Cllr Mike Prendergast is the Conservative Group Leader on Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council and has recently been selected as the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for West Lancashire, having stood in the by-election there in February this year.
Since 2012, Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council has been controlled by Labour and, at the time of writing, they hold 51 of the 66 available seats in the council chamber. Conservatives hold 5 seats, Liberal Democrats hold 9, and we have one Independent.
To say that Labour dominates in Sefton is somewhat of an understatement and the electoral mountain that Conservatives in Sefton need to climb is more Himalayan than Pennine; sheer rather than undulating.
Conservatives on Sefton Council are a rare breed indeed.
It wasn’t always this way though and a combination of factors has led to the current electoral circumstances.
I was elected as a councillor in May 2021, ousting the incumbent Liberal Democrat councillor, and was then elected Group Leader in May 2022. I firmly believe that Conservative prospects in Sefton, and across the wider Merseyside region, can trend upward with the right message and by speaking and listening to our constituents.
Sefton, like a lot of Merseyside, is seen as a Labour heartland and viewed (wrongly in my opinion) as a lost political cause by many in our party. Yet, certainly, in the north of Sefton, there is a significant anti-Labour vote at the local elections and many people in the south of the borough are growing more and more weary of Labour-controlled Sefton Council and its poor record over the last decade or so.
In Sefton, we have a Children’s Social Services Department that has been rated as inadequate by OFSTED. Things are so bad that a Commissioner has been sent in by the Secretary of State to oversee the necessary improvements. Conservatives in Sefton have been holding Labour to account over this and standing up for the most vulnerable children in the borough.
Council Tax has increased under Labour, going up by almost 40 per cent (there is never enough money according to our socialist friends) since 2012. Yet, over the same period, they have increased the allowances paid to councillors year after year. The most recent rise was over six per cent, opposed by Conservative councillors on Sefton Council.
These issues, as well as botched commercial property ventures and questionable practices regarding declarations of interest within the Sefton Labour leadership, highlight the failings of a local Labour Party.
The fact that Labour have been so dominant in Sefton, despite the issues set out above, raises many questions about the performance of opposition parties at local elections over the last few years, including our own.
As Conservatives in Sefton we will be defending two seats (mine included) and looking to make gains as well. In the north of Sefton, we are in competition for the anti-Labour vote with Liberal Democrats (in Southport especially) and in some of the more traditional Labour strongholds in the south of the borough we are seeing increasing vote shares for Green party candidates and some independent candidates too.
I am firmly of the belief that the Labour vote is ‘soft’ and our aim and ambition is to position ourselves, certainly for the next set of local elections, as the natural opposition to Labour and the only party who can hold them to account and provide a genuine change to what is being offered by Labour.
This will involve putting forward to the electorate a positive Conservative alternative, including a freeze to Council Tax, ensuring we get the basics right (road and pavement repairs, no more missed bin collections and fixing street lights) – and pledging to turn around our troubled Children’s Services Department with a fundamental change in culture, that is so urgently required.
Too often, local elections become about national issues. We need to relentlessly focus on the local matters that our voters care about; whatever is going on nationally, helpful or not, is not what local elections are about.
In very practical terms, any ambitions we have are only going to be achieved by knocking on lots and lots of doors, having conversation with voters and emphasising the importance of all our supporters coming out to vote. Too often we hear people say they vote Conservative in the General Election but not in the locals, a big part of our job and our ambition, is to get those people to vote for us in the local elections as well.
As I write this, national opinion polls are not great, to say the least, but it’s a long time until May and if a week is a long time in politics, then six months is an eon when much can change. I am confident that through hard work we can defend our seats and look to make some gains.
We, as I suspect, like many Conservatives across the country will be focussing on the local matters where our local knowledge and expertise can prove the difference between winning and losing.
The conversations we have on the doorsteps count for so much between now and May and the more of them we have, the greater our chances of success in Sefton and across the country.