Good morning, and try to control your excitement: it’s local elections day in the UK!! YES!!! No, wait, don’t go: today’s votes matter not only because of the usual issues (bins, potholes, housing) – but also because we’re in a cost of living crisis where local government has control of many of the levers that can affect it. And then there’s the national picture – in particular Boris Johnson’s security as prime minister -that the results will help us to understand.
Tomorrow, results will come in from more than 6,800 seats in 200 local authorities, and the big parties – having downplayed their chances in advance – will furiously seek to present the outcome as a success. For today we’re asking: do voters care about Partygate? Is Keir Starmer making an impression? And what about the constitutional questions in play in Scotland and Northern Ireland?
Guardian reporters tell us what they’ve been hearing on the ground about all of this – right after the headlines.
Five big stories
Ukraine | A Ukrainian commander in the Mariupol steelworks said fierce fighting was underway late last night. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen proposed a total EU ban on Russian oil imports, a major escalation in sanctions.
Abortion | As the US supreme court threatens to strike down the right to abortion, Joe Biden has said LGBTQ+ children could be the next targets of a Trump-dominated Republican party he called “this Maga crowd” and “the most extreme political organisation … in recent American history”.
Cost of living | Shoppers can deal with the cost of living crisis by choosing value brands in the supermarket, the environment secretary suggested. George Eustice said that by doing so people “can actually contain and manage their household budget”.
Climate crisis | A climate-sceptic thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, has received funding from groups with oil and gas interests despite insisting that it remains independent from the fossil fuel industry. The thinktank has led a backlash against the government’s net zero policies.
US | Amber Heard told a court that her ex-husband Johnny Depp abused drugs and said the first time he hit her it “changed my life”. Heard is testifying in Depp’s lawsuit against her for claiming she was a victim of domestice abuse.
In depth: Big questions in the local elections
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How much will voters be motivated by Partygate?
Boris Johnson is unlikely to collect the rubbish whoever voters choose on Thursday – but that doesn’t mean he isn’t on their minds.
One theme to emerge from the Guardian’s battleground dispatches is quite how many people have been turned off by Partygate. Efforts by local Conservatives to distance themselves from Johnson lead the print edition of the Guardian this morning. Take a look at this Hartlepool leaflet as an example:
Political correspondent Aubrey Allegretti heard plenty about all this when he visited the London borough of Wandsworth, a flagship Tory council which is now a credible target for Labour. He recalls a conversation with one Conservative voter, who told him that “while [the party is] led by a man I don’t consider has integrity, I wouldn’t vote for them.”
Aubrey thinks allegations of lockdown rule-breaking at No 10 could “contribute significantly” to how the Tories perform there. He said he was “quite surprised by how tactical some natural Tory voters are. They seemed ready to accept some short-term pain locally in exchange for what they see as the long-term gain of getting Johnson out.”
Similarly, Heather Stewart’s piece yesterday from Worthing, West Sussex, feels like more evidence for Labour optimism in former Tory strongholds in the south. “I think [Partygate] may have an effect on turnout,” the Tories’ deputy council leader Edward Crouch told her. “Our voters don’t vote against us very often, they just stay at home and shout at the telly.”
In many other parts of the country, Partygate appears to be actively motivating people in the opposite direction. “I’m voting Labour for the first time ever,” one voter in Bridgend told Steven Morris. “Every time I see Boris the buffoon, it makes me more sure. He’s lied and lied.”
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Do voters see Keir Starmer as a credible alternative?
Unfortunately for Labour, there are quite a lot of voters feeling enthusiastically rude about Keir Starmer, too – or simply viewing him as a non-entity. “There’s a big poll lead nationally and we are getting a hearing again, but I’m still not sensing that love on the ground,” one Labour figure told Josh Halliday in Sunderland, where the party fears losing a council it’s held since its creation in 1974.
Loretta Anthony, a 61-year-old Labour supporter in Bury, was pithier still in Jessica Elgot’s piece: “I’m sorry to say I don’t like the guy. We really need someone with a bit of backbone.”
“It was striking that some longtime Labour supporters don’t think he’s opposing the government forcefully enough,” said Jessica, kindly breaking into a precious day off to speak to me, and only occasionally pausing to ask her toddler to please stop taking the leaves off a nearby bush. “And Keir Starmer as a person – it didn’t seem like people think about him as the barrister who’s taken on the Stephen Lawrence case, or McDonald’s – they think he’s some corporate lawyer.”
Most predictions suggest Labour will make some progress – but, as Robert Ford wrote in the Observer, “The bulk of this year’s English contests are being fought on Labour’s strongest terrain – London and other big cities – meaning more seats to defend and fewer opportunities for gains.”
Rather than seats, Jessica said, “the thing that’s interesting about places like Bury from a national perspective is vote share. If they can’t win parliamentary seats in Bury at the next general election, they may as well go home. It’s not a big headline, but gaining one or two councillors would indicate that they’re on course.”
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Who will lead opposition to the SNP in Scotland?
If the dynamics in England and Wales seem complicated enough, consider the lot of the Guardian’s Scotland editor Severin Carrell. With every council seat north of the border in play, he’s sorting through the vagaries of the single transferrable vote system - which can lead to outcomes unthinkable in parts of the UK where votes for Labour and Conservatives are binary opposites.
