LOCAL elections underlined the extent of the Tory collapse, but also Labour’s weaknesses.
Sky News’ Professor Michael Thrasher found the results pointed to Labour being the largest party after a general election — but failing to win a majority.
The projection rests on the vote shares being replicated evenly at a general election. And it necessarily ignores areas which didn’t vote last week, including Scotland, where the Scottish National Party’s troubles are likely to benefit Labour.
Even so, this is no ringing endorsement of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. It picked up well under half the seats the Tories lost. Everyone did well against Tories — Lib Dems, Greens, many Independents.
The clearest regional cause of poor Labour performance is the party’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Heavy losses in areas with large Muslim populations — a BBC analysis found a 21 per cent fall in Labour’s vote share in such wards compared to 2021 — indicate real anger, as does the very strong third place for a pro-Palestine independent, Akhmed Yakoob, in the West Midlands mayoralty. Labour won that, but only by a few hundred votes when Yakoob took almost 70,000 and 11.7 per cent — and its actual share of the vote fell, just by less than the Tories’.
For all Wes Streeting’s claims the party is “calling for a ceasefire now,” it has not pushed ministers to punish Israel for ignoring the UN security council vote ordering one, demanded an end to arms sales, or British support for the genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
So now is the time to press demands. Election campaign co-ordinator Pat McFadden says Labour will work to rebuild trust and claims “a better future for the Palestinian people would be a really high priority for Labour” in government.
So prove it: demand an arms embargo, call out the wave of repression against Palestine solidarity activists, condemn the government bid to ban the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Reverse Starmer’s decision to drop Labour’s policy of recognising a sovereign Palestinian state if elected, one disgracefully taken as Palestinians are being killed in their thousands. Without these concrete steps, there is no reason to give Labour’s leaders the benefit of the doubt.
Besides Palestine, Labour’s 35 per cent share is nothing to crow about. It polled the same in 2018’s locals, a year before a heavy defeat.
Given near-universal rejection of the Conservatives, this suggests a lack of enthusiasm for the main electoral alternative.
And no wonder. People are sick of the way things are — yet Labour’s offer can be summed up as “more of the same.”
That’s not to deny the value of the few remaining left policies — rail renationalisation, or the new deal for workers, though the latter is now an active battleground. Unite’s Sharon Graham is right to threaten consequences if Labour continues to retreat on it — unions will get nothing through mute loyalty.
But on a wider range of issues, on public services, welfare, foreign policy — Labour will change nothing, and it is struggling to mobilise voters with the non-offer.
That, too, is an opportunity to make demands. Britain’s Establishment has rewritten the history of Labour’s last defeat: blanking out the appeal of socialist policies demonstrated in 2017, and ignoring the complete dominance of the 2019 election by Brexit to blame those policies.
But the polls are consistent. A majority want public ownership not just of rail, but of mail, water, energy. Most want higher taxes on the rich and corporations. Most want more investment in public services, especially the NHS.
Labour has not turned its back on all that to make itself electable, but to cosy up to the corporate crooks running Britain into the ground.
Unions have the reach, particularly if combining with the emerging anti-cuts campaigns at local level, to make who owns Britain an election issue too.
