The ascendant Labour Party disappointed its followers in U.K. local elections on May 3 that saw neither Labour nor Conservatives register significant gains despite deeply unpopular Tory policies.
Critics of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn say their mediocre results are due to people's loss of faith in his ability to lead Labour to victory in the next election. The Liberal Democrats meanwhile gained control of three Conservative councils last Thursday, suggesting the party's partial recovery after the fallout from its failed Conservative alliance.
More broadly, the stalemate between Britain's two major parties is being blamed in part on Brexit, which remains a divisive issue nationally. The biggest change in a party’s number of seats came when voters all but wiped out the anti-immigrant U.K. Independence Party, with 123 councillors losing seats and only three remaining.
This led many to speculate about a rising tide of anti-Brexit opinion after the U.K.’s close 52 to 48 vote for the Brexit referendum two years ago. Others insist that the lost UKIP votes simply went to pro-Brexit Conservatives.
“Perhaps the most important thing to understand about this election is the fact that not a great deal happened,” political scientist and senior research fellow at NatCen Social Research Sir John Curtice told BBC News.
“With one exception… the UKIP vote, which repeats what we saw happen to UKIP last year [in the general election]. Where the UKIP vote collapsed heavily, that’s where the Conservatives did best. The vote that is helping to buoy up Theresa May’s popularity at the moment is very much a Leave [or pro-Brexit] vote.”
Meanwhile, rebellion within the Labour party over Corbyn’s approach to Brexit is escalating. More than 40 Labour peers who want a “soft” Brexit have apparently supported a cross-party amendment to legislation that would let Britain remain a member of the European Economic Area but leave Europe. Meanwhile, the Labour party’s staunch Remainers (as anti-Brexiteers are commonly referred to) are hitting out at Corbyn's inability to commit to a strong and coherent anti-Brexit policy.
Labour’s main disappointment was its performance in London, where it typically does well. It held its own in many areas, but in others faced unexpected defeat. Curtice believes this is partly due to growing unease in some quarters over Corbyn’s comments on Israel – citing the results in one borough in particular as incontrovertible proof that Corbyn's Israel position affected the election results.
“Barnet so happens to be the part of the U.K. with the largest Jewish population,” he explained. “And it looks as if the row about anti-Semitism in the Labour party certainly didn’t do the party any favors there.”
Changes to the electoral process itself produced a further example of controversial Conservative policy, when a pilot voter ID scheme saw 4,000 voters across Bromley, Woking, Gosport, Watford and Swindon turned away from the polling booths because they didn't have a bank card, driving license or passport.
Conservatives plan to roll out the voter ID scheme nationwide. There are, of course, worrying parallels with the pervasive influence of voter ID laws in the U.S., which consistently see black and Latino citizens restricted from voting in Republican-controlled states.
“Voter impersonation, known as 'personation' in elections speak, is a very rare practice as far as we are aware,” a spokesperson for Democracy Volunteers told Occupy.com. “Just two cases of voter fraud were successfully prosecuted in 2017, but this has been frequently used as the basis for introducing ID requirements.”
Unsurprisingly, a disproportionate number of both elderly people and immigrants were affected in the areas where the voter ID system was in place. “There are very large groups of voters who don’t have ID, as recently highlighted by the Windrush scandal.”
Like Democracy Volunteers, the Electoral Reform Society also takes the position that voter ID fraud is a very minor threat to democracy. “Our broken first-past-the-post voting system has far bigger implications of a handful of people pretending to be someone else,” a spokesperson for the group told Occupy.com. “Millions of votes are wasted.”
As well as championing the introduction of proportional representation in the voting system, he added, “we also need to be looking at things like automatic voter registration”.
The ERS is working on a report, due to be published within the next month, which scrutinizes the legality of piloting the voter ID scheme. “We will consult with legal experts to ascertain whether or not the trials conflict with the 1918 Representation of the People Act as well as assessing their impact," said the spokesperson.
Last week's local election results give analysts little indication of what to expect from the 2020 U.K. general election. However, with Brexit scheduled for March 29, 2019, tensions appear ready to rise. With both main party leaders facing criticism over their unclear approaches to how Brexit should be implemented, British politics is sure to get more interesting in the months ahead.
