Sir John Curtice and Sarah Calkin joined IfG experts to discuss what is at stake and what to expect in the elections on 2 May.
Subscribe to the IfG Youtube channel: https://bit.ly/3fL6Iek
On Thursday 2 May 2024, voters across England and Wales will head to the polls in a major set of local and mayoral elections. The highest-profile contests will be the election of 10 influential metro mayors – including in Greater London and across the north and the midlands. Together these leaders will be responsible for over £25bn of public spending and will play a vital role in shaping the fortunes of the places they represent.
Thousands of councillors in over 100 local areas across England are also up for election, with the successful candidates taking responsibility for key public services at a time of acute financial pressures across local government. Voters will also elect 39 police and crime commissioners and the 25 members of the London Assembly.
These elections are far more important than just providing a straw in the wind for the general election to come. To discuss why these elections matter and what to expect, the Institute for Government hosted a public event with expert panellists including:
Sarah Calkin, Editor of the Local Government Chronicle
Sir John Curtice, Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University and Senior Research Fellow at the National Centre for Social Research
Akash Paun, Programme Director at the Institute for Government
The event was chaired by Emma Norris, Deputy Director at the Institute for Government.
Get more from the IfG:
►Register to our upcoming events: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/our-events/upcoming-events
►Subscribe to our newsletter: https://bit.ly/3Wz9tQx
►Catch up on previous events at: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/our-events/past-events
►Listen to our podcast at: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/podcast
#MayoralCandidates #LocalElections #MayoralElections
thanks hello everyone and welcome to this institute for government event on what to watch out for in the local elections I’m emoris I’m the deputy director here so tomorrow voters across England and Wales are going to be heading to the polls up for election at 10 Metro Mayors close to 3,000 local counselors 37 police and crime Commissioners and then the 25 members of the London assembly and there’s also the Parliamentary byelection in Blackpool South now lots of people are going to be watching these elections for Clues as to what we might expect in the general election that will be happening later this year or early next but these elections importance goes far beyond that the 10 mayors that are up for election uh influential Regional figureheads in their own right they have some of the largest political mandates of any politician in the country and together the Mayors will be responsible for about 25 billion pounds worth of public spending they’ll play a vital role and indeed do already play a vital role in securing the futures of the areas they represent now as the results of tomorrow’s elections start to roll I think all eyes are going to be on what happens to conservative incumbents Andy Street in the West Midlands and Ben hon in teas Valley um looking to whether they’ll be able to hold on to their seats um and then in the Northeast the incumbent north of thare Jamie driscolls obviously running as an independent having being blocked from the labor party short list but just as important are the local elections that are going on there are going to be lots of new councilors counselors taking on responsibility for key public services at a time of acute Financial pressure in local government and then we’ll see whether labor can convert its high opinion poll leads in councils to wins in places like Bolton Stockport South End and so on so to talk about all of that I’m delighted to have a brilliant uh panel with me got the editor of the local government Chronicle Sarah culen the polling experts are John Curtis he’s a professor of politics at Strath Clyde University and a senior research fellow at the national Center for social research and of course a podcaster like everybody else these days and the institute for government’s program I’m director for Devolution Akash pal so we’re going to start with uh some opening questions for the panel we’ll probably Talk Amongst ourselves uh for about 20 minutes then I’ll save about half an hour from questions from the audience and for those of you that are joining us online hello you can start asking questions right now by submitting them via slido I’ll make sure that when it comes to questions I take a mix from the room and from people online okay so without further Ado John I’m going to come to you first what do the polls say is likely to happen AC Ross these elections and which contest should we be watching most closely while of course strictly speaking with the exception of uh some of the Metro Mayors and the London Mayo contest the answer is the polls say nothing because we’ve not had any polls of local election voting behavior and the truth because of the very idiosyncratic nature of the cycle of local elections in England it is pretty much impossible to do occasionally people try to do it but it’s you know you know which bits of England have an election in any particular year is you know it’s a it’s almost worth a PhD in itself um so that’s that’s that’s the first answer you to then let me give you a second answer the of course the circumstances in which uh these elections are being held are very very different from the circumstances in which most though not all of the positions being contested this time were last contested so basically of course uh all the mayor and PCC uh contest and London assembly contest were last fought over in May 2021 which was a postponed election from 2020 in the pandemic um in the case of the local elections there only about 70% of the seats are uh up from uh 2021 because of War boundary changes and if you get War boundary changes every after all all of a sudden everybody’s seats are up for grabs and therefore so you’ve got uh seats that elected in 22 and 23 in there as well anyway um it it might now be difficult to remember but three years ago Boris Johnson remember him he was prime minister and not only that he was ahead in the opinion polls on average the conservatives were six points ahead this was not long after the covid vaccine roll out which is probably the biggest PR success of the conservative Administration under Boris Johnson um um and um secure’s leadership they party was you know a little bit uncertain at this time um now of course the conservatives are 20 points behind in the opinion polls their position in the polls indeed is weaker now than it was when Liz trust vacated 10 Downing Street so therefore inevitably the speculation so far as you know what does this mean in terms of where we are politically is all about how much uh will the conservatives lose and will the local ballot boxes affirm or not the mage M of the opinion polls now at that point let me just stop I think I mean we know that not everybody votes in local elections in the same way as they do in a general election about one in five don’t 2021 B shows that very clearly and in particular the liberal Democrats always do better in local elections than they do in in contemporaneous opinion polls and that’s now also of the greens and and Independence of how B of rival as well um so to that extent at least you certainly can’t just simp read the result of the general election