Local elections 2022: Labour Council seat gains are woeful despite mainstream commentary.

Starmer's Labour might have got some big councils, but overall have done rather poorly against a dire Tory Party. So Labour have been playing down expectations since yesterday and as soon as the local election programming began overnight that very much continued and it soon became apparent as to why that was. Polls were predicting gains of anywhere between 300 and 800 council seats, so whats going wrong? With half of councils now declared, Labour have gained just 38 seats. At this time, just before 9am, the Lib Dems have actually won more seats, gaining 59. Now Labour will be pleased with gaining control of some big councils, Wandsworth, Westminster, Barnet, these are big symbolic trophies, big Tory scalps, but these are of course all in London, every blue tick Labour supporting Twitter mouthpiece out there extolling Labour’s virtues is no doubt London based and that ‘kissing Starmer’s arse’, bubble mentality belies what are really poor gains against a criminal Tory Party, who absolutely have made losses, but where 70% of those losses have not gone to Labour. Those same Labour voices want us to compare these elections to the 2019 General Election, they want to paint a bad night as somehow good compared to that, so obviously, they’ll want to have made gains in those red wall seats in the North of England. Take Hartlepool, a by-election seat Starmer lost. Has he made the gains to show he’s winning it back? No. The Tories gained 2 more seats there last night. Labour lost control of Hull City Council after 10 years to the Lib Dems, Labour lost 3 Councillors in Sunderland, lost 4 in South Tyneside, lost 3 in Salford, lost 5 in Oldham, lost 3 in Barnsley, where the Tories gained 1, lost 3 on the Wirral, where the Tories gained 1 – Do you see a pattern? All the talk of winning back the red wall, winning back the north – it hasn’t happened. It isn’t happening. Labour are claiming otherwise, pointing to the newly created Cumberland administrative district, but its new, there’s no previous precedent. Just listen to election guru John Curtice view of Labour’s performance. Labour is losing ground in the north, not gaining it and it’s not exclusively a northern problem either. Labour lost 3 councillors in Thurrock TO the Tories, lost 2 in Nuneaton where the Tories gained 1, they lost 5 in Brent and lost 8 in Enfield and they all went to the Tories. Starmer is out saying Labour’s back on track to win. It’s bulls**t based off of this. His gains are mediocre and there’s no sign that they are an endorsement of him, when his gains are largely from Londoncentric Tory councils giving Johnson a bloody nose. Electoral data shows that for every Labour voter gained from the Tories they’ve lost 2 to smaller parties. Starmer has won votes for not being Johnson and lost them elsewhere for being himself.