I read last week that the Conservatives expected to lose between 400 - 800 councillors in yesterday's local elections. There is usually an element of expectation management in these forecasts, where the parties think of the worst possible results and then add a bit more so that afterwards they can say it wasn't as bad as they thought it might be. Presumably after feedback from those councillors who dared to campaign and fearing they had perhaps not been pessimistic enough, they later revised the figure to 500 - 1000 councillors who might go. In fact, they should have been a lot more pessimistic because they actually lost 1334! It was absolutely dire.
Easily the most humiliating local election results since John Major got it in the neck in 1995 and lost over 2000 councillors. Within two years he had been swept away in a landslide.
Without exception the pro-Brexit parties - Conservatives, Labour (-82) and UKIP (-145) - all lost vote share and seats. The Libdems (+703), the Greens (+194) and Independents (+662) all gained massively.
There is now a debate about what all this actually means. Vince Cable (HERE) says every vote cast was one for stopping Brexit. Kate Hoey (HERE) says Labour faces extinction in the North because they failed to back Brexit. Funny how politicians can look at the same picture and see totally different things.
Hoey seems to think if Labour showed the same insane determination for Brexit as the Tories they would have gained seats. She believes voters punished the pro-Brexit parties by voting for the anti-Brexit parties in a sort of perverse taking umbrage. This is like the socialists, after Michael Foot's defeat in 1983, claiming he lost because the manifesto wasn't socialist enough and voters punished Labour by voting for a right-wing Thatcher government. You have to be a special person to believe this sort of stuff.
Anyway, I think it's all being taken as generally positive for remainers (and it is) but we should be careful not to crow too much until after the European elections. Farage's party wasn't on the ballot papers yesterday - after all he hasn't the slightest interest in solving any real if minor issues at local level only in creating more and bigger ones nationally - but he will cause problems for both the Tories and Labour on May 23rd. He is a dangerous demagogue with charisma and we know what a lethal combination that can be.
All we can do is encourage as many people as possible to vote for parties that are unequivocally for remaining in the EU.
I noticed some commentators were suggesting that yesterday was a hurry-up call to both front benches to come to an agreement and get Mrs May's deal, or a slightly modified version of it, over the line before the 23rd May so they can avoid another even more humiliating and possibly terminal humiliation for the leaders.
This puts Corbyn in a very awkward spot. Robert Peston (HERE) explains it succinctly:
"And what many of them [Labour campaigners] will fear is that if he does what he has just said, which is to work now to secure Brexit in the coming weeks, what he will in practice do is engineer a Tory revival rather than a Labour one, since it is Brexit uncertainty that is the big weight crushing Tory popularity".
For this reason I don't think there will be an agreement between Labour the Conservatives. It was Napoleon I believe who said never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake - and let's be honest Brexit is a mistake of epic proportions. If I was Corbyn I wouldn't want Labour's name anywhere near it.
The ship is going down and the Tory party is tethered to the mast. Corbyn should take to the life boats and watch from a safe distance.
