Local elections: Rishi Sunak should call general election now | UK politics | New Statesman podcast

“Get [a general election] done now, so you can recover sooner” says polling expert Ben Walker.

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After a bruising set of results for the Conservatives in the UK local elections 2024, will Rishi Sunak call a general election?

Rachel Cunliffe discusses the results with Ben Walker, who says a poor showing has rallied Conservatives away from a leadership challenge because, as he says, “oh my god, [the results] are so bad”. Which means the Prime Minister should call an election now to avoid further damage to the Conservative brand.

Keir Starmer and Labour, meanwhile, are celebrating historic wins including the Blackpool by-election.

See our full election results map here: https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2024/05/britainelects2024

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hello and welcome to the new Statesman podcast I’m Rachel Kliff associate political editor and joining me down the line is our senior data journalist and polling expert Ben Walker Ben welcome thank you for having me we’re recording this podcast at about 3M on Friday the 3 of May so results are continuing to come in but there is already so much for us to discuss Ben how much sleep did you get last night uh three three hours that is that is a sort of classic local elections cycle um let’s start though with Blackpool South the one byelection taking place uh this week uh to replace Scott Benton the conservative MP who had to leave Parliament after a lobbying Scandal um Labor’s got it its newest MP in the form of of Chris Webb that was pretty much expected um but what can we read into this yeah so labor gain in Blackpool South that’s not news although bear in mind you know labor only had won other MP in Blackpool South since even though it was the same guy 1997 to 2019 that was the last time uh Labour won this seat but the forecast was Britain predict which I always have to advertise available from all good magazines such as the new Statesman you just Google it Britain predict you’ll be able to find it um we forecast and it you know our forecast does pretty well for you know getting elections right except this one we expected labor to come away 50% to the conservatives 30 and what happened uh lab came away with 58% and the conservatives almost almost fell uh into third place behind reform here this is a worst performance for the conservatives and what the national polls implied this is a better performance for labor than what the national polls implied for reform it’s about you know on online in line although they are up three points on what we expected but the thing about reform is this they they are a thing now okay uh a few podcasts ago about half a year ago I suppose I was calling you know the Reform Party a phantom vote you were only seeing them in the opinion polls you weren’t really seeing them in byelections now we’re seeing them in byelections now we’re seeing Tory voters leave the Tories to go vote reform they are existing as a real force and we’re seeing it also in council elections particularly in Sunderland last night what this means is um first of all the polls are right they they may actually in some parts be understating the labor lead and um the problem for the conservatives of losing their supporters to reform is genuine it is real now it’s not Phantom it’s not you know a polling uh error or polling phenomenon it’s really voters are going to reform now the question is as we see in Blackpool is how many of those reform voters can the Tory squeeze we don’t know yet we can’t really say uh reform voters absolutely hate the labor party absolutely hate Kama Ramona Europe that kind of stuff and they really do not like the conservatives so squeezing them you know when the general election comes is going to be a tough ask but it’s not impossible what what you see in Blackpool South really is is maybe we are understating the labor lead a little bit but also you’re seeing a potential for the conservatives in a vote that could also be squeezed the reform vote so a good night for niga farage and Richard Ty uh and and the Reform Party uh also though 26 Point swing from conservative to labor one of their biggest swings in post-war history uh and their newest MP and so that I mean kiss dmer said that is the most important for him anyway result of the night but obviously by elections are not the point of of of local elections um in general looking across at councils and the performance of of the parties sort of up and down the country what have we learned keeping in mind that it’s it’s only Friday afternoon what have we learned so far well there’s two takeaways one is the polls are right and the second is nothing has changed the last time we had local elections was was this time last year you know had 8,000 seats up for grabs a lot of them are also up again because they’re multi-member if you know what I mean so they elect in thirds and we’re seeing very little change there you know the landslide inducing leads labor had last year in a lot of these local Council Wards pretty much being repeated and in some areas it’s doing a hell of a lot better so um before we had the local elections I vote a piece sort of saying look no excuses for labor now you know we are are in general election mode more and more Britains are paying attention to the fact that this year is a general election year even though we’re not seeing it particularly reflected in turnout but what you are seeing is the proportion of Britains who are undecided going down and yet at the same time the Tory uh deficit against labor is not exactly you know narrowing is it so um people are paying more attention and that means labor needs to start showing a bit of you know electoral success uh in the places it needs to win so last year they did quite poorly in Grimsby this year they they almost swept it they did really well redit one of those traditional Battleground seats that new labor lost Cameron’s Tories won labor swept it there or almost did they swept the town not the countryside bit uh Rushmore as well complete shocker that one um you’re talking a military town in Hampshire near alers shot near sandur where the British army is based what H what on Earth is happening there you know that