Local elections 2024: how bad must Tory results be to topple Rishi Sunak?

This week sees one of the biggest tests of public opinion in England and Wales since the 2019 general election, and with the next election now due they will also tell us a good deal about the state of the parties.

In all, there will be elections for: 10 directly elected or metro mayors; 2,636 council seats across 107 local authorities (comprising 31 city boroughs, 18 unitary authorities and 58 district councils); 25 members of the Greater London Assembly; and 37 police and crime commissioners.

Each of the major parties will have their own private hopes and fears about the outcome, and will apply the usual spin to the results. However, there are some clear benchmarks for each party, and implications for the timing of the general election by Rishi Sunak, and for electoral strategies.

The results are bound to be pretty dismal, and some degree of panic and speculation about his leadership will ensue. The question is: how dismal, and how much panic? Many of these contests were last fought in 2021, when the vaccine rollout and post-lockdown relief gave Boris Johnson quite a boost, so the Conservative performance is almost certain to be down on that. The uncertain variable is what constitutes losses that are “too high” to continue without a change of leader, or what results are bad enough to trigger a vote of no-confidence.

Electoral experts Rallings and Thrasher say that if the Tories lose 300 council seats then the party will be doing effectively no worse than in 2023. Losses of 400 to 500 wouldn’t be a shock; more would start to induce existential tremors. (The Conservatives are defending 985 seats in all.) Given that so many activists are councillors and known well by incumbent Tory MPs and candidates, the psychological shock of these losses shouldn’t be understated.

In terms of projected vote share (ie assuming that elections had been held everywhere) the Tories would ideally be looking at a significant improvement in the 29 per cent vote share scored in 2023; if it falls nearer to 20 per cent, as the opinion polls suggest, then that will be an additional worry.

Presentationally, the best they can hope for is to retain their two trophy mayors: Andy Street in the West Midlands, and Ben Houchen in Tees Valley. In both cases, personalities and local factors will make a difference. Holding on to both would help Sunak survive, as would a weak showing from Reform UK.

Certainly picking up most of the council seats and other posts lost by the Tories, and a notional vote share in excess of the 36 per cent seen last year and ideally cresting the 40 per cent mark would bolster his position in the party and the country. Making a clean sweep of the elected mayors would be a real coup, as would winning control of authorities in places where they expect to make parliamentary gains, such as Hartlepool, Burnley, Bolton, Dudley, Milton Keynes, Southend or Thurrock.

Labour will also look to see how much damage their stance on the war in Gaza has done to their support, particularly in Muslim communities such as in Rochdale, given the challenge from ex-Labour independents, Greens and George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain. Sadiq Khan should hold London for Labour, especially as he is up against a poorly received Tory candidate, but look closely for signs of underperformance in the outer boroughs. The East Midlands and North East (where a Labour rebel is running for mayor) are also potential (relatively) weak spots.

Yes. They hope to gain control of Dorset, and build momentum that could win them more “blue wall” gains in the House of Commons later this year. The Lib Dems may be becalmed in the national polls, but they’ve traditionally done well in local elections, ever since the days of “pavement politics” helped revive their fortunes in the 1970s. A projected vote share of about 18 per cent is to be expected.

Not in the sense that they’ll expect to end up running any local councils, but they’re putting up candidates in many contests. With an undeveloped party machine and virtually no current local government representation besides a few councillors in Derby, they can’t expect much. Their candidates for the East Midlands mayoralty and Hartlepool council are their best bets.

Buried by all the municipal action, the election of a new MP for Blackpool South has almost gone unnoticed. The constituency will almost certainly go to Labour, which only needs a swing of 5.7 per cent to retake it – small by current standards. As ever, it will be the size of the swing that will be more closely watched. Given the local area, it will also be interesting to see how successfully the populists at Reform can exploit grievances. Also look for signs of tactical voting.

Spare a thought for the expert psephologists who have to contend with two big reforms that make comparisons with past elections tricky. First is the reformed voting system for the mayoralties, from a preferential “supplementary” system to the more basic first past the post. Second is the relative novelty of voter ID requirements, something that will probably artificially depress the Labour vote a bit more than the 2019 Conservative vote.