Results are still coming in fast but one of the big stories of this local election night has been the Tories’ southern discomfort. Onetime safe seats in the once-impregnable ‘Blue Wall’ have fallen overnight to the Liberal Democrats and to a lesser extent, the Greens and Labour too. The leaders of Windsor and Mid Suffolk council lost their seats to Lib Dem and Green challengers respectively; the regions where the Tory vote share has fallen most is by 5.7 per cent in the south west and 3.7 per cent in the south east. Conversely, CCHQ is keen to talk up the areas where the party performed best: this occurred in the north where the swing to Labour was 4 per cent, less than the national average.
Traditionally, the safest Tory seats were in the south, attracting high-flying candidates who were likely to become ministers. It’s therefore perhaps no surprise that some of the biggest swings thus far have occurred in the seats of cabinet ministers, selected in pre-Brexit days.
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