“I just want to get past Friday. I’m fed up with the whole thing!”
This could, conceivably, have been a council candidate standing for election or re-election on Thursday. It could have been an MP busy campaigning to save or promote the former. It might have been a party leader, after weeks of intense scrutiny. Zack Polanski’s cult following have been complaining bitterly about scrutiny, pretending Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer haven’t had the same.
But it wasn’t any of them.
There is, as within many an industry, a sort of loose camaraderie amongst political journalists and commentators, where whilst they don’t share stories or scoops share the dull-to-anyone-else vagaries of their job.
It was one of them who said that to me yesterday, and I’m inclined to agree.
Covering as we do at ConservativeHome the fate, future and fortunes of the Conservative Party these elections have been looming for months, expectation management from my sources has fluctuated from “it’s going to be dire again Giles” to “look it’ll be bad, the brand doesn’t match the leader’s popularity” (see Tali Fraser’s excellent analysis) through to “it’s still going to be bad, but possibly not as dire as we feared, but its close. Brace yourself”
We’ve discussed all this on these pages, and outlined the case that the party of 2026 is not the party of 2024. Kemi Badenoch not only says in her latest video that she has changed and will continue to change what the Conservatives are offering, and from the position of the Right. We’ve heard from candidates, especially the new generation of, that whilst it’s tough, people are starting to listen again, but the hard reality is many are not ready to vote for the Tories, yet.
However I do have one last word on all of this before the polls close.
What are you voting for?
Which before anyone asks is not the same as ‘why are you voting?’
If you have a vote you should vote.
You may choose to vote tactically as Alys Denby of CityAM has said publicly she will do, as a Tory, and choose Labour over the Greens in a ward the Tories cannot win. Or you may show your colours regardless and stick with your party of choice. That may not be the Conservatives – ConHome has a small but vocal Reform section within its readership, and that’s fine.
It is down to a few of them I wanted to pose the question, because they made a valid point.
I’d complained on Monday that, on a scale much larger than I’ve seen before, though often the case, these elections to local councils, and national Parliaments – but not Westminster – have largely been slogged out over national issues. Even in local areas it’s been dominated by the national picture, particularly the failure of Starmer to be the change, or the Prime Minister he’d promised.
Reform supporters responded that it was not that surprising, if I may paraphrase:
“Local councillors can’t do very much, it doesn’t make that much difference who runs a council, they are so constrained by national government it’s inevitable that local elections become a referendum on national politics”
OK, first, the elephant in the room before I address that important point.
Of course they are saying that because that’s their campaign.
Reform’s leaflets in local areas have been so much about national issues, you’d think Nigel Farage was standing in every council ward going! For Reform UK, and I don’t blame them, this is about vote share, and on-the-ground wins to build national party campaign structure ahead of a General Election in 2028/9. It’s straight from Paddy Ashdown’s Lib Dem strategy. Nigel’s long believed in that ground game, and has told me so, he just never managed it entirely with UKIP. Now he can.
However, that aside, they do have a point.
Once you tot up the statutory financial burdens on local authorities, for schools, children in care, social care, housing, street lighting, refuse collection and all, the settlement form central government has left very little wriggle room for political choices. DOGE campaigns that so proudly pointed to where ‘waste’ could be cut, found very little but performative fat to cut.
Few people outside politics – and we politico-nerds forget that’s almost everyone – know who their ward councillor is, and far less engage with them beyond voting every few years.
It poses the question: In that case what are they for? What is local government for?
Too often councils – desperate to make up financial shortfalls to cover specific services most of their residents won’t use – can come across as simply aggressive money making operations. Increased fines, increased fees, costs for services, all sit on top of council tax that just keeps going up – even when you promise to cut it, and don’t.
Up and down the country there are people who stand to serve, to deliver, what are really important but frankly quite dull day to day operations, and they do so for little reward. Some are on a journey to ‘higher things’ but most do it out of service to their community. Objectively, and you can snort with derision, but Conservative run councils – on this metric – are pretty good at it.
It’s quite thankless and they are too often the loyal pawns who can be swept aside by political tides beyond their control.
Judy Terry, a recent contributor, said they feared turnout at the elections would be low, because people don’t understand what local government does, or why it is being reorganised, or why it might need reorganising. That’s not to give a slap on the back to Angela Rayner’s original plans – besides, a slap on the back might send her flying into a door – but the system needs a shake up because people have started to ask the same question:
What is it for? And as it exists, does it deliver that? For too many the answer is not so much no, but ‘I don’t know‘.
We might all be a little tired of the electioneering – my friend and fellow commentator, who I started with, certainly is – and we may as commentators want to get on with analysing what the results might mean for politics in the UK for the next few years, but local government will continue to operate, or produce examples of where it falls apart, but when voting for those to do it, we might want to ask ourselves if we have the slightest scoobies what it actually does, and what it should do.
I bet you most people don’t, and won’t.