Stand by for an unofficial Labour-Lib Dem coalition to oust Boris Johnson

When Tony Blair won his landslide 25 years ago, Labour canvassers could barely believe the positive response they got on the doorsteps of affluent voters. “People with gravel drives were coming over to us,” one recalled.

In the run-up to Thursday’s local elections, the same group of voters were cited by Conservative campaigners in the south of England. “The ones with gravel drives hate Partygate the most,” one MP said. It seems that, unable to vote for Boris Johnson, many stayed at home or switched their allegiance.

Unfortunately for Keir Starmer, this was not a 1997 moment. Disenchanted Tories did not flock in droves to Labour – despite Partygate, the cost of living crisis and even the prospect of a recession. “There is not the same buzz and momentum we had in 1995 or 1996,” one Starmer ally admitted to me.

Although the Tories’ belief that Starmer can’t win an election will be reinforced by Thursday’s results, all is not lost for the Labour leader. It is often said that he needs the same 10 per cent swing Blair secured in 1997 to become prime minister. But he doesn’t. He can still oust the Tories in 2024 on a much smaller swing, and head a minority government, since Johnson’s party would almost certainly have no partners in a hung parliament.

The bad news for Starmer is that he will need the tacit support of the rejuvenated Liberal Democrats to get into Downing Street. The good news for him is that he will get it.

The local elections provided further evidence of an unofficial electoral pact between those the Tories like to call the “two Sirs” – Starmer and Ed Davey. There won’t be a formal agreement, even though the centre-left group Compass, which campaigns for a progressive alliance, is calling for a Labour rule change allowing constituency parties to give the Lib Dems or Greens a free run.

Neal Lawson, the director of Compass, told me: “The [local election] results show there is an anti-Tory majority in the country but not a Labour majority. Labour can win in the cities, the Lib Dems in the suburbs and more rural areas – the progressive parties win together or lose apart.”

Starmer and Davey think a more formal deal would frighten off some Tory voters who would be prepared to vote Lib Dem but would not want to let Labour in by the back door. They will continue to deny there is an unofficial one but it will exist below the radar.

Labour and the Lib Dems will target their resources and energy in the areas where they have the best chance of beating the Tories. Such an arrangement in about 100 seats in 1997 helped Blair win his 179 majority. It happened in parts of the south on Thursday.

The Tories calculated that Labour fielded candidates in 61 per cent of seats in the southwest, down from 97 per cent when they were last fought in 2018. In the northeast, the Lib Dems contested 56 per cent of the seats, down from 78 per cent four years ago, while Labour fought 99 per cent.

The pact has also been evident in parliamentary by-elections in North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham, safe Tory seats won by the Lib Dems, and Batley and Spen, where Labour held on after the Lib Dems campaigned hard in “soft Tory” areas. The unofficial deal will likely operate in the next two by-elections in Tory-held Tiverton and Honiton, where the Lib Dems hope to be the main challenger, and Wakefield, where Labour has the best shot.

Crucially, it will happen at the general election. Yet it is not without risks. The Tories will warn voters not to sleepwalk into a “coalition of losers” or a “coalition of chaos”. Starmer and Davey playing footsie under the table will allow the Tories to warn that Labour would also need the support of the Scottish National Party to form a minority government and to claim Starmer would concede an independence referendum. Such claims damaged Ed Miliband more than he expected at the 2015 election.

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This gives Starmer a dilemma about whether to talk about what would happen in a hung parliament. Some Labour figures think a bit more honesty is needed. But this might play into the Tories’ hands and highlight that Starmer has not sealed the deal with voters in the way Blair had by this point in the 1992-97 parliament.

Johnson might breathe a sigh of relief that Labour’s performance in the red wall in the north and Midlands was not stronger on Thursday. Yet the Tories should be deeply worried by the Lib Dem advances in the blue wall in the south.

Starmer won’t shout it from the rooftops, but he is now completing Blair’s unfinished business to unite the anti-Tory forces. The council elections underline that a minority Labour government in 2024 is probably as good as it gets for him, given the weak hand he inherited after Labour’s crushing 2019 defeat. But it will be good enough for many voters if it ousts the Tories after 14 years in power.