Theresa May is facing the loss of hundreds of council seats this week as voters take the chance to “kick the government” over Brexit, but Downing Street is clinging to the hope it can yet avoid an even bigger wipeout in European elections next month.
Robert Hayward, a Tory peer and political analyst, predicted that the prime minister’s Conservative party could lose more than 800 seats in council elections across England on Thursday, with many of the contests taking place in the party’s shire heartlands.
Lord Hayward said he expected the Liberal Democrats to to be the biggest beneficiaries in the poll, making net gains of more than 500 seats, while Labour, grappling with its own internal divisions on Brexit, might pick up fewer than 300 extra seats.
Helen Whately, vice-chairwoman of the Conservative party, told Sky’s Sophy Ridge she expected “a difficult night” and that voters would “kick the government”, but she confirmed reports from the doorstep of widespread anger towards politicians of all parties.
The Tories are defending council seats won at the high point of the party’s popularity in 2015, when David Cameron won a majority, and heavy losses are already priced into predictions for this week’s result. The 2015 vote also saw Lib Dem fortunes reach a nadir.
Given that Change UK, the new anti-Brexit party formed by pro-Europe Labour and Tory MPs, is not seriously contesting Thursday’s vote, the Lib Dems should be well placed to bounce back.
Although Mrs May is braced for serious losses in the local elections, they will pale into insignificance with the expected Tory wipeout on May 23 if the European parliamentary poll goes ahead.
Polls suggest that Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, which will not be a big presence in the local elections, is running neck-and-neck with Labour to win the European vote, with Tory support in the low-teens.
Brandon Lewis, Conservative chairman, refused to say whether the Tories would even fight a serious campaign in the European elections, given the party’s divisions on the issue and Mrs May’s failure to deliver Brexit, almost three years after the EU referendum.
He insisted that there was still time for parliament to approve Mrs May’s Brexit deal and therefore remove the need for Britain to participate in the Strasbourg elections, but few senior figures in either Labour or the Conservatives believe that will happen.
Cross-party talks between the two parties will resume on Monday with a “plenary session”, but the two sides are accusing each other of intransigence and time-wasting, and senior Tory and Labour figures privately say they are close to collapse.
Although neither side wants to take the blame for ending the Brexit talks, Tories and Labour now accept that there is unlikely to be any major breakthrough in time to avoid the need for European elections.
Asked by the BBC’s Andrew Marr whether the Conservatives would launch a formal European election campaign, Mr Lewis said: “Our first priority is not to have to fight the European elections. If and when we know we will definitely be fighting those European elections we will take some decisions.”
Labour is also split on how to fight the euro-elections. An early Labour leaflet was sent out without referring to the party’s commitment to keep a second Brexit referendum “on the table”, creating an angry backlash from pro-Europeans.
That policy is expected to be reaffirmed at a meeting of the Labour national executive committee on Tuesday, although Mr Corbyn’s party remains hamstrung by the need to win support from both metropolitan Remainers and hardcore Leavers in many towns across the Midlands and North.
Ahead of the national executive meeting to finalise the Labour manifesto for the European elections, 22 Labour candidates signed a pledge to campaign to put Brexit back to the people and vote Remain in a future referendum.
In a sign of the strength of opinion, 12 of the candidates are sitting Labour MEPs and include Richard Corbett and Seb Dance, the leader and deputy leader of the Labour group in the European Parliament.
Meanwhile Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, urged party members to message Labour’s ruling NEC to call for a “confirmatory ballot” pledge, underlining the tensions in the party.
