UK Local By-Election results as a Barometer of National Political Fortunes
Making long term predictions about political outcomes nationally is a risky process indeed. In some ways it’s comparable to weather forecasting – the earth’s atmosphere is a chaotic system and trying to predict its behaviour locally more than 2 or 3 days ahead with any degree of accuracy still presents us with many uncertainties, despite all our advances in predictive technology (including even AI!). And we’ve all seen recently how long a week is in politics nowadays, let alone a month, or indeed 3 years - chaos seems to reign there, also. Although 2029 is thus a very long way ahead from a political point of view, and Labour's leadership and cabinet will be focused on more immediate policy decisions, their advance planners will already be thinking hard, and I suspect with some trepidation, about their electoral prospects…and not solely for the next general election. After the hammering both major parties took in the May 2025 local elections, largely at the hands of Farage’s...