John Curtice previews the local elections for the Mirror this morning:
The local elections on May 1st take place in unprecedented circumstances. Never before have both Labour, whose current average poll rating is just 24%, and the Conservatives, on 22%, been so unpopular at the same time. Both are struggling to keep pace with Reform, narrowly ahead on 25%.
British politics was once a two-horse race between Conservative and Labour. Now it is a fragmented five-way battle. Even the Greens (9%) are at a record high in the polls, while the Liberal Democrats (14%) are a force once more.
And the most encouraging part?
In taking votes from the Conservatives, Reform could simply help the Liberal Democrats, who always do better in local elections than in the national polls, take key seats from Kemi Badenoch’s party, such as in Oxfordshire. Despite the party’s current unpopularity, even Labour might pick up some Tory seats too, with Nottinghamshire a key target.
A couple of points:
ReplyDelete1) Will Reform replicate their current opinion polling when their core supporters generally aren't interested in local government?
2) All eyes will be on Nottinghamshire, but they always should be, it's the most important place in England
"The richest plum of them all", as Sir Hiss describes Nottingham in the 1974 Disney Robin Hood.
ReplyDeleteAt this point I am obliged to point out that Leicester was a Roman city several centuries before Nottingham was a collection of mud huts called Snotengaham.
ReplyDeleteI think we can all agree that Leicester had a good run 100 - 300AD. There's a growing academic consensus led by Dr Caitin Green that says Leicester was completely upstaged by Lincoln from 400AD onwards - it retained key craft skills such as pottery and building in stone, and was ahead of everywhere else administratively setting up the Kingdom of Lindsey, everywhere else was chaos and anarchy in the early Saxon period. These days Lincoln, however, can only look at Nottingham open mouthed in awe with its chemistry and bike building capabilities ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks, that may explain why Leicester suffered such an eclipse. It was treated as a city by the Domesday Book, but did not regain that status until 1919.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to know that Leicester enjoyed an upgrade under Lloyd-George. Safe to say it's been let down by Conservatives and Labour ever since.
ReplyDeleteI'll have you know that in 1936 the Bureau of Statistics of the League of Nations identified Leicester as the second-richest city in Europe. I went to an event about the Leicester pop and art scene in the Sixties recently, and everyone said there was still full employment in the city then.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure modern day Leicesterians would point to having the biggest crisp factory in the world, and its exceptional heritage in hosiery manufacturing. In turn the people of Nottingham would cite its light rail network, having a Test Match cricket ground and the Astoria nightclub as signs of greatness.
DeleteIt's an argument that will never stop!