While the nuances in different parts of Scotland are vast, Severin says that “the most obvious single dynamic here is Labour against Tory – who is going to be top of the parties that are against the SNP”, the governing party which has endured a period of steady decline in the polls but remains first by a distance.
“It improves Labour’s chances in Scotland that it jumps the hurdle of being electable at a UK level,” he said. “Working-class unionist swing voters may have jumped ship last time around because they didn’t believe that about Jeremy Corbyn.”
As Severin set out in this piece, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has argued that at 27%, the party’s rough level of support in recent polls, a number of seats will come back into play in the next general election.
For the Scottish Tories, whose leader Douglas Ross has “gone through really embarrassing contortions recently over the suitability of Boris Johnson to be PM”, the question is how many seats will they lose.
The SNP, meanwhile, are insulated from serious harm: they underperformed in 2017, and can’t lose any of the councils they currently run. In summary, Severin said, “whatever happens probably isn’t going to change the political weather”.
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Will Northern Ireland get its first nationalist leader?
In Northern Ireland, the vote is for members of the executive Stormont Assembly rather than councils. If polls are right, Ireland correspondent Rory Carroll says, Sinn Féin should emerge as the largest party – an outcome portrayed by the Democratic Unionist party as damaging for the union.
“The Sinn Féin bogeyman is useful as a tool for the DUP to stop people turning to other unionist parties,” Rory said yesterday. “It’s worked in the past. The polling suggests that it won’t this time.” That’s part of why Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland Michelle O’Neill is taking a cautious approach on campaign messaging, as Rory explains in this piece.
“Pro-union voters are not sufficiently scared to flock to the DUP because they mostly recognise there is no prospect of an Irish unity referendum in the short term,” Rory said. “And Sinn Féin have stopped talking about it themselves.”
That’s not to underestimate the symbolic significance of a first Sinn Féin first minister – especially if the combined vote for all nationalist parties comes out ahead of unionist support. But Rory emphasises that it’s complicated: “Sinn Féin may make this pretty momentous breakthrough and yet actually lose seats, just because the DUP does worse,” he said, adding: “Good luck explaining that pithily.”
Thanks Rory! (And if I’ve failed, do read his hugely interesting exploration of what the election might mean for unionism in the Observer.)
What else we’ve been reading
The ten leading US feminists who give their responses to a new supreme court threat to abortion rights sound horrified, but not surprised. As Robin Morgan says, they’re not giving up. “Women will go ahead and disobey the law,” she writes. “What are they going to do when half the population is in revolt?” Archie
Amy Fleming speaks to the people who turned their government-mandated walks into fulfilling hobbies. Fleming highlights how the simple pleasure of strolling around their city has transformed people’s lives. Nimo
A new series of obituaries for lost species is just a great, sad, powerful idea. First is Helen Sullivan’s beautifully written farewell to a Hawaiian songbird: “The only remaining po’ouli had just one eye … alone in all the world, he closed it.” Archie
Rafael Behr asks: why has the prime minister not lost the support of his colleagues? Behr wonders how much longer his MPs will count on Boris Johnson’s dwindling charisma: “They have no respect for their leader,” Behr writes, “yet they are unable to imagine what they would be without him.” Nimo
If you live somewhere you can get delicious salt and vinegar or spicy Korean ramen crisps, and you’ve ever visited the US, you may have wondered: why are American flavours so boring? Finally, Jaya Saxena finds the answers for Eater. (Via Today in Tabs.) Archie
Sport
Football | Manchester City suffered a stunning defeat by Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-final, conceding two late goals to force extra time before a penalty dumped them out of the competition.
Football | Arsenal took the title race in the Women’s Super League to Sunday’s final round of fixtures with a 3-0 victory over Tottenham Hotspur. Chelsea remain favourites to take the title.
Tennis | Andy Murray will face Novak Djokovic for the 37th time in his career at the Madrid Open - the pair’s first meeting in five years. Murray played down his chances, saying: “He’s the world No 1 and I’ve got a metal hip.”
The front pages
The Guardian’s print edition leads with “Tory candidates distance themselves from Johnson” while the other papers – very unusually – all have a different top story. Economics leads the Times – “We can cope with rising inflation, insists PM” – and it’s a similar theme in the FT: “Fed ramps up inflation battle with first half-point rate rise since 2000”. The Mirror splashes on anger over remarks by a Tory minister – “Let them eat cheap pasta” – and the i says “20 warnings missed to stop Covid slaughter in care homes claims”. The Mail bigs up Boris Johnson ahead of the local elections with its story “PM: Rwanda plan at risk from left-wing lawyers”, as does the Express with “Shackles off! PM to rid Britain of EU red tape”. The Telegraph’s lead is “Falklands vets call for Exocet answers” and the Sun’s splash is about an alleged threat to England’s football anthem: “P.C. lions on a shirt”.
Today in Focus
The US supreme court is ready to overturn the right to an abortion. What happens next?
A leaked draft opinion lays out the supreme court’s plans to overturn Roe v Wade. It is something abortion activists have long feared – and will have lasting repercussions for all Americans, reports Jessica Glenza.
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Researchers from Cambridge University have developed a robot that can “taste” food in a way similar to humans. The robot has already been trained to make an omelette and has accurately tasted the salinity of scrambled eggs and tomatoes by simulating the chewing process. This might sound dystopian, but it’s also exciting: in a few years time these robots could help people cook at home, perhaps giving busy families the option to have their very own robotic sous chef.
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