Local elections 2023: Tory MPs in marginal seats can be waking up in a chilly sweat as Labour sees indicators of a brand new daybreak

In 1997, as he celebrated Labour’s landslide, Tony Blair famously declared: “A new dawn has broken, has it not?”

In 2023, as they head in the direction of a set of dismal native election outcomes, the Tories will worry that is the darkest hour earlier than one other new Labour daybreak subsequent 12 months.

From Plymouth to Stoke-on-Trent, from the South West and South East of England to the Midlands and the North, the in a single day outcomes have been disastrous for the Conservatives.

Defeat for the Tories in Plymouth was absolutely one of many night time’s most predictable outcomes, after the nationwide public outcry towards the council’s act of vandalism – in response to critics – in chopping down bushes within the metropolis centre.

But one in all Labour’s most spectacular leads to Medway, in Kent, the place the Conservatives have been ousted after 20 years in energy.

Counting happened all night time on the Medway Park sports centre in Gillingham, opened by Dr Roger Bannister in 1973.

And the rely was a marathon, not a dash.

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The outgoing Tory chief of the council, 72-year-old Alan Jarrett, candidly admitted in a Sky News interview the federal government’s unpopularity was an enormous think about his occasion’s defeat.

As Labour candidates have been elected with thumping majorities, group chief Vince Maple appeared poised to develop into council chief.

Some 24 hours earlier, at an elite drinks occasion on the Reform Club in Pall Mall, Rishi Sunak had mentioned the Conservatives would lose seats due to the “box-set drama” that engulfed the occasion through the premierships of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

Labour definitely pulled out all of the stops in Medway, with Sir Keir Starmer visiting twice, the second time on the ultimate day of campaigning. The Tory chairman, Greg Hands, even visited on polling day.

Back within the Nineties, a Labour surge in native elections in Medway acted as a springboard for Mr Blair, successful all three parliamentary constituencies within the borough in his 1997 landslide.

But the arithmetic is completely different now, and Medway has three Conservative MPs with large majorities: Tracey Crouch in Chatham and Aylesford (18,540), Rehman Chishti in Gillingham and Rainham (15,119) and Kelly Tolhurst in Rochester and Strood (17,072).

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Elsewhere within the nation, nevertheless, Conservative MPs with smaller majorities can be in a chilly sweat this morning.

So a lot for a Rishi Sunak bounce within the Tories’ fortunes, up to now, though Friday afternoon’s outcomes – principally within the shires and districts – ought to be higher for the Conservatives than these declared in a single day, principally within the city areas.

Many of the Conservatives’ worst outcomes have been in “red wall” and strongly pro-Brexit areas, like Stoke-on-Trent, for instance. What will fear the occasion’s excessive command is that Nigel Farage’s vote in 2019 seems to have gone again to Labour, not the Tories.

That can be a large reduction to Sir Keir, who has wobbled in latest weeks underneath a Tory onslaught of labelling him “Sir Softie” on crime and “Sir Flipflop” on points like tuition charges.

We should not overlook the massive good points made by the Liberal Democrats, both, many in so-called “blue wall” areas in prosperous southern England. They look poised to grab extra seats from the Conservatives on the normal election.

So because the solar rose across the city halls of England this morning, Labour and the Lib Dems could possibly be assured of a brand new daybreak on the horizon. But for the Tories, it actually was one in all their darkest hours.