As the local election results filter in over this weekend, Tory party chairman Richard Holden will have his work cut out to spin them as anything like good news.
But despite the hammer-blow of another parliamentary by-election loss in Blackpool South, and possibly hundreds of local council seats, Holden will be hoping for two silver linings amid the electoral storm clouds.
Ben Houchen, the Tory Mayor of Tees Valley, has secured a third term with 54 per cent of the vote. If the Conservatives hold onto the West Midlands metro mayorality too, he will probably claim Rishi Sunak is far from finished – and that Labour is still failing to convince key voters in even its own former heartlands and in swing seats. In doing so, the party chairman will hope to repeat the trick pulled by his predecessor Ken Baker 34 long years ago after another pounding by the voters.
Back in May 1990, the Tories lost hundreds of councillors to Labour across the country. In terms of national vote share, the metric many prefer, Neil Kinnock’s Labour scored an impressive 44 per cent to Margaret Thatcher’s 33 per cent. Thatcher’s poll tax was undeniably unpopular.
Yet some of us older hands remember how Baker flipped the narrative of the night by seizing on the Tory victories in their “flagship” councils of Wandsworth and Westminster. He tipped off The Sun newspaper early on election night, so they could run a headline “Kinnock Poll Axed” in a late edition. The next morning, he arranged for the TV cameras to film him walking into Tory Central Office, holding the paper aloft like a conquering hero.
Of course, the spin won’t work as easily this time. For a start, it’s obvious that both Houchen and Andy Street have run a mile from the Conservative brand itself, leaving the very word off their election material and running on their own personal records.
Sunak should also beware that even Thatcher (who unlike him won three general elections) was deposed months after the 1990 local polls, as her own MPs saw through the Westminster/Wandsworth spin and realised her wider unpopularity. And if anyone is reading national implications from this year’s results, it’s worth remembering that swing is king. Even if it doesn’t win, if Labour can show it came close in both seats, it can terrify Tory MPs who see the read-across for a general election.
Moreover, Labour wins in the newly created mayoralties of East Midlands and York and North Yorkshire would suggest the Tories were failing in areas full of both key marginal seats, and in their own traditional backyard (Sunak’s constituency, Richmond, is in the North Yorkshire mayoralty).
It’s become almost a cliché these days for politicians who back devolution to say they want to win power in order to give it away. And that can include giving away power to another party.
That’s why former communities secretary Greg Clark, who created the East Midlands and North Yorkshire mayoralties in the dying days of Boris Johnson’s government, deserves credit for expanding the devolution agenda he championed under David Cameron.
Clark oversaw the expansion of devolved power to city regions like Greater Manchester, West Midlands, Liverpool and elsewhere because he grasped the fundamental point that local areas are best placed to deliver the economic growth and transport links needed to spread wealth and opportunity more evenly across England.
There’s a saying that all politics is local, but more accurately all growth is local – it relies on individual businesses creating new jobs and markets, building new factories, shops and offices in specific areas. Crucially, there is now that rare thing in politics: a cross-party consensus that devolving power from Whitehall is vital for tackling the appalling regional inequalities in employment, living standards and life expectancy that disfigure our nation.
Whichever party gains or loses this weekend, the real winner is the metro mayor model. It compels politicians to work together locally for the common good, in partnership with those businesses and universities that know the needs of their locality better than anyone else.
Most importantly, the metro mayor “combined authorities” (an unlovely word for lots of councils working together) allow the directly elected mayors to play an invaluable role as the vigorous voice of their region, while working closely with local council leaders to deliver policy on the ground.
In many ways, this model is preferable to the London version, where individual boroughs have no formal role in cross-city government and can seem cut out of the process.
By contrast, in the West Midlands, Andy Street has had to work with both Tory and Labour council leaders to get change. In Greater Manchester too, council leaders are now so used to working together with Andy Burnham at a regional level, the process can seem seamless.
Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner plan to go further and faster with devolution, giving new powers to the combined authorities. Labour will have to be careful not to dilute the role of councils in issues like planning, but overall, its move to simplify funding and give more responsibility locally can be transformative.
There’s no question that some in the party still worry that more devolution means more postcode lotteries as each area does its own thing, or that a Labour government could be making a rod for its own back if combined authorities turn Tory in coming years. Fragmentation is the fear.
But national standards and better-funded public services should ease fears that devolution will worsen inequality rather than tackle it. Cameron boasted of devolving power while implementing savage council cuts and centralised Hunger Games-style bidding processes, mistakes Starmer won’t be repeating.
Labour’s own plans also do something the Tories have failed to do, which is to link local strategy to national strategy. Starmer’s big “missions” on economic growth, housebuilding, better infrastructure and cheaper, cleaner energy will be powered by partnership between central, local and regional government.
Most importantly though, giving local areas control over their own economic regeneration, transport and skills can be the best way to bridge the gap between the South East and the rest of the UK. It will lead to a better Britain.
Paul Waugh resigned as i’s chief political commentator in January to stand as the Labour candidate for Rochdale, a contest won by Azhar Ali