Jeremy Corbyn has declared victory as today’s local election results continue to come in, saying in Sheffield this morning that Labour has “hung on.”
Perhaps fearing that struck too pessimistic a note, he added “and we grew support in a lot of places.”
That’s a rich interpretation. The party has lost 29 councillors across England, or 3 per cent of those up for election in results announced so far.
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That’s not bad – but “those up for election” is the catch: only a fraction of English councils and councilors were up for election today.
Labour only lost control of one council, but most weren't in play.
Today’s results are a poor way to judge the Labour leader. For the purposes of a general election, very little appears to have changed in Scotland and Wales, with Labour still labouring on about a fifth of the vote in Scotland and dominant in Wales.
If Corbyn is going to better Ed Miliband’s general election debacle, he has to lead Labour to a resurgence in England. And today doesn’t much help us gauge how well that’s working.
Why? There are 326 councils in England. Councilors were up for election in only 124 of them yesterday, and all of the council was up for election in just 18 of them. That’s less than 6 per cent of councils.
No elections were held in the other 202 councils. In most areas only a third of councilors had to campaign for their seats.
That leaves us with very few English elections. There are over 16,000 local council seats in England. With results from 75 per cent of councils, just 1,800 seats have been announced, so only around 2,500 will be once the count is all in.
Data on a sixth of the country isn’t really data at all.
And after national and local polls proved so inaccurate in last year’s general election, we are left where we have been ever since Corbyn became Labour leader.
There is no evidence of mass enthusiasm, but we don’t have not much of an idea about how well or badly he could fare in 2020 – if he makes it so far. After today’s results he isn’t going anywhere soon.
