I don’t know what exactly Curtice says but my guess is that Liam Young is being selective on the quote, something we’ve seen before. Curtice said that outside London Labour aren’t doing as well as Corbyn.
This is the same point as yesterday. If you leave out London, Scotland and Wales Labour is not making the progress they’d want to. They’d argue that the real nadir was 2019, not the 2018 locals but I’ve no idea if that’s true.
But if you insist on excluding all the places that they’re doing well in, you’ll get that result. ‘Except for the places they’re doing better, they’re doing worse’
Also not all of the councils have reported yet.
Thanks Hucks, I am both being deliberately irritating about this and not. Ulitmately I don't even have much skin in the game as parliamentary politics is not my thing.
Basically this isn't an exciting victory for Starmer. Thus far, he does not seem to have ignited the electorate in the way that some people assured us he would.
It is easy to dismiss the Labour gains because of external factors - the length of time the Tories have been in, the pandemic, partygate etc. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone suggesting that the Labour gains were anything to do with Sir Keieieir as a leader or personality, or even Labour's current politices, whatever the fuck they are. "Not being Boris" is a value that also applies to a showroom dummy.
A critical issue, as I see things, both in terms of the next general election and the wider political culture, is whether Labour can win back the red wall. Not as far as I can tell.
On current evidence it seems likely that the non-Tory vote in the South of England might go to the Libdems or Greens and to the SNP in Scotland. Sinn Fein look like they are doing the business in Northern Ireland too.
So my current analaysis is that Labour remain screwed.