Edelman Local Elections 2018 Analysis by Edelman

LOCAL ELECTIONS May 2018

Will Walden Managing Director, Public Affairs Will Walden Managing Director, Public Affairs

Will leads the Edelman Public Affairs practice in the UK and has extensive experience at the top of Government, after five years as communications director, official spokesman and chief political advisor to Foreign Secretary and former Mayor of London Boris Johnson. He spent four CityEdelman Hall where he oversaw for and the 2012 London Olympics, andat Willyears leadsatthe Public Affairs communications practice in the UK has extensive experience led Johnson's transitionafter teamfive at the Foreign Office, as well asdirector, advising him on spokesman theMr top of Government, years as communications official communications andadvisor policy during the EUSecretary referendum and chief political to Foreign andcampaign. former Mayor of London Boris Johnson. He spent four years at City Hall where he oversaw communications for the 2012 London Will providesand senior to a range of clients on at government policy and as communications Olympics, led counsel Mr Johnson's transition team the Foreign Office, well as advising strategy. For more information, pleaseduring get in touch viareferendum will.walden@edelman.com him on communications and policy the EU campaign. Will provides senior counsel to a range of clients on government policy and communications strategy. For more information, please get in touch via will.walden@edelman.com

ELECTIONS OVERVIEW

Hold the front page. Voters went to the polls yesterday, and surprise surprise, politics looks pretty much the same today. Little has changed. For the Prime Minister, considerable relief. For the Labour leader, something of a blow.

Hillingdon proved just that – talk. None of Labour’s target councils went red, including Barnet, where Corbyn had planned a victory tour, only for the anti-Semitism row to turn the council blue. Instead Corbyn was forced to head to Plymouth, the only council Labour wrestled from the Tories. Theresa May has avoided electoral meltdown, and with it any The PM, as if to rub salt in the wound, headed across the prospect of an imminent leadership challenge has evaporated, Thames to Wandsworth. They actually lost 8 seats there but it for now. Snap election, lost majority, Brexit, resignations, felt like a victory. Windrush – none of it appears to have made much difference. For Jeremy Corbyn this, in truth, was a pretty bruising night. The new political dividing lines of leave vs remain and town vs For a party supposedly positioning itself as a government in city appear intact. UKIP were all but wiped out. The Lib Dems waiting the status quo is not a happy position. Labour’s talk made some gains. Leave voters appear to have returned to today is of ‘consolidation’ – code for ‘oh dear’. Privately the the Tories. Labour failed to make inroads in the places it must internalising is underway. What’s clear is that Labour spinners, win to take Number 10. The Tories failed to move the dial in messagers and strategists will be ruing the lack of expectation cities where diverse, young, remain, metropolitan voters see management – particularly in the Capital. nothing attractive in brand Tory. Given last night, both parties have a problem without an apparent solution. How does May Labour actually did pretty well in London – a 100+ seat swing marry support for a harder Brexit with the need to move in a Labour city with a popular Labour Mayor and a Labour younger centrist voters? How does Corbyn garner enough Assembly. Yet none of that matters a jot. The headlines will be ‘momentum’ to scale the battlements in Tory and leave about hubris – how talk of victory in Tory flagship townhalls leaning towns? We are stuck. Brexit – good or bad – may yet like Wandsworth, Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, and move the dial. But don’t bank on it.

LOCAL ELECTIONS 2018: RESULTS AT A GLANCE COUNCILLORS AS OF 17:00 +59

4 May 2018

-19

+66

+12

-123

2,166

1,305

499

141

LAB

CON

LIB DEM

GREEN

UKIP

OTHER

CONSERVATIVE FORTUNES Craig Woodhouse Director, Public Affairs Former Press Secretary to the Prime Minister Make no mistake: for all the talk of good expectations management by the Conservatives about their prospects for these local elections, there were genuine fears inside the party that today could be a very difficult day. MPs have had it marked in their calendar for months as a potential flashpoint for the Prime Minister: a disastrous showing – particularly losing control of crown jewel councils like Westminster and Wandsworth – would almost certainly have triggered a leadership challenge. As it turned out, disaster was averted. The prospect of that leadership challenge – at least over the election results, rather than Europe or anything else – is “off the table”, as one MP put it. And there are smiles in Conservative Headquarters that the party has performed admirably well eight years into Government, when history dictates the Opposition should be on the march. It wasn’t all good news, by any means. Losing Plymouth to Labour, and flagship northern council Trafford to No Overall Control, will be painful. Despite holding the key London councils, and even winning Barnet, the Tories lost seats in many areas and saw Richmond-upon-Thames go to the Lib

LABOUR FORTUNES Substantial Labour seat gains across the country and their best result in London since the 1970s will leave Labour activists feeling good. But the Leadership and Momentum – the vanguard of the Corbyn project – hoped to turn all of London red, winning in Tory strongholds like Wandsworth, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster. In all three, gains were made, but given the expectations, an objectively strong Labour performance feels rather flat. This is perhaps where we see that the need to mobilise Labour’s activist base can be at odds with sensible expectation management. Having talked up their prospects and mobilised thousands of volunteers, Labour went backwards in Hillingdon and in Barnet, where the Conservatives won a majority of 13, we saw the political costs of Corbyn’s anti-Semitism crisis. The defeated Labour candidate and member of the Jewish Labour Movement Executive, Adam Langleben argued Labour’s “problem of conspiratorial antisemitism” meant the people of Barnet were “robbed by the Labour leadership”. Outside London, Labour lost ground, notably losing the key marginal of Redditch to the Conservatives, as the Tories 4 May 2018

