Local Elections in England 2019

The two major parties received their second-lowest share of the national equivalent vote since records began

The Local Election Results in England were a pretty devastating critique of the performance of local councils, or as the media would have it the woeful performance of the two main parties in the search for Brexit. It is useful to look at the real outcomes, that is the number of councillors of the various political parties and how this has changed since 2015 when the elections took place on the same day as the General Election when David Cameron squeezed a narrow victory.

This is summarised by looking at the number of councillors now, the losses or gains since the last equivalent elections in 2015, and the percentage change. These are shown in the table below. The Greens and the Lib Dems (the pro-remain parties) saw their numbers soar whilst the Conservatives and UKIP (the pro-Brexit parties) witnessed all-time record losses. The party that sat on the fence (Labour) lost out whilst the independents, who tend to focus on local issues, made massive gains at the expense of the two main parties who controlled the majority of councils. But this analysis is taking a view through the prism of Brexit and that is far from the whole story.

Green                265       +194   +273%
Independent     1178      +662   +128%
Lib Dem           1351       +703   +109%
Labour             2021         -82        -4%
Conservative    3564      -1334      -27%
UKIP                   31        -145      -82%

Listening, watching and reading the local election results made me realise how out of touch with local democracy the fourth estate has become. They have a collective amnesia about local issues and the days of gimlet-eyed reporting have been a victim of the banality served by social media  Almost all reporters and commentators reasoned that the election results were a pronouncement on Brexit and the failure of the two main parties to deliver a solution. There was little attempt to understand the impact of ten years of austerity and how it had devastated the range and quality of local services. This is more the fault of the Westminster government than the elected councillors of any party. The government has reduced its funding of local government by 50% over the past decade without understanding the consequences and has been more than happy to heap the opprobrium onto the said councils.

Bus services have been withdrawn; libraries, sports centres, swimming pools and community facilities have closed; roads and schools are not being repaired; community care is failing to meet needs and far too few energy-efficient homes are being built. Community leadership has been undermined by taking away youth leaders, community safety officers, grants to community groups, closing local offices and making telephone contact virtually impossible as everything goes online. It is no wonder that the citizenry is fed up and disinclined to vote for the existing administrations in local councils which are mainly either conservative or labour. Local politicians have been bracketed with the MPs who have displayed their incompetence with impunity over recent years.

As a returning officer for 14 years, I was able to observe at close quarters how local voting outcomes varied from UK elections. Yes, there was a general tendency for the vote of the party in power at the UK level to suffer. However, good councillors and there were many in all political parties as well as some independents, performed better than the benchmark for their party. They were the ones who held local surgeries, turned up at community meetings, and supported their schools and community activities and events. They acted for the people they represented when there was an injustice or failure to provide them with a suitable service. You could also predict the councillors who would do less well because they were failing to represent their electorate or espousing causes that did not resonate well in the community.

It became a bit more difficult after the move to multi-member wards in Scotland in 2007 but this did require councillors from different parties to find ways to work together as there were 3 or 4 councillors elected by a form of proportional representation to cover a far bigger ward. This also had a downside as the councillors tended to be approached by those who supported their party and had less exposure to the wider views of the electorate. If anything it intensified the tribalism.

How the Prime Minister has responded to the dire election results is to claim that the collapse in the conservative vote leading to 28% fewer conservative councillors and the 4% fall in labour councillors is a demand to get on and deliver Brexit. If she believes that Brexit was the main influence on the local elections then surely the 109% increase in the number of Lib Dem councillors and the 213% increase of Green councillors should be telling her that perhaps Brexit is the problem, not the answer.

In which case it becomes increasingly inevitable that the only plausible solution to the impasse is for a confirmatory vote on the options available: her deal, an alternative deal or remain. The chances of the Conservatives and Labour stitching together a feasible Brexit are just another fiction of her imagination. So we will have to watch the further episodes of the Conservative Party's own Game of Thrones for a few more weeks until the majority of MPs realise that the Game's a Bogey and go for a confirmatory vote before the EU call that time is up and throw the UK out.