Some Conservatives had feared the political bloodbath could have been even worse, but as Thursday’s local election results began to trickle in, Rishi Sunak and his team were arguing there were reasons to be cheerful. It was a remarkable way to confront one of the worst Tory local election performances ever, one which experts said demonstrated Labour was firmly on track for a parliamentary majority. The Conservatives were on track to lose up to 500 council seats and Labour made gains across traditional Tory territory in the south. But Downing Street insiders were keen to point out that Labour failed to win control of Harlow council, a top target Keir Starmer had visited on the eve of polling day. The Conservatives held it by one seat. Ben Houchen also won a third term as Conservative Tees Valley mayor, despite a 16.7 point swing to Labour, and Andy Street was predicted to hold on to the West Midlands mayoralty on Saturday.
Loyal Conservative MPs sent messages to the Tory MPs’ WhatsApp group on Friday claiming to celebrate the early results. “I’m genuinely reading into this that the Labour lead is soft and we need to work our seats,” one Tory MP said. No 10 aides insisted they could see off any attempt to unseat Rishi Sunak. One said the “Armageddon narrative [is] not quite coming to fruition”. “People said we were going to get absolutely spanked and we haven’t been absolutely spanked,” a senior Conservative source said. “The big positives are Labour not winning Harlow, which they really wanted to, and Reform not coming second in South Blackpool. The big one to watch is London. We won’t win there but I don’t think Labour are going to win by 20 points like the polls said they would.” But for many, Downing Street’s upbeat tone jarred with reality. By Friday afternoon the Conservatives had lost at least 300 councillors and were on track to lose half of the 1,000 they were trying to defend. Tory-held councils across England, including North East Lincolnshire, Redditch, Rushmoor and Basildon, fell to Labour or no overall control. “The council results are an obliteration,” one Tory source said. A Tory MP said they were “dreadful”. Labour won the new metro mayoralties in the East Midlands and York and North Yorkshire, which contains Sunak’s own constituency of Richmond. “Keir Starmer’s Labour party is now winning in Rishi Sunak’s backyard,” a Labour spokesperson said. “The prime minister’s own constituents have taken a look at the two parties and chosen Labour.” The Tories hailed hanging on to Harlow as an enormous triumph, with the local MP Robert Halfon saying it was the “biggest comeback since Lazarus”. But the council only remained under Tory control by one seat thanks to the re-election of a councillor who was suspended last month over remarks he made about Muslims. The Conservative party refused to respond to queries about whether he had been readmitted. Meanwhile, the swing towards Labour in Tees Valley would, if replicated at a general election, wipe out all Tory-held battlegrounds there. “This all means a definite Labour government with at least a reasonable majority,” another Tory insider said. Senior Labour aides point out that the Tories who appear to have performed best – Houchen and perhaps Street, who will find out the outcome of his election on Saturday – effectively campaigned as independents, disowning the Tory leadership and record in Westminster. Houchen was not wearing a blue Tory rosette for his victory speech on Friday and said he could “absolutely” work with Starmer were he to become prime minister. Sunak sought to claim some credit for the win, saying the people of Teesside “knew it was Ben and the Conservatives that delivered for them … and I know that come the general election, they’re going to stick with us too”. One senior Labour aide said the Conservatives were using Houchen’s victory as a “coping mechanism”. “It was nothing to do with CCHQ and Rishi Sunak; if they want to ignore the underlying numbers behind it, then they are welcome to,” they said. Many Conservatives are most concerned about the results of the Blackpool South byelection, which Labour won with a huge 26.3 point swing. The insurgent Reform Party, whose honorary president is Nigel Farage, came within 117 votes of pipping the Tories to second place. There are fears that if Farage were to take a more frontline role in the party, it would spell disaster for the Conservatives.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the Tory MP and former chancellor under Liz Truss, told LBC on Friday that Reform was “taking more votes away from us than they are from Labour, and we’ve got to do something about that”. He suggested that support for the party was “a protest vote” that went beyond Farage and that “there’s a chance they could do well even without him”. Results from more councils and metro mayoralties, including the West Midlands and London, will be counted and announced on Saturday, at which point a fuller picture will emerge. But by Friday night Downing Street had one reason to relax. The outcome of these elections was not catastrophic enough to trigger the Tory rebellion Sunak feared could unseat him as leader. Andrea Jenkyns, one of only two Tory MPs who have publicly called for Sunak to resign, said it was “unlikely” that others would now follow suit. “I’m not sure that colleagues are going to be putting the letters in, so we’re working with what we’ve got,” she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. Meanwhile, the small shadowy cabal of former Tory advisers, MPs and donors who have been aiming to destabilise Sunak for months showed no appetite to move against him. “We’re off to the pub,” one ringleader said.