swindon When Brits elect most of their local councils and some mayors on Thursday, Swindon will be the focus of attention at the party headquarters of the ruling Tories and the Labor opposition. The English industrial city, an hour’s drive west of London, is a kind of guidepost for British politics. Whoever wins here often has the upper hand in the rest of the country.
The local elections are a dress rehearsal for next year’s parliamentary elections, and the first voter test for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after six months in office.
It was therefore no coincidence that Labor leader Keir Starmer launched his party’s election campaign in Swindon at the end of March with a promise to freeze municipal taxes and compensate for the loss of income with a special tax on crisis profits from the big energy companies. “Across the country, everywhere I go, here in Swindon, communities want change!” the opposition leader called out to his supporters.
He convinced Gary, who doesn’t want to give his last name. In his 50s, the slightly graying hair has lived in Swindon ‘forever’ and is fed up with the Conservatives – locally and nationally. He has already voted by post with Labor. The Tories are exhausted and have gambled away their economic competence. “Swindon used to be a prosperous town – that’s gone,” says Gary, recalling the ups and downs of the town’s history.
Whoever wins in Swindon has a good chance in the rest of the country
In the 19th century, Swindon was a center of the English railway industry, and in the 1980s the city became the most important location for the Japanese car manufacturer Honda in Europe. In 2021, however, the industrial boom was over: the Japanese closed their factory and 3,500 employees were left on the streets.
Shortly thereafter, Amazon opened a huge logistics center nearby and hired many former Honda workers back – albeit at significantly lower wages. Swindon has moved with the times, but not necessarily got richer in the process.
The British industrial state was already affected by several structural changes.
(Photo: The Image Bank/Getty Images)
Today, the city and residents seem exhausted and unsettled in view of the sharp increase in the cost of living. Gary sits on a wooden bench in the desolate pedestrian street between the closed Debenhams department store, forced to close during the pandemic, and the Swindon HUB, a community center in the middle of the shopping street where residents battered by high heating bills could warm up on cold winter days . Now those in need can come here for a warm coffee. “There are construction sites everywhere, but nothing gets finished,” says the enthusiastic cyclist. The city lacks the money for a modern infrastructure.
Swindon has been governed by the Conservatives for 13 years. “If the Tories are able to hold their majority here, that would also be a good signal for the Conservative government in London,” says Tony Travers, a political scientist at the London School of Economics (LSE). Although the city is more in the south of England, it has important elements of the so-called “Red Wall” regions in the north.
This refers to the former Labor strongholds between Liverpool and Middlesbrough, which Boris Johnson conquered for the Tories in 2019 and which opposition leader Starmer must win back if he wants to become prime minister in 2024. In addition, further south in the traditionally conservative strongholds, the Liberal Democrats are breathing down the Tories’ necks.
Overall, the parties are fighting for more than 8,000 seats in 230 local authorities in England. Local elections are not held in Wales and Scotland, and Northern Ireland does not hold an election until 18 May.
Almost half of the mandates up for election are currently in Conservative hands, which is why the Tories are already stacked low and General Secretary Greg Hands has already calculated the loss of “up to 1000 seats”. But the Labor Party, which is 15 points ahead of the Tories in national polls, is also trying to dampen expectations of a march through. “The Conservatives will make significant gains,” says Starmer deliberately modestly. Perhaps also because his opponent Sunak has almost caught up with him in the polls in a personal comparison.
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But that’s not enough for the conservatives: “The fact is that the ruling Tories are extremely unpopular given the poor economic situation and after numerous scandals and the political chaos of Prime Minister Liz Truss, who resigned after only 45 days,” says Sarah Hobolt, election researcher at the LSE. According to surveys, around two-thirds of Britons are dissatisfied with the Conservative government.
In order to keep their disappointed regular voters in line and still have a chance of re-election next year, the Tories are therefore increasingly focusing on cultural issues such as how to deal with illegal immigrants, who mainly come to Great Britain by boat across the Channel.
Interior Minister Suella Braverman has now introduced a bill that would provide for the detention and immediate deportation of illegal immigrants to Rwanda. The right to asylum would be practically undermined. If necessary, Braverman also wants to override objections from the European Court of Human Rights, because her law is likely to encounter considerable legal resistance there. “The Tories are trying to use the issue of immigration to revive the identity campaign that lost traction after the dashed hopes of Brexit,” says political scientist Hobolt.
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(Photo: AP)
However, immigration is only third on the list of political priorities for most Britons. For 60 percent, the elections are primarily about the economic situation, more than 40 percent are particularly concerned about the NHS health system, which has been hit by strikes and a lack of money and skilled workers. That is also the reason why Labor is attacking the Tories on the economic front and has been trying for weeks with a charm offensive to assuage top managers and foreign investors’ fears of an election victory for the Labor Party.
The campaign appears to have been successful: in October 2022, for the first time, a majority of Britons considered the Labor Party to be economically more competent than the Tories. Incidentally, Brexit only plays a major role in British politics for 18 percent of Britons. Labor is reluctant to reopen the controversial issue. Finally, in 2016, many Labor supporters voted to leave the EU.
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The decisive factor is whether and how the results of the local elections can be converted into national political trends. British pollsters have developed the so-called “National Equivalent Vote” for this purpose. The rule of thumb is that a party must achieve a converted share of the vote of at least 40 percent if it also wants to be successful at the national level, says LSE researcher Travers.
If the professional augurs are right with their forecasts, Labor would be in good hands: With a converted share of the vote between 39 and 41 percent, the opposition is not only well ahead of the Tories with 28 to 30 percent in the forecasts, but the seat of government would also be 10 Downing Street within reach.
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