of this in any case any ballot simply tells you about where you are now it doesn’t necessarily tell you where you will be in six months time okay so I think the way to think of this in terms of the framing of of of the kind of significance of Westminster is not does it mean the toys are bound to lose but rather does it affirm the message of the opinion polls that the position of the conservative party may be even weaker now than it was 12 months ago and that perhaps Labor’s lead over the conservatives uh may have strengthened somewhat although that’s not so clear from the opinion pulse um so that’s what I think broadly speaking we are looking for now at that point one has to say there are certain contests that we should probably not take too much notice of but of which journalists are being encouraged to take a great deal of notice by the conservative party in particular and that th those particular are the contests in Te Valley and in the West Midlands um of course uh the conservative party is kind of trying hoping that Andy Street and or Ben hin will win win one of those two contests and they will be able to say well look the opinion polls to say we’re 20 points behind but look we’re still wi winning contest that we won three years years ago the polls are wrong this will be nonsense all right um first of all and this is something to to to to look out for there are two elections in the West Midlands conation this on to tomorrow there is one for the mayor and there is one for the police and crime commissioner an election that the government tried to stop at the high court stopped them from uh from uh aligning the PCC with the morality because there hadn’t been enough consultation while Andy Street won the morality in 2021 labor won the PCC election right so that’s already a first clue that maybe Mr Street has a not insignificant personal vote and that of course is one of the things that Metro Mayors are meant to be able to do you know Ben hin getting 72% of the vote in teas Valley in 2001 was a superb personal performance but really really valuably so the first thing you can will be able to compare Andy Street’s vote with what happens in the PCC election that’s clue number one and then the second thing we know from the opinion polling done by Redfield and wilon in both te Valley and and in in West Midlands that ask people how they would vote in the general election and the labor party is well ahead in both places all right and there are quite a lot of people who if you look at the inits of the polling there go um right well um the um I’m I’m not going to vote for the conservatives could possibly vote for them but yeah I’ll vote you know they voted conservative in 2019 and they’re not so unhappy that they aren’t willing to vote for IND stre because they think he’s quite a good guy and quite a good man and all the rest of it so in other words because of the personal votes of these two this is going to be the least reliable indicator whereas you know the elections for the Council of whom nobody’s ever heard of in tumbridge Wells or wherever is going to be a much more reliable guy because these persons for the most part will have less in the way of a personal appeal okay okay but you conservative party is doing this because they think they might manage to to to win the contest and therefore they’ll be able to cover whatever disasters happened elsewhere I mean equally conversely here in London sadik Khan will not do as well as the labor party would doing a general election because sadik has has a negative personal vote okay but this city is now so strongly labored he’s going to win anyway so the so the Metro Mays are the contest you should not look at but they are the ones in which journalists are hooked because it’s got big personalities that people they’ve heard of and they can write a human interest story around it but in terms of the boring shopology that people like me are interested in we go no no don’t bother don’t take any notice this isn’t actually a guide for in so far as you want to find out what these local elections and how people vote in these local elections tell us about where we are politically across the country as a whole thank you John particularly for debunking some of the debate that’s going on at the moment well it’s called getting in the antipin in before the spin right so Sarah if um John set out some of what we should be looking for and some of what we should be ignoring perhaps you can tell us a bit about why the local elections and indeed the maral elections matter what is at stake tomorrow yeah well the sort of short answer as you alluded to is councils have direct control over around 64 billion pounds of public money which is not insignificant I think the mayor’s figure is about 25 billion and that’s not even the whole of it because they have influence over a lot more spending they also deliver Services some of which we will all use and rely on every day they maintain Parks they keep our streets clean obviously collect the bins but also those services that we might turn to in times of needs so housing social care things like that so in short you’re going to want somebody competent and capable uh taking decisions about that all that kind of spending but at least as important I would say and certainly I think councils feel this is their role as stewards of of place of the places that we all call home so that would be through things like decisions on planning on capital investment um but also just as advocates for their places nationally and in the case of the maral combined authorities even internationally in terms of attracting investment working with business um none of the councils I know kind of look at their list of statutary services and then just go out and deliver the bare minimum if something’s going on in their place they want to get involved in it they very much see themselves as Leaders of place um and I think the same is true of Metro Mayors who many will say on paper they haven’t got that much power but I think what we’ve seen is that they haven’t let that kind of limit their ambition or or what they want to get involved with um so a good example of that might be Andy Street and Andy Burnham uh and what they’ve done around homelessness which is not their remit um at all um I think it’s been quite interesting someone who’s been covering local government for almost 10 years now to see in the last 18 months the sort of national attention that local government and councils have been getting now that’s not really for good reasons it’s linked to the the many sort of section 114 notices we’ve seen declared with Council saying they can’t balance their books but while it hasn’t been for good reasons it has actually shown a spotlight on the significant of local government and the fact that what they do goes a lot you know Way Beyond just collecting the bins not fundamentally important as that is don’t want to to diminish that um I think so of those councils where we have seen them declare one4 notices only a couple of them actually have elections this time in woking and thork and they aren’t uh they aren’t they’ve already been to the polls um but we did see some evidence last year that voters in those places were punishing the administrations that had got the council into trouble and so to John’s Point that’s the sort of some some local um issues at play so in slau for example labor lost control of the council which massively booked the national Trend last year when conservatives lost over a thousand seats um I think the the other thing that makes local