Cllr Michael Taylor is a councillor for Hale Barns and Timperley South on Trafford Council and a senior manager in the NHS.
If you listened to most of the political commentary before the 2026 local elections, you would have expected Trafford Conservatives to struggle. Across much of the country, Conservative associations were finding things difficult. Nationally, the political winds were blowing against us and many commentators were predicting another disappointing set of results.
Yet in Trafford, the exact opposite happened.
Not only did we hold every seat we were defending, we increased our majorities and gained additional seats from Labour and the Greens. Hale Barns and Timperley South went from a majority of 309 to 1,054. Bowdon, which in 2024 was won by a knife-edge majority of 21 votes, returned a Conservative majority of 1,192. In Manor, a ward we lost in 2024, we came back and won by 1,210 votes.
On top of that, we gained the seats we were targeting: Broadheath from Labour with a majority of 703 and won Hale from the Greens by 370 votes. That result was particularly significant given that Hale seat had previously been represented by Hannah Spencer, who has since become the Green MP for Gorton and Denton.
These weren’t lucky results. They weren’t a fluke. They certainly weren’t achieved by sitting at home waiting for the election campaign to start.
The simple reality is that Trafford Conservatives never stop campaigning.
Under the leadership of Nathan Evans, we have built a culture where campaigning happens all year round, not just in the weeks before an election. Our fantastic councillors, activists, members and volunteers are constantly in the community—delivering leaflets, knocking on doors, attending residents’ meetings, holding the Labour Council to account and listening to local concerns.
We also campaigned on clear, local pledges, including scrapping the £50 Green Bin Tax and closing the Cresta Court hotel used to house migrants. By consistently highlighting these priorities in our literature, residents knew exactly what we stood for.
People sometimes ask what the secret is. There isn’t one.
It’s work.
A lot of work.
I remember when I was first elected, Laura Evans, Deputy Chair of Altrincham and Sale West, told me something she’d heard from Baroness Williams of Trafford, the former Leader of Trafford Council: “If you open a packet of crisps, you let the residents know.”
The point was simple. Residents should know what their elected representatives are doing and, just as importantly, what they are achieving.
If we get a blocked drain sorted, we tell people. If we stop an unpopular development, we tell people. If we secure improvements in a local area, we tell people. Not because we’re chasing praise, but because residents deserve to know someone is fighting their corner.
One of the biggest mistakes politicians make is assuming people automatically know what they’re doing. They don’t.
Most residents are busy with work and family life. They aren’t reading council reports or sitting through committee meetings. If you don’t communicate with them, they’ll assume nothing is happening. That’s why regular communication matters.
Some people look down on leaflets. They shouldn’t.
Time and again, residents tell us they appreciate being kept informed. They like knowing what’s happening in their area and who to contact when something goes wrong. Most importantly, they like knowing somebody is paying attention.
Of course, none of this is glamorous.
There are evenings spent delivering leaflets in the dark after work. Saturdays spent knocking on doors in freezing temperatures. Wet winter mornings speaking to residents. There are plenty of easier ways to spend your spare time.
But that’s the job.
The days of safe seats are gone. Any councillor who thinks they can disappear between elections and then expect voters to reward them on polling day is living in the past. Politics is more competitive than ever and residents rightly expect their representatives to be visible and accessible.
If you’re not prepared to knock on doors, listen to concerns and spend weekends campaigning, then politics probably isn’t for you and you should stand down for someone who will do the work. Those who are prepared to put the work in will always have an advantage over those who only appear when votes are needed.
Social media has become another important part of that effort. Trafford Conservatives have embraced it in a way many local parties still haven’t. We regularly post updates about local issues, council decisions and community campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and Mailchimp. Videos, photos and updates help residents see exactly what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
The beauty of social media is that it allows councillors to communicate directly with residents without relying on traditional media coverage. Combined with traditional campaigning, it is an incredibly effective way of reaching people. Plus it is free.
The local election results also provide an interesting glimpse into what might happen at the next General Election.
In Altrincham and Sale West, the former seat of Graham Brady, which Labour won in 2024, the aggregated local election vote put the Conservatives comfortably in first place on around 14,000 votes. What surprised many observers wasn’t just Labour’s collapse, but who finished second.
It wasn’t Labour.
It was the Greens, who secured more than 7,500 votes.
Labour didn’t finish third either. They finished last, behind the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, polling only around 5,000 votes across the constituency.
To put that into context, the Conservatives received 2,616 votes in Bowdon alone — more than half of Labour’s total constituency-wide vote.
None of this happened overnight. These results were built over years, not weeks. A couple months before the local elections even arrived, Trafford Conservatives had already won by-elections from both Labour and the Greens. The pattern was there for anyone paying attention.
The lesson is straightforward. If you want to win elections, you have to earn them.
That means being visible. It means listening. It means communicating. It means putting in the hours when nobody is watching.
Even now, the election is over and we’re still out delivering thank-you leaflets, speaking to residents and preparing the next round of literature. Far too many political organisations disappear between elections and then wonder why voters have forgotten them. Trafford has taken a different approach.
In fact, our success has attracted attention from well beyond Trafford. Activists, councillors and MPs from elsewhere have been coming to see what we’re doing, help on campaigns and understand why Trafford is winning seats while many other areas are struggling.
The answer isn’t complicated. We have a local message, we are visible in our communities and we work relentlessly. Residents see us because we are there — not just at election time, but every week of the year.
And in politics, that still matters.