Meanwhile, in Britain

While Americans continued to absorb the fundamental transformation of the Republican Party, Great Britain held a series of subnational elections – local councils in England, provincial elections in Scotland and Wales.

Of course, using elections from “across the pond” as a projection of American results is a bad idea; the Tories’ stunning re-election in 1992 (nowhere near repeated in the US) was the best example. However, the behavior of the Labour Party in the UK and the Republicans in the US has been fairly similar, while the Tory division over Europe is acquiring a personality conflict that very much resembles the Clinton-Sanders divide.

So, what tea leaves can we read?

First, “the people” within a party are not “the people” throughout the country. Both Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn relied on a populist revolt against their parties’ respective leaderships. Both have used it to claim nationwide mandates driven by new voters that will sweep them into office. The results in UK make that claim deeply questionable.

In Scotland, where Corbyn’s left-wing populism was supposed to help the party recover from getting thumped by the Scottish Nationalists in 2011 and 2015, Labour not only lost votes again, but finished behind the Conservatives and in third place. The last time Blue (Tories) beat Red (Labour) north of Hadrian’s Wall was 1955; the last time Labour was in third place there was 1910. South of the Wall wasn’t nearly as bad, but Labour still looks to be the first Opposition party to lose council seats since 1985. That was also Labour, and it wouldn’t see power for a dozen years. They also fell back in Wales, but I’ll get to that later.

So, the Democrats – who have the same appearance of public competence that comes with incumbency that the Tories have – can simply sit back and cruise to victory, right?

Not so fast, divisions within the Conservative Party clearly hurt them. Their remarkable recovery in Scotland aside, the Tories’ results were hardly cause for celebration. Given Labour’s weakness, there was talk of recovering councils lost recently in southern England (the Blue base). The votes didn’t follow the talk. In fact, as the Conservatives have divided over whether the UK should leave the European Union or not, the alternatives on either side (Liberal Democrats for In, UKIP for out) who made gains at the Tories’ expense.

UKIP also took from the Tories in Wales, where initially it had been thought that Labour’s 17-year, deeply checkered tenure in Cardiff could lose them seats to the Conservatives. Labour only fell back one seat, but Conservatives fell three as UKIP gained seven. Clearly, the Conservatives lost votes based upon their divisions, divisions that the Democrats would be wise not to copy over here.

According to BBC projections, had the “Super Thursday” results been repeated in a general election for Parliament, neither major party would have a majority (in fact, based on the projection as I saw it, the numbers would look a lot like the 2010 result – except that the SNP would have a good deal more seats than the Lib Dems).

At first glance, it appears the Conservatives (and the Democrats) are more likely to solve their problems before their nations’ respective national elections. The Democratic division doesn’t have the ideological clash that marks the Tories’ EU arguments. In theory, Labour could reverse course and replace Jeremy Corbin before May 2020. The Republicans have no such recourse – even if they wanted it, and I don’t think they do – before November.