ANDREW FISHER has had a busy couple of days, as the clip from LBC above demonstrates, as he has been keeping close watch on the local election results. Here, he considers what they might mean for Croydon
The overnight local election results from across England only told us something that the opinion polls have been telling us for months: voters are unhappy with the Labour government they elected less than a year ago, and they are even less enamoured with the Conservative opposition.
Jolly poor show: Croydon Labour had a bit of a jolly to Cambridgeshire and Peterborough yesterday. Not that it did the candidate, Anna Smith, much good
It could have been even worse for the Conservatives if more county council elections had gone ahead. Several were postponed while negotiations take place over the establishment of new unitary authorities.
One of the places spared electoral delights yesterday was neighbouring Surrey. As at the general election in July 2024, had the scheduled county council and district council elections gone ahead in Surrey, the Conservatives would have been under threat from both the Liberal Democrats and Reform.
Across England, the Conservatives have shed votes in massive numbers, losing control of county councils including Derbyshire, Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Devon, where they were pushed into joint third place (with the Greens) by both the LibDems and Reform.
It’s hard to overstate how badly the Conservatives have done – but one statistic stands out: they have lost two-thirds of all the councillors seats that they were defending.
‘Political extinction’: Sky’s politics expert Beth Rigby gives her verdict on the Tories’ performance
With the Labour government deeply unpopular and the main opposition going backwards, it is surely only a matter of time before the Conservatives dump their abject leader, Kemi Badenoch.
Two-party politics looks dead in England, with the Labour and Conservative votes crumbling. We now live in an era of five-party politics – with Reform, the Greens and LibDems all breaking up the duopoly that has dominated British politics for a century.
For Labour, the loss of the Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election to Reform on an 18% swing against them was the lowlight, with the BBC’s correspondent Henry Zeffman reporting that one of the party’s activists told him, “On every door it was the same story — winter fuel and PIP.”
‘Disastrous plight’: the Grauniad’s Owen Jones was not holding back on his verdict on Labour’s losing night
Loyal Labour government ministers were wheeled out today to parrot the same script – that they are “listening”, that they “understand voters’ frustrations” and will “go further and faster”.
I’m not sure they have been listening, or understanding, as the people raising their dislike for cuts to pensioners’ winter fuel payments or disability benefit cuts weren’t urging Labour to go further and faster. They want Prime Minister Keir Starmer to stop and do a U-turn.
Clinging on to the executive mayoralties in North Tyneside and Doncaster gave Labour the vestige of some relief – until the victorious Doncaster Mayor, Labour’s Ros Jones, launched a scathing broadside on the party leadership, highlighting again the unpopularity of winter fuel and disability benefit cuts.
A trend that started when Labour won a parliamentary landslide at last year’s General Election on less than 34% of the vote is continuing as voters turn away from both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in ever greater numbers.
Scathing: the re-elected Labour Mayor of Doncaster, Ros Jones
In some cases that is helping the major parties.
Labour held the West of England mayoralty on just 28% of the vote – lower than the 33.4% they won with in 2021. Likewise, the Conservatives took the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoralty with only 28.4% – way down on the 40% they won with in 2021. Reform, Labour and the LibDems were all hovering around 20% each.
What used to be a two-way split in most voting areas is now a fractured voting pattern, with four or five political parties all winning similar numbers of votes.
Such quirks should provide little comfort to the strategists in party HQs. After a century in control, the British political duopoly is looking vulnerable to collapse.
What does all this tell us about our own corner of south London? Not a lot. Most of these votes cast yesterday were in rural areas, and those that weren’t were often hundreds of miles from the capital.
Green success: Labour lost a council seat in Lambeth to the Greens. A suitably pleased Croydon councillor, Ria Patel, can be seen in the background
It was a lone council by-election in Lambeth that provided some local interest. There in Herne Hill ward (represented by Labour MP Helen Hayes), veteran Labour councillor Jim Dickson – a predecessor of Steve Reed as council leader at Brixton Town Hall – had stood down following his election last year as the MP for Dartford.
Labour’s national unpopularity, plus some local factors, saw the Greens’ Paul Valentine take the seat from Labour, with a bit of campaign support from Croydon Green councillor Ria Patel.
Other Croydon councillors were also out and about on election day.
A large number of the Labour group were sent to support Labour’s candidate for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Anna Smith, who trudged in third, just a fraction ahead of the fourth-placed LibDem.
