In May 2023 many local authorities in England will be holding elections either for the whole council or for one third of the seats in the council area. There will also be some mayoral elections as well as elections for local government in Northern Ireland. These elections will be the first big electoral test, outside of the Chester by-election which takes place tomorrow, for Rishi Sunak’s government.

I suspect that Labour will hang on to Chester as unlike other similar seats in the North of England it didn’t shift to the Tories in 2019 and bucked the trend of regular and repeat Labour voters lending their votes to Boris Johnson’s Tories in order to get Brexit finalised. I don’t see Chester turning Tory as there doesn’t seem to be any massive degree of enthusiasm for the Tories at present among the electorate. If there was a general Tory enthusiasm wave across the country then Labour’s position in Chester might be more shaky, but the dire state of polling results for the Tories will probably preclude this scenario.

It’s the May elections that will give us much more of an indication as to the political trajectory of the nation, provided that is there is a reasonable turn out. This is because low turnouts, something local elections are notorious for, only really count the politically engaged among the populace in each area rather than the nation as a whole. It’s why the Lib Dems do so well in some local elections as they have a very good between election ground game which gets their vote out, something that the challenger parties such as Reform, SDP and others need to be copying.

Local elections also due to their poor turn out can land areas with bad local government because only those who are highly motivated bother to turn out. This is how Oxford City Council ended up being run by authoritarian Labour, Lib Dem and Green types, as these councillors were elected mostly on sub-50% turn outs with at least two 20% turn outs in some wards, who are now imposing draconian vehicle movement restrictions in the city. Low turn outs were also a factor in getting Greater London Mayor Sadiq Khan re-elected in 2021 as only 42% of Londoners could be arsed to get out and vote. Khan was able to continue wrecking the economy and society of the Capital primarily because not enough people could be bothered to vote against him.

It’s quite possible that the May ‘23 local elections might be coming at the absolute worst possible time for the Tories. As you can see from this Wiki page about the forthcoming local elections there are a lot of councils that are currently run by the Tories and they are going to be vulnerable to electoral anger over national issues. Many people are starting to wake up to the extent of the way that the Tories have mismanaged the economy, migration and by blind adherence to net zero policies, have saddled Britons with unreliable and overly expensive energy. With new and excessive energy bills dropping onto people’s doormats in April ‘23, there are going to be a lot of people angry at the mess that the Tories have made and this may cause regular Tory voters to stay at home or vote Labour or Lib Dem out of disgust at the Tories. Unfortunately when it comes to the main issues that people worry about such as migration, energy and the economy, Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens are as bad if not worse on these issues than the Tories. There’s unlikely to be any hope to be derived for the British people for voting for the Labour, Lib Dem and Green parties as they are mired in similar ideologies to those that the Tories have succumbed to and which have led us to our current dire and dismal position.

I believe, based on my observations of the current political situation that the Tories might be in for an electoral hammering in May of next year. A lot of this hammering will be from those who would normally vote Tory but who will stay away from the polling stations in disgust whilst more problems will be caused for them by vote switching. The problem is if voters decide that they will fall for the superficial moderation of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour or the Janus faced opportunism of the Lib Dems then many of the areas that make that choice could find themselves much worse off than if they’d stuck with Tories in local government.

This is why I believe that the 2023 local elections are a major opportunity for the various challenger parties and in particular Reform and the Social Democratic Party. Each of these parties appeals to a particular political demographic that is not being properly served by the legacy parties. Reform has an appeal to traditional Tory voters and is very strong on issues such as energy security and migration whereas the SDP could appeal to those Britons who want the country to be economically somewhat centre-Left but which is to the right on issues of culture and society. In the past the Tories could credibly appeal to both these cohorts of potential voters, those who are more libertarian economically and those who believe in traditional values. Unfortunately the record of the Tories over the last twelve years has shown that although the Tories might posture about being supporters of traditional morality or economic freedom or stuff that’s urgently needed such as border control, their actions have been very much the opposite of these ideas. I regret to have to say this as a former Tory voter but the Tories have proven themselves to be liars. They’ve lied over the efficiency and contribution of renewable energy, lied over the border and migration scandals, lied about fighting back against the cultural Left and lied consistently about their competence to manage the economy.

As I said before, the 2023 local elections is a massive opportunity for the challenger parties and also a good proving ground for them prior to the 2024 elections. However the challenger parties must do their utmost to take advantage of this rare opportunity when people are not just pissed off with the current governing Conservative Party but also are less than enthusiastic about voting for the nation wreckers of Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens. The challenger parties need of course to keep up the public profile on social media as they are highly likely to be utterly monstered by the MSM should one or more of the challenger parties start to pick up support, but they also need to take some lessons from the Lib Dems on running an effective ground game.

It is my belief that the challenger parties need to keep up with the criticism of the current political parties in Parliament via all possible means in order to highlight to the public just how badly the current Westminster parties have screwed things up. But they also need to start setting up local systems to get the vote out and exploit justifiable dissatisfaction with the Westminster parties. Prior to the locals they are going to have to have local offices with paid staff in every local authority that they are targeting. They need to be taking local polls and putting out election and party name recognition publicity now, not three weeks or a month before May 2023, but now. This is so that the challenger parties can be in a good position come 2023 to put up a good fight against the Westminster parties and the sometimes lacklustre independents who control the local authorities that are up for election next year.

For the challenger parties to make an impact both at the local elections next year and the General Election the year after that, is going to take an awful lot of money and hard work. It’s going to involve doing all the unglamorous stuff that is part and parcel of the democratic process such as door knocking, stuffing envelopes, raising money and a whole host of stuff that is boring, onerous but necessary. To have a chance of shifting the self serving, ideologically brainwashed Westminster party councillors and lukewarm independents from councils will also take a lot of coordination and compromise from the leadership and members of the challenger parties. It will mean negotiations between challenger party leaderships to see what challenger party stood the best chance in which area and not stand two separate candidates for example one from Reform and one from the SDP in the same ward. If this is done then any opportunity to strike back at the Westminster parties and similar will have been wasted as split votes between challenger parties will really only benefit the Establishment.

There’s a pretty good chance that the Conservative Party will face a wipe out in the 2023 locals in England. If it happens then it will be a wipe out that the party well and truly deserves. But unless the challenger parties get their arses into gear the result of voters abandoning the Tories might really only benefit the Westminster parties who are either as bad as the Tories or likely to be much much worse.