British Local Elections, May 2024
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Assuming we don't have a may general, this will be our last electoral test for the sunak ministry. Most followers of this board will be aware of the events that have led the current conservative party to be discredited in the eyes of the electorate, so i will not overlabour that point, but this is going to probably be a very rough ride for the incumbent government (especially as this race was last fought in a post-covid glow, so they have a lot of seats to lose). There is also a small electoral reform, with all mayoral and PCC elections moving to FPTP.
The races include:
- mayoral election. Obviously a lot of attention will be on the capital but I don't expect that to be that interesting. Sadiq Khan is not beloved but he is not hated, and the Tories have largely thrown in the towel with a pretty lousy candidate, Susan Hall. In Birmingham, Andy Street is running for reelection but he is fairly popular and Labour don't have a massively high profile challenge to him - if he wins, expect him to be mentioned all the time as a future tory leader. Street may be popular, but the same does not apply to Ben Houchen in the Tees Valley, who has suffered under corruption allegations and is looking very vulnerable as the Red Wall heads away from the tory party. Incumbent Labour mayors in liverpool, south Yorkshire, west Yorkshire and Manchester all are up, and i don't think there's any drama there.
We also have some new mayoral elections: york and north Yorkshire, east midlands (ben Bradley vs former Labour MP Claire Ward) and the North East (which seems to be a battle between Labour's Kim McGuinness and the leftist ex-Labour incumbent mayor of the "North of Tyne", Jamie Driscoll. Somebody has to do something about these bizarre positions because this is too much bs.
- as usual all sorts of other councils are up: the ones that are fully up include Bristol, Dudley, Dorset and Wokingham. Closer to the time we can probably work out where Lib Dems have potential, where Labour could suffer post gaza backlash, where Tories are most boned etc.
- and of course the PCC's are all up, which will be a useful barometer of the mood of England and Wales (having never lived in a place with a PCC i refuse to believe they are beloved local figures).
YL:
Because of the PCC elections, I think everywhere in England and Wales has at least one position to vote for.
Bristol might be interesting to see how well the Greens do, though I think winning control would be an ambitious target.
Some of these new mayoral positions are quite strange. "East Midlands" just means Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, which is not a particularly coherent unit. "North East" is the current North of Tyne (Newcastle, Northumberland, North Tyneside) plus Gateshead, South Tyneside, Sunderland and the Durham unitary, so is all of the North East England region except for the bits in Tees Valley.
I will try to write previews for a selection of councils at some point...
Oryxslayer:
I'm sure we'll be able to go into more details when things get closer (and if there's no coinciding GE) however the year is likely be transformative despite the limited number of elections. In many of the 1/3 councils this is the 2021 "Johnson-Wave" class of councilors up. The shear overexposure compared to even a average year means there are a lot of incoming Tory losses. In many places it is this class that has maintained conservative control, even as they lost seats and seen reversal waves for Labour. A few examples:
Harltepool and it's by-election were the capstones of 2021. After Labour swept 9/12 seats up in 2023 (and were 2 votes away from 10/12) things essentially tied between the governing Conservatives + Indies versus Labour. And the class now up is 7 Con, 3 Indie, 2 Lab.
Thurrock had to declare bankruptcy under the pandemic-era Tory leadership. This led to Labour making 5 gains and going 9/16 despite it being a difficult set of seats up. It's presently under a Tory minority of 23 to 19 Labour and 7 Indies of various colors. The 2024 class is 11 Con, 4 Lab, 2 Indie.
Dudley is interesting because If the near-identical 2022 and 2023 elections were to have decided council control then things would be tied or near-tied. But the 23-3 Tory sweep in 2021 keep things safely in their hands. Boundary changes mean not just the 2021 class but every councilor is up, potentially allowing for even more dramatic changes.
The Dudley situation is similar in nearby Reddich, Cannock Chase, and Nuneton, Nuneton notably had no election in 2023 so the council is still absurdly Tory, even though that electoral foundation has likely collapsed.
Then in Tamworth where Labour had that surge in 2023, every councilor up is a Tory or ex-Tory.
I'll also mention that, like you said, the Police Commissioners are posts nobody cares about in normal circumstances. But precisely because nobody cares about them they are good generic ballot tests. In 2021 the Tory wave allowed them to push into normally Labour turf. Now we'll be able to see how deep are the Tory losses.
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The movement to FPTP will also be interesting because the PCC's (especially at first) have often had decent independent numbers and there are several counties where it is not immediately obvious whether Lib Dems or Labour are the opposition, and with much less need to tactically vote because of a lack of public awareness about these positions.
YL:
In South Yorkshire the Government is proposing to abolish the PCC position and merge it into the Mayoralty, which will require an election for the latter, but as far as I'm aware this hasn't completely gone through yet. The Mayoralty is held by Labour's Oliver Coppard, and assuming there is a Mayoral election I don't think he is likely to have much trouble. Three of the boroughs have council elections; Doncaster is on an unusual cycle and does not.
Sheffield One third of seats up. Currently Lab 31, Lib Dem 29, Green 14, Con 1, Ind 9 (all elected as Lab).
What happened here is that immediately after last year's election the national Labour Party forced out the then leader, Terry Fox. A few months later he and six allies were suspended from the party after breaking the whip on a planning issue, and in October they and one further ally formally left the party and now sit as the "Sheffield Community Councillors Group"; this is not a registered party so I count them as Independents above. Labour's new leader Tom Hunt is still leader of the council, though some power is shared with the Lib Dems and Greens.
The split means that it's very unlikely that Labour take overall control this year, but they will hope to gain several seats, including the two of the rebels' seats which are up this year, the seat of another former Labour councillor (this one of a more Corbynite shade) sitting as an Independent and the single Conservative seat in Stocksbridge & Upper Don (the only seat the Tories have won in the last 20 years). The Green results in 2023 were a little disappointing and Labour will hope to take a couple of seats from them as well, while the Lib Dems and Labour will each be targeting a couple of each others' seats.
Rotherham Whole council up. Currently Lab 33, Con 15, Lib Dem 4, Ind 7.
The Conservatives performed strongly in 2021 in the Rother Valley constituency, where they won a comfortable majority of the seats, including in some very implausible wards (e.g. Maltby East); they also won some scattered seats in the area covered by the new Rawmarsh & Conisbrough constituency, and it will be interesting to see how they hold up in this borough.
Three seats were won by what was effectively the former UKIP group under the label of the Rotherham Democratic Party, but that party has since dissolved and the two remaining councillors sit as Independents, along with four councillors elected as Tories and one elected as Labour. The Lib Dems will be hoping to make a few gains, in particular in Anston & Woodsetts ward where they took a seat off the Tories in Anston & Woodsetts in a by-election.
Barnsley One third of seats up. Currently Lab 48, Lib Dem 10, Con 2, Reform UK 1, Ind 2.
As can be seen Labour are pretty dominant here, with the largest opposition coming from a slowly growing Lib Dem group who target a handful of wards in the west of the borough and generally win the ones they target; they will be targeting at least one Labour seat (Kingstone ward) this year.
The Tories failed to win a single seat last year and are left with just two seats, including one up this year, in Penistone East ward, which voted Labour last year. They had won Rockingham ward (western Hoyland and Birdwell) in 2022, but the councillor has since joined Reform UK. The other threat to Labour has usually been from Independents; the organised Barnsley Independent Group has disappeared, but actual independents did win two seats (including Rockingham again) last year.
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