How great a pointer to the next general election is provided by midterm council election results? Not much.

Only about 30 per cent of voters take part and many are those who follow local matters and are prepared to vote on local issues and for hard-working local candidates. So local campaigning and election organisation can really count. Nationally, government supporters are less likely to turn out to say ‘carry on the good work’ than are those who want to give the government a kick or who always vote against the party they dislike.

But in a general election the turnout doubles and most people set aside local issues, focus on party leaders, and choose the one who comes across as most prime ministerial and most competent to oversee the economy and look after their money.

So to be on course for general election victory, an opposition party has to perform hugely better in council elections than it needs to do when the ‘big election’ comes along. Only this indicates the change of public mood that will lead to a change of government. Labour’s council results in 2012 were not good enough to win in 2015.

In East Anglia in the run-up to 1997, Labour was winning council seats in nearly all the small market towns and even some village wards, as well as dominating councils in the urban areas like Norwich and Ipswich. When I moved from being council leader to MP in Waveney in 1997, we held 44 out of 48 seats on the council.

So do Thursday’s results in the east put Labour on course to win in 2020? Sadly not.

A move back to Labour from Green in Norwich; modest gains in Ipswich and Cambridge; and holding on in Stevenage and Harlow, show a consolidation of Labour’s urban council vote, rather than the deep inroads into the Tory vote that will be needed to gain the parliamentary seats in the east needed to form a Labour government.

Elsewhere in the region, results were dire. The Tories regained control in Peterborough and Labour got nowhere in councils where we have little presence. There was no emergence in those small market towns – a key test of whether Labour is broadening its appeal.

But there was even worse news in two seats we seriously hoped to win in 2015. After the 2013 council elections, I warned that the United Kingdom Independence party represented a bigger threat to Labour than to the Tories – a message that went unheeded by the leadership back then. But further horrible evidence of this was provided last week in Great Yarmouth and Thurrock where Ukip made further gains from Labour and we sank into third place on those councils.

Ukip is not competitive in all parts of the east, but its appeal to former Labour voters in places it targets reflects deep (non-racist) concerns about immigration, its impact on job opportunities and the undercutting of wages, and a feeling that Labour is not really focused on white working-class people who seem ‘left behind’.

In the 2015 general election there were items on Labour’s menu to address these issues and Ed Miliband made a visit to Great Yarmouth to launch the ‘control immigration’ pledge, taking aim at the exploitation of migrant labour by employers. But because so many voters did not see Ed as a prime minister and did not have confidence in Labour to run the economy, we were not taken seriously enough to win the seats we needed.

The situation is now worse, as few beyond the membership of the Labour party see Jeremy Corbyn as a prime minister, and although Keir Starmer is going round the country consulting on immigration policy, the message reaching ordinary voters is that Labour favours more immigration and is still more focused on welfare than work.

To me, the 2016 council election results look similar to those we had in the 1980s. We fought hard and were proud of our results. But, looking back, we should surely see that ‘hanging on’ and blaming the media is not enough. Those results presaged Tory landslides in 1983 and 1987. Our failure to reach out beyond the faithful helped sustain those Thatcher victories. We should not let history repeat itself.

—–

Bob Blizzard was member of parliament for Waveney from 1997 to 2010 and fought the same seat in 2015. He was leader of Waveney district council from 1991-1997.