What’s up for grabs in the 2024 local elections?

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Good morning. Welcome to the second part of my hour-to-hour guide to the local elections.

Yesterday I went through the results as they would come in on Thursday night. In today’s newsletter, here’s what to look out for on Friday as a much larger set of results come through. As ever, these aren’t predictions — this is the central scenario for what we’d expect if the national polls are about right. Nor is it a completely exhaustive list, as there are some safe local authorities for all three parties that it felt excessive to mention.

Normal service will resume for Thursday’s Inside Politics, while tomorrow’s newsletter will take in the counts that would arrive on Saturday.

Inside Politics is edited by Georgina Quach. Read the previous edition of the newsletter here. Please send gossip, thoughts and feedback to insidepolitics@ft.com

Swinging cities

12pm

What connects Blackburn with Darwen and Walsall is, like most of the councils up for grabs in these elections, they elect in “thirds” (a third of their seats are up for grabs every year, with a year off for good behaviour). The Conservatives cannot lose Walsall no matter what happens: even if they were to lose all the seats they were defending they would still have a majority on the council. Labour could in theory lose control of Blackburn with Darwen, which would be a big shock and a disaster for the party. Labour ought to make gains in both contests.

If the polls are right then we would expect Labour gains in both contests. Harder to call is the new North-East metro mayor race: police and crime commissioner Kim McGuinness is running for Labour but faces a tough fight against Jamie Driscoll, the former Labour mayor for the North of Tyne metro-mayoralty, which has since expanded to the new North-East mayoralty.

Broxbourne is a safe Conservative local authority: the Tories have run it since 1974 when the borough was created and it will stay that way this time next week. The most interesting thing about this result is that the council’s logo is a rather lovely little badger.

Havant was the site of a minor political earthquake last year — Labour and the Liberal Democrats won two seats, taking their total number of seats on the council up to four and two respectively, while the Greens won a seat on the council for the first time. Owing to boundary changes in Havant, every seat is up for grabs but it remains a very safe Conservative local authority.

In Tees Valley, Ben Houchen is seeking re-election. Although most of the seven mayors hoping to be re-elected will not discover their fates until Saturday, they are better understood together. So here I will also bring in Andy Street, the other Conservative incumbent mayor.

Some of these mayors won in 2021 because of their party affiliation. Others — such as Street in the West Midlands — won because they managed to outperform their parties. Street persuaded about 60,000 voters who backed Labour in ballots for council and police and crime commissioner elections across the conurbation to vote for him in the metro-mayoral election, to “split-ticket” in other words. In contrast, the Conservatives did well enough across the Tees Valley that the “extra” votes channelled towards Houchen didn’t matter at all to the outcome: they were the difference between a comfortable victory and a landslide. But Houchen did receive many split-ticket votes last time and therefore is well-placed to be re-elected even if the Conservatives are doing very badly across Tees Valley and the country as a whole.

I think we can say pretty safely that the Conservative party generally is much less popular than it was in 2021 and therefore what really matters here is whether Houchen’s personal vote is still big enough to get him re-elected. Given he got more than 72 per cent of the vote last time, 20 points ahead of the Conservatives in the area, and there is no Reform candidate, the answer is almost certainly “yes”, though the questions over Teesworks are a complicating factor.

1pm

In theory, either the Lib Dems or Labour (which currently run Welwyn Hatfield as a coalition) could gain enough seats from the Conservatives to win a majority. In practice however, both parties ought to make gains, particularly Labour given how poorly it did in 2021 here, but not enough to govern alone.

Watford (like all councils in this piece unless otherwise said, electing in thirds) is one of those fun little places where the Lib Dems have run the council for a long time and are generally seen to have run it well, but they have never managed to translate that into success at a Westminster level. That is much more interesting than the result: whatever happens, the Lib Dems cannot lose control of the council this year.

Castle Point, which is run by the Canvey Island Independents and the People’s Independent party (Castle Point), a party formed in 2021 to prevent the building of 5,000 new homes. The current administration took control in 2022, ending 20 years of Conservative rule. The coalition, which has scrapped the “thirds” model and will now have elections every four years, is likely to be re-elected for a four-year term.

Following boundary changes, every seat in Cannock Chase is up for grabs — Labour, which has suffered a series of very bad election results in Staffordshire starting with this constituency back in 2010, did very well across the county last year and won nearby Tamworth in a by-election. It ought to be able to retake control of the council in what will be the party’s best chance to do so for the foreseeable future. Labour also ought to fill the Nottinghamshire police and crime commissioner post and hold on to the North Wales commissioner, both closely fought Tory-Labour battles in 2021.

Manchester and Preston are safe Labour councils, though Manchester has seen a small Lib Dem revival in recent years. Either way, there will not be much to see in either of these councils unless something has gone wrong for Labour. Similarly, Newport council leader Jane Mudd ought to easily retain the Gwent police and crime commissioner role for Labour.

