Thursday, May 1, 2025

Today's local elections are billed as the first big test for Keir Starmer, a referendum on how badly the Labour administration is doing. There's even more at stake for Kemi Badenoch: her Conservatives look set to lose almost all of its councils.

And yet, when the ballots are counted, all eyes will be on Nigel Farage. Our veteran Westminster-watcher Andrew Grice called it when he said the Reform UK leader has "become the 'F-word' of British politics, as figures in both parts of the now broken duopoly fret that they 'don't know what the f*** to do' about him". Farage's party is poised for a new high watermark – polling guru John Curtice told The Independent before polls opened that Reform will likely gain "hundreds of council seats".

But having sloganeered from the sidelines about immigration, are they in any position to run local services? "Reform has no local election manifesto," rued Sean O'Grady, "and its mayors and councillors can't do anything to 'stop the boats' or reduce regular migration."

Before polling stations opened, the tally of refugees crossing the channel so far this year hit 10,000. Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa of the Muslim World League wrote about how it's time to rethink migration: "It's not 'a crisis' – it's a symptom." Read his piece here.

When the last local election result is declared – by Friday afternoon, bar the odd recount – the biggest loser is expected to be the official opposition. In his assessment of the Conservatives under "Brexit Badenoch", Professor Tim Bale pinpointed the problem with Badenoch – that she "risks taking the party even further down the road towards being an ersatz populist radical-right party, towards a space on the political spectrum already occupied, and very effectively so, by Farage's latest vehicle". 

I hope you have a good Bank Holiday weekend – certainly a better one than the Tory leader.

Cartoon of the week by Dave Brown

Paul Clements

Deputy Voices Editor | @paulclements

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