We’re just over a month away from the first big elections of the year – the Local Elections and the London Mayor/GLA contest (which will be covered in a separate blog). I’d like to draw your attention to some of the more interesting and significant contests happening up and down the country. The big picture is that 2641 seats are up for election, spread across 107 different councils. The Conservatives currently hold 985 seats, Labour 966, Lib Dems 410 and the Greens 107.
My main hunch is that the Tories are going to lose 250 – 500 seats, quite who will be the main beneficiary we’ll have to wait and see. On the one hand Labour have ticked up in the last year when it comes to parliamentary by elections, on the other many Labour councillors and hardcore activists are unhappy with Labour’s leadership for various reasons so this year could be a major opportunity for the minor parties to come to the fore. What we can be sure of is that the Tories will definitely lose a lot of seats and their activists will barely campaign. This is either because they’ve thrown the towel in completely or they’re lulling us into a false sense of security, just like they did in 2019.
A Map of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude Fawley – aka Jude the Obscure, but will the Lib Dems write their own script in May?
The glittering prize: Dorset
Dorset Council is one of only four unitary authorities up for election and it’s a gold-plated opportunity for the Lib Dems. Dorset is a relatively young unitary, having been created in April 2019, a merger of the old County Council with every district apart from Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (a NOC council that is led by Vikki Slade of the Lib Dems). Remember that in early 2019 the Lib Dems had barely improved much on their low water mark of 2015 and Vince Cable was being goaded on Newsnight because we languished under 10% in the polls. We also fretted about the foundation of Change UK and how that presented an existential threat to us. After that the Lib Dems had a golden spring with 700 gains in the locals and had a fantastic Euro Elections too. It’s fair to say those 700 gains took us by surprise and our expectations and capacity to deliver results in Local Elections are different and better now.
How things change in five years, in 2019 we were feeling our way in Dorset as part of early stages in our recovery mode nationally. Now we know it’s possible to flip the status of the council, and precisely where to target. The council has 81 seats with the Tories holding 43, and the Lib Dems on 27.
The ambition is for the Lib Dems to become the largest single party, so that the Tories cannot form a coalition with the independents or a minority administration. Here the Greens have five seats and Labour two – it’s possible they might tick up a bit but Joe Public will mainly be looking to the Lib Dems to win the eight seats needed gain parity with the Conservatives. This is a realistic ambition, given how well we’ve done in Devon and Somerset in the past two years in local elections.
If the Tories do indeed lose Dorset it will be fascinating to see the response of the most famous Dorset Tory, Sir Michael Take – long term parliamentarian now social media pundit. He will probably blame left-wing media such as The Sun, Express, Mail, Tatler and Telegraph and point to unwelcome social trends such as veganism and the rise in the popularity of cycling, especially Freestyle BMX.
Runnymede – more Tory misrule punished?
Running Runnymede should be pretty straightforward, it includes incredibly affluent places such as Virginia Water and some pretty average commuter-belt hinterland such as Egham and Chertsey. Despite that Runnymede has the fifth highest debt per person of any council in England – it’s in hock to the tune of £638m, which amounts to £7,270 per person (only Woking, Thurrock, Warrington and Birmingham are in a worse financial position, and have been well documented). Why is Runnymede so indebted? For the same reason as Woking – it was encouraged to take a punt on commercial property at a time when investing in retail became an extremely bad idea. Surrey Live reported at the end of last year that Runnymede had borrowed 71 times its core spending power to fund an investment portfolio that is yielding less than 1 per cent (not great when we’ve recently seen inflation at 10 per cent). At the time Lib Dem group leader Don Whyte said that the Government needed to take a significant amount of responsibility for ‘giving out loans via the Public Works Loans Board with minimal due diligence.’
Whyte will be leading the Liberal charge in Runnymede, which is a curious Conservative outpost on the Surrey/Berkshire border surrounded by Lib Dems councils such as Elmbridge, Woking and Surrey Heath. There’s currently a Conservative minority admin, with 18 seats out of 41. This is because the opposition is split between Lib Dems, Labour, Greens and localist groups. A few Tory losses could lead to a Localist/Rainbow coalition including the Lib Dems, however.
Disappointed of Tunbridge Wells
Tunbridge Wells, arguably the richest part of Kent with incredibly well-heeled villages such as Lamberhurst, Benenden and Sissinghurst is the kind of place you’d expect the Tories to govern forever. Indeed up until 2021 the Tories had been in power for all but four years since the great Local Government reorganisation of 1973. A combination of complacency and incompetence has seen the Tories fall hard since then.
Perhaps the richest parts of the borough are indulging in post-materialist politics as this is an area that will have seen the same long-term decline in public amenities and infrastructure as the rest of the country. Anyway the Tories have fallen from 28 seats in 2019 to just 11 last year, with the Lib Dems leapfrogging them as the largest single party. Now Tunbridge Wells has moved from a thirds election cycle to all-up elections. It’s not a two-horse race as a localist group known as the Tunbridge Wells Alliance has gained significant traction in the past five years. Often independents in Tory facing areas form when people are unhappy with the local Tory group but can’t face representing the national opposition parties. As I follow a few Alliance councillors on twitter I’d say they’d be comfortable in a liberal left home, but having no national agenda might help them in villages where nearly every house is worth over £1 million.
