tories out!” remains a rallying cry across the left.
We should also note where Labour has done badly: particularly in areas with high Muslim populations. The loss of Oldham council is a case in point.
We will not know till tomorrow who has won the West Midlands mayoralty, but Labour has been briefing the BBC it expects a loss with a “senior party source” putting a typical imperialist, indeed racist, spin on losing votes to a Palestine solidarity candidate: “It’s the Middle East, not the West Midlands, that will have won [Tory] Andy Street the mayoralty. Once again Hamas are the real villains.”
The anonymous briefing oozes contempt for voters protesting at Labour complicity in genocide. But the lesson is that Palestine matters, and should encourage the No Ceasefire, No Vote movement to demand more from Labour representatives if they wish to avoid challenges.
Finally, Britain’s mass media tend to treat local elections as omens, which experts pick over to predict general election outcomes, rather than of significance in themselves.
That reflects the loss of real authority by councils, their lack of financial autonomy and limited ability to make a difference on the ground.
But we face devastating cuts to local services in coming months, in every corner of the country: and local government needs to start fighting back for the communities it represents.
We have seen too many sorry examples of cuts, punitive attacks on the poorest and even union-busting from Labour councils to imagine electing them means winning the battle.
A mass, grassroots movement to see off cuts and force the hand of councils and government alike, much like that being planned in Birmingham by the Brum, Rise Up! alliance of unions and campaigns, needs to start taking shape.