of course people voters move around demographic change does happen but um does that explain all of it no you’re seeing labor break ground in a whole load of new areas and I think the one thing that I summarizes this for me is the result in my own home county of North Yorkshire and York we didn’t have council elections there we had mayal elections and it’s a new mayor it’s a nonsensical entity but you know it’s the election for North Yorkshire and Labour won it labor won in North Yorkshire now of course you got York celb and scarra in North Yorkshire that labor sometimes do top the poll in they definitely top the poll in York but you’ve also got Harriet where I’m from you got richmondshire you’ve got Hamilton you’ve got Craven you’ve got rural North Yorkshire the Moors that doesn’t even consider labor party at election time how on Earth did labor win that and and so I I’ve been tweeting this I’ve been messaging friends this uh the summary this is not normal the election results we are seeing now are not normal this is a dramatic uh collapse in support for the conservatives that is seeing them lose across the board in places where they absolutely should not be losing and when you consider this as a general election year and the polls are not narrowing even though Tory uh undecided you know are getting smaller and smaller um oh dear oh dear rishy well as you as you say oh dear rishy um yor and North yoria is very much Rishi Sak’s own backyard um and let’s let’s talk about some of those meril results because the ones that people generally get the most excited about we’re not going to hear until tomorrow Saturday that’s the the London maral election uh Sadi Khan and Susan hall and then we’ll also get the result of West Midlands and see if Andy Street has managed to cling on he’s the he’s the conservative incumbent there but the meral results that we do have so far uh yor and North Yorkshire as you say new meraly uh was not expected to go Labor uh until sort of the last week or so when there were murmur that it might and it has labor are reporting that they are pretty confident that they’ve won the East Midlands malaly which is a new one where the Conservative candidate Ben Bradley is a is an MP and he’s also the incumbent leader of the council uh the biggest Council there so that’s kind of quite big as well if labor are correct and they’ve managed to win that but the conservatives are really trying to focus on a big win that they have had which is Benin teas Valley uh who is exceeded expectations and has uh has won a third term by quite a substantial margin and uh if you listen to the conservatives who’ been going off on the broadcast round today that is the thing that they’ve all wanted to focus on so maral elections incumbents new ones uh conservative leads labor getting surprise victories how do you read the this slate of of maril elections that we’ve had so far yeah yeah so so so I so I came into these meril contests I wrote I want to know one or two pieces about um you know the polls showing initially showing you know labor comfortably ahead in the West Midlands and then not and then once you prompt for Andy Street it getting quite tight and then you prompt him for a bit more you do a few more polls you you find he actually could be ahead and as as you say there is a potential that uh the uh Tories or rather Andy Street has held on the west Midlands um I was casting a lot of Doubt on these polls because I thought you know in an era of 20o Labor leads in an era when you’re also winning North Yorkshire uh personality cannot sustain itself you know against the moving herd of you know Tory loss and yet it has in the case of the teas Valley that’s a Boris Johnson phrase isn’t it when the herd moved it mov it’s a great actually I think it’s a really great phrase because when the herd move it does move and the country has you know by and large moved against the government with the exception of Personality politics which surprises me because I thought you know that wouldn’t have mattered as much but it seems though in Marl races it has in America a lot of people were telling saying this to me you know when you look at Merl races very popular Governors very popular Mayors do tend to hold on even though the city or state is you know the opposite of them politically um we’re seeing that we’re seeing that in the UK and if you if you want to talk about Americanization of British politics that is one such instance um I just I’m just surprised at it really uh the teas Valley which you know doesn’t exist it’s teas Dale Ben hch and they’re holding on labor you know in a general election if a general election was held now and if you trust the polls which I don’t think there’s any reason to not uh you know label would be coming away with 54% to the Tories 25 and what what we instead have is that we instead have a conservative hold a pretty clear conservative hold and if if indeed what happens in the West Midlands is the same that was also a county localized region where labor should be on 50% Plus and the conservatives collapsing to 20 something perc it’s it’s it’s it’s astounding really it is the sign of successful personalities but that does mean personality is a double-edged sword because it’s not a likable personality you could underperform the now of course we’re recording at 3M on Friday we can’t exactly say uh too much about London yet we don’t know about it but early indications are maybe Sadi Khan has underperformed and you always got to remember this in London uh 51% plus of London is a expect to vote Labor uh in the maral election based on the polling what was it 43 44 45% for May KH yeah getting his re-election in but just bear in mind that only 30 to 33% of londoners like sadique KH as may his approval ratings are pretty poor You know despite being very you know devoutly on the he’s he’s he’s marketed himself quite successfully as on the left of the labor party he according to most londoners doesn’t get high approval ratings and I do Wonder actually if that has come back to bite him we don’t know yet but um it is something to bear in mind yeah personality is beginning to play a bigger role in British politics locally I want to come back to that point about possible areas of danger for labor I think it’s also worth saying with with Ben hin that the swing away from him since uh the mity was last fought in 2021 obviously that was vaccine bounce the height of Boris Johnson’s success uh but he did win 73% of the vote there and there was a 16 point Point swing against him this time around and I believe if that swing were replicated across the seats the constituency seats uh in that area labor would win all of them so even with that substantial victory for Ben hin it’s still a sign that that the labor are making gains that they need in that area although the force of Personality as you say is a really important one um we don’t know about London we we’ll know more on Saturday um but were there any other areas of potential labor anxiety there’s obviously the the the new meraly in the Northeast where labor have won it but the former formerly labor now independent candidate Jamie Driscoll did pretty substantially well as an independent um and then there were also areas of local councils where they’ve gone from labor to no overall control or where the greens have done very well are there any kind of Amber warning lights flickering on the kiss sta dashboard yeah yeah there’s absolutely there’s dozens actually and and here’s the thing you know in Tory labor fights labor are cleaning up they are doing well enough to get themselves a majority get themselves very comfortable probably secure a landslide you know in a certain enough seats where liberal and green voters you know lend their support in the general election but we know once labor gets in things are going to change and uh I think we are already starting to see that these new battle lines being drawn so um I think we discussed this before you know what impact has Gaza Israel Palestine what impact has that had or not on British public opinion and I’ve been saying quite regularly that it’s been very negligible it’s been there you know limited to certain areas certain types of people most Britains aren’t motivated by it but it is disproportionately motivating amongst Muslim heavy and Asian heavy areas and what we have seen in one of the most Muslim parts of Newcastle labor losing a very safe seat to an Asian green candidate significant swing what we’ve seen also in Blackburn safe labor bur Blackburn and Darwin whilst labor were cleaning up shop in the very middle class Darwin uh picking up a lot of seats off the conservatives they were losing five to upwards of 10 uh seats to Independent candidates now that we are seeing a bit of rebellion there um we can’t necessarily attribute what it is we can see suggest it’s Gaza we can suggest it’s Israel Palestine we can suggest it’s growing antipathy amongst Muslim voters towards the labor brand I think an inevitability the more settled you become in a country but um I the scale of which it’s hard to say what will this mean in a general election we don’t know in Alm and Rochdale you know in Alm we’ve seen the labor brand locally be to torn apart by local Independence and now it’s been joined with antipathy over Israel Palestine uh we don’t know but it is definitely definely an Amber warning uh other seats greens are beginning to bite into very safe labor areas you just saw north of Liverpool in Bole um you saw the green candidate you know striking gold in a very safe labor seat and what it is you know imagine a part of Liverpool neighborhood in Liverpool that’s a bit younger than the average bit I don’t want to say affluent but it has people with more professional skills than the average and you’re seeing the greens starting to win in places like that uh in Council election season uh we don’t know to what extent to what scale we just know it’s starting to happen you’re seeing it in certain parts of SC side you’re seeing in certain parts of oh god well Bristol whenever that comes out will the greens have a majority on Bristol Council or will they you know uh will labor will they fall short we don’t know but there’re are complete there there a very threatening presence to labor um and that’s something to keep an eye on uh other Amber warning uh issues for labor is this always remember that labors vote in a general election as a coalition of anti-tory Voters okay and uh right now voters are lining up to plump for the party that’s most that best able to beat the conservatives in a general election that will overwhelmingly be labor in local elections it’s going to be uh different parties but the minute labor gets in that Coalition fractures so the Amber warning here is that labor is winning seats other parties are winning seats and labor knows that when those other parties win seats they’re going to be a threat to labor as well so uh Sheffield uh the greens and libdems still have a presence labor have won quite convincingly there but I know when labor gets in they’re going to be on the back foot quite seriously on the back foot Ditto in Hull where it’s like a 5050 split no actually I think the libdems have the edge there uh it’s a splitting hole between the lims and labor and I know when labor get in it’s going to be a bit of trouble for them so Amber warning all over all over labor Labor’s challenge is to keep that Coalition together for long enough to win a second term so you said a lot of things there that we don’t know yet another thing we don’t know is the impact of the new voter ID rules uh that they all had on turnout uh obviously lots of people voting this time around uh for the first time requiring a photo ID in order to vote and there were a couple of funny stories there was the uh Tory MP Tom Hunt who was desperately asking if anyone could arrange a proxy vote for him because he’d managed to lose his photo ID and then blaming that on being distic uh and uh perfectly reasonable there are other dyspraxic people who may also have struggled to find their ID that it would have been nice if the conservatives thought about before bringing in this legislation um it’s anger that uh veterans cards weren’t valid uh and people trying to to vote with other forms of of ID that uh led to them being turned away to polling station but my favorite one my favorite one has got to be Boris Johnson uh who who introduce this legislation forgetting his ID just wonderful wonderful irony there um do we know anything about the the impact that these rules might have and and how that might affect different parties vote share last year was a big year for local elections 8,000 seats up for grabs I think it was like four million votes