Have the Tories avoided a local election catastrophe?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Daily News, Politics

4.4 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rishi Sunak can breathe a (small) sigh of relief. Ben Houchen, the so-called ‘patron saint of the red wall’, has won a third term as Tees Valley mayor. Houchen secured 53.6 per cent of the vote with Labour in second place with 41.3 per cent, despite some polls in advance suggesting it was neck-and-neck between the Tories and Labour. The Conservatives have undeniably had one of their worst nights for a generation, but are there some silver linings?

James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson.

Produced by Natasha Feroze and Oscar Edmondson.

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Transcript

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0:18.1	Hello and welcome to coffee house shots I'm James Heel. I'm joined today by Katie
0:25.8	Bulls and Freddie Nelson. Now we're recording just after lunchtime on Friday afternoon
0:29.7	we've got about half the local election results thus far, including most recently the Teeth Valley
0:33.8	Merlety.
0:34.8	Katie, what do you think the big stories are thus far?
0:38.0	So I think the results started pretty bad for the Tories and you can't get away from that. He look at some of the councils that they've lost control of,
0:45.3	he look at some of the areas where Labour has taken control such as Reddich. I think that you know when you speak to MPs
0:51.2	I do think this is towards the bottom end of
0:53.2	expectations on councils you add to that however what's just happened
0:57.9	around lunchtime on Friday which has Ben Houch and being reelected as Tease Valley
1:01.6	Mayor and I think you can say that Ritchie's in that at the very least has avoided the nuclear option.
1:08.0	The nuclear option was that he would lose all the metro mayors and have bad local council results and I think Ben
1:14.9	Howchin has been seen to be such a symbol of the red walls seen as the patron
1:19.6	saying to the red wall had a mandate of over 70% when he was re-elected in 2021, that it would have become
1:26.4	very symbolic were he to lose.
1:28.6	So I think Riccinet has bought himself a little bit of briefing space.
1:31.2	He's now got this so long with along with I think Harlow and the
	...

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