Many Conservatives may be feeling gloomy about today’s local elections. Labour are 20 points ahead. Last year, our Local Government Editor urged Conservatives sceptical about Rishi Sunak to be patient with him, hoping that he could turn things around. He, alas, has not.
My personal belief is that Sunak is the best leader currently on offer, a talented and hard-working man overwhelmed by a vile inheritance and his lack of political nous. His five pledges have become millstones around his neck. Repeated resets have clouded have left an unavoidable sense of drift.
One might look at the Prime Minister’s record and suggest that in his time in Downing Street, he has done little but steady the ship, make one failed asylum seeker £3,000 richer, and tinker around the edges. His is not a government of high ambitions or radical changes.
As such, I understand if there might be many Conservatives feeling disillusioned. They may be unenthusiastic about trooping to the polling station today. Whatever the virtues of their local Tory councils, their unhappiness with the Government may encourage a protest vote or to sit the whole shebang out.
They may believe they are sending the Government a message. A few hundred lost councillors and commissioners here, defeat for Andy Street, Ben Houchen, and Susan Hall there: it adds up to a disastrous enough result that Conservative MPs might move against Sunak and ruin all our summers.
It is an ambition with which I politely, but firmly, disagree. Even if the results of today’s polls were particularly disastrous, trying to oust the Prime Minister would only make the party’s position worse. MPs silly enough to open Pandora’s Box would be hastening defeat. Whom the Gods wish to destroy…
It also treats these local elections without the respect they duly deserve. It is no surprise that voters habitually treat them as a referendum of national issues. Many view our municipal administrators as powerless or irrelevant, despite our best efforts to provide them with a voice.
We raise and spend far less money locally than in comparable countries. Centralisation across successive governments in recent decades means councils can do little accept follow the diktats of Westminster. Children’s services and adult social care swallow two-thirds of their budgets.
Recent enthusiasm for localism was supposed to change this. But Street can only read about the powers over Birmingham possessed by the Chamberlains with envy. Then again, Joseph and Neville didn’t woo Ozzy and Sharon Osborne, so our columnist is doing something right.
Whatever the political composition of councils after today, financial pressures, poor investments, and the long consequences of austerity will mean the threat of bankruptcy hovers. Whoever wins the next election will, one hopes, take a long, hard look at local government funding and duties.
But in the meantime, Conservatives have to confront the choice in front of them today. Even with their limited responsibilities, Tories in local government can usually be trusted more than their Labour equivalents to keep council tax low, fill in potholes, and not waste precious time pontificating about Gaza.
Localism has also provided the opportunity for star Conservatives to emerge. It would be remiss of me not to urge readers to go out and back Andy Street and Lisa Townsend if they can. Our two excellent columnists are doing great jobs in building up Birmingham and keeping Surrey safe.
Similarly, Ben Houchen can point to his record at Teesside Airport and the Teesworks industrial site as a sign that he can be trusted to deliver. The pair have taken different approaches in defining their relationship to central government and governing their patches. But both deserve another four years,
One politician for whom the same can’t be said is Sadiq Khan. Crime, ULEZ, the slow collapse of TFL and our capital’s night life: the London Mayor has been an undisputed disaster – pompous, inept, and in denial about the capital’s crises. Londoners know what to do: vote for Susan Hall.
Perhaps the benefits of a Conservative administration can only be fully understood once one has had to live under the alternative. Scottish and Welsh readers can be sympathetic. At our best, local Tories show that lower taxes, better services, and happier residents can go together.
The virtues of democracy likewise seem most pertinent to those with experience of the alternative. Many of us youngsters take it for granted. We are wrong to do so. However heavy your heart, if you can do so, please vote Conservative today. It’s always better where the Tories are, as someone or other once said.
The post The case for voting for your local Conservatives today remains as strong as ever appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: William Atkinson
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