The full results aren’t in yet, but already a lot of nonsense is being said about the local elections in England and Northern Ireland.

The Conservatives have taken a hammering; at the time of writing they’re something like 10 per cent down on their previous position and could end up with just a quarter of the total councillors in England – putting them in a precarious position ahead of any future general election.

Labour has won a couple of hundred seats so far but the percentage swing in that party’s direction is negligible. I saw it described as something like 0.1 per cent in the early-early morning coverage.

As the early results came in overnight, This Writer saw a Conservative commentator saying Labour had only benefited because Tory voters had stayed at home.

This struck me as ironic, considering the point of the Tory legislation on “voter ID” was to stop Labour voters from coming out.

In that circumstance, it seems reasonable to believe that Labour could have won many more seats from the Tories if not for the new law to suppress voters.

Meanwhile, the Green Party’s support has skyrocketed, with the party almost doubling its share of councillors already. That’s a 93 per cent gain.

But the biggest kick in the teeth for the main parties – especially Labour – is the strong performance of councillors who have been expelled from that party for being too left-wing (other excuses are available).

Usually when a person leaves a political party – or is, as in these cases, removed – and stand as an independent, they sink without a trace. Look at the performance of the Labour quitters who formed Change UK while Jeremy Corbyn was in charge, and then lost their seats in the 2019 general election.

Instead, independent left-wing candidates are retaining their seats across England.

Here are a few examples:

This is in Portsmouth:

This is in Windsor:

To me, this indicates that people are starting to give up on political tribalism – they’re not all voting for candidates just because of the name of the party those people represent.

Instead, they are voting for the people they know will represent them.

We should bear in mind that these are council elections in wards with low electorates and low turnouts.

But council election results are regarded as forecasts for general elections.

It would be welcome if more high-profile exiles from Labour – like Jeremy Corbyn, for example – took this as encouragement to seek election to Parliament as independents.

The times are changing. The Parliamentary elites have tried to dictate the policies we can support and the people available to get our vote – and across the country, people are saying they’re not going to put up with it.

It’s the way we are. We’ll put up with a lot – but there come a point when someone will try to tell us what to do and we’ll say: “No.”

It would be nice to think it’s because our culture has an innate sense of decency.

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