The Conservative Party have exceeded even their own “worst case” predictions in yesterday’s local elections after losing more than 1,000 Councillors – with even more losses still predicted as around 40 of 248 Councils are still yet to declare results.
At the time of publishing, Theresa May’s Tories had suffered staggering net losses of 1,064 Councillors from across the country – plummeting from 4,084 in 2015, to just 3,020.
Despite numerous Tory politicians openly expressing pessimism about the party’s prospects going into the Local Elections, their own worst case scenario was a maximum of 1,000 losses.
Both the Conservative Party and Labour suffered losses – mainly attributed to poor voter turnout and anger around both party’s stances on Brexit.
However, despite vast swathes of the mainstream media attempting to portray the Local Election results as an equal “disaster” for both main parties, the Tories have clearly fared far worse than Labour, having suffered more than ten times the losses of Jeremy Corbyn’s party.
Whilst Labour were expecting to see modest gains, they are currently facing a net loss of around 100 Councillors.
Yet, with Brexit having turned the political landscape upside down – and with voters either staying away from the polling booths or displaying their anger in protest votes – losses for the two main parties were almost inevitable.
However, even as late as last night, some Tory MPs were optimistic that the party might only see losses of around 500 Councillors – with Sky News reporter Beth Rigby stating that 1,000 losses would be a “catastrophic” result for the party.
How big might those Tory losses be? @JamesCleverly goes for the worst possible pre-election prediction out there with a loss of 1000+ seats. That would be catastrophic. A bad night is 600-800. Neutral about 500. #LocalElections2019
— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) May 2, 2019
Despite the Tories having now surpassed four-figures, Ms Rigby has now downgraded her opinion from “catastrophic” to just “very bad” for the Tories – whlst simultaneously describing Labour’s losses of around 100 as “absolutely dreadful”:
Let’s just take this in. Tories heading for 1,000+ losses. Very bad news. But look at Labour, 9 years into Tory govt, in net losses. +100 seats would have been a very bad night. They are on -124. That’s absolutely dreadful pic.twitter.com/04KnVqtccr
— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) May 3, 2019
Furthermore, despite the Tories’ suffering an absolute rout, the BBC are still attempting to push the narrative that both Labour and the Tories have fared equally badly – with their main headline still stating “Main parties hit by Brexit backlash in polls“.
The mainstream narrative has now become so clearly deluded and devoid of reality, that even ostensibly mainstream commentators have begun to call it out:
No denying that this was a poor performance by Labour, but nonetheless, the fact the narrative for so much of the day has focused on that not the Tory wipeout feels like it says something about our media culture
— Jonn Elledge (@JonnElledge) May 3, 2019
The BBC ticker saying 'Both parties suffer losses" while their count immediately below it had Labour -80 a Tories -800 was quite telling.
— Ross McCafferty (@RossMcCaff) May 3, 2019
