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| Manchester Town Hall, where the one third of council seats are up for election. Photograph: Manchester Town Hall by Mark Andrew (License) (Cropped) |
The return of Members of Parliament to work after the Easter Recess, is a good time to take a look at what is ahead. For MPs, the impact of their efforts over the next month will be for the benefit of others in their party besides themselves.
On the 5th May there will be elections. Amongst them are the Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and London devolved assembly elections. But perhaps most pressing for the situation at Westminster will be the midterm local council elections.
Local government in the UK, in the form of elected councils and council workers in their employ, represents a confusingly multi-tiered system that provides or commissions local services (LGA, 2011) - some of which represent mandatory duties while others are discretionary and the council can charge not-for-profit fees for them.
The services councils provide include those for children, like schools; for adults with needs; social housing and housing benefit; scrutiny of local health services; museums, libraries, sports and recreation facilities; care for local roads and co-ordination of public transport; care for the local environment and management of waste collection and disposal or recycling; planning; collection of local taxes like business rates and council taxes; administration of elections; and the keeping of registers of births, deaths and marriages.
After six years of austerity, with as much as 40% of funding cut from their budgets, and likely cuts more to come, there has been substantial discontent on councils, and in party council associations, with the government (Sparrow, 2015) - not least in the Conservative association. That situation has not been eased by the transfer of further burdens not being matched by the transfer of sufficient means of funding, and central government decisions like the substantial cut to business rates included in Budget 2016 (BBC, 2016).
Governments usually struggle during midterms - especially after spending a long time in government. But after years of austerity, with frontline services slashed even, to his great discontent, in the Prime Minister's own council area (ITV, 2015), the Conservatives must be expecting considerable losses.
So for the Conservatives, this election is fairly simple. Lose as little as they can and hope that their opponents, particularly Labour, fall well short of their own targets - from the Conservative view, embarrassingly enough that it becomes an interesting news story.
What the Conservatives do not want is Jeremy Corbyn's Labour to show itself able to beat the Tories in the popular polls. Labour will almost certainly be under pressure to, at least, achieve results comparable with those of Ed Miliband from 2012, which means gaining a not insignificant number of council seats (Labour List, 2016).
However, possibly of greater importance from the view of the MPs returning to work today, is the national vote share. What MPs at Westminster will want to know is whether a Corbyn-led Labour can come first in the popular vote - because that would establish the party as a realistic option come 2020.
Labour's efforts at achieving gains in vote share and seats will be hampered by the array of parties scrapping with each other, as well as with the Conservatives, to make gains (Ford, 2016). In Scotland, the seemingly unstoppable SNP momentum will make life difficult for Labour, while in Wales Plaid Cymru tend to be much stronger when it is Welsh Assembly election time than in the national polls.
In England, UKIP will likely continue to plague Labour - as they have yet to go away completely despite the failure of their big push in May 2015 and the stats saying their vote share has fallen by a swing of around 8% nationally since then (Britain Elects, 2016), not least because of the European Union Referendum scheduled for June.
There may also be some pressure applied to Labour by the Liberal Democrats. It's one thing for the party to talk up its #LibDemFightback, but another for, over the same period from the May 2015 election, the party to see a positive swing of around 4% (Britain Elects, 2016{2}) - putting it well ahead of the other parties in England in terms of local momentum.
Not least do the Liberal Democrats have a reputation for campaigning at the local level, based on a committed and engaged approach to local government and community-based politics that is even acknowledged by their opponents (BBC, 2015; Labour List, 2016). If momentum swings back their way, they may have a positive showing that gives tangible substance to their fightback.
From Labour's perspective, they may help their own cause by establishing these things as limiting factors (Ford, 2016), allowing them to set their own, much more modest, targets. Yet they are unlikely to have that liberty and will probably be under pressure to make real terms gains.
From Labour's perspective, they may help their own cause by establishing these things as limiting factors (Ford, 2016), allowing them to set their own, much more modest, targets. Yet they are unlikely to have that liberty and will probably be under pressure to make real terms gains.
For MPs at Westminster, the next few weeks and the bills that they will debate could have a substantive impact on the council elections. Policy at the national level will be seen through the lens of its impact on local government - at least a temporary boon for local government that can often feel sidelined from political debate and policy decisions that affect them being made centrally at Westminster.
It should be kept in mind, however, that midterm election results can only tell you so much. Local government elections from 2011 through 2014 all saw Labour under Ed Miliband top the polls - though sometimes only barely as the UKIP spectre ate away at the support of both the Conservatives and Labour.
It should be kept in mind, however, that midterm election results can only tell you so much. Local government elections from 2011 through 2014 all saw Labour under Ed Miliband top the polls - though sometimes only barely as the UKIP spectre ate away at the support of both the Conservatives and Labour.
From a country-wide perspective, what midterm local elections can be is a substantive base with which to demonstrate momentum, a fightback, and upon which to build a platform. For progressives from all parties, under a Conservative government and with council services under increasing strain, that will likely be the main hope with 2020 firmly in mind.
References
'The LGA quick guide to local government'; from the Local Government Association (LGA); December 2011.
Andrew Sparrow's 'Local authorities 'cannot cope with further cuts': Conservative-run Local Government Association says councils already face funding black hole of £10bn'; in The Guardian; 1 September 2015.
'Budget 2016: Small business welcomes tax changes'; on the BBC; 16 March 2016.
'David Cameron wrote to his local council complaining about cuts to frontline services'; on ITV News; 12 November 2015.
'Corbyn’s Labour must gain more than 100 seats to pass local elections test'; on Labour List; 25 February 2016.
Robert Ford's 'What Labour needs to win in local polls to give heart to Corbyn: The English council elections will be the first major test of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership'; in The Guardian; 3 April 2016.
'UKIP council by-election performances so far this year: Average: -8.06% (standing starts excl.)'; from Britain Elects, on Twitter; 2016.
'Liberal Democrat council by-election performances so far this year: Average: +4.20% (standing starts excl.)'; from Britain Elects, on Twitter; 2016{2}.
'Lib Dems have best by-election record this year'; on Lib Dem Voice; 19 February 2016.
Tom Clarkson's 'Where did it all go wrong for the Lib Dems?'; from ComRes; April 2015.
'Election profile: The Liberal Democrats'; 27 March 2015.
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