elections different um and and is important is they’re kind of the front line of local called democracy and they where communities s of most uh connect with democracy and I think what that Trend we’ve seen in recent years of a greater number of candidates from smaller parties and independents and particularly these kind of increasingly sort of place-based groups um you know one town in the borrow might have a a handful of councilors formed a party dedicated to getting the best for that town we’ve seen that kind of an increasing Trend um is really important in terms of building that trust in democracy that that perhaps we’ve seen uh lost in recent years um yeah and I think I was going to mention the pcc’s um just because I think it’s interesting to look at look at those roles and even though they’ve been around longer than the Metro mares they’ve not achieved anything like the profile and I think that kind of raises bit of questions around around whether people understand them but what it does mean is that you wherever you live tomorrow you can in in England you can vote um so please do and Wales and Wales yes correct don’t forget Wales and soah I just wanted to pick up on um on something John was saying that in the West Midlands for instance there’s an argument that there’s a big personal vote for for Ry Street rather than necessarily being party aligned in your experience and you know based on kind of the conversations you have what determines how how people are casting their votes in these polls is it about the national politics or is it about how uh politicians have performed locally I think it’s a real mixed bag isn’t it it very much depends on what profile those individuals have and uh or what profile the local issues has so um for example you you know the example of of slow where they labor did lose control because the local populations blamed them for some of the things that had happened there in terms of all the excessive borrowing and things um so I I think it’s hard to say I don’t think you can say it’s a uniform picture it very much depends on the local area and you know to a certain extent the role of local media and how active they are in terms of reporting this stuff and and making people aware of it which as we know is pretty patchy in some places these days thanks and Akash let’s just talk a bit more about the um the 10 Metro mares here are up tomorrow so how important have Metro mares um become and what impact have they actually had at the local and perhaps the national level too uh so I think increasingly important and that’s both in terms of what the Sarah and John have already spoken about that their High name recognition that big personal mandate um they have from being directly elected across a region and the ability and Authority that gives them to act as champions for their places as as you said Sarah in in negotiating with government and negotiating with with businesses to invest in the region um and giving a voice to places that in many places have you know long-felt in many cases have longf left out of national debates I think that’s partly what Ben hin has been so successful at teas Valley you know even when there’s a focus on say north south divide Northern Powerhouse strategy and so on teas Valley I think is one of the bits that typically feels a bit ignored and left out and Ben Hon’s really been able to correct that and has a a record of delivery albeit there’s you know some controversy surrounding some of the stuff he’s done but there’s very specific concrete stuff he can point to in terms of jobs that he’s you know associated with creating investment he’s brought in um favors done to for him by government too which is maybe partly for party political reasons but still he’s the mayor who can stand up and say I got the Free Port I got you know government to set up its um treasury campus in Darlington that kind of thing so it is that it is that sort of champion voice role but it’s not just that I mean Mayors started off at the point of creation fairly weak um in many respects but the Devolution process has continued and at this point I mean you’ve already mentioned the kind of size of the budgets collectively Metro mayor control this is not insignificant amounts of money and they are taking important decisions over transport over housing over planning regeneration in some cases policing health things like that as well and I and I think we can start to see we have started to see um the the actual impact of the decisions they have have taken I mean transport is you know the biggest evolved function if you look at the budgets and it is kind of at the core of a lot of the mayor’s strategies reg economic strategies so you know there’s absolute direct evidence of what Mayors can do Andy Burnham’s taken the buses into public control prioritized you know improving connectivity between the city center where jobs are education opportunities and so on are and some of the surrounding borers like oldum and Bolton that are more deprived and have you know lacked the ability or people living there have lacked the ability to access those opportunities so I think that’s the type of thing that really makes the case for Devolution to that scale um a leader and an institution because not just the mayor themselves it’s the combined Authority able to think in a joined up way about transport about housing about skills and so on so I think that’s the kind of area you’ve seen kind of quite um clear benefits coming through I think also in sort of skills system the actual fruits of that to some extent we won’t see for some time time to come because um you know ultimately this is about improving productivity and economic growth and you know maybe come back in 5 10 years and we’ll see whether you can see those um growth trajectories converging which is the idea but you can already see how say in West Midlands there’s been a real big attempt to for example prioritize higher qual like level three plus qualifications because on average the population has lower skills and there’s a big demand from sort of manufacturing sector and that kind of thing so those are the kind of decisions I do think metr Mayers are very well placed to take and um yeah for me I think for uh for those reasons Andy Street and Ben hch and those races are the ones I will be interested in watching not as as John said because they’ll tell us much about the the national situation but because there’ll be a real test of whether the the mayoral system has has taken root and and voters are judging Mayors and and candidates on their record and on their vision for the place and on that John I wonder if people you know agree that Mayors really are making a difference and this is the stuff that kind of affects their lives what might we see happen to turnout tomorrow um should we expect turnout to be high and if it’s not if turnout’s low does that matter well I mean the one place where we’ve got as we a bit of a historical record in terms of Mayors in particular is London uh and sorry it’s a while since I’ve looked at this but my me I mean and of course in London also you can do a a nice comparison with the turnout in the London B elections and my memory is that basically initially turn out for the maral contest was simply On a par with those London B elections but that more recently the mayor Mar election has managed to attract a somewhat uh higher turnout um that said I mean I I think one has to say that the visibility of the Met Mayors does vary I mean I think um what is it the mayor for the west of England I’m not