"It can be stated that the cause of Labour's sizeable problems in Hastings is both national and local, presenting a hard challenge for Labour in Hastings."
In the aftermath of the 2021 local elections, social media quickly began to debate how bad the result was for the Hastings Labour Party. Some argued that the result showed localised problems for the borough's Labour Party, whilst others argued that it merely reflected wider national trends. As Labour could not escape these wider national trends it was therefore argued that failings with the national party were to blame for the poor result. Other commentators later argued that this was a denial of local problems the Labour Party faced as the result for Labour highlighted both national and local problems. This blog post aims to provide evidence that will help inform this debate. This research article finds that Hastings Labour's result in some way did buck the national trend, but not in a good way. Specifically, it finds that the swing from Labour to the Tories was much greater in Hastings than elsewhere, indicating that both national and local factors hurt Labour.
Hastings compared to the national average:
Firstly, table 1 highlights how the result for Labour in Hastings was comparatively worse than compared to the rest of the country, whether you compare Hastings to the South East, the Red Wall or the national average. These averages are the first indication that Hastings was an outlier, indicating local factors possibly partly shaped the election. However, averages can be misleading, therefore the article goes onto compare the Hastings result against results in regions across England.
The Tories gains over Labour:
Figure one shows how Hastings compared to all other borough council results across various regions. Specifically, it shows the Conservative Party's net gain in the share of the vote (this is calculated through the Conservative Party's increase in the share of the vote plus Labour's decrease in the share of the vote). Figure one demonstrates how when using this measure Hastings can be said to have been one of the worst results in the country. Although a few cases do outrank Hastings, when comparing Hastings to other regional trends the Hastings Labour Party lost out far more than other local Labour organisations. Whilst it would be unfair to compare Hastings to the rest of the South due to demographic differences that exist in Hastings it is not unreasonable to identify that when compared to other regional averages Labour performed significantly worse. Crucially, this highlights how Hastings can be viewed as an outlier, indicating external factors, such as local issues, may have caused Labour to buck the trend.
Labour's decline in support:
Figure 2 shows that when focusing just on Labour's loss in the share of the vote (compared to the last local election) it can be stated that Hastings bucked the national trend. Hastings Labour decreased its share of the vote by twelve and a half per cent, a figure well below all the regional averages. Again, a few borough Labour parties did perform worse than Hastings, but Labour did worse than 75% of councils in all regions. Therefore, whilst Labour's result in Hastings did appear very bad when considering Labour's better performance in the South when considering borough results across the country Labour still stands out as an outlier. This would again indicate negative local factors depressed Labour's vote alongside the clear national problems the party has.
The SwingOmeter:
Whilst swing is not a perfect measure, it does accurately capture the relative position of Labour to the Conservatives, who is an up and who is down. Table two shows when producing a list of the 20 boroughs with the highest swing away from Labour, Hastings placed in the top 10. Over 120 borough councils were contested in the recent local elections, clearly making Hastings one of the heaviest defeats for Labour. Considering that Hastings usually bucks the trend in a positive way for Labour, this raises the question of why this year's result was so poor for the Hastings Labour Party? Considering national factors were at play everywhere this does raise the possibility local issues also damaged Labour candidates in Hastings.
Local factors?
On viewing table three it can be seen that the results of Old Hastings and West St Leonards were where most of Labour's largest net losses occurred. Within these areas, there were clear local issues, particularly planning issues. West St Leonards had a mixture of tough planning issues that any incumbent council group would find tough to defend. Moreover, Old Hastings had a long-standing planning issue, the Marina development, something that gave the Greens a foothold and a focus to campaign upon. Therefore, local factors most probably did cause Labour to have a particularly hefty decrease in their share of the vote. However, it should also be noted that large net losses occurred in other seats that more reflected problems Labour had nationally, such as the seats of Baird, Ore, Tressell and Wishing Tree.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the cause of Labour's sizeable problems in Hastings is both national and local, presenting a hard challenge for Labour in Hastings.
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