I don't
really care about this but I feel like I ought to throw it out there.
Local council elections in the UK are in and the Tories have taken a pasting.
One thing that I do think is interesting at a first glance here is that Labour is not nearly so clearly the victor as they are crowing about. Yes, they got the largest number of seats... but it's not that far ahead of the Lib Dems and the Greens more than doubled their holding.
My suspicion is that the Lib Dems are benefiting from the hard core of Tory voters who want to express their dissatisfaction but will never vote Labour, and the Greens are benefiting from the hard core of Left voters who will never vote Starmer.
It's always difficult to predict what will happen at the next GE from local council results but I think the Lib Dem gains give particular reason for pause here. Most people don't take local elections seriously because the stakes are perceived as lower (which is ironic as they often have a bigger impact on their lives in material terms than their MP). Lib Dems have a reputation for being good in local government (which... eh) and then rarely being able to translate that into strong parliamentary showings because people just don't take them seriously as a party of potential government (which is good; they don't deserve that).
When people are faced with the choice that 'matters' I think there's every chance they swing back to the Tories. Memories are short and Sunak still has time to craft his pitch. I still ultimately think that a Labour government (possibly a Labour led coalition) is the most likely outcome, but particularly if Starmer continues to fail to inspire and the pitch from both parties is "Things are shit, they're going to get more shit, and that's good actually" people may well decide to just stick with the devil they know.