sure many people know who that is or Cambridge sh and peterb um and that broadly speaking I I’m not sure that well I think I shall be sorry I think the jury is out as to whether or not across the pce metal May are going to produce a higher turnout than certainly if you look at the opinion polls I mean there are you know for every Andy Burnham there are quite a few metres where the pollers just basically struggle I mean the polers saying the moment we’ve doing this metr it’s very difficult to do because lots of people don’t know who we’re talking about right so that that that visibility is is arguably still something issue there more broadly I mean turnout in local elections in England tends not to be that high it’s typically around 33% um it’s whether it’s going to be marketly different from that this time who knows um you know that is is uh uh very very difficult to tell the one the one institution that really does struggle on the turnout front is the pccc’s remember the first ones that were held I forgot what the turnout was no what was it 12 13 14% or whatever was it very very low when it was November or something it was held on so the first ones they held in November on a entirely separate from loal elections and then they went ah B nobody’s turned up so they then started coupling them with local elections um but then you could still see because there were always some places because of the rather idiosyncratic character of um the um uh timing of local elections in England there were always some places where there wasn’t a local election and even that was even two in 2021 you can see in those that the turnout tends to be lower although still somewhat better than November 2016 the challenge in Wales this time for example is that both the two previous um elections coincided with local or devolved elections in Wales there’s nothing else going on in Wales tomorrow from the PCC and indeed there are more places in England without Co coincident local elections because this is a relatively small part of the cycle um uh than was the case back in 2021 where they coincided with an enormous double-e cycle so I think the pccs are the one where their Merit well you know turnout in government elections in England is not brilliant and the truth is that um the pcc’s have problems on top of that um and how many of the Metro Mara contests will actually register anything significantly better we’ll have to see aash Metro mares are so such important figures in driving forward this kind of new era of of regionalism and and heightened kind of regional power if turnout is very low tomorrow for Metro Mayes does that raise any questions about legitimacy around this kind of push for we have to be care you see again because you have to remember a lot of the Metro Maro contests are occurring Co alongside local elections which makes it very very difficult to disentangle what’s going on the point about London is you can disentangle because the burough elections always take place at a different times for the maral election yeah that’s true I mean but so I think the general the answer in general is it does matter because I mean for the reasons we’ve talked about already the the effectiveness of Mayor these Mayors to some extent rests on their ability to claim that strong mandate and the ability to um to to to speak for their region so low turnout indicates um yeah lower voter engagement a weaker mandate for whatever it is that they’re they’re trying to achieve so I mean short answer it does matter I mean the other thing I was just going to just going to knowe I mean we looked at this just the the data on mayor will turnout and yes you of course need to look at which we didn’t do like which other elections were going on on the same date but the general pattern is turnout has increased in all the mayor elections from the first to the subsequent ones where there’s been more than one um I mean so you mentioned London John I mean yeah initially it was sort of low 30s the last one was sort of low 40s so still not spectacular still quite a bit below Scotland Wales obviously general elections but moving in that direction and the same positive Trends was seen in like all the other places where yeah where as I say we’ve we’ve had two so I mean T’s Valley it went from 22 or something to 33 or something um in we went we’ll see in a couple of days but again we have to remember 2021 was an enormously bumper year of local elections because of the postponement of the 2020 elections so you’ve got more in the way of stimulation from what’s going on in local government that’s true of course even this year because um you know most of the Metropolitan districts have elections every year a lot of the maral contests are taking place alongside uh local elections that are going place in either all or most of the combined Authority area yeah some yeah and Sarah we’ve been talking a lot about um Metro Mays but I wanted to ask about the newly elected councilors tomorrow there as you set out already facing some really difficult Financial pressures so um what are the kind of biggest uh challenges associated with that that they’re going to have on their plates yeah I mean there is a bit of who would be a counselor at the moment you know nobody goes into politics to make things worse and some of the decisions that councils councils are being faced with are really really difficult about you know rationing services or you know choosing often it’s it’s about sort of making sure the money is available for those what we call statutary services um so the adult social care or for children with special educational needs at the expense of some of the more discretionary services that are actually um experienced by by more people and and that is that is really tough um I just want to say something as well about turnout and John’s been referencing this sort of the the complicated idiosyncratic nature of um council elections and that’s because of this thing of Elections by thirds where you have um you know so you have uh elections in three years out of every four and a third of councilors up every year and it’s arguably that that’s not really very good for Democratic engagement because it means um at one end a scale you don’t really get much change so I think uh in Wakefield and Sandwell even if Labour lost all of the councilors that are or all of the seats that are being contested they wouldn’t lose control of the council because there’s only a third of them up and their majority is such um and so we kind of saw that a bit in thork um last year the leader lost his seat and the conservatives majority was reduced but they did hold on so that will be one to watch because labor will be are hoping to to gain control of that one um and then but Thor’s also an example of at the other end of the scale of that if you’ve got councils where political control is really finely balanced then actually it’s very difficult to get anything meaningful done because you’ve essentially got nine months then you’re in election mode again and then the the politicians in charge could change and so for the priorities and and the policies um so it can make it very challenging to operate in that environment and I think this you know when you speak to council officers I don’t know any Council officers who would advocate for continuing with thirds um everyone would prefer the sort of all out every four years and then you know get on and and deliver on your sort of Manifesto and policy platform but that trouble is that does produce incredibly disproportional results because you’re using