Read all about this week's happenings in Who's Top, Who's Not!
Top: Labour
Labour was expected to do well in this week’s local elections and so far that seems to be the case. Council seats are being won, councils are coming under Labour control and the national poll lead appears to be holding up when confronted with (local) electoral reality.
One example comes in Rushmoor in Hampshire – as historically true blue as it gets and including the home of the British Army at Aldershot – where Labour took control of the council for the first time.
Economy and security are two of the biggest factors in electoral analysis, and Labour’s political strategy for the past two years has been that the party has changed and that it can be trusted. Caveats that this is a local election, but it is still indicative that the party that recently had Jeremy Corbyn as its leader can now win in leafy Hampshire suggests that the strategy is reaping results.
But caution is needed. Labour is still unlikely to win Aldershot at the general election and local elections can be poor indicators of future general election success. Nonetheless, Labour HQ will be going into the weekend popping the prosecco, if not the champagne.
Middle: Mayoral results
At time of print (well, uploading) the key mayoral results had yet to be declared so WTWN is still relying on powers of prediction and idle speculation.
Whilst we can expect North Korean-esque levels of votes for the incumbent Mayors of Labour-lovin’ Manchester and Liverpool, Tees Valley and West Midlands are harder to gauge.
In part, this is due to a successful Conservative expectation management game which has kept the focus on these two results instead of the hundreds of expected Tory council seat losses.
Nonetheless, wins for both Andy Street and Ben Houchen would ease pressure on Sunak and raise questions about how well Labour is actually doing in convincing so-called ‘Hero Voters’ – those who have historically voted Labour in traditional red seats but who voted for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019. Even if Labour loses Tees Valley (which it did last time, badly) look out for how the vote swing compares with National Vote Share to see if they are still making progress in a vital battleground region.
Bottom: Hamza Yousuf
It seems cruel to have Yousuf bottom two weeks running but how could we not after Scotland’s (former) First Minister resigned after only a year in charge.
The writing was on the wall after it became obvious that he couldn’t command the confidence of the Scottish parliament. The first rule of politics is learn to count and although he received a bad political inheritance, the parliamentary arithmetic was always against him after the split with the Greens.
Now Scotland will get its third First Minister in just over a year and the prospect of independence seems further away than ever. With the SNP now joining the Tories in appearing to have severe leadership issues, it could be that the nats gets hit by a resurgent Labour Party in the general election. But if they can avoid an early Scottish Parliament election then they may hope to have restored some stability by 2026.