Local Election Results 2016: Sorry, What Does Any Of This Mean?

Exactly how many failed Scottish Labour leaders have there been now?

At this point, could you even justify pushing Kezia Dugdale off the electoral cliff 'just' because she gave the party its worst ever Scottish results since universal suffrage began in 1928? Wouldn't that be an insult to Johann Lamont, 'Wee' Wendy Alexander, short-lived Jim Murphy, utterly-forgotten Iain Gray? At this point in the continuing unravelling of a once indomitable force, third place, slipping behind the Tories, obliteration, feels like it should just be sucked up with a shrug by Scottish Labour. Meh. We utterly crashed and burned. Happens.

The first point that became apparent out of the fog of contradictory data these elections have generated, was confirmation that Scotland has morphed into something that looks, increasingly, like the foreign country Nicola would love it to be. From outside The Holyrood Bubble, what's happening there feels like it may as well be happening in Macedonia, or the sort of place a committee of MPs would turn up on a fact-finding mission: "We wanted to find out what the situation on the ground was. In the course of our visit, we will be talking to the separatists, to the transitional authorities, and to local warlords."

Back in England, Labour's woes were far less severe, their failures were ones of omission. A story that, pre-Ken, could very easily have been 'shaky government begins to visibly wobble' - splits on Europe, Tata fudging, IDS, a doctors' strike, - has been turned into a referendum on Corbyn. Does the retention of several hundred local council seats in the south mean that Jezza isn't an anti-Semite? Or that he is? Modern politics can be so confusing.

What should have been mild validation of Corbs's ability to play with the big boys has descended into a strange wagon-circling exercise, where the inner guard has been briefing hacks to go easy on the guy, with Tom Watson doing the broadcast rounds saying "He needs more time to set out his stall… It's only eight months in…"

Meanwhile outside the inner sanctum, Corbyn's enemies have been acid in their counter-briefing. "Jeremy says we hung on," a Labour shadow minister texted The Times, "A year on from our worst general election result, what exactly are we hanging on to?".

The parliamentary party who don't like him, who fear for their jobs come 2020, are lashing out. But even that lashing out seems like an act of meaningless rage rather than actual politics. There is almost no mechanism by which Jez could be removed given the size of the mandate he was handed only a year ago. And there's no clear challenger, certainly not on the right. Most likely scenario: Jez resigns 'on health grounds', Menzies Campbell-style, and a more incisive politician in the same party wing, maybe John McDonnell, finds himself promoted. Would the post-Blairites be happy about that?

There is at least one unalloyed bright spot. This afternoon, the Labour leadership will be heading down to City Hall to bask in Sadiq's triumph. Had Sadiq not nominated Jeremy, Jez would never have been leader. And had Jez's Momentum hard-left voters not effectively hijacked Labour's mayoral run-offs from Tessa Jowell, Sadiq wouldn't be in City Hall right now. They're both manifestations of the same massive sea-change in the way the country does politics.

Perhaps the most disappointing moment for Labour isn't even the Scottish trend. It's the first UKIP inroads in Wales, which have returned the comedy gold likes of Neil Hamilton and Mark Reckless to frontline politics. As we saw in the south of England, where UKIP made gains in local councils, for every disaffected working class voter energised by Jez We Can's principles, UKIP gobbles up a disaffected working class voter who's had it with Labour and immigration. The idea that once seemed radical - that UKIP were a party who could take as many votes from Labour as the Tories - has become accepted common sense. Twenty years ago, in the north, the Lib Dems became effectively the only opposition to Labour dominance. Could UKIP do the same to the Tories?

They 'hung on', but even if it's true that Jez could never hope to put much more on Ed Miliband's stoinking 800+ gains in 2011, the fact that no party has ever stood still at a local election and won a general election ought to be a crushing blow. Even Michael Foot put on seats. Even IDS went forward. Combine that with the electoral impossibility of Labour winning without Scotland, and you can see why William Hill's odds for when there will be a next Labour government have now slipped to a best-bet option of 7/4 for '2031 or after'.

It says a lot that for the Conservatives, the night's 'story' is about glorious succession - Ruth Davidson's fighty charm in winning second place in Scotland now putting her in the frame as 'a future Party Leader'. That means that, with Michael Gove topping a recent poll of preferred successors to Cameron, the idea of a 'Scottish Tory' has slipped the oxymoron to achieve an unlikely cultural rehabilitation on a par with Jade Goody's.

But any thoughts of a thousand year reich (as Ken might put it) are very premature. For the Tories, this entire electoral palaver already feels like a sideshow. For them, the storms are circling, winter is coming. The EU Referendum is next month, and the great fault line of British conservatism is about to rupture with San Andreas power. Cameron's survived May. But he may not last June.

@gavhaynes

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