Annabelle Sanderson: Conservatives campaigning for next year’s local elections need to change tack

Annabelle Sanderson, is Deputy Political Chair of her local Conservative branch and was a 2025 Conservative candidate in the 2025 local elections. She previously served as UKIP’s Head of Media. 

Standing as a Conservative council candidate in May’s local elections this year, I lost count of the number of times I stood on the doorsteps of residents homes and discussed boundary changes.

Or met those who wanted to speak to me about the different responsibilities of a unitary, county and borough council.

I’m sure those of you who stood found the same?

Of course you didn’t.

Even standing in a seat previously held by the Liberal Democrats in landlocked, rural Wiltshire most of the conversations I had were about immigration, stopping the boats and apologising for the last few years of our Conservative government.

I spent time going round to speak to people, dealing with road repairs, helping with social housing issues and attending parish council meetings. It was always going to be an uphill task for a seat we didn’t take in 2021 but I wanted to give it a good go and make sure people knew that the Conservatives were still here, fighting for them and for common-sense policies.

Meanwhile my Reform rival sent out one generic leaflet to postal voters which didn’t even have his name on it and scored nearly as many votes as me. I don’t know if he actually stepped foot in Corsham Without, let alone knocked on a door.

Because Reform, just as UKIP before, knew that regardless of what election you are fighting, it’s the big issues which matter.

People these days vote more and more with their heart.

The loyalty people once had to parties has been demolished as they see their country around them changing for the worse. Whether it’s the migrant hotels in Epping or polling by The Pensioner Vote which found that 94 per cent of female pensioners in the UK feel unsafe – these are the things which matter whether it’s on their doorstep or on their social media feed.

As Conservatives we know that the Lib Dems always tell people what they think they want to hear: it’s unlikely they’d have as many MPs as they do or taken council seats from Conservatives if they’d been honest about their policy of open borders, profligate spending on nonsense and an inability to understand basic biology.

But Reform is a different beast. Or is it?

The class of 2025 had the opportunity to look at the elections of 2013 and 2014 to see what UKIP would do. Sadly, those running campaigns chose not to or worse, tried to belittle a party which likes to be seen as the underdog. (The concept of labelling someone as the underdog in a country with a history of supporting that character has always struck me as a little baffling.)

The result? In Wiltshire, the best run council in the South West with even the BBC comparing us favourably to our neighbours, we lost control of the council. Reform now have 10 seats, largely in towns and military areas and in a number of wards we lost good candidates to single figure margins.

The public doesn’t like politicians in general.

It really doesn’t like politicians who clap themselves on the back for doing a good job – even if it’s true – when they are feeling angry at the inherent unfairness of so much in our day to day lives. And especially when they are feeling lighter in their pocket whilst their public services decline in quality.

The class of 2026 holding elections this year have the opportunity to learn from the errors we made in our campaigns.

So, scrap the boundary change lessons and the ‘haven’t we done well’ on services which many of our voters will never use and drill down to those key issues everyone is talking about.

We know that Conservatives have the best track records when it comes to running councils. Reform are already realising that life isn’t as easy as blaming everyone else and the Lib Dems manage to turn well run councils into basket cases within years.

However we’re campaigning in a different environment now and it’s our job to make sure our residents know that we understand that, that their concerns are our concerns and importantly, that under a new leader we have turned a corner and the Conservative Party is once again truly Conservative.

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