Tory relief as elections end in little change

Local elections in the UK have caused less political upheaval than was expected, as Labour fail to make any major gains in councils across the country.

David Sapsted

4 May 2018

To the relief of many – not least business chiefs who were dreading signs of English voters favouring a political upheaval at the time of crucial Brexit negotiations – English voters opted for the status quo in local elections.

Small changes in councils throughout the UK

With just over half the results in more than 4,000 wards declared by Friday lunchtime, the Labour Party had failed to make the dramatic gains it had been hoping for, the ruling Conservatives were relieved they had managed to hold on to much of what they had, and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) were all but wiped out.Results showed none of the big swings expected towards Labour, though the party managed to gain control of the council in Plymouth. But Labours’ big hopes of gaining control of councils of traditional Conservative strongholds in London, including Wandsworth and Westminster, came to nought.A gleeful Prime Minister Theresa May seized on this failure in a triumphant visit to Wandsworth on Friday. “Labour thought they could take control – this was one of their top targets and they threw everything at it, but they failed,” she said.

Labour fails to make major gains

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, maintained the party had made “solid” gains in the elections although most analysts said activists would be disappointed by the performance. The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, were buoyed by modest gains and managed to capture Richmond-upon-Thames from the Conservatives.Lewis Baston, director of research at the Electoral Reform Society, wrote in the Guardian, “The elections should be seen as a deflating but necessary learning experience for the Labour party, and a bullet dodged by the Conservatives. Labour has some genuinely impressive sets of results...however, most of the targets were missed – the hard ones in London and some arithmetically easier ones outside – and there was embarrassing slippage in the Midlands in particular.“The Conservatives can point to an achievement that is the mirror image of Labour’s salvage operation in the 2017 general election – retaining more than they can have expected to in places where their vote is trending downwards, such as wealthy inner London, while making headway in the places where they can expect to gain.“For the Conservatives, there must be a feeling that they have got away with it, and normal service is being resumed after the unexpected reverse in the general election. They would be unwise to take too much comfort from this, because these are volatile times.”

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Laura Kuenssberg, political editor of the BBC, commented, “Elections are about asking voters what they want and what they think. This time round, what the public has said back to politicians is: ‘We don’t want big changes yet’.“As things stand it looks like the Labour Party have made some gains in London, but small steps, rather than the dramatic strides some had expected. They had poured energy and the enthusiasm of their huge number of new activists particularly into London boroughs and that seems to have come up short.“There could well be some head-scratching in Labour HQ about how that can be explained. It is certainly too soon to suggest that we have reached ‘peak Corbyn’, as Conservative former education secretary Justine Greening has suggested.”For related news and features, visit our Enterprise section. Find out more about our upcoming Relocate Awards. Relocate’s new Global Mobility Toolkit provides free information, practical advice and support for HR, global mobility managers and global teams operating overseas.Access hundreds of global services and suppliers in our Online Directory

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