Tunbridge Wells has developed into a four-cornered fight as Labour has been gaining ground here too so this might be one of the most competitive boroughs in the country. This is no bad thing with the general election coming up – there’s nothing better than a battle-hardened squad, and in Tunbridge Wells we have a parliamentary candidate, Mike Martin, who is a former Army Officer and is a senior fellow in Geopolitics and Conflict at King’s College London (not to be confused with Mike Martin, a fictional SAS officer in Frederick Forsyth’s The Fist of God).
Peterborough – what the hell is going on?
Last year Peterborough bucked the national trend, where the Tories lost 1,000 seats overall. They actually gained two seats in Peterborough and resumed leadership of the council, just one short of an overall majority. Tory joy was shortlived, though, despite their against-the-odds success, two weeks after the elections four councillors left the Tory group to join a localist group. Few weeks after than father-and-son combo Mohammed and Saqib Farooq both left the Tories, citing a ‘toxic bullying culture’, they were joined by ward colleague John Howard (not the Aussie Prime Minister). This eventually signalled the end of Tory control, there is a minority Peterborough First admin, which presumably works with Labour and Lib Dems who collectively have 22 seats.
Seeing as all is not well in the Conservative camp at the moment, it would be major surprise if they repeated their success this year. Neither Labour or the Peterborough First group is likely to make sufficient gains to take the council outright expect more horse trading and coalition deals after the May election. Any Lib Dems optimism for Peterborough is fuelled by the fact we control neighbouring Rutland and Huntingdonshire councils.
At present Lib Dem Nick Sandford is ceremonial mayor of Peterborough. Nick comes across as a thoroughly decent man, he’s currently bound by protocols to stay apolitical, I’m sure he’ll have a tale or two to tell about Peterborough’s tempestuous recent past, when the time comes.
Preston – passport to a brighter future
If you consider Lib Dem success at local government level across the North in recent years it’s a surprisingly long list – leading County Durham for the first time, gaining control of Stockport, leading Derbyshire Dales, West Lindsey, winning the first election for Westmorland and Furness, becoming official opposition in Sunderland. It’s not been a bed of roses everywhere though, and we haven’t been able to catch a break in West Yorkshire or Lancashire. When things don’t go your way all you can do is keep your head down and graft hard. If you say and do the right things your neighbours and near neighbours will notice. Eventually you’ll gain some traction even if that’s not reflected in huge gains in one year. That’s the place Preston Lib Dems finds itself in. Preston’s group is led by one of the hardest working councillors in the country – John Potter. His energy and enthusiasm is infectious and I’ve noticed over time that his campaign narrative increasingly includes more volunteers. As Liberals we really believe in the power of the free-thinking individual but you have to admit that the herd mentality is a very strong part of human nature. Build up a critical mass and people get involved because they start believing in you. That’s definitely happening with Preston Lib Dems.
Preston City is a safe Labour council and like many places across the North results have been pretty static in the last few years. Will we see much change in these Labour-run councils? One straw in the wind is Pendle where the Labour group is in disarray this week with mass defections. This is part of a wider trend since October as dozens of Labour councillors have been unhappy with the party’s stance on Israel/Gaza, sometimes coupled with a typical top down arrogance (this was a factor in Labour deselecting 19 candidates in Leicester last year). While Preston Labour is not known to be an openly dysfunctional group it’s entirely possible that the councillor/activist discontent we’ve seen elsewhere could lead to an underwhelming campaign. If that happens Lib Dems could turn Preston from safe to competitive. That might not sound earth-shattering to some, but every local group has to work on its own success metric, whether that’s standing more candidates, increasing vote share, gaining more seats or flipping the status of a council outright.
returnoftheliberal 
Very interesting, thank you. I am waiting with bated breath to see the number of candidates nominated for each party, especially in Dorset. The Lib Dems seem to have stood aside in a few contests there recently, and I’m not sure if that’s a definite policy of not opposing some Independents, or whether it’s a problem with manpower. The recent local government reorganisation and hiatus in the electoral cycle cannot have helped. Anyway, I’ve bunged them a few quid, and hope to see a disproportionate reward!
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You are correct that in recent years there have been local agreements between Lib Dems and Independents who often work together in rainbow NOC coalitions. That came unstuck in Torbay last year, however, where the Tories gained the council, against the national trend because the Independent vote dived in areas outside of Torquay. In general Independents are less of a factor in big unitary authorities like Dorset, so I remain optimistic that Lib Dems will make gains, even if the campaign intensity is not quite the same as in metro areas.
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Bit of a shame you don’t mention Wokingham, another unitary with all-up elections this year (usually elects by thirds but has new boundaries this year), where there’s a strong likelihood of the Lib Dems (who currently run it in minority as the largest party) gaining majority control. The Wokingham Lib Dem campaign machine is formidable and is gearing up to give Sir John Redwood, the arch-Brexiteer local MP, a serious run for his money come the General Election.
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I’d like to point out the following – I write election previews and I’m super selective about the places I choose to write about, so that the blogs are an easily-digested read. Last year I didn’t write about Wokingham because our success there was covered off by the mainstream media, the more print/broadcast coverage a local group gets, the less sense it makes to me to amplify that. I’m very deliberate about giving coverage to places that even in the internal Lib Dems dialogue are not given much prominence. Also, at the risk of being somewhat combative, I’m in Sevenoaks district, no one from outside Sevenoaks in the Lib Dems community ever pumps any air into our tyres in terms of positive content. That being the case, I really don’t think I owe any particular local group anything.
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