Where do the local elections leave the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems?

Where do the local election results in England leave the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats? Rishi Sunak’s internal critics have predictably seized on the voters’ first verdict on him as prime minister as evidence that his project is not working.

Although the results are worse than the Tories hoped, Sunak’s critics are wrong: he is turning the ship round, reducing Labour’s lead in the opinion polls from 20 to 15 points. Voters can hardly be blamed for punishing the Tories for the chaos of the Johnson and Truss regimes; they were not really punishing Sunak.

But inevitably, his project is a slow process – and probably too slow with a general election coming next year. That is why these results will provoke the party’s first wobble under his leadership. Sunak will come under pressure to change course rather than doing what he is doing today – sticking doggedly to delivering his much-trumpeted “five priorities” on the economy, NHS and stopping the boats.

The Tory right will mobilise at two conferences in the coming weeks – one on the US brand of “national conservatism” and the other staged by the Conservative Democratic Organisation, whose chair David Campbell Bannerman said today it was not about “Bring back Boris” but gave the game away by adding that recalling Boris Johnson should not be ruled out.

However, those Tories who still dream of toppling Sunak should forget about it because it is not going to happen. “We cannot possibly change leader again before the election,” one former cabinet minister told me. “Even if we had ended up with zero councillors, it was never going to happen.”

Labour did well in the local elections but perhaps not quite as well as it privately hoped. Keir Starmer can claim he is on track for Downing Street and he won’t face the same public criticism from within that Sunak does. The party can point to progress in key target seats at the general election.

“We are gaining ground in the right places. I don’t see how the Tories can come back from this,” one Starmer ally told me today. Although there were no local elections in Scotland, the SNP’s crisis has boosted Labour’s prospects of making gains there next year, reducing the number of seats it would need to win in England to gain power.

However, the local results appear to confirm a picture of Labour mainly benefiting from anti-Tory sentiment rather than winning positive support. This is not 1995, when Labour under Tony Blair was doing better than Starmer is today. After 13 years of Tory rule, Starmer has not yet managed to deploy the powerful “time for change” weapon at his disposal.

Voters need a tangible idea of how Labour would make their lives better and Starmer needs to address their doubts about him. Recent focus groups by More in Common show Starmer’s performance has improved over the past two years, though it is “a shift from negativity to indifference”.

Being “not Corbyn” is his main positive but there are recurring questions about what he stands for and voters see him mainly as someone who opposes and criticises the government.

Privately, Labour insiders cheered the strong performance by the Lib Dems in Thursday’s elections because they are eating into the Tories’ natural support. So Ed Davey’s party can play a vital role in ousting the Tories next year as voters warm to tactical voting, which was an important factor in Blair’s 1997 landslide.

Davey won’t admit there is even an informal anti-Tory pact with Labour as this would frighten off some wavering Tory supporters who don’t want to aid Labour. But crucially, there is an understanding between Davey and Starmer that they will not rain on each other’s parade in seats where one has a chance of defeating the Tories. That should worry the Tories.

Overall, the local results suggest Labour needs to do better to be confident of winning an overall majority next year. A hung parliament is under-priced. If that happened, Labour would probably be the largest party but even if the Tories prevented that, they wouldn’t have any potential partners.

So Starmer looks very likely to become the next PM, but we might be heading for a minority Labour government in which Starmer did not do a formal deal with the Lib Dems and SNP but relied on their support in key votes.

The uncertainty that scenario would bring would worry some voters (and the business world) so the urgent task for Starmer now is to create the sense that a sea change is inevitable, as Blair managed before the 1997 election. It is not there yet.