Latest figures show that Labour could hold on to enough MPs to stop the hard-left taking over the party by default, writes Charlie Cadywould

Despite the Labour frontbench putting on a brave face for the cameras, no amount of spin can change the fact that these local election results have been pretty terrible for its supporters. Labour is losing ground almost everywhere, while the Conservatives have gained handsomely at the expense of both Labour and the United Kingdom Independence party.

This does not bode at all well for next month’s general election. Admittedly, local elections are not always a useful predictor a general election outcome, but as Stephen Bush has argued this morning, opposition parties rarely outperform their local election vote share, while the government rarely underperforms. Today’s results can be seen as a potential ceiling for Labour, and a potential floor for the Conservatives.

On the projected national vote shares – the percentage psephologists estimate each party would have received had the whole country been voting today – the Conservatives are on 38 per cent, Labour on 27, Liberal Democrats on 18 and Ukip on 5. On a uniform swing at a general election, this would give Labour 212 seats, down 20 from its 2015 total, with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats gaining 9 and 11 respectively.

This is better for Labour than recent polls, not because they outperformed expectations yesterday, but because the high Liberal Democrats vote share eats into the massive Conservative leads we are currently seeing in surveys of Westminster voting intention.

If this is the ceiling for Labour though, the questions are how much worse things might be in June – especially given the lack of a ‘Lib Dem fightback’ at this stage – and what this might mean for the Labour party going forward.

Labour’s future as a potential alternative government will to a significant degree depend on whether the role of party leader remains filled by someone on the hard left of the party. If Jeremy Corbyn were to stand down after an election defeat, any potential candidate would need nominations from 15 percent of members of parliament and members of the European parliament, though fearing that a ‘continuity’ Corbyn candidate would fail to reach this threshold, there are attempts in the works to reduce this to 5 percent.

In my research for Policy Network, published this week, I look at various different defeat scenarios for the Labour party, and how this might affect the ideological balance in the parliamentary Labour party, as well as the gender and BME balance, and the party’s representation in different parts of the country and types of constituency.

Crucially, I found that because pro-Corbyn MPs disproportionately hold safe seats, they become relatively stronger within the PLP the more seats Labour loses in June. However, if Labour were to lose just 20 seats – as would we would see on a uniform swing if today’s projected vote shares were repeated – Corbynites would be unlikely to get the 15 percent of nominations needed, and so would need to pass the ‘McDonnell amendment’ to get their candidate on the ballot.

Number of Labour MPs and MEPs if Labour loses its most vulnerable seats, by support for Jeremy Corbyn

On the other hand, as Steve Fisher has pointed out, Theresa May is going into the general election with a bigger projected national share lead than in the local elections that preceded the Tory landslides of 1983 and 1987. If Labour significantly underperforms its projected national shares next month, as it did in ’83 and ’87, its losses could be far more substantial.

The threshold for Corbynites reaching the 15 percent threshold, and thus bypassing the need for the McDonnell amendment, is met if Labour loses more than 50 seats (or 52 if we assume it regains Manchester Gorton and Rochdale).

This provides a strong incentive for Labour moderates – frustrated or disheartened by Corbyn’s leadership – to get out on the doorstep and save as many Labour MPs as possible. Corbyn is extremely unlikely to become prime minister, but Labour will have the best chance of recovery under a more capable and electorally appealing leader if it holds onto as many marginal seats as possible.

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Charlie Cadywoud is a researcher at Policy Network. He tweets at @ccadywould