With the
Conservatives expected to lose around 500 council seats, according to one
forecast, these should be difficult elections for Kemi Badenoch. But she won’t
be taking it personally, she told BBC Breakfast this morning in an interview.
Asked if a bad result would be a vote on her own “personal popularity as
leader”, Badenoch replied:
No, I don’t.
We had a historic defeat last year, and it’s going to take some time for us to
get back on track. I am working to rebuild public trust, letting the country
know that the Conservative party is under new leadership. But as we saw with
previous oppositions, it took 14 years, 13 years and 18 years to come back.
I’ve only been leader for six months. It’s going to take a while to fix the
problems which we had from last year.
There is
also a byelection on Thursday, in Runcorn and Helsby, where Labour had a
majority of almost 15,000 at the last election. The constituency is counting
overnight, which means that on Friday morning, when a lot of the local election
results won’t yet be in (many councils count on the Friday, not overnight,
because it is easier), the election night narrative will be determined largely
by the Runcorn result. Reform UK hope they can win, and that would be a
formidable show of strength (even though parties that pull of amazing
byelection victories don’t normally perform so well at general elections).
Given what has happened to the Westminster expectations thermometer, even a
narrow Labour win would be a good result for Keir Starmer.
And the
Conservative? According to Labour, they have given up totally in the seat. This
is what Ellie Reeves, Labour’s chair, told HuffPost UK.
The Tories
aren’t doing anything. [Tory MP] Esther McVey basically said the Tories should
sit it out and let Reform win, and we’re seeing that on the ground.
They’re not
doing any work on the ground at all, it looks like they’re just gifting it to
Reform.
Reeves, of
course, has got an incentive to maximise the ‘Keep Reform out’ vote in Runcorn.
But that does not mean she’s wrong, and it would be surprising if she is. The
Tories wrote off their chances in this seat some time ago, and it would make
sense for them to deploy campaign resources elsewhere.
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