Arguably against the most corrupt Tory government in history, on the verge of a recession, Labour has done terrible outside London and always will with Starmer as Leader!
Sir Keir Starmer performed worse than Jeremy Corbyn in last night’s local elections outside London, a leading polling expert has said. Despite the party claiming historic victories in London, Professor Sir John Curtice said that, from results announced overnight, Labour’s share of the vote and numbers of seats won outside the capital were actually lower than the last time the seats were contested in 2018.
Sir John Curtis called it when he states the loss of support for the Conservatives did not simply translate into Labour advance. Although at 35%, its projected share is six points up on last year, it is no better than what the party achieved in 2018 when Jeremy Corbyn was still party leader. The party did no more than maintain its 2018 vote in London, secure a small increase in the South of England, but was down three points in the north of England.
Its tally of just over 50 net gains of seats (most of them in London) is a reflection of the decline in Conservative support rather than of any electoral advance by Labour themselves since 2018.
In fact, the Conservative decline has helped the Liberal Democrats even more than Labour. Coupled with the modest three point increase to 19% in the party’s projected national share since 2018, the party has enjoyed a net gain of 200 seats and gained control of Kingston-upon-Hull from Labour and of Somerset and Gosport from the Conservatives.
![Starmer ‘performed worse than Corbyn outside London’: After two years of flag shagging Labour show no signs of winning back the Red wall 1 labour conservatives losing support](https://labourheartlands.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/labour-conservatives-losing-support-.jpg)
Of particular note is the average increase of eight points in the Liberal Democrat vote in places where the party started off in second place to the Conservatives, a performance that the party will hope augurs well for winning so-called blue wall parliamentary seats, where the party is breathing down the Conservatives’ neck.
![Starmer ‘performed worse than Corbyn outside London’: After two years of flag shagging Labour show no signs of winning back the Red wall 2 support swing](https://labourheartlands.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/support-swing-1024x471.jpeg)
Overall, other than the 2019 local elections when the party also scored 19% in the projected share, the result represents its best performance in local elections since it entered into coalition with the Conservatives after the 2010 general election.
However, perhaps the least anticipated success has been that of the Greens in gaining over 50 seats, enough to more than double the party’s representation on the councils that had elections on Thursday. The party won an average of 12% in those wards that it fought, up four points on 2018, though not quite matching its previous best ever local election performance in 2019.
Although much concern was expressed before the election that the various recent scandals at Westminster would serve to depress turnout, in the event, it was only down by a point or two on other recent local elections. There is no sign that particularly large falls in turnout were occasioned by Tory voters staying at home.
![Starmer ‘performed worse than Corbyn outside London’: After two years of flag shagging Labour show no signs of winning back the Red wall 3 State of play in England](https://labourheartlands.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/State-of-play-in-England.jpg)
We remember a time when 172 Labour MPs and 600 Labour councillors, including Starmer tried to force Corbyn to quit, carrying out a very public coup and attack on the Labour leader, however, Jeremy Corbyn still managed to make inroads not seen for over a decade with the voters, building the Labour Party up to what was then the largest political party in Europe, only to be decimated and brought to virtual bankruptcy by the current leader.
Brexit vote trends still relevant
Since the EU referendum in 2016 we’ve become used to dramatic shifts in voting patterns. It seems from today’s results that some of those trends might be baked into the baseline by now.
Labour lost 60 seats in 2019, 6 seats were lost in Scotland and a whopping 54 in England, from those 54, 52 seats voted to leave the EU. It was the shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer’s vote losing second referendum policy that lost Labour that election and those seats. No amount of flag shagging will ever bring him forgiveness never mind a vote for that betrayal forced upon the Red wall constituencies.
Without any shadow of a doubt this election was a failure for Sir Keir Starmer, he is destined to lead the Labour Party to defeat in the next general election. By now people should realise the only way to get rid of the Tories is to get rid of Keir.
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