1.30pm

The election results of Burnley and Sheffield’s councils are more interesting because of the Israel-Hamas war: Labour ran Burnley until November 2023, when 10 councillors and the Burnley council leader quit the party over Keir Starmer’s stance on the conflict. As a result, the council is currently run by a coalition of independents and the Lib Dems and it may well still be after the elections here. In Sheffield, which is run by a three-party coalition of Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens, discontent over the Israel-Hamas war may well see the Lib Dems and the Greens make gains at Labour’s expense.

In West Oxfordshire, the Lib Dems govern in coalition with Labour and the Greens. The former could in theory win a majority in their own right — the Conservatives are defending 10 seats — but in practice that includes some very safe Tory seats so this is more likely to be a place where the Lib Dems continue to advance but do not win control.

Labour ought to win the Humberside police and crime commissioner election, which they lost in 2021.

2pm

Fans of foregone conclusions will find them in elections for Knowsley Borough Council (Labour since its creation in 1974) and the Hampshire and Suffolk police and crime commissioners (both Conservative).

The new East Midlands metro-mayoralty, in which former Labour MP Claire Ward faces current Conservative MP Ben Bradley, should similarly be a straightforward Labour win. The Cambridgeshire police and crime commissioner is a more complicated Conservative-Labour battle, as there is a sizeable Lib Dem vote in third place.

New council boundaries mean “all-up” elections in Basildon, Brentwood, Nuneaton & Bedworth and Rossendale. Labour has done astonishingly badly in recent elections in Nuneaton and patchily in Basildon and it really should be doing better there. It already holds Rossendale. In Brentwood, the Lib Dems, which run the council in coalition with Labour, will hope to take outright control.

Labour has an opportunity to take control of Hyndburn, where a third of the seats are up for grabs.

2.30pm

Labour will hope to increase its majority in Crawley and will have a tough fight against George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain in Rochdale. The Conservatives could lose their majority in Solihull, but no other party can win a majority as only a third of the seats are up for grabs.

3pm

The new York and North Yorkshire mayoralty — this is very safe Conservative territory normally and includes Rishi Sunak’s constituency. But Labour is fighting it hard and hopes to win it in what would be a big coup for the party.

Another contest worth watching: Festus Akinbusoye is one of the few police and crime commissioners to have enjoyed nationwide coverage but his Bedfordshire patch is going to be hard-fought. While he is clearly admired by many in Bedfordshire’s civic society, that admiration didn’t translate into victory in the Mid-Beds by-election and it might not here either.

Hastings is another Labour-held local authority that has been hit by resignations over the Israel-Hamas war and another one where the election results are uncertain as a result. In Kirklees, Labour may lose seats owing to local controversies.

Department of foregone conclusions: the Conservatives should retain their police and crime commissioners in Norfolk and Surrey. Plaid Cymru should hold on to that post in Dyfed-Powys, which the party won narrowly in 2021 in much better circumstances for its nearest challenger, the Conservatives. The Lib Dems ought to retain Three Rivers while Labour should be similarly safe in Barnsley.

3.30pm

Labour should win comfortably in Halton, Sandwell and Trafford, all of which they already run. In Georgina’s hometown of Milton Keynes, Labour needs just two gains to win a majority (it currently runs the council alongside the Lib Dems). It also ought to win the Leicestershire police and crime commissioner election.

4pm

Worth looking out for: how the Lib Dems do in Woking, which they won shortly before the council declared bankruptcy last year. Although the council’s difficulties are nothing to do with what was then a box-fresh Lib Dem council, we don’t yet know what voters will make of it. The incumbent ruling party ought to make enough gains to run Wokingham alone.

Police and crime commissioner elections to watch: the Labour party ought to win Lancashire from the Conservatives fairly easily.

4.30pm

The Labour party will hope to take control of Dudley from the Conservatives.

5pm

Cambridge and Oxford: two Labour-held local authorities that have seen resignations over the Israel-Hamas war, while Oxford’s low traffic neighbourhood scheme has been particularly controversial. If there is going to be a Lib Dem council triumph at Labour’s expense, it will come here.

5.30pm

Labour will hope to win control of Worcester, where it currently has a joint leadership with the Greens.

5.45pm

Cherwell, the last Conservative-run local authority in Oxfordshire, will declare. None of the opposition parties were able to agree an alternative leader after depriving the Conservatives of their majority last time, but they all have good prospects to gain more seats this time around.

6.30pm

Bristol, currently no overall control. Expect a fierce battle between Labour and the Greens, ahead of what will be another Labour-Green fight over Thangam Debbonaire’s Bristol Central parliamentary constituency.

10pm

Conservative-run Gloucester, is the last major contest to declare on Friday. The Lib Dems will hope to win control, while Labour will be seeking to make gains.

Now try this

I made the mistake of watching the Mean Girls musical on the plane to New York. So bad I hoped I was flying on a Boeing.