multimember plurality um as as the London bers do so um you get you you you can get um overall majorities on quite small shares of the vote so that that’s the D me I think if you’re going to go down that track then I think you’d have to think about going back to much small ws and having single member WS because multi member plurality is an even more disproportional system than a single member plurality or we can introduce a single transferable vote into English local government in the way that it’s already being introduced in Wales and and in Scotland I mean that’s the alternative yeah although yeah and then which is uh yeah arguably more representative but you get a lot of you get basically all coalitions then don’t you yeah but but but but the truth is but the truth is local government in England as youve already acknowledged already generates lots of places with no overall control it’s something like a half the councils that are being elected um on uh tomorrow are places where at the moment no single party has overall control I think smaller Wards with allout elections is a better solution because then you would have even more much more local community Representatives at a sub level but but then the council officers will say all they’re then interested in is their is their own narrow backyard rather than the broader interests of the district as a whole right I it’s just a longstanding debate about what’s the best form of representation just before we go out to the audience we haven’t talked much about the kind of policy questions that are being discussed um in these set of Elections Akash what are some of the kind of big issues been in the meril campaigns and have you seen any particularly interesting policy proposals I think there’s quite a lot actually actually um I mean first of all in terms of you know issues in the campaign eight in eight out of the 10 contests there’s an incumbent standing um obviously the two completely new mes can’t have an incumbent so you know all of them are to some extent standing on their record um in some cases the opposite the opponent opposing candidates are trying to focus on on the mayor’s record crime in London for example Susan Hall has been talking about that a lot so you know that’s that’s part of it but in terms of sort of new ideas and proposals um yeah there’s there’s there’s quite a lot I mean transport as I said is really the biggest the the kind of big devolved function and a lot of the candidates are trying to follow that greater Manchester or indeed the London tfl model um is a big priority for Steve R room in Liverpool City region for Kim mcginness in the Northeast um Tracy Braven in in West yor in a different form they’re all talking about that more integrated transport system with yeah bus buses taken under public control multimodal ticketing all that kind of stuff as well as you know sort of specific schemes that they’re committing to investing in so mass transit scheme in West Yorkshire is a big one extension of trams in um in West Midlands for example so there’s there’s lots of things like that sort of specific um projects but then also I mean just quickly one one of the things that I do find interesting is the extent to which some of the candidates more than others are really trying to look Beyond and Branch out in terms of their Vision Beyond those kind of core growth investment productivity things which are kind of at the core of of the dvo deals if you look at them on paper I mean that’s most obviously the case with Andy Burnham I’d say I mean he’s got these three big Ideas he talks about in his Manifesto which are all more kind of like social policy type of things around Community Health um and Technical education for like post 16 what he’s talking about an mback Manchester B laurat um and helping people with like multiple complex needs so he’s really trying to make that broader and and some of the others as well uh that that broader case for yeah devolved leadership of a of a wider social policy the agenda and then the other thing I’d note just quickly is lots and lots of the manifestos have um propos proposals and calls for further Devolution I mean that’s very very um strongly present in a lot of they want more power I mean why you shouldn’t be surprised well I’m not surprised but I think it what it does reflect is is the fact that both both parties in the general election are committed to more Devolution to deeper Devolution to New Deals as I do once they get into office the enthusiasm for de Devolution strangely begins to diminish well that’s one cynical view but I mean a lot of progress has been made over the past 5 years is what I would say so a lot of the may they want control of apprenti Levy funding employment support power to introduce rent controls a bunch of other stuff there’s lots and lots of interesting ideas out there no I’m not expecting all of it to happen John but I think there’s a bit of an opportunity there for Mayors and the ifg has proposals quick plug coming out in a couple of weeks in this space as well Sarah you going to come in yeah um so I’ve just been really interested to see how much this the Marl focuses around housing so the delivery of new homes is um is part of their their core Powers but they’re also looking to do stuff on the sort private rented sector in some cases Andy Burnham’s got proposals around that Kim mcginness and Jamie Driscoll as well I think which is not their remit um and uh you know looking to talk they’re talking about retrofit they’re talking about the homes they do build being Net Zero as far as possible and I think you know housing is such a huge issue in the country at the moment it’s and it’s seems to be nowhere in our national debate where we’ve spent the past however long talking about sending people to Rwanda or not I think it’s actually really refreshing to see some of these issues that are really impacting people’s lives day today kind of getting that air time and getting that um discussion yeah and yeah to John’s point they ALS say it in opposition and then they don’t but I guess the difference this time might be the of there really is no money and so maybe they will have to try and do something passing the passing the pain as we know is something that central government is very very keen on yeah yeah on that note I’m going to go out to the audience and so there’ll be mics coming around I’ll probably take questions in groups of three if you could tell us uh your name kind of which organization or where you’re from I’ve got um gentleman at the back in the blue shirt there somebody in yellow here and somebody white T-shirt over here thank you Alan Evans I think this question is probably for John because it’s a boring theological question rather than about Metro Mays but looking at the local election results tomorrow to what extent John do you think it will be possible to produce a meaningful National projected vote share looking ahead to the general election and if so and taking into account that Scotland won’t vote which will be vital the election what should we looking for what would be good for the conservatives or bad for the conservatives would it be anything under 20% lead okay I’ll just take a few more first yeah sorry yeah sure okay right oops hi F here in a personal capacity um I want to ask question about voter ID this is not the first election the voter ID laws uh but it is coming up a lot and obviously we couldn’t really draw many conclusions last year about the impact will we be able to do you think more so tomorrow um about effects on turnout or