Croydon’s elections in 2022 were an electoral breakthrough with the first Green councillors and a LibDem elected after years of the duopoly. The indications from last night are that the Greens and LibDems could build on their breakthrough from three years ago, but could Reform further complicate the electoral arithmetic in our borough?
As shown by the mayoral elections in the West of England and in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, that would have very unpredictable consequences for own our mayoral election, too …
- From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn. Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
- As well as his column, Andrew is also conducting podcast interviews, in-depth and informed with specialists and national figures, sharing their expertise with Croydon, and available on Inside Croydon’s Spotify channel
The Andrew Fisher Interview is usually available only to paid subscribers of Inside Croydon. This month’s podcast is with disability rights activist Ellen Clifford, and this episode is free to access to all our readers
Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:
- What a load of old rubbish! And that’s just inside the Town Hall
- Bad for disabled people. Bad for unemployment. Bad for growth
- Everything’s going up except Starmer and Labour’s poll ratings
- Labour’s letting water companies take the pee with rising bills
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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The only thing that Starmer’s Blairite infiltrators will do “further and faster” is take Labour to the oblivion it so richly deserves.
In Croydon we’ve seen how a shadowy clique of crooks and incompetents rose to the top, ruined the borough and walked away as if nothing had happened.
Nationally we’ve got a government led by an uncharismatic son of a toolmaker who is dominated by a foreigner that was too thick for university and is starstruck by someone who started a war with lies and takes money and orders from fossil fuel companies and a murderous Middle Eastern monarch. The government agenda includes dismantling the welfare state found 80 years ago by, er, Labour.
Internationally, we’re supporting a country committing genocide and kowtowing to a unhinged fascist dictator. Our Ambassador to that former ally was a friend of Epstein and had to resign because of a dodgy loan. It now turns out he was instrumental, along with Tory Bliar, in pushing forward the computer system that gave us the Post Office scandal.
Some people think Starmer isn’t listening or is being poorly advised. Another possibility is that he’s doing all this on purpose, in what little time he knows he’s got left. His mission is to destroy socialism.
As for BadEnoch, she’s trying to appeal to people who are racist and sexist while presiding over a party stacked with corrupt scofflaws and hypocrites. She’s doomed
Hey , Don`t hold back.
You’re right Ian. I didn’t mention Labour’s refusal to give us a new referendum on either Brexit or electoral reform, and their wars on people who are poor, trans or have disabilities
To clarify , I fully support everything you have enunciated.
I think it was your hero Jezza who ‘destroyed socialism’. You and Red Andy may long for a Marxist leader who can restore socialism to the party Jezza wrecked but there isn’t anyone. Yesterday’s men, including the Fisherman, have had their day and blown it.
Did you sing a rousing “Tomorrow belongs to me” after writing that Chris? Your unfailing ability to get the wrong end of the stick and confuse facts with your feverish imagination never ceases to amuse me. Keep it up!
Just looked up that song Arfur and you’re out of order. How did you learn it ??
Can’t believe you’ve never seen Cabaret.
Get yourself along to the KitKat Club post haste and acquaint yourself.
He wouldn”t have been able to have watched the Cabaret. He was outside with the goons who were going to raid it.
That is a good round up of facts and commentary.
It was “Labour… ministers [and indeed the Prime Minister on the radio this morning] saying that they will “go further and faster”, instead of doing some U-turns, that I made me cringe in agreement with you. .
Dynamics in Croydon’s Mayoral election include
Since May 2022, the time of the last election, Conservatives national polling down 14 %, Labour down 20%, Reform up 27%, Liberal Democrats up 5%, Greens up 3%.
Change in voting system from 1st choice/2nd choice AV to First past the post.
Poor following and party organisation for Reform in Greater London. Relative strength of Reform in New Addington and Selsdon.
Poor recent record in London by-elections for Labour damages credibility.
Extent to which voters forget Labour mess with local finances which depressed the Labour vote for councillors last time by 13.1% when Labour in London was moving ahead by up to 4%. Bounce back from those lows a key factor but 4 years may not be enough.
In that context Labour ability or more likely inability to persuade that they have changed their failed governance and councilllor make up.
Competition between the two Croydon dominant parties aiming to squeeze the vote of third parties.
Continued move of some South Asian heritage communities away from Labour.
FPTP stops prospect of disruptive independents as per last time.
Differing turnout across the Borough.
Unpopularity of incumbent national government.
High local council tax – now 2nd highest in London.
Parties concentrating efforts in other target Boroughs.