What Can We Learn From These Local Elections?

With much of England set to go to the polls next week we’re previewing a crucial set of local elections, with more than 1,600 council seats up for grabs, as well as six mayoral contests and a high-profile Parliamentary by-election in Runcorn and Helsby.

On the panel is Jonathan Ashworth, chief executive of the think tank Labour Together and a former shadow cabinet minister, Max Wilkinson, Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham and his party’s culture spokesman, as well as Scarlett Maguire, pollster and founder of Merlin Strategies, and Jack Sellers, a former Conservative special adviser who worked for Rishi Sunak in Number 10.

They talk to host Alain Tolhurst about the government’s potential electoral struggles, Reform’s high hopes, whether the Tories will take another pasting, and why nobody is talking up the Lib Dems.

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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot