With over 1,600 council seats up for grabs, the Tories are expected to lose as many as “half the seats” that they are defending
A seasoned Tory peer has warned the Conservative party are in for a brutal result in the local elections, as the rise of Reform continues to plague Kemi Badenoch and her party.
“The last round of [local] elections was in 2021, Boris Johnson was at his absolute height,” said Lord Hayward, pollster and former MP for Kingswood. “People rewarded the Conservative Party because we were the first place to go into general vaccinations against Covid.”
That post-vaccine boom won the Tories a whopping 2345 council seats four years ago, but following a wipeout in last year’s General Election and a dismal showing in the polls all signs point to more misery for the Conservatives.
“They have a very long way to fall, and in falling, there is no doubt that the biggest single beneficiary will be Reform,”explained the Tory Peer on The Division Bell podcast, “who effectively start from zero, because they weren’t around in 2021. They got the odd defector, but beyond that, any seats they win are almost automatically gained.”
Lord Hayward says Conservatives have a long way to fall
As well as a potentially big night for Reform, Lord Hayward also pointed out the Lib Dems and Greens stand to make big gains across the country.
“Having done so successfully in terms of seats at the General Election, what [the Lib Dems] now want to do is mop up the council seats that are in the parliamentary constituencies that they won. So they will aim to gain 100 plus seats from the 200 that they’re on roughly.”
Although the Greens won just four seats in the General Election, Lord Hayward predicted: “they will roughly double the number of seats”.
“If anybody is likely to be able to cry foul in terms a first past the post system, I think it could well be Greens.They will have upped their overall vote quite markedly, but they won’t come anywhere near getting the seats at their percentage.”
Hayward has little in the way of good news for his own party ahead of the first results emerging on Friday morning: “My estimate is that about half the seats the Conservatives are defending they will lose which means they will lose roughly 450, 500 seats in total”.
To hear more about the local elections and what they mean for key battlegrounds like Doncaster, and the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby, listen to this week’s special episode of The Division Bell.
