2023 UK Local Elections

[Blair]

Only a mere 5 months away.

[JimJamUK]

Obviously still 5 months away, but some thoughts on each party:
Conservatives - Probably going to be pretty dire, but last time was as well so they may pick up a few of the ‘freak losses’ to smaller parties/independents while losing loads to Labour.
Labour - Should be very good, and benefit from the fact 2019 was an awful performance vs the smaller parties/independents which means they should be gaining a lot from everyone.  
Lib Dems - Arguably the biggest wildcard. They did very well in 2019 and their polling has been rather anaemic this Parliament so they could lose a lot of seats. Still, they’re competent at local elections and can pick up most of the ‘not Conservative’ vote in places they properly campaign. No idea how it washes out.
Greens - The party did very well in 2019 and will sustain some losses, but are better organised than they used to be so will be hoping to balance this out with gains elsewhere (and entrench in many of their 2019 gains).
Reform - Will they actually get into double figures? The party doesn’t seem to have much of an activist base and their by-election performances have been rather weak, but a party polling 5% or so should be able to get some decent performances, right?
Others - Minor parties and independents did very well in 2019 and will sustain serious losses this year. UKIP won 31 seats and will totally disappear, a lot of the independents only won on the back of the hideous unpopularity of the 2 main parties and will sustain net losses, probably even against the Conservatives. Still, you’d expect incumbency, the Conservatives unpopularity and the type of councils up this year to deliver a larger than normal cohort.

[CumbrianLefty]

LibDems have made significant gains this year in council by-elections despite never polling that well. I suspect that gives us a fair indication how next May is likely to go for them.

Tories have never had a *really terrible* set of local elections since coming to power in 2010.

That could change fairly soon.

[YL]

This is the year in the four year cycle of English local elections when most unitary or second tier councils outside London have elections, as it's the year when most of those which have all-up elections have those.

Metropolitan boroughs All, except Doncaster, Rotherham and Birmingham, which have moved to all-up elections in a different year of the cycle.  In most cases a third of the councillors will be up, but in some cases there are ward boundary changes and so there are all-up elections.  Also Liverpool and Wirral (at least) are moving to all-up permanently.

Unitary authorities Most unitaries have elections, but some are on a different cycle; there are some (mostly former county councils) which have all-up elections in the county council year, and some like Bristol are on other cycles for various reasons.  The majority of these are all-up elections, but some have thirds elections like most of the Mets.

Second tier districts The great majority of these have elections, the main exceptions being the ones which elect by halves like Oxford and Nuneaton & Bedworth.  Again the majority are all-up but some are thirds.

A full list of councils with elections (may not be entirely up to date)

[Torrain]

Northern Ireland is the only one of the devolved nations to hold council elections in 2023.

Like the NI Legislature, the councils are elected via PR, in large multi-member districts.

Each council has 40 or 41 members (except Belfast, which has 60), and no party holds a majority on any of them. The DUP elected 122 councillors in total, just ahead of SF on 105, in the last election, in 2019. In that cycle, SF stayed at the same number of total councillors, the DUP, SDLP and UUP fell slightly, and Alliance nearly doubled their total seats.

Notably, in 2019, SF won election to 17/40 seats in Mid-Ulster - bringing them close to a majority. So worth watching - even if PR is likely to prevent a major upset.

In 2019, the SDLP managed to come back from a poor second place showing to tie SF for largest party in Derry (Derry City and Strabane District Council). Derry remains a heartland for the party, and they retook the Westminster constituency (tactfully named “Foyle” after the city’s river, to avoid the great naming debate) in 2019. So I imagine this will be a key target for them to improve on.

And as ever, the ability of Alliance to soak up votes from the disenchanted, largely moderates who’ve grown tired of smaller parties like the UUP and SDLP will be interesting. Alliance became the second-largest party in Ards and North Down in 2019 - based on a DUP slump. Will be interested to see whether that continues, and whether it could propel them towards largest-party status. This council is dominated by territory they won from unionists in Westminster in 2019, so definitely one to watch.

