Celebrating the results of the local elections, Keir Starmer said, “make no mistake, we are on course for a Labour majority at the next general election.”
By the usual way of judging these things, most commentators rightly cast doubt on that claim. But a broader assessment of historical trends and the detailed pattern of the local election results suggests that Starmer might be right, as well as revealing some important clues as to what might go wrong for Labour.
First, let’s apply the usual approach. The Labour lead in the BBC Projected National Share (PNS) of the local election vote is just nine points. That is short of the target 12-point general election lead that would produce a majority, assuming current electoral geography. And in the year to the next election, that 9-point lead could shrink. Blair’s 16-point lead in the 1996 PNS was followed by a 13-point lead at the 1997 general election. Cameron’s 15-point PNS lead in 2009 shrunk to less than half that by the time of the 2010 general election, leaving him short of a majority.
There are two key assumptions in that argument: electoral geography will not change, and the Labour lead will narrow before the next election. Combined, these assumptions count against a Labour majority next year.
Detailed ward-by-ward results collected by the BBC show, however, that electoral geography is changing, especially in wards consistently contested by all three main parties in a way that reflects party competition at a general election.
While there was no sign of extra Labour to Liberal Democrat tactical voting this year, Labour did three points better where it started second to the Tories, apparently thanks to one point from Liberal Democrat voters and two from the Greens. That will be useful to Labour if replicated in the general election.
The geography of the Brexit vote was an important limiting factor for the opposition parties at the 2019 general election. With 63 per cent of constituencies estimated to have voted Leave, the party that was strongest among Leave voters had an advantage in winning seats in the Commons. The Brexit divide in local elections started unwinding last year, and unwound further this year to about the level it was at the May 2019 local elections. If that continues to the next general election, the electoral system will not be so biased towards the Tories.
This unwinding of the Brexit divide is part of a more general tendency for the Conservative vote to drop more where they started strongest, and especially where they were defending a seat from 2019. In such places the swing to Labour (the average of the Labour rise and Conservative fall) since 2019 was five points greater than elsewhere. The same pattern is true on a smaller scale for swings from 2021 and from 2022.
A governing party falling further where it started stronger is an extremely important development if replicated in a general election. It helps explain the scale of the collapse of the Liberal Democrats in 2015, Labour in 2010, and the Conservatives in 1997. If the Conservative vote drops more where they are defending seats, they will lose more seats than they would if the drop were the same everywhere.
So the local elections suggest the pattern of electoral geography is changing to Labour’s advantage, despite the fragmentation of the opposition vote between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Greens in the post-Brexit referendum era. That leaves the question of what might happen to Labour’s lead in the polls between now and a general election that is probably around 17 months away.
Conservative governments have typically done better in general elections than the polls have suggested this far beforehand, partly due to government recovery but also polling error. Combining both those factors, the postwar average suggests Labour’s lead is likely to drop from 15 points in the opinion polls now to seven points in the actual vote at the general election.
With no change in electoral geography, that projected 7-point lead would win Labour 315 seats, 11 short of a majority. That does not account for the effects of the travails of the SNP. Recent polls in Scotland suggest a additional 11 seats for Labour, bringing them into majority territory. The parliamentary consequences of the evidence above regarding the Conservatives doing worse where they started stronger are hard to estimate, but seem to be worth at least a further 15 seats by way of improved electoral geography for Labour. That would give Labour a majority of 32.
While things might work out differently, it would take an unprecedented bounce for the Conservatives to stay in power, even with the current electoral geography that benefits them. Since the Tories no longer have any potential coalition partners, they need to win a majority. For this they need a five-point lead. That would require a 10-point swing between now and the election—bigger than any post-war Conservative government has ever achieved in their final 17 months. Bigger even than the 7.5-point swing that Margaret Thatcher enjoyed as a result of the Falklands War. Never say never and all that, but the Tories have to hope for something spectacular to hold on to office now.
Labour may manage to strengthen its lead. It certainly should not rely on electoral geography: the electoral system is unlikely to treat Starmer anywhere near as favourably as it treated Blair. Labour won a tidy 66 majority with just a three-point lead in 2005, and a massive majority of 179 with a 13-point lead in 1997. With that kind of treatment, Labour’s current 15-point lead would yield a bigger majority still.
