UK Local elections- What the polls really say and where the parties really are.

Britain had a pretty foul, cold winter. An early but phoney spring broke out briefly in March and April has been grey, wet, sometimes windy and generally depressing. No wonder therefore that for must humans in the country the local elections are generating little interest. Politicians and politics have joined bankers,estate agents,lawyers,and now the rich in the "not to be trusted " sin bin.
Class, wealth and being "out of touch" have been dangerously hyped and unscrupulously used by in the run up to these elections but few are bothering to watch or listen. Many push the "off" button as soon as a party poltical broadcast flits onto the screen. Whether it is Tory toffs (Cameron and Osborne) or Labour intelligensia (the two Eds)buying a cheap sausage rolls nobody believes that these people actually know one of the pastry from the other. People aren't stupid and simoly see it as another besuited publicity "man of the people" photoshoot. They may as well just not bother. These elections are little ro do with the issues, latest bananaskins and mishaps .It's not that these things don't matter and don't need attention. They do but this time around it's mainly about pure maths. This is why while Cameron & co should and need to be stirred there is no reason yet for them to be shaken.

Today's poll for the Sunday Times gives Labour 40% of the vote, Conservatives 29%, Lib Dems 11%, UKIP 10% and the rest 10%. Bad headlines for the Tories but not a disaster.

Firstly there is a cyclic movement to local elections. This time round one would expect the Tory gains made at the height of Labour's unpopularity to be reversed anyway. Add to that the fact that any government two years into a five year term and carrying out tough policies can expect to be unpopular. Recent displays of ineptitude, repeated public relations failures and a lack of a big vision for Britain all compound but the situation are not its rockbed. The loss of around 700 seats is a predictable outcome more or less whatever the party did unless it were overwhelmingly popular and did not take money out of anybody's pockets.

With three years to go to the May 2015 election, the Tories can shrug off current polls and media excitement over them for at least another year. Ideally by summer 2013 they would be able to see some tangible results from their early robust efforts to rebalance the economy and remove the annual current spending defecit by lowering government spending while growing the private sector. The timing problem is whether this massive shift financial and cultural shift can be done in three years or even five. Amongst other things, getting rid of people involves heavy one off up front payments which increase rather than decrease government spending. It will be a close call. If things aren't looking too good by this time next year the Conservatives may be able to swallow hard and let the unpopularity run through until May 2014, just a year before the election. Real General Election campaigning will begin from the end of the summer holidays 2014. For the Tories this will present the additional problem that their coalition partners the Lib Dems, will incrasingly peel away in an attempt to disassosciate and differentiate themselves from the government. A formal split could happen in the autumn of 2014 . This might actually benefit both. The Conservatives could then enunciate their own policies, sharply showing the gap between the two and what might have been since 2010 if they hadn't been encumbered with the Lib Dems. They would go on to paint the picture of what could be achieved by a second term from 2015-2020. For their part, the Lib Dems would be able to claim that they had never had their hearts in the coalition all along and that had managed to water down some of the excesses which unrestrained Conservatism would have brought down upon the electorate and that they would do the same if in a future coalition with Labour.

The other thing about today's poll which will keep the Conservatives off the valium is pure arithmetic. To them UKIP with its 10% is what the far, far left, even Communists, would be to Labour. That brings the significant right to 39%, just 1% adrift of Labour. On the right the extremes have this 10% visibility in UKIP while on the left they are mainly hidden within the left of Labour so do not form a separately identifible polling group.

The reality therefore is that the two main left and right groupings are much closer than this poll suggests. They are pretty much neck and neck.

Despite this explaination, the Conservatives should pay attention and start to understand why so many of their natural membership has graviated right to vote UKIP. The reason is simple. They are unimpressed with David Cameron. They know he is constrained by trying to keep the Lib Dems in unwilling formation for another three years but they feel he is giving away too much to keep them there. Indeed many suspect that in reality his thinking is very close to the soft left or nearly Lib Dem edge of the party. On many occasions on a range of issues including the EU,immigration,and benefits abuse he has talked tough but acted soft. He has also failed to manage areas where policies overlap and conflict. The high profile tightening of airport passport checks while reducing Border Agency manpower is just one of these and it's beginning to bite him and the unfortunate Mrs May.

The other and much more fundamental concern about the party and its leader is the lack of perceived dynamism and a vision for a brave new Britain which would exite and motivate voters. The constant grey and dismal repetitive focus on schools and hospitals,schools and hospitals, schools and hospitals ,while topical is not going to set the electorate or even MPs on fire. Those are things they take for granted. What is needed is exciting substance, some real things to go for to clearly put blue water between Conservative and Labour offerings. Labour aren't winning at the moment. They haven't got to do very much and can even get away with urging their old disastrous recipe which brought us here,-more borrowing and spending. The Conservatives are simply losing and need to come out of their box fighting.

It's not today's polls the Conservative party should be worrying about. It's the lack of direction and rallying points to get the electorate to do anything but stretch, yawn and kill the alarm clock on election days between now and the big one in 2015. That's fundamental. A bundle of losses on Thursday isn't.

Footnote: The only really interesting contests this week are Boris Johnson v Ken Livingstone for London Mayor and Labour v SNP for control of Glasgow. Both of these are far more significant than the hundreds of results elsewhere. A Boris win would show that being a toff isn't fatal and a SNP win would punish Labour for decades of introverted self interest and taking Scotland for granted. Each would in its own way reassure that under the general apathy, democracy is alive and well when it matters.