The local election results are as terrible for the Conservatives as feared and thanks to Reform they would have been lucky to have had only a 1997-style wipeout, says veteran pollster John Curtice in the Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt.
The overnight election results have been every bit as disappointing for the Conservatives as they might have feared.
The party is so far losing one in two of the seats they have been trying to defend. When all the results are in, it is at risk of suffering the catastrophic 500 losses of council seats that some analysts had predicted.
The party’s vote fell by 32.1 points in Blackpool South, making it the party’s third worst ever performance in a parliamentary by-election. With 16.9% of the vote, its best performance yet, Reform appears to have done much of the damage.
Moreover, in the local elections the Conservative vote fell most heavily in those wards where Reform fielded a candidate. The only silver lining for Tory HQ was that Reform only contested one in six of the wards where there was an election on Thursday. A full slate would have been even more devastating.
Meanwhile, some of the evidence underneath the bonnet of the headlines will particularly worry the party.
First, detailed ward by ward results collected by the BBC suggest that on average support for the party is down on last year’s local elections. That slippage is consistent with the message of the opinion polls that, rather than closing the gap on Labour, the party has actually lost ground over the last twelve months.
Second, the fall in Conservative support is proving to be highest in the party’s heartlands. The better the Conservatives did locally in 2021, that is, when most of the seats being contested on Thursday were last fought, the greater the fall in their support now.
Worth reading in full.
Their only I hope I suppose is that voters will give them more of a kicking in the locals than in the General Election. But the scale of Conservative failure, particularly on immigration but also on cost of living tied to Net Zero (and lockdowns, though it’s not clear how many voters blame them for that) should not be underestimated.
Meanwhile, Muslim voters have been giving Labour its own (much smaller) kicking over Gaza. From the Mail:
Labour has today sensationally lost control of Oldham Council after Muslim voters punished it over Gaza.
Sir Keir Starmer’s party has lost power in the town in Greater Manchester – and outgoing councillors say the leader’s face has been plastered on leaflets of independents who took their seats.
Speaking today Sir Keir was asked whether his stance on Gaza had been a factor in Oldham. He told the BBC: “There are some places where it’s a very strong factor… I respect that.”
Despite gains all over England from the Tories in yesterday’s local elections, Labour lost control of Oldham after gains by Independents, some of whom abandoned Sir Keir’s party over Gaza.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I confess, I am equally frustrated that everyone carries around with them a way of accessing the entirety of human knowledge, and so few bother doing anything more than watching kitty video’s or asking their friends what they are doing.
Puppy videos are better.
Thanks to Joanna Gray for exposing this shocking truth. All these years I had just assumed that young people were even more adept than us old folks at using the internet as the vast, wondrous library it is, so it comes as a real shock to me that most young ones have no interest at all in that.
One small English quibble: it’s “reams”, not “reems”.
Really nteresting article. I think you are on to something here. Most people will default to ‘lazy’, given the chance and lack of stimuli.
I will be looking at my teenage children’s usage with this in mind.
One more reason to be glad that I’ll be dead soon.
When I wrote my PhD, I could only use hardcopy sources and I went through a LOT of books and journals to do it. The internet existed, but it was nothing like the resource it is now. When I quit teaching, half my students were using the internet to write their essays for them (and being caught out because the results didn’t sound like them. Thus I would type in what they’d written et voila! Source found and student got a b@ll@cking). To find they’re not even doing that much is depressing. I am reading academic papers, doing research, watching documentaries, listening to interviews… It’s all there for them. Why aren’t they seizing on it? What has changed in education that they no longer have the urge to learn even when it’s easy?
Stupid is as stupid does (or does not); the answer my be that the younger generation has become more and more stupid.
Ah yes.
But that’s just with Bliar’s genius stroke of increasing university attendance to 50% of yoof.
(In other words ensuring a cohort of students of below 50% IQ, as many kids can’t or don’twant to do that. And the appointment of “University Professors” who would be lucky to have been laboratory assistants back when I was at University.).
Now, we learn that our Uniparty (Labia,branch) chums look to ensure 70% of kiddies go to University. The outcome should be exciting.
Maybe forcibly jabbing children with 72 needles has something to do with it…
What do they eat in Scotland? Fascinating question.
Technology is great and we should ofcourse use it. —–But today Technology is using the people.———– In a very short period of time we have gone from no phones to where I now see young people waiting for the school bus or walking along the road all glued to their phones. I see young mums pushing their buggies with one hand on the phone and paying no attention at all to their baby. —————I think we have to class this now as some kind of phycological disorder.
It is tied up with changes to the family structure and lone parents and grandparents needing to provide 365 day support to their children and grandchildren in order to keep them dependant and home for as long as possible so they will never be lonely.
Jordan Peterson does a good analysis on this subject.
Yes, plus pots of extra benefit money for life, if they can get their sproggies declared “mentally disabled” under one or more of the hundreds of categories.
Going to a hospital appointment the other day I was carrying my current read, D Day, by Antony Beevor. “Good book? What’s it about?” Asks the nurse. “Er, D day”‘ I reply. “What’s that then?” She said.
It’s hopeless, isn’t it?