Europe Decides

Thursday 03 May this year sees elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and a vast swathe of English council seats - about 10,500 councillors standing in 312 local authorities - in what some commentators have dubbed “Super Duper Thursday”.

In headline terms, opinion polls point to Conservative gains from Labour in the South and Midlands; Liberal Democrat gains in the North of England, Scottish National Party gains in Scotland and a mixture of Conservative and other party gains from Labour in Wales. The true picture will be more complicated than this - the Lib Dems for example could make gains from Labour in the North and Scotland, but suffer losses to the Conservatives in the South East. Whilst the Conservatives could sweep to power across swathes of England but actually lose seats in Scotland.

Whatever the eventual arithmetic, it looks like Labour will have a very bad night and, in a ‘perfect storm’ scenario where voters turn to whichever party is best placed to hurt Labour in their locality, Tony Blair could leave office having suffered one of the worst mid-term drubbings for any governing party in decades.