London: Theresa May led the Conservatives to a massive victory in the local elections after she reunited the Right-wing of the British electorate and obliterated Ukip and Labour.
The Conservatives gained 558 council seats by taking voters back from Ukip, which gained a solitary seat, but lost all 114 seats it contested. The Tory rise also saw Labour surrender 320 seats, a margin that, if replicated at next month’s general election, would spell a huge victory for May’s party. Andy Street, one of three new Conservative “metro mayors” to beat Labour in its urban heartlands, said his victory in the West Midlands signalled the “rebirth” of the Tory party.
Ben Houchen, who stunned Labour by winning the race to become the first mayor of Tees Valley in the North East, described the result as a “political earthquake”. It was the best performance by a governing party since 1974, and the first time an opposition party had recorded net losses for three council elections in a row.
Jeremy Corbyn said the result meant Labour faced a challenge on a “historic scale” if it wanted to win power. Ukip voters deserted the party in droves, drawn to the Tories as if by a magnet, as the party’s vote share plunged by 18 percentage points compared with the 2013 local elections. Consequently, the Conservatives increased their share by 13 points. Arron Banks, once Ukip’s biggest donor, pronounced the party “finished as an electoral force” and said it needed a “strategic bullet to the back of the head”.
Meanwhile, the anti-Brexit bounce that the Liberal Democrats had predicted for themselves failed to materialise as they lost 37 seats. Pollsters said that if the results were repeated on June 8, the Tories would win an overall majority of at least 48. The Conservatives’ projected national vote share based on the results would be 38 per cent, with Labour on 27 per cent — the lowest for any opposition at an election, the Lib Dems on 18 per cent and Ukip on just 5 per cent, compared with 23 per cent four years ago.
North of the border, the Tories gained 164 seats while Labour lost 112, becoming Scotland’s second-biggest party at a local level for the first time in decades. In a sign of the Tory surge, the party even had a councillor elected in Ferguslie Park in Paisley — the most deprived council ward in the country.
May said she would “not take anything for granted” as there was “too much at stake”. She once again reminded voters that the polls had been spectacularly wrong in the 2015 general election, the EU referendum and the US election and wore a look of concern rather than jubilation as she addressed the media on a visit to a factory in west London. Asked if she had dealt a fatal blow to Ukip, she said: “I think if we look at what’s happened in the local elections we have taken votes from across the whole of the political spectrum.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the Tories seeking re-election next month, said: “Mrs May has reunited the broad Tory family, which bodes well for the general election and will strengthen her hand in negotiations with the potentially obdurate European Commission.” Senior Conservatives accepted that complacency was now the biggest barrier to a landslide next month. Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said: “We still have a general election to win.” As well as winning the mayoral contests in the West Midlands, Tees Valley and West of England, the Conservatives picked up seats in the Welsh Valleys, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Labour lost control of Glasgow for the first time in 40 years, as well as losing control of councils in Wales, including the towns where Keir Hardie, the party’s founding father, and Aneurin Bevan, the creator of the NHS, once served as MPs. Across Wales the Tories gained 81 seats while Labour lost 62. Mr Corbyn claimed his party was “closing the gap” on the Conservatives, despite its vote share falling by four points since 2013. But he was accused of “cowardice” by members of his own party after he refused to accept blame for the defeat, leaving local activists and campaigners to carry the can.
The Telegraph Group Ltd., 2017