On the Local Elections, pt. 1: The National Picture

The main mediatic talking point of the local elections has been the success of Reform U.K. Farage’s party have now solidified their position, from being the ‘opposition apparent’ in many Labour-won seats in 2024, to looking capable of winning a general election in 2029.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that these local elections put up for contest just a handful of English council seats, and by no means give Reform U.K. a monopoly of power at the local level.

Labour remains the largest party in local government, and the Liberal Democrats have, meanwhile, supplanted the Conservatives as the second party at the local level.

Nonetheless, Reform U.K.’s success is, to a degree, inevitable, ‘mid the rise of frustrations at the current government who seem detached from the interests and concerns of the ‘ordinary person,’ in their seeming intransigence to criticism – doubtless bolstered by Starmer’s disproportionate landslide majority. Unscrupulous cuts to Winter Fuel Payments, inheritance tax on family farms, the maintenance of the two-child benefit cap, have all come to undermine Labour’s image as the party of the vulnerable. Starmer’s ideal of a government of ‘service,’ upon which he drew the distinction between Labour and ‘Tory sleaze,’ has been seriously discredited by donor and freebie scandals.

While Starmer has at times made apparently brilliant displays of competence, such as his leadership in Europe over the recent Ukraine fall-out, Reform’s successes at this election can be put down to his apparent domestic detachment from ‘ordinary’ people’s concerns. Besides increasing the minimum wage, which happens every so often anyway, and improving a certain number of worker’s rights at the behest of the unions, what has Labour really do so differently from the Conservatives to improve the living standards of the working man? What has it done to put power in their hands, when its answer to the question of devolution is to centralise power further into the hands of single mayors?

Labour should not be surprised that many of those who voted for them in 2024 hoping for ‘change’ – but have seen much of the same scandal and London-centric indifference as was the status quo under the Tories – are now trying voting for its more progressive synonym, ‘reform’?

Reform is doubtless what Britain needs – constitutional reform, democratic reform, regional reform, local government reform, public service reform; the putting of power back into the hands of ordinary men and women up the country, and giving to those most affected by decisions the greatest say in those decisions.

Labour’s mayoral model will not deliver this reform. Its party leadership will not listen to its own democratic institutions on the matter of electoral reform – but whether Reform 2025 Ltd., a Party still controlled to a large degree by director Nigel Farage, is truly the body which will bring forth this reform to the U.K. is another matter.

For example, Reform says it definitely wants to leave the European Convention of Human Rights – indeed, Farage wants to do this on day one – but plans not to have a replacement British Bill of Rights ready until the vague ‘thereafter’ (Our Contract with You, pg. 21). What happens to our civil liberties in the meantime?

Reform U.K. supports electoral reform, by introducing proportional representation for the House of Commons, but doesn’t have any plan to counter-balance the deficit in local representation this will cause. Meanwhile, Reform’s 2024 manifesto doesn’t mention regional or local government once, let alone devolution and decentralisation of powers.

Only time will tell if Reform’s new representatives will address their mandate to deal with local issues sufficiently. Early indications suggest their priorities lie elsewhere: the party has already back-tracked on plans to fly only the English and U.K. flags at local councils, as voters demand their local or regional flags be flown still.

Wessex Regionalists will continue to argue that reform to our democratic system and constitution needs to enfranchise those most affected by decisions to have control over those decisions, rather than put at risk our civil liberties and centralise power further into the hands of the national government.