Today's local election results and voter intention polls suggest the Conservative Party is heading for a general election wipeout – but victory for Labour is not yet guaranteed.
While Keir Starmer's party looks set to give the Tories "their worst drubbing in a century" when voters next go to the polls, said The Telegraph's Ben Riley-Smith, Labour "can be skittish" when it comes to electoral victory. "Share a coffee with frontbenchers or advisers and it is clear that the ghost of 1992 – and, to a lesser extent, 2015 – still haunts those nervous to believe in the polls."
Amid "internal mutterings" about party strategy, fears of potential "election shocks" continue to loom.
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What did the commentators say?
The local election results are "bleak" for Rishi Sunak, said Steven Swinford in The Times. As of this morning, the Tories had "lost more than half of the councillors who were up for election", and Labour's by-election win in Blackpool South is "one of the biggest swings in postwar electoral history". Yet there are "some signs" that Labour's position on the Gaza conflict is "having an impact".
Nick Peel, leader of Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council, told The Bolton News that many South Asian voters had turned away from both Labour and the Tories "as a direct result of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine".
Experts have warned that Labour "could struggle to win as many as a dozen of its key targets", said The Guardian's Kiran Stacey, "and could even lose two of the seats it now holds", as the party's response to both Gaza and the climate crisis alienates growing groups of voters.
Although Labour "leads the way" in the local election results, said Sky News's elections analyst Professor Michael Thrasher, it is "having to share the headlines with seat gains made at the Conservatives' expense by the Liberal Democrats, Greens and a range of local independents".
The Lib Dems could also do better than expected in the Conservative heartlands in a national vote. The resignation of former PM Theresa May as MP for Maidenhead after 27 years leaves the previously safe Tory seat up for grabs – which the Lib Dems view as a "big opportunity for what could be a significant win", said the i news site.
What next?
The biggest general election shock may simply be the scale of the Conservative wipeout, said The Economist. Prediction models forecasting Tory defeat may "still be being too kind", as they don't "explicitly consider the potential for a jump in tactical voting". Previous wipeouts for the Conservatives such as those of 1906, 1945 and 1997 have been "at the hands of coordinated anti-Tory coalitions". And that could happen again as Labour becomes "more palatable to crossover voters" under Starmer than Jeremy Corbyn.
Providing another "dollop of the heebie jeebies" for the Conservatives is the performance of Reform UK in yesterday's votes, said Chris Mason on BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme. In the places where the Nigel Farage-founded party chose to stand, it "performed well", coming within fewer than 120 votes of beating the Conservatives to second place in the Blackpool South by-election.
"Support for Reform is real," said Sky's Thrasher, "and will hurt the Conservatives if played out at the next general election."
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