Looking at the opinion polls, it is glaringly obvious that Sir Keir Starmer’s party is not going to have the best time in May’s elections.
A YouGov poll at the end of March put Labour in an embarrassing fourth place. Behind Reform UK, the Greens and the Conservatives.
To make matters worse for Labour, four years ago – the last time many of the seats were up for grabs – was a time when the party was riding high in the polls.
The Conservatives were gripped by Boris Johnson-related scandals and lost control of Barnet, Wandsworth and Westminster councils in London to Starmer’s party. Local Tories blamed the scandal-ridden prime minister for their defeats.
Similar scenes are likely on May 8 when newly jobless councillors will point the finger at the man at the top.
In many ways Starmer faces a similar dilemma: a lot of his cabinet colleagues want him gone because of his personal failings and character flaws.
There have been various scandals relating to the actions of key advisers and an energy crisis fuelled by war – a challenging circumstance for whichever party is in government.
But this coming set of elections could be far more than a usual electoral cycle drama of an opposition party in the ascendency gaining seats at the expense of a governing party being blamed for potholes or the infrequency of bin collections.
Weeks after the 2024 general election, Labour’s landslide victory and return to government for the first time after 14 years, I had spotted a potential vulnerability that Labour’s electoral achievement masked: there was a sizeable voter base motivated by opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza.
I did not think their motivation was going to be limited just to general elections and, in fact, who becomes responsible for collecting the bins could be determined by how anti-Israel their party is.
Both the Green Party and local independents are wrapping themselves in the Palestinian flag – in some cases quite literally using the flag in election literature – in an attempt to mobilise voters against the Labour Party in town halls up and down the country.
The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t going to hand himself into the International Criminal Court because keffiyeh-cladded councillors pass a resolution declaring him a war criminal is rather beside the point, which is that signalling one’s stance against Israel has proven to be a popular rallying call.
At the recent Gorton and Denton by-election, Labour complained that the Greens used “sectarian” tactics – leaflets and videos in Urdu and Bengali saying that Labour should be “punished” for Gaza.
But this trend is not limited to areas with large numbers of Muslim voters. It also includes more middle-class and left-leaning parts of the inner cities.
The Times reports that Labour could lose London boroughs including Southwark, Islington and Hackney to the Greens and be pushed into coalition in Bradford and Newcastle.
These are the sorts of areas in which Jeremy Corbyn performed very well as Labour leader. Although he failed to win over the country, in inner-city areas he was able to pile up humongous majorities.
Take Hackney North and Stoke Newington for example, the parliamentary seat of (now suspended) Labour grandee Diane Abbott. In 2017 she got a whopping 42,265 votes and boasted a majority of 35,139. In 2024, that figure was much reduced and she got 24,355 votes and a majority of 15,080. In 2017 her nearest (but very far) rival was the Conservative candidate and in 2024 it was the Greens.
While general elections and local elections are obviously very different, it is clear that the Greens are in the ascendency and see Gaza as an issue worth campaigning on.
The Green candidate for mayor of Hackney boasts that she “secured a Gaza ceasefire motion after months of Labour resistance”.
In Birmingham, an alliance of local independents hopes to take control of the largest local authority in Europe and their figurehead is in many ways a pioneer of the use of Gaza as an electoral mobiliser.
Led by Akhmed Yakoob, a flashy, social media-savvy lawyer known for his catchy videos and expensive cars, they hope to challenge Labour’s rule and not just because of their desire to solve the long-running bin strike that has plagued the city.
In 2024, Yakoob came third in elections to the West Midlands mayoralty in 2024, asking voters to “lend Gaza your vote” and at the general election came within a few thousand votes of unseating Shabana Mahmood.
During the campaign he told a rally that “Allah” had put him in a position to “challenge the Zionist regime, challenge the elites of this country and the world… We live in a world that slowly is getting controlled by these elites.”
He was recorded making similar comments by Sky News recently, making it plain how important opposition to “the Zionists” is to his campaign.
Given the full-throated opposition to Israel by rival parties, the attempt by local Labour candidates to highlight their party’s opposition to the Israeli government – and record in office in restoring funding to Unrwa, sanctioning Israeli ministers and recognising a Palestinian state – is understandable.
But given it has failed to halt Labour’s slide down in the opinion polls at a national level, is there really much chance of the freefall decline being stopped at a local level?
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