Last night Smarkets held an event to look at next week’s local elections. The areas that are having them are in colour in the Wikipedia map above. I found it a weird experience because where I live like in most parts of England there are not elections next week and it is harder to share the excitement.

It is always noticeable how the mainstream media takes the locals more seriously when London elections are involved and the signs are that the Tories could suffer losses in the capital. Most of the discussion focussed on the London boroughs with Wales, Scotland and the rest of England being an afterthought.

For me the big numbers will be the projected National Equivalent Vote share which is computed by a team of political academics gathered together by the BBC.

Last year the split was CON 40/LAB 30/LD 15/OTH 15 and it will be recalled that polling day happened when the success of the vaccine roll out had given Johnson’s Tories a big boost in the polls.

Next week it is going to be hard for the Tories to get anywhere near the 40% of last year and the LSE’s Tony Travers is predicting it down to 30/31 with LAB upto 36/37. He has the LDs on 16-17.

There have been a large number of ward boundary changes since most of the seats were last contested in 2018 so making direct comparisons is going to be difficult.

Mike Smithson