effects on anything related to the elections upcoming thank you thank you and then one over here uh Matthew price from Delta pole another question probably mainly for John um one of the main stories from the national polling over the last year is the rise in support for reform but they’re obviously not standing as many candidates as the other part parties in the local elections tomorrow so I was wondering what you think will be the best gauge that we’ll get from tomorrow for whether that support is translating yeah okay so National boat share Productions um reform John I’ll come to your not okay well I hope it’s going to be possible to produce a meaningful quote unquote projected National share because I’m contracted to do so by by by Friday afternoon but but but but straight away I’m going to say to you it is not even telling you even attempting to tell you what the result of a general election would be if it was held tomorrow let alone what it might be in 6 months time it is a measure me of the local electoral performance of the parties and it should be compared with the local electoral performance in previous years of the parties that’s the way to think of it it’s a measure of where we are now through the rather complicated prism of um English local the cycle of English local government um elections but that be underneath that there are things to look out for um and I’ll at this point I’ll link it with with with the um the third question um those of us who’ve been doing this for far too long will know that two of The crucial signals that came from the local elections of 1995 and 1996 were one that the conservatives were losing ground more heavily in places where they were previously strongest and two that voters were voting tactically against the conservatives on unprecedented scale both of those geographical patterns then manifested themselves in the 1997 general election last year’s local elections for the really the first time since the formation of the Coalition in 2010 saw a significant amount of anti-conservative tactical voting and secondly it very definitely showed the conservative losing votes more heavily in places where their previously strongest that’s why the Tories ended up losing a thousand seats right so those are two things that underneath the Bonnet of the projected National share I’m definitely on the lookout for uh and of course one of the reasons why the MRP polling that we’ve had it’s gener a lot of publicity of the do you really mean to think the toys can get less 100 seats well maybe is because of the uh the risk because that why those polls are picking up they don’t pick up the Tactical voting polls won’t pick up tactical voting at this stage but they are picking up that tendency for the Tories to lose votes more heavily in places where they previously strongest which in part is almost an arithmetical inevitability because at the moment the conservatives are average are 22 points down on where they were in 2019 and there’s about a 100 constituencies where they did not get 22% of the vote in 2019o their vote must be going down more elsewhere right okay that takes me to reform I mean you’re right and I think one of the reasons why the conservatives may not do as badly as some people are anticipating is because reform are only fighting one in six of the local government Wards uh they’re only fighting what a couple of the Metro Mayors couple of the PC they’re fighting fewer than they did in 2021 though for some strange reason they’re fighting the L elections in London and this is the least reform part of of of the country until you get to the Scot Anglo Scottish border um but of course therefore again looking underneath the Bonnet what we can do is to look at how well reform do in the places where they do stand um and is their vote up on where it was and that will help to answer the question that you know your all poers are asking about how reliable is this um and also then also is there any relationship between reform being on the ballot paper and how well or badly the conservatives do again these are questions beneath the headline stuff that we can do with the data we’re collecting at the BBC um and uh so and then you know that’s and then of course the Blackpool South byelection which is black pool South a very euroskeptic area you know um it should be somewhere where reform could do um uh reasonably well voter ID I mean to be honest this is a bit of a polarized subject if you think that maybe voter ID might be a good idea you will point to the evidence of whatever it is that not. x% of people who turned up to the poing station and were denied entrance originally um you know then didn’t come back again and it represents you know what 0.6% of the people are going to stand up if on the other hand you are don’t like this policy you say ah but some of them an unknown number which is quite conveniently unknown number say were weren’t didn’t go into the poing station because somebody had told them beforehand but have you got your ID right so the debate continues I must admit my own my my own views are somewhat uh colored by having done um uh election observation elsewhere and basically not having a requirement to prove your identity does not means we’re not up to inter standard international standards okay oecd will regard this as as as as done and if we know well you know when oecd is observing elections in place well were at least they don’t count anymore observing things in Russia you know one of the things absolutely looking at is are people required to give their IDE what is the risk of fraud etc etc now one of the reasons why we are where we are is because we have a very peculiar Victorian system of architecture and we we used to rely not on people being challenged on the pting station but people being challenged to get on the register in the first place and what the parties did was to challenge whether or not people had the right to vote as a part of the registration process and you know but of course it’s already the case in Northern Ireland where we felt we couldn’t trust people you do have to vote do have to vote our ID um I mean so I mean to be honest I mean in terms of the level over level of turnout last year you know you really couldn’t tell the difference I think that said what I think is unfortunate about it uh I think in an Ideal World this would have been done on a bipartisan basis um and that all of the parties would come to an agreement about the introduction of this and that along the way shall we say some seemingly curious decisions about was and was not valid ID would not be the source of contention now you know in so far as ideally in in a liberal democracy you want agreement about the fundamental rules of the game and I think the right of people to write to vote in a sense is part of the fundamental rules of the game um so I I you know I think this is unfortunate so I think I’m not necessarily opposed to the principle though of course it then really gets us to the all argument about ID cards because most people who require people to choose their identity have ID card systems so you know everybody has the ID that’s required so long as they can find it so that makes it more complicated here um uh but you know that aside I think in principle it’s difficult to object to the question is could have being implemented better and can it still be implemented better in future thanks Sean Sarah just to add on that I think yeah you’re right we didn’t it wasn’t as big a pressure last year as had perhaps been feared but I think um election electoral