The British Conservatives had few illusions about the outcome of the local elections on Thursday, May 4 – 8,000 municipal councilors were renewed across England. However, they did not expect such a rout: Friday evening, May 5, the count was still not over in the 230 councils (municipal or district) concerned, but the extent of their losses was already much worse than the one they feared, with more than 1,050 elected seats lost against, at least, 527 net gains for the Labor Party and a notable breakthrough by the Liberal Democrats.
This election was important for two reasons: it is the first electoral test for the conservative Rishi Sunak, who arrived in Downing Street in October 2022, and it is the last before the British general election of 2024. His main lesson? The Prime Minister has certainly succeeded in recent months in putting an end to the chaos of the Johnson and Truss eras, he has put an end to the civil war within his political formation, signed an honorable compromise with the European Union on the Northern Ireland, he conducted himself as a capable and responsible leader. But that was not enough for voters to forget the lies of Boris Johnson and the catastrophic economic policy of Liz Truss.
On Friday, Rishi Sunak acknowledged that the results were “disappointing”, but he refused to change course. At the beginning of the year, he set himself five priorities: curb inflation (still at 10% over one year), reduce waiting times for care at the public hospital (the NHS), relaunch the growth, intercepting the arrival of migrant boats crossing the Channel and reducing public debt. These promises are slow to materialize or have seemed too vague to voters to give their vote to the Tories.
These elections were partial – not all English town councils were up for renewal, Scots and Welsh did not vote, Northern Irish will not vote until May 18. It is therefore difficult to extrapolate from these results.
But the British right has nevertheless significantly retreated in this famous “red wall”, the Midlands and the north of England, lands traditionally favorable to Labour, which Boris Johnson had managed to conquer in the general election of 2019 with his effective message “Get Brexit Done” (“let’s get Brexit done”). Labor regained, for example, the majority in the council of East Staffordshire, in the West Midlands, or managed to win the town hall of Middlesbrough, in the northeast of England.
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