Dems. It was no surprise to anyone, but the party does have a problem in the capital which it needs to fix if it wants a Commons majority in future. Quite how to do that in a pro-Remain area when fighting to deliver Brexit is a significant conundrum. But elsewhere in the country there were some impressive results – winning in areas where Labour need to make progress if Jeremy Corbyn is ever to make it Downing Street. Strategists point to seats gained in Dudley and Walsall, and taking control in Basildon, Peterborough and Redditch, as evidence the Tories’ message is popular and getting through. While the Tories won’t win Birmingham they are expected to make some gains, which one insider puts down to people wanting a council who will collect the bins – something Birmingham has failed to do, with rubbish piling up in the streets in recent months. So how to explain this unexpected success? Firstly, despite all the Westminster noise about last year’s General Election debacle, Cabinet resignations and arguments over Brexit, a lot of people out in the country still like Theresa May. Secondly, the Tories have been quietly building an effective campaign machine to deliver votes on the ground – and it has had a decent first outing which has delighted its architects in Conservative HQ. And thirdly, there are parts of the country which just don’t like the goods that Corbyn is trying to sell. The problem for the Tories is that the reverse is also true – in swathes of London and elsewhere, Conservative voters are scarce. Until something fundamental changes, the country remains in something of a political deadlock.

benefited from the collapse of UKIP (the gateway drug for Labour to Tory switchers) and the changed post-referendum landscape. Labour moderates are already pointing to Brexit equivocation as the reason, despite seat gains, for the failure to win more London councils and majorities in areas where impressive gains were nonetheless made, like Trafford. But while Labour went backwards in Leave areas like Nuneaton, Derby, Amber Valley, and Dudley, the Party held Lincoln, Wigan and Wolverhampton comfortably, and won decisively to take control of Leave-voting Plymouth. These elections have brought local politics into line with the national politics we saw at last year’s General Election: but any party entering its eighth year in Opposition, in the face of a divided government, should undoubtedly have done better. The Labour left will blame MPs for undermining Corbyn by ”weaponising” anti-Semitism for the failures in Barnet and a lack of unity behind the leader for shortcomings elsewhere, while moderates will quietly maintain that Corbyn’s leadership will have undermined efforts to gain further seats. Both Labour tribes have fresh ammunition for the well-rehearsed internal arguments, but rehashing those arguments will do little to build on the electoral platform of 2017.

OTHER PARTIES

It’s hard to disagree with former Energy Secretary Ed Davey that, from a very low base, the Lib Dems produced their “best night in years”. The party gained control of heavily Remain-voting boroughs Richmond-upon-Thames, and South Cambridgeshire from the Tories, and also took overall control of Three Rivers Council, netting 61 seats.

UKIP won 166 seats the last time these councils were up for election. Four years on, the party saw the wipeout almost everyone had predicted. Refusing to bow to the inevitable, General Secretary Paul Oakley insisted UKIP was simply lying “dormant” like “the Black Death. Without doubt, the highlight of their night was unseating Derby’s Labour council leader; leaving them with three seats nationwide.

Party Leader Sir Vince Cable told supporters they were “beginning the fightback”.

Co-leader Caroline Lucas claimed that the modest net gain of five council seats had established the Greens as “England’s fourth party”. A strong showing in Richmond, securing their first elected councillor in Birmingham and depriving the Conservatives of a majority in Worcester were all welcome victories, while a local tree-felling dispute in Sheffield allowed the Greens to snatch two seats from Labour.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? James Morris Senior Director, Corporate Reputation Former advisor to Ed Miliband

When an election result beats expectations, it shows that expectations were wrong. It doesn’t necessarily show that a party did well. So, while Conservative spinners can pop champagne corks at their success in portraying clinging on to Westminster and Wandsworth as a coup; Tory electoral strategists have some harder lessons to chew over. If the Conservative party cannot break out of their handful of urban redoubts, it is hard to see a path to a majority. Losing Trafford, one of the few dots of blue in the North West, against a Labour party mired in a row about racism and led by a leader who is regularly defeated by Don’t Know in polls about best PM, suggests Tory weakness in urban areas is a big threat to forming a future majority government. But if the lights are amber there for the Tories, they’re

flashing bright red for Labour. In 2015, it was the early result in Nuneaton that portended the party’s crushing defeat. Last night Labour lost 8 seats in Nuneaton, while the Tories gained 9. There was a similarly dispiriting pattern for Labour in other small and medium sized towns including Derby, Nuneaton, Swindon and even parts of Bolton. If Labour is going backwards in these places, it’s hard to see how gains in metropolitan areas could possibly compensate. The big question for both parties is around what drove the result. It is easy to think Brexit policy is the key – as the Tories broadly did well in Leave areas and Labour did well in Remain areas. But jumping to that conclusion is too quick. Few voters have an opinion about the customs union. let alone one strong enough to determine their vote. It is more likely to be the case that the same things that made those small towns lean leave have also made them lean Tory. Populations are older, more socially conservative, less prosperous. The task for Labour is to fashion an identity and agenda that can reach those places. For the Tories, there is the opposite problem. Without stronger support in Britain’s cities they cant get ahead either.

LOCAL ELECTIONS 2018: KEY STATISTICS PROJECTED TURNOUT

36%

COUNCIL CONTROL 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Barnet

14% 15%

CON gain

35%

35% LAB

4 May 2018

SPOTLIGHT RESULT

VOTE SHARE

CON

LIB NOC DEM

Labour

Conservative

Lib-Dem

Other

The anti-Semitism scandal may have prevented Labour from seizing this Tory minority council with a large Jewish population.