The Conservatives Lose the Local Elections: Will They Bring Boris Back?

on Thursday Brits went to the polls to

elect

8058 local councilors in some 230

councils across England both parties

were doing a lot of expectation

management before the vote kistama

explained that the last time these seats

were contested in 2019 the toys did

pretty terribly largely due to Theresa

May's unpopularity so this time around

the conservatives should be expecting

gains to bring them back to pre-2019

numbers so I think for the conservative

party the Baseline is on the floor and

they should be making gains and if they

don't if they can't make games on that

awful set of results then I think there

are serious questions as to whether

Rishi sunak is going backwards on the

other hand the conservatives were

claiming that anything fewer than a

thousand losses would be a good night

given where they're currently sitting in

the polls

the conservatives will lose more than a

thousand seats and that labor need to

make big gains that is what the

expectation is out there okay but I've

been up and down the country because

others were fighting really hard I've

got some great counts you're predicting

a thousand seat loss are you just trying

to massage our expectations here that is

what the independent experts professors

railings and Thrasher John Curtis are

all predicting in reality the base case

was somewhere in the middle with most

people expecting the conservatives to

lose a few hundred seats unfortunately

for sunac however things have turned out

pretty badly for the conservatives and

at time of writing it looks like they're

on track to lose over a thousand seats

so in this video we're going to take a

look at the local election results what

the results mean and whether they could

spell the end for sunac as they did for

Theresa May in 2019

[Music]

so the first thing to say is that we

covered how local elections work and

what to look out for in a previous video

so if you want to know more go have a

look at that

for those of you who can't be bothered

the main takeaway from that video was

that because 2019 was a truly terrible

year for the Tories we advised you not

to pay too much attention to losses and

games and instead focus on what's known

as projected vote share as kistama

mentioned in 2019 which is the last time

these seats were contested the

conservatives were led by Theresa May

who was trying and failing to get her

brexit deal through Parliament

the brexiteers were angry with me for

not getting brexit done and remainers

were angry at her for going too hard on

brexit and bulldozing the UK's

constitutional Norms which is why

Theresa May's conservative party did

terribly in 2019

May lost over 1 300 councilors and 44

councils winning just 28 of the popular

vote and she resigned just a few weeks

later

this is why most people expected the

conservatives to only lose a few hundred

seats because they were starting from

such a low Benchmark and why we instead

recommended looking at projected

National share which basically takes the

vote share at the local elections and

transposes it onto the broader UK

electorates

here we argued that labor should be

looking to achieve at least a 10-point

lead here and ideally at least 15 points

because these are the sorts of numbers

Blair and Cameron were looking at before

they won their elections

at the 1996 local elections for example

a year before the 1997 labor Landslide

Blair's labor had a 16-point lead over

John Major's conservatives at the 2009

local elections a year before Cameron's

majority in 2010 the conservatives won

by 15 points however the results were so

bad for the Tories that it doesn't

really matter whether you look at seats

or projected National share a time of

writing on Friday morning they're on

track to lose over a thousand seats and

their projected National share is about

25 which is one of their lowest ever

the news was so bad that the

conservatives didn't even try and spin

it it's always disappointing to this

hard-working conservative councilors

their friends their colleagues and I'm

so grateful to them for everything that

they've done that in terms of the

results it's still early we've just had

a quarter of the results in conservative

chairman Greg hands also admitted that

it had been a disappointing night for

the party and the government so does

this mean it's good news for labor well

yes and no labor did win a significant

number of seats off the Tories and in

some areas a bad night for the Tories is

by definition a good night for labor

however at time of writing projected

vote share is giving labor just an

eight-point lead which is significantly

lower than the leads that Blair and

Cameron enjoyed before their majorities

this is because conservative losses have

actually been split relatively evenly

between labor and the lib Dems who had a

particularly good night

despite winning over 700 councilors in

2019 essentially doubling their total

the lib Dems won hundreds more seats

this time around with particularly

strong showings in southern rural seats

similarly it was a pretty good night for

the greens who managed to win over a

hundred seats and in terms of vote share

saw a greater increase than any other

party

the green struggle at national elections

but the number of green councilors has

been rising exponentially for the past

few years and this trend looks set to

continue here

all in all a terrible result for the

conservatives an okay result for labor

and a good result for the lib Dems and

greens perhaps the headline takeaway

here is that there's clearly a really

committed anti-tory vote even if they

are split between the opposition parties

at the moment so how have the Tories

reacted to these results well

predictably more right-wing

conservatives are blaming it on sunak's

political mildness and have called for

him to adopt what they describe as

proper conservative policies which

basically means be more right-wing and

more ardently brexiteer

there's even been some murmurings about

bringing back Boris Johnson which is

basically what happened after Theresa

May's local election results in 2019.

so is this going to happen will the

Tories actually bring Boris back well as

we see it this is still very unlikely

the conservatives would be mad to switch

leaders this soon before a general

election especially when they've already

got a reputation for internal chaos and

while sunak hasn't done well here Boris

Johnson is conspicuously less popular

than the current prime minister most

Tory MPS know this which is why we think

sunak will still be able to continue in

post nonetheless Tory MPS did vote for

trust so you can't rule anything out if

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