Local elections 2018: It was meant to bruise Theresa May, but Jeremy Corbyn’s the one with the bloody nose
As the dust settles on yesterday’s local elections, the picture that is emerging is one of status quo.
Incremental gains have been made by the two main parties – but mostly at the expense of Ukip.
None of the councils targeted by Labour in its much-hyped Unseat campaign have turned red. Instead the Tories have kept the hugely totemic councils of Westminster, Wandsworth and Kensington & Chelsea, while Barnet – which at one point was viewed as a dead cert – stayed blue in the wake of the anti-Semitism row.
One reading of this situation is that it’s no great shakes. Labour certainly isn’t any worse off, and in fact across the country has gained a number of council seats, more proportionately than the Conservatives. But that would be an excessively generous take.
Labour was gunning for the Tories, and the local were theirs for the taking. Theresa May has been consistently one of the least popular leaders – at least for someone so new in the job – since Gordon Brown.
The last fortnight alone has been particularly challenging for the Prime Minister: she has lost one of her most important Cabinet ministers in the wake of the Windrush scandal, with fingers pointing firmly at her, as former home secretary, to take the ultimate blame.
We are eight years into an austerity programme that has been viewed as hugely painful for some of the most vulnerable in society.
In London, Remainers should have been out in force to show their anger and frustration at the handling of the Brexit process, particularly in view of the fact May is sticking to her guns on the Single Market and customs union.
The housing crisis and rising cost of living should have pushed voters into the arms of a party promising to find a solution.
The shadow of Grenfell Tower, and the memory of May’s mishandling of the situation in the early days, should have ensured loomed large.
This morning Jeremy Corbyn tried to put a positive spin on it. “Across the country we made a lot of progress in a lot of places,” he told the BBC. “We had a very effective campaign all over the country. I’m very proud of work the Labour has done in these elections and of those councils that got elected.”
The reality is that Labour set out to give May a bruising, with the ultimate aim of forcing her to resign. Even the Tories were nervous. But once again, Labour have failed to make the most of the multiple gifts they have been handed and instead it’s Corbyn who has ended up with the bloody nose.
This is not to say the vote was a ringing endorsement of May – far from it – but the fact the opposition has failed to claim any scalps of significance shows just how minimal Labour’s threat it.
Corbyn supporters may believe it’s better to have an opposition with ‘integrity’ than power without it, but increasingly the rest of the party is waking up to the realisation that it’s better to be in a position where some of your policies can be acted on, rather than none.
Far from spelling the end of May, this result is another challenge to Corbyn’s leadership.