Labour and Tories both lumbering like zombies after local elections
Both parties seem unable to break through the other's bloc, says Sky's Lewis Goodall, as leaders fail to persuade swing voters.
Monday 7 May 2018 14:30, UK
In the aftermath of last year's shock general election result, many Labour activists and Jeremy Corbyn supporters felt it was only a matter of time before their leader stood on the steps of Number 10.聽
At the Labour Party conference in Brighton in September, I lost count of the number of people who essentially thought it was a case of "one more heave".
The local election results (so far) place a serious dent in that assumption. Far from sprinting to the finish line, both parties are lumbering like zombies.
:: Have Corbyn and May both passed their peak?
Most of the gains for both Labour and the Conservatives are coming from the last remaining UKIP seats across the country. Politics is returning to a period when UKIP did not exist.
What neither main party is doing is taking many seats from the other. Generally, Labour wards are returning Labour councillors; Conservative wards are returning Conservative councillors.
This speaks of a hyper-polarised politics. In much of the post-war period there was a substantial minority of "swing voters" who would be willing to put their cross in either of the Labour or Conservative boxes, depending on the overall political circumstances.
That seems to be happening less and less. Brexit and a US-style culture war is polarising the British electorate.
Labour are stuck in their urban, liberal, younger, more ethnically diverse seats in the big cities and university towns. The Conservatives are stuck in small-town Britain, post-industrial areas and rural/semi-rural seats, with older and whiter voters.
But here's the rub: there really are not enough seats on either side of that divide to give Labour or the Conservatives a convincing majority.
And with neither side apparently able to break through the other's voting bloc, both parties appear trapped by the very coalitions which sustain them.
We've only had three hung parliaments since the war. Two have been in the last decade.
I wouldn't be remotely surprised if we had a third next time around.