The Tories will pay a “Brexit penalty” in next month’s local elections if Theresa May fails once more to get the UK out of the EU, polling experts have warned.
The Conservatives are set to lose large numbers of councillors when voters go to the polls on May 2, with turnout expected to drop by half since the seats were last contested four years ago.
But the Lib Dems rather than Labour could emerge as the main beneficiaries, according to a new analysis by elections expert Robert Hayward and pollsters ComRes.
The Tories have the most to lose in the elections, which take place in 8,000 council seats, many of them in the party’s traditional rural and district heartlands.
Hayward, a Tory peer who coined the term ‘shy Tories’ to explain the party’s victory in the 1992 general election, said that the exact impact was hard to quantify but the danger of a further impasse was real.
“There is a Brexit benefit to the government if there is a deal. The corollary of that is that there is a dis-benefit, deficit, penalty to the Tory party. There’s no question about it,” he said.
“Talk to any MPs and they will say exactly the same thing. They want a deal so they can go out on the doorstep and say we’ve got a deal. But if there isn’t a deal, the Tories have a disadvantage.
“There are large numbers of people who just want it over with. Voter turnout will drop dramatically, partly because there was a general election in 2015 on the same day, but also because there are people just so hacked of with it all and they won’t vote.”
The Tories have bucked the trend in recent years in council elections, as the collapse in the Lib Dem vote helped them to defy the usual convention that a sitting government party loses council seats.
But Vince Cable’s party are poised to pick up key seats, not least as they are rebuilding their grass roots organisation on the ground in many Tory areas such as the South West.
The Lib Dems are expected to pick up swaths of Conservative seats in both Bath and North East Somerset and Wokingham, the backyards of two leading Tory Brexiteers Jacob Rees-Mogg and John Redwood.
“The Tories are there to be taken,” Hayward said. “It’s target practice for the Lib Dems.”
Of the seats up for election next month, the Tories have 4,628 councillors, Labour 2,069 and the Lib Dems 641.
When the wards were last voted on, the same day as the general election in 2015, turnout was above 70%, as David Cameron clinched a wider victory to return to No.10.
Back then, the Conservatives gained 504 councillors, with Labour losing 238, the Lib Dems losing 425 and Ukip gaining 112.
The number of candidates standing in next month’s elections became clearer on Monday, with the Tories standing in 96% of all seats.
Labour are fielding contenders in 77% of seats, up on the last time the elections were fought, but still leaving nearly a quarter of Tory candidates facing no Labour opposition. That’s despite a big increase in the party’s grassroots to half a million members.
By contrast, the Lib Dems show a large spike in candidate numbers in key areas. In North East Derbyshire and Basildon, where the party fielded no contenders at all in 2015, it has nominations for several seats.
Labour is expected to make some gains in the few metropolitan areas featuring in the elections, with Trafford and Calderdale set to turn red.
Yet the Lib Dems could make more net gains because with a low turnout local organisation will play a crucial role in getting voters to the polls. The Lib Dems and Greens, who are contesting 30% of the seats, also have no-aggression pacts in several places.
CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, this article was changed to reflect that local elections are on May 2, not May 1