Another couple to keep an eye on - the DUP have another bad year, Lisburn and Castlereagh could become a three-way brawl for first place between DUP, UUP and Alliance. As will Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon, where the DUP (11), SF (11), and UUP (10) will be tussling for largest-party status.

I apologise if this was a slightly unfocused ramble, with a focus on sectarian politics, but given this is NI we’re talking about, it seems vaguely appropriate…

[omar04]

All 7 UKIP councillors could lose their seats in 2023: http://www.opencouncildata.co.uk/councillors.php?p=352&y=2022

[YL]

In 2019, the SDLP managed to come back from a poor second place showing to tie SF for largest party in Derry (Derry City and Strabane District Council). Derry remains a heartland for the party, and they retook the Westminster constituency (tactfully named “Foyle” after the city’s river, to avoid the great naming debate) in 2019. So I imagine this will be a key target for them to improve on.

SF's result there in the Assembly election, where they outpolled the SDLP, suggested that they'd recovered from the malaise which caused the spectactular General Election result there.  Except in Foyle (and even there their vote was down a little) the SDLP had a pretty dreadful result in general in the Assembly election, so it might be worth watching whether they can improve on that.

[CumbrianLefty]

All 7 UKIP councillors could lose their seats in 2023: http://www.opencouncildata.co.uk/councillors.php?p=352&y=2022

I would say that is more likely than not.

[omar04]

All 7 UKIP councillors could lose their seats in 2023: http://www.opencouncildata.co.uk/councillors.php?p=352&y=2022

I would say that is more likely than not.

Interestingly there's a couple of ex UKIP councilors hanging around as independents, localist parties or Conservatives (Great Yarmouth being a good example of the latter).

[CumbrianLefty]

All 7 UKIP councillors could lose their seats in 2023: http://www.opencouncildata.co.uk/councillors.php?p=352&y=2022

I would say that is more likely than not.

Interestingly there's a couple of ex UKIP councilors hanging around as independents, localist parties or Conservatives (Great Yarmouth being a good example of the latter).

Indeed - and even during their peak years, this sort of thing happened strikingly frequently.

[MABA 2020]

All 7 UKIP councillors could lose their seats in 2023: http://www.opencouncildata.co.uk/councillors.php?p=352&y=2022

I would say that is more likely than not.

Surprised UKIP still has 7 to be honest

[Blair]

Some briefing that allies of Bojo will use a bad result for Sunak in May as a way of launching a leadership challenge.

I'm not really sure what a bad result would look like for the Tories?

[YL]

Some briefing that allies of Bojo will use a bad result for Sunak in May as a way of launching a leadership challenge.

I'm not really sure what a bad result would look like for the Tories?

This is the year in the cycle when a lot of districts in usually safe Tory areas have all up elections.  As it happens, so was 1995, and look what happened.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Though with the caveat that the Tories had an average result in 1991 and so were defending a lot of seats, whereas they had a terrible one in 2019 and shed a lot of seats they had no business losing.

[YL]

Indeed when looking at changes in a set of local elections, it always makes sense to think about what happened in the year the seats were last up, and 2019 was pretty bad for the Tories in much of the country, though not so much in Lab/Con battlegrounds.  The thing which really stands out about 1995 is how little the Tories held, in terms of both council control and numbers of seats in many councils.

[Blair]

Are there any guesses what the headline councils will be?

I did love how in 2022 the Tories really seemed to brief heavily about Sunderland and iirc ended up doing awfully.

It was a very weird election in hindsight- it was an bad result for them yet they tried to pretend it was great. They were very lucky to pick up two London councils thanks to Labour local Govt incompetence!

[CumbrianLefty]

It struck me (and others with long political memories) as an attempt to rip off the 1990 template that was remarkably successful in turning an overall near rout into a moral victory. Though given that the sitting PM was ousted within 6 months even then, it didn't make that much difference longer term.