administrators are still concerned what will happen in a general election when turnout will be so much higher there’s also this issue of it’s kind of changed the nature of what you do as a polling Clerk and that’s making it a bit harder to recruit people to do that so it’s usually it’s usually Council staff that will give up their normal duties and do that for a day but if you’re having to sort of confront people and challenge people um some there’s less kind of willingness to do that so that’s another s of slight concern with it um and it’s not just photo ID that’s been brought in there’s various other changes that um that are coming in around postal votes and you know have to share ID then you if you want to drop your polling your postal vote off at a polling station you then have to show ID for that way you didn’t before so there’s there’s there will be some sort minimal issues I think as the system gets used to the new way of working and yeah I think as John said the way it was introduced um as even I think Jacob ree MOG admitted was I think he used the term Jerry mandering so uh yeah that’s not a great start is it if we’re trying to maintain trust in our but he’s now of course concerned that maybe he’s going to rebound on them because older voters are less likely to have the passport would be the easy form of ID aash I wanted to come to you on um one of the online questions so uh tomorrow Merill and police and crime Commissioners are being voted on by first past the post uh for the first time used to be supplementary vote what difference um are you expecting that change system to have on the elections so I think you know it’s not likely to have a an if uh make a difference to the results very often um I mean we looked at this in a in a blog that we did my my colleague Millie who’s somewhere in the room crunched the number and I think we found here I’ve got it here there have been 200 there were 223 elections held under the supplementary vote of the system used up until this time uh for Metro mayor PCC and um local Authority mayoral elections out of which 17 on 17 occasions the result would have been different under the first part of the post assuming people didn’t changed the way they voted in other words the person who got the highest share of first preference votes was not then the successful candidate because the second place person overtook them so in other words it would um from time to it will from time to time lead to different results I mean there was one Metro mayor last time around James Palmer in Cambridge year who had the highest share of first preferences and and lost on second preferences um so we might see that sometimes um and I mean what we concluded about this is the risk of this change is I mean what you might see sometimes is mayor’s El and I’m specifically talking about Metro Mayors really here elected with a pretty small share of the vote maybe a third or so particularly when there’s lots of candidates um and in a system that unlike SV or avw as well that where there’s no kind of incentive for them or imperative for them to appeal for second preferences U from people who who you know voters who who back are candidates and our concern about that is you might see people elected who are less able to basically do what it is that metr Mayers are there to do which is work across party lines often work with a wide set of set of stakeholders and build a coalition for you know whatever projects that they’re trying to advance because they don’t have all the executive power you know to just do this stuff themselves their their their effectiveness in post is based as we’ve already touched upon on that mandate and that Authority and I think there is a risk with that change that that in some circumstances that would be weakened so in our view it probably is something that a future government should uh revisit thank you I we’ve also got a question on Independent Mayors we’ve talked about Jamie Driscoll already Sarah are there other independent Mayors you can see being elected tomorrow and is there any benefit to having an independent mayor rather than a mayor that has a Party Machine behind them um so we’re talking about Metro Mayors Metro Mayors yeah um I don’t think there are any other independent Mees of smattering of candidates but um no I don’t think we’re going to get any independent Mayors elected the Jamie Driscoll situation is really interesting because obviously he was Labor um until relatively recently um and you know there’s there’s the argument isn’t there about how is it better beneficial to have a mayor that’s also this for the same party that’s in power and if we’re expecting that to be labor probably some point soon you know how does that Dynamic work given um Jamie just’s not only left labor party but fallen out pretty badly with them um but equally you know I think you can be a sort of a stronger voice for your region potentially if you’re not kind of bound by party lines but the question is is is anybody listening I think that if you look at you know you look at Andy Street and Andy Burnham they have not always towed the party line um and they’ve able to speak for their place and not speak for their for their party so um yeah I’m not sure it makes massive difference right I’m going to come up back out to the room got a hand uh straight up over here in purple one here on the front row and then um here glass so we’ve talked about people like Andy Street distinc themselves from their party and having an independ in you know personal vote of their own but what about you know generally where you know you have the conservatives changing their party name on all the ballot papers to local conservatives does it work and if you’ve not I think today and they have swanage conservatives literally writing out saying you know we are not National conservatives we are local conservative I mean like really really desperate stuff does it work and how can we judge whether it works thank you great and then we’ve got one just here sorry you mind um saying your name and way or from if possible uh yeah my name is Hees and I work at ston Haven uh which is a sort of political consultancy with its own uh polling arm as well but um I wanted to know what you thought about the effect of kind of the claps of local media sources and uh local radio local newspapers was on these elections and also in kind of the accountability of uh local authorities as well and whether it makes further Devolution uh more risky thank you and then here so my questions related to that I really wanted to ask Sarah that struck me that the campaign in London has been crucifying dull and lowkey and I wondered whether the contests anywhere else were capturing the public imagination in any sense because it seems to be an incredibly sort of boring set of local elections and the only leaflets I’m getting through my door apart from the mayoral booklet have all been about the general election even labor haven’t bothered to distribute anything talking about the morality or I’m in a highly marginal GLA seat uh and nothing about that thank you so Sarah I’m going to come to you first are they more exciting elsewhere um so from what I’ve I’ve seen and picked up I think um yeah the obvious ones teas Valley in West Midlands that’s where the cont there’s been a lot of interest there what I’m sort of speculating here but what I don’t get a sense is that any of the parties are spending lots of money on these elections I don’t know if they’re all kind of hoarding their War chests for a general presumably but um and yeah