Sarah Ingham is author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.
In the past week, the inspiration for many political pundits seems to have been Mystic Meg. Although polling experts – including that doyen, Sir John Curtice – caution against using local elections to predict a general election result, this doesn’t stop the commentators from rushing to judgment.
Many really should don a coin-fringed headscarf and large hooped earrings. Instead of a crystal ball or tea leaves, they have consulted the election result in, for example, Adur. Despite the low turnout, they have been pronouncing that, in the Autumn (or January), the Conservatives will be smashed.
“Forget Blue or Red – We’ll Be Winning the ‘Grey Wall’ Boasts Labour”, reported the Times; “Furious Tory Voters Now Want to Destroy the Party that Betrayed Britain” was a headline in Monday’s Daily Telegraph; “Keir Starmer Tells Rishi Sunak to ‘Make Way’ as Labour Pummels Tories in Local Elections”, stated the Mirror.
But last week’s elections took place well beyond the groupthink of the insulated Westminster and media bubbles. Surely some of the local results reflected voters’ verdicts on purely local issues, and many of those who actually bothered to vote may have chosen not to reward the abject failure of their local councils.
Since 2018, seven local authorities have effectively gone bankrupt. The roll of dishonour includes, shamefully, three Conservative councils: Northamptonshire, Thurrock, and Woking. Less unexpected are Labour-controlled Slough, Birmingham City and Nottingham City; Croydon first went bust under Labour in November 2020.
Setting up a bankruptcy tracker in November, the New Statesman reported that one quarter of councillors they polled in England believed their council will soon go bust. In December, a Local Government Association survey found that one in five council leaders and chief executives expected to run out of the funds needed to keep key services running.
This was around the time the government confirmed it had a watchlist of councils “on the brink of financial collapse”, according to Bloomberg. This jaw-dropping but somewhat under-reported development was surely a factor for some voters entering the polling booth.
Last week in Thurrock, the former council leader blamed the government for the loss of ten seats which handed control to Labour: “The Conservative Party, the Government, need to give people a reason to vote Conservative.” One reason should be the core Party principle of prudent oversight of taxpayers’ money – which apparently was cast aside in that particular corner of Essex.
By March 2023, Thurrock had borrowed £1.3 billion but had experienced “repeated failures” in its investment strategy and in the delivery of major projects. “These failures have resulted in the loss of substantial sums of public money,” ruled the Best Value Inspection report. The Council’s lack of openness gave rise to a culture of insularity and complacency; indeed, it was in a state of “unconscious incompetence”.
Given this mess, it seems a bit rich to blame Rishi Sunak for Thurrock voters being “disheartened and disappointed.”
The story in Woking is not dissimilar: reckless borrowing by the Conservative council, £2.6bn of debt, then bankruptcy, followed by all the Conservative councillors being booted out last Thursday. The same pattern can be seen in Slough, except it was Labour which lost 18 seats and control of the council in 2023.
Dowdy, unloved relation of politics that it is, compared to its more exciting Westminster cousin, local government has a far greater direct impact on people’s quality of life. None of us can be certain of the effectiveness of the government’s foreign policy, but we know immediately if the binmen don’t turn up. The chances are that the priority for some voters last week was not Palestine, but potholes and council carpark charges.
Instead of focusing on the job they are either elected or paid to do, too many councillors and officers have got above themselves. Wannabe Wolves of Wall Street have borrowed massively for grandiose schemes which then fail, only to lumber taxpayers with debt interest payments while blaming austerity and/or the government.
“We have had 14 years of Conservative cuts to our funding,” Nottinghamshire City Council’s new leader moaned predictably last week. Imposed by Labour’s National Executive, Neghat Khan is a former director of the council-run Robin Hood Energy, which collapsed in 2020 at a cost of £38.1 million.
Despite this horror story, Labour won a landslide last year, continuing the iron grip on the council it has held since 1992. Turnout in 12 of the 20 wards was less than 30 per cent.
Copium is the current meme describing Conservative supporters who refuse to accept that the local election results were not the total calamity that opponents want us to believe, and who are unconvinced that they signal a Conservative end of days. Yes, Andy Street’s defeat in his bid to get a third term as Mayor of the West Midlands was disappointing.
But it was by the narrowest of margins, just 1,508 votes out of 600,000. This is hardly a joyful endorsement of Labour, especially when Reform’s 34,471 votes are considered. And the opposition parties’ supporters were hardly stampeding to the polling stations: turn-out was an apathetic 29.8 per cent.
Many of us are often guilty of confirmation bias (i.e. finding evidence which suits our opinions), but it seems unlikely that local factors were irrelevant in last week’s local elections.
The general election could well be determined by the economy and immigration, Reform’s chief beef. (The threat from them could well be neutralised by swiftly adopting the recommendations offered in Taking Back Control, a report by the Centre for Policy Studies and MPs Robert Jenrick and Neil O’Brien, which was launched on Wednesday.)
A shellacking for the Conservatives? A hung Parliament? All those who are so confident about predicting the future can perhaps tell us whether United will beat City for the FA cup.
The post Sarah Ingham: Too many councillors (and pundits) are too quick to blame Westminster for voters’ anger appeared first on Conservative Home.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Dr Sarah Ingham
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, http://www.conservativehome.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.