Anthony Boutall is a former Bedford Borough Councillor and currently Deputy Chairman, Political – South Croydon. He is an Assistant Headteacher at a grammar school in South London and a Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute.
As more than a thousand Conservative Councillors lost their seats, and pictures came through of local teams holding heads in hands, in one part of the country the count kept on going – and going. Finally, in the early morning of the day of King Charles’ and Queen Camilla’s Coronation, and with few fingernails left, we learned that Bedford local elections had defied the laws of political gravity. Against a backdrop of doom and gloom for the Conservatives at a national level, my friend and former Council colleague, Tom Wootton, dislodged ‘Dave the Mayor’ – Bedford’s longstanding Lib Dem Mayor – and the Conservatives enjoyed a net gain of seats in Borough Hall. The result is remarkable, and Tom and his team deserve every accolade going.
It reminded me of exactly a year ago when another campaign I had been involved with in Croydon resulted in a similarly heroic result when contrasted with the national picture. In 2022, Jason Perry and his team gained the same number of Council seats in Croydon as that held by Labour, closing a chasmal gap, having been twelve seats behind in 2018. More than that, Jason became Croydon’s first elected Mayor. All of this was achieved against a backdrop of the Conservatives losing one in four of all sitting Councillors nationally.
How did they do it?
Having helped with both, I can state that there are some parallels in these two stand-out campaigns.
In both cases, the teams were up against an increasingly disliked and discredited incumbent – in Croydon, particularly. Labour’s ruinous mismanagement of Croydon Council’s finances was so colossal and indefensible that Richard Penn, who formally investigated the matter, has recommended that his findings are referred to the police. Like Thatcher with Scargill, and Vote Leave with Juncker, one can be lucky with enemies; the Conservatives were up against a particularly awful crop of socialists in Croydon last year who left an almighty mess in their wake.
Although he is unpopular, no one believes former Bedford Mayor, Dave Hodgson, is guilty of anything like the mismanagement inflicted upon Croydon under Labour. Instead, people were just tired of the same old, exhausted narrative from an underwhelming Lib Dem-Labour coalition he had led since 2009, and they were fed up with him personally. His coalition’s lasting legacy amounts to little more than a skew-whiff footbridge over the river – built at an angle because they got the planning wrong – and reduced High Street traffic lanes, gridlocking an already overly-congested town centre.
There are many other reasons for the remarkable results in Croydon and Bedford, including long-term realignments, electoral systems, and a proposed local rail route. Conservatives also benefitted from the Left’s voting behaviour. With Keir Starmer’s Labour Party so lifelessly complacent, alternative parties’ candidates seemed more exciting to left-leaning voters and the Green surge in particular mattered. The Greens now hold three seats in Bedford and two in Croydon, all at the expense of expectant Labour candidates.
More than that, though, both the Conservatives in Croydon in 2022, and the Conservatives in Bedford in 2023, had a positive vision for the area, and they had the personalities to encourage others into the campaign tent. Although it is a tiresome truism to state that local elections should concentrate on local issues, genuinely doing so requires message discipline and leadership. It is all too easy for local candidates to fall into the trap of wasting precious energy engaging in national debates. In reality, people care more about their waste collection and potholes. In Bedford and Croydon, the campaigns were about Bedford and Croydon; the messaging was tight and disciplined, and it got through.
Personalities were key. Jason and Tom both share special, long-term links with the areas they now serve as mayor. They are also both genuinely very likeable people who are fun to be around and who naturally garner loyalty and comradery on the campaign trail. People were choosing to come in from neighbouring districts and boroughs – including those with their own elections – to join in with the positive spirit of these campaign teams. Creating a welcoming, fun environment with some apparent hope in the air attracted campaigners from all over and forged new association alliances with groups who may rely on Bedford’s and Croydon’s reciprocal support in the future.
What can we learn?
Much of the context of these victories is out of other associations’ control and cannot be emulated. For instance, we do not decide how the Left votes and, although non-Conservatives in office statistically tend to have relatively worse track records in terms of delivery, we shouldn’t rely on our opponents’ failures for our success.
We can, however, decide to learn the following lessons from these great success stories: