These are the most extraordinary local elections of my lifetime. The Tories’ loss of more than 1,000 councillors is way worse than the gloomiest projections.
And yet Labour should be as depressed as the government because the fact that it is losing more than 100 seats, and its share of the vote is broadly the same as the Tories’ is devastating for it, when arguably this is the most shambolic government in modern history and the comparator elections are the 2015 Ed Miliband lowpoint.
And although Brexit is one explanation for both parties’ poor performance, for Labour in particular it is a million miles from being the whole explanation – for the definitional reason that Labour isn’t in charge of Brexit.
Labour campaigners, many of them, tell me that Jeremy Corbyn has gone back to being a negative on the doorstep, maybe because of the anti-Semitism taint, in part.
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