in in London there’s kind of know the polling suggests there’s not a big Challenge from from any of the other parties so you would kind of assume that’s that’s driving that um but generally to the question about local media I think that’s it is a massive concern I I started my career as a local journalist and I think there’s just no better like foundation for life really like few years on a local newspaper you kind of see all sorts and everything but I just don’t think you know those opportunities aren’t really there anymore or if they are they’re not local often they’re miles away um and I think even I think London really as a major city is quite underserved by its political media really in terms of some of the kind of the level of coverage and the depth of the analysis that we get from some of our local local newspapers so yeah I’d agree it’s it’s a real concern John does um distancing yourself from the National Party work it’s a common practice when your party is in trouble but I certainly have not aware of any evidence that it it’s particularly successful um that whether anybody has ever done any systematic analysis um you know I’m not I’m not aware but um you know I I presume that Mr Sun’s um face has not appeared on that many conservative leaflets in the last three weeks but Pro well I mean s St at least has probably been on some although he’s not particularly popular either but um you can see you can see why people sorry have not found K stor on any of the either yeah I mean you know we’ve got we we we do have a problem in this country at the moment is we don’t really have any good politicians who are leaders of political parties um the the S&P are finally ditched theirs um we’ll see whether they can come up with somebody better this second time around but anyway Akash um I wanted to well do you want to come in on any of those questions from the audience um only to say I mean on the media local media question question I mean yeah I think generally this question of accountability of Metro Mayors is it’s a very important one I think is kind of well recognized that the the local scrutiny model that exists for Metro Mayors is very weak the scrutiny committees they have of of counselors most of whom never show up they don’t get paid for it they don’t really see any point in doing it um unlike well obviously in London there’s a London assembly at least is something even though people question how effective it is but um when you yeah basically I think when there is a weak or virtually absent local media with the capacity to kind of you know forensically follow what Mayors are doing how combined authorities are using money that does leave a bit of an accountability Gap and that potentially you know incentivizes or encourages government departments to not let go naturally because um you know if things go wrong they’ll feel that the buck stops there so I think that is one reason why Devolution you know maybe has been a bit slower than than some of us might want it to be I also wanted to ask you aash about the kind of the outlook for the future of devolution in England we’re going to have at some point um a a new government whether that’s a um continuation of the incumbents or or a labor government what are some of the kind of key questions facing them about the future of English Devolution yes so I guess I mean we’ve touched upon some of these already um I mean one we haven’t talked about and yes thank you for again opportunity to mention it but we we have a paper that we be talking about this coming out soon so what one thing that both parties what in one one form or another have committed to is extending Devolution to the rest of the country so as of tomorrow around about 50% of the population of England will be covered by some kind of devolution deal um there’s a few more deals on track to be done by next year year um but still quite a lot of areas including some big cities big urban areas have been left out so I think one important question is how do you complete the map as it’s sometimes called um of devolution which we think is the right thing to do first of all just for fairness reasons because it does in you know our analysis bring benefits um only seems right that all places should have that have that opportunity but I also think it would be good for Central govern government because at the moment you have this weird situation of government departments like dck um taking in some parts of the country kind of you know micromanage decisions about resource allocation about house building DFT doing likewise for transport etc etc and in other places they’ve got a much more hands-off approach it’s quite weird and I don’t think it leads to good policy making and resource allocation basically and central government I think would benefit from being liberated from some of that stuff so it can focus on the things that it actually does better in terms of you know big National strategic objectives resource allocation you know making sure there’s sort of fair distribution accountability and governance questions at a high level that kind of thing um so yeah for us that’s one key thing for the next government thanks Akash and um John last question from the online audience for you um if the conservatives do better than expected tomorrow does that reduce the likelihood of the general election being held sooner rather than later um I have long been of the view that the election will be on the 14th of November um and that the relative Pro well the relative performance of the cons I mean assuming the conservative party lose right whether they lose um narrowly or lose badly is irrelevant it’s for the person who has to make the decision which is richy sunak right I take the view basically if the conservatives lose his political career is over he has no base in the party and you know he might as well go back and make some more money in California or enjoy his swimming pool because because it will be his political career will be over right but what has he got he’s got so long as he can stop his party trying to throw him out he’s got two years in the bank by going going to to November and in that between now and November he can aim to get the legislation on the statute book that might eventually get rid of tobacco smoke in the UK when the history books get written in 20 years time the one thing that which is soon up will be remembered for is for that legislation and hey guys that’s not bad that’s more than most Prime Ministers managed to achieve um but I think I think the per you know the all the arguments about well maybe the toys would lose a bit little bit less here then or wherever um it’s irrelevant to him right unless all of a sudden the conservative party is in a position where he might be able to carry on in office he has every incentive of just running the clock on maximizing his term in office um and at least uh enjoying the job while he’s got it because he probably doesn’t have it thereafter on that note going to bring the event to a close I think we’re bang on half past um Akash has already mentioned the fact that we’ve got a report out on the next uh steps for English devolution um in two weeks time weeks two weeks time so please do visit our website then and have a look for it and to look at all our other fantastic work on Devolution huge thanks to our brilliant panel for a fascinating Lively discussion um and huge thanks to the audience both in person and online for great questions for those of you who are in person do um come out into the landing and join us for a drink thanks everyone