This time round, the fact that Labour won Westminster and Wandsworth meant it flopped pretty much from the off - taking Harrow and making gains in Croydon/Enfield doesn't have the same glamour.

[MaxQue]

Are there any guesses what the headline councils will be?

I did love how in 2022 the Tories really seemed to brief heavily about Sunderland and iirc ended up doing awfully.

It was a very weird election in hindsight- it was an bad result for them yet they tried to pretend it was great. They were very lucky to pick up two London councils thanks to Labour local Govt incompetence!

Wasn't the pick up in Harrow mainly because of the Conservatives scaring local Hindus about the Muslim mayor of London?

[CumbrianLefty]

Though with the caveat that the Tories had an average result in 1991 and so were defending a lot of seats, whereas they had a terrible one in 2019 and shed a lot of seats they had no business losing.

Though going back four years, the Tories had a very good result in 2015 (on the same day as their GE win) so their result in 2019 looks worse because of that - let's not forget they roughly tied Labour on the "projected national vote" despite all those losses. They might win back a bit of ground against the various localist/Indy groups (though even then one probably shouldn't overstate it) but major losses to both Labour and the LibDems are very likely if polling remains anything like it is now.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Also will be interesting to see the Labour result in councils where their main opposition is Lib Dem/Green/Indy to see if the Labour brand has recovered on its own rather than stayed the same as Tories fall off a cliff. I expect, say, Middlesbrough to be a relatively easy puck up from Indies, but a strong result for Labour in councils like Sheffield, Hull, Brighton, Stockport, Redcar and York would be an indicator of their regrowth. I notice Jason Zadrozny is in legal trouble in Ashfield, but what else is new?

Also of interest: certain areas (mainly Midlands) of Red Wall where Labour decline seemed terminal - Stoke is the most obvious example? Also Leicester might be an interesting test to see if there is some Sunak effect for Hindus, especially with the recent clashes. Oh yeah, and the big Bournemouth unitary is up: will be interesting to see if Labour can get more of an in-road in the city.

[Хahar 🤔]

Also Leicester might be an interesting test to see if there is some Sunak effect for Hindus, especially with the recent clashes.

My thought is that Leicester will actually be a rather poor test for this reason, since local issues will presumably outweigh any effect that Rishi Sunak might have.

[YL]

Also Leicester might be an interesting test to see if there is some Sunak effect for Hindus, especially with the recent clashes.

My thought is that Leicester will actually be a rather poor test for this reason, since local issues will presumably outweigh any effect that Rishi Sunak might have.

I agree; problems for Labour in Leicester East constituency were apparent well before Sunak took over.  The Tories even won a by-election there (the one where the Labour candidate was supposedly a BJP supporter and their vote collapsed, with the Greens moving into second) when Truss was PM.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64722070

This has a risk of being a major  up - lots of people don't seem to be aware of the new ID laws and may end up with no valid ID in time for the elections.

[oldtimer]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64722070

This has a risk of being a major  up - lots of people don't seem to be aware of the new ID laws and may end up with no valid ID in time for the elections.

In theory it shouldn't have that much of an effect, 32 million voted in the last G.E. , so 2 million is not that high and I suspect that most of them usually don't vote anyway.

But if they voted they would probably be Labour voters and that's the controversy, could shave at max.5 points of a Labour lead, but probably only half of that.

The next election though is unlikely to be a close one at this point.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64722070

This has a risk of being a major  up - lots of people don't seem to be aware of the new ID laws and may end up with no valid ID in time for the elections.

In theory it shouldn't have that much of an effect, 32 million voted in the last G.E. , so 2 million is not that high and I suspect that most of them usually don't vote anyway.

But if they voted they would probably be Labour voters and that's the controversy, could shave at max.5 points of a Labour lead, but probably only half of that.

The next election though is unlikely to be a close one at this point.

I'm thinking more people literally turning up in May not knowing about the ID requirements (this thread is about the local elections) and causing confusion and rancor. I would also not be sure about this mostly hurting Labour - it's often older voters (especially women) who do not carry valid ID.