cast there anyway um we saw I think it was 10,000 people who were turned away and did not come back so a lot of local authorities made the habit of counting the number of people asking their poll Clarks to count the number of people they said you don’t have ID and then counting the number of people who came back most people came back and we’ve seen that also today the Paul Clarks I’ve spoken to have all said the people we’ve had to turn way the vast majority of them have come back nevertheless you know in a in a room of about you know if you have to turn away a 100 people I I suppose around about 90 to 95 will come back so you have a loss rate of 5% among those who uh 5 to 10% among those uh who initially didn’t bring ID that’s that is a chunk of people um I think the analysis from the House of Commons and others was you know 10,000 plus voters were turned away and did not come back in a local election which a few million votes were cast that is yes A Drop in the Ocean does it does it mean anything different for the parties um well hear about this low turnout local elections are low turnout the people who will turn out in council elections let’s be honest are the people more switched on than most people right they are the ones who actually pay attention to the candidates perhaps why these Personalities in the maril fights are you know holding firm for the conservatives um so it could be different in a general election it actually could be uh we just don’t really know who it disproportionately hurts um you’ve got to ask who doesn’t have ID who doesn’t psychologically tell themselves to carry ID around with them um I think one report sort of suggested that ethnic minority voters don’t have ID as much as white vot um you could ask about well do young people not have ID but then I would contend young people are used to carrying ID around because we like to go drinking more often than most people um so I I think um I’m not sure I’m I’m really not sure we the jury’s still out on the impact of voter ID you know politically party politically we don’t really know all we know is that you know last year a few million votes cast 10,000 were turn away um and I think they were disproportionately an urban areas but there’s not much more we can say unfortunately but I think that’s a really interesting point that the rate of people turning up who don’t have ID at local council elections might be smaller than at a general election because the people who vote in local elections as you say more more likely to be engaged um it’s more switched on so I think that’s definitely something for us to watch this is like the the last big electoral event before the the general election Lots questions about Rishi Sak’s leadership about uh whether he’ll face a challenge whether he’s more likely to go for a general election as a result of this certainly the conservative MPS that I’ve been speaking to even the ones who really don’t like zunac and would like to see him replaced didn’t really seem to have the momentum to to sort of get rid of him I sort of get the feeling that that plan has fizzled out and the results like the Ben hin one have helped insulate sinak from a challenge for now particularly because as always with the conservatives they they might want to get rid of him but they don’t have a clear idea of who they would like instead uh in general election terms though if you were richy sunak looking at the results we have so far would you be tempted to go for a June July election or is is there still an argument for waiting as long as possible um there’s always an argument for waiting as long as possible to what turkeys vote for Christmas very few do um it’s hard it’s really hard because um you could look at these results and think my God it’s so bad it’s not going to get better but then you could also think my God it’s so bad why don’t we wait out the economy why don’t we wait out the boats why don’t we wait out to see if something improves but they’ve been doing that for the past year and a bit and the conservatives are pulling just as low as when list truss’s mini budget was making its way through the markets and people’s houses it’s really you know um I don’t really think there’s much ground here but there is room for improvement I said it at the start Blackpool South the reform vote it exists it’s real that can be squeezed that can be squeezed a little bit but I don’t think by much let’s don’t forget this um reform voters absolutely hate uh the labor party but they also hate the conservatives just not by much okay if you think you can squeeze a bit of that have a go see what you can do but I don’t think it’ll be enough because labor you know won’t have tiny leads that can be overturned by reform reaching they’ll have massive leads they’ll have massive leads you know that will get them up to 380 390 seats at least so um hard ask uh should he go soon um if you I always take the view get the pain out of the way get it done now so you can recover sooner get it done now so your reputation isn’t further damaged by um Talk of replacement talk of leadership challenge talk of confidence because I know I actually think yeah I think I agree with with your observation that these local elections sort of rallied the conserv if not around the Prime Minister but away from getting rid of the Prime Minister because they think oh my God they’re so bad they’re so bad what can we do and um I can’t remember the minister who said it but um she said it on BBC in the morning uh that um you know voters don’t like seeing these Westminster Wars of struggle and fighting over a load of a load of uh new candidates faceless candidates they they they want to see something else but I also take the view that they want to see a different government they want you out so I don’t think whatever you do will change the public opinion narrative I really think it is over um I said I said this about a year to almost two years ago 2third to 70% of Britains say the next election should be a change election they want a change of government nothing I think is ever going to change that it is over um we are just we’re just talking we’re just talking in the funeral basically aren’t we reassuring words there for rishy sinak if he is listening to us um Ben thank you so much for join joining us I hope you get the chance to have a nap no more results to come thank you