‘Labour must expose the gap between Reform’s local ambition and ability’

So the results are in, and we now have 677 new Reform councillors, and ten new Reform administrations in England. And Andrea Jenkyns is the new Mayor of Lincolnshire. Oh happy days.

Too much coverage treats local council elections as a national polling exercise, but political composition of councils aren’t just data points for how well the national party is doing.

Councillors are statutory roles within local government, and councils are ‘corporate parents’, responsible for multi-million pound budgets, and with a direct impact on the wellbeing and welfare of the people they serve. Three years into my first term as a Labour councillor, I know how much there is to learn in order even just to do a decent job as a ward councillor, let alone to run a local authority.

Because it’s all well and good running on an ‘anti-politics’ platform, but the morning after an election victory, you too will wake up to find, as strange as it may feel, that you are now a politician too. You’re the person people go to with their issues, and you’re be the one responsible for whether or not they get fixed.

In my experience, while people may say they want systems overthrown or destroyed, what they actually tend to want is for them to work better, especially at a local level, where service provision has such a direct impact on their lives. Like with Militant Tendency in the 80s, I wonder if it’s now the turn of the far-right to discover that their politics don’t translate to running local government, and that their failures there won’t help their popularity.

READ MORE: Council by council Labour gains and losses – and its position in each mayor race

‘Anyone who thinks budgets haven’t been cut to the bone is not in the real world’

Unlike for MPs, where committee roles or Cabinet positions are both voluntary and competitive, most councillors are obliged to take up official roles without which councils don’t function. If in administration, they’ll have to form Cabinets to lead council departments, with members making strategic decisions about adult social care, environmental health, libraries and much more besides. It’s not always exciting, but people really notice when these things go wrong – look at the recent Birmingham bin crisis, or the tragic human cost of safeguarding failures in children’s social care.

Then there various bodies to sit on in the council, with names like ‘Governance, Audit and Risk Management Committee’, ward surgeries to organise, and emails from residents on everything from noise complaints to how exactly you to plan to help support the local high street traders’ association.

Of course there’s always the option just not to do some of this stuff – but haven’t Reform been loudly campaigning against ‘lazy’ and ‘out of touch’ politicians for years? So no doubt there’ll be keen to show how different they are to all the rest of us once they’re actually in power, and are all chomping at the bit to start the hard graft of improving representing people as soon as possible. We’ll see.

READ MORE: Runcorn blame game begins – why did Labour lose?

I may be wrong, but I suspect many of these new councillors have not put a great deal of thought into what they might do with these new responsibilities, and the party establishment itself hasn’t had much to say about local government – apparently Aaron Banks thinks Metro Mayors are ‘meaningless jobs’, and Nigel Farage believes some DOGE-style efficiency savings will quickly unlock millions more in revenue.

But anyone who thinks local government budgets have been anything over than cut to the bone over the past two decades is just not living in the real world. I almost pity our new representatives, many of whom I assume genuinely believe that if they just cut a few DEI initiatives and the budget for the Mayor’s annual dinner dance, they’ll find plenty more for local services. They won’t.

And it’s one thing railing against council ‘fat cats’ on high salaries when in opposition; quite another to face a recruitment crisis for senior council officers, whose skills will often be better compensated in the private sector, and who also may not be that keen to work for such politically divisive council leadership.

Banning working from home in Reform-controlled councils, as Farage seemed to suggest, is likely to run up immediately against the reality of downsized council offices, without desk space for everyone to work there five days a week, and the threat of an exodus of council employees, who, like most British workers, value workplace flexibility (especially in sectors like local government, which can’t compete on salaries) and will prioritise employers who offer it.

The same will be true of threats to ban Pride week, or whatever tiresome culture war measures they’re planning to inflict under the new regimes – it will sap morale and make people not want to work there, exacerbating a recruitment crisis and impacting on what councils can ever deliver.

READ MORE: ‘Results so far say one thing: voters think change isn’t coming fast enough’

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‘Reform peddle fantasy politics’

In terms of Reform policies, a quick scan of some election literature in my hometown of Watford contains pledges to cut local councillor numbers and get rid of the Mayor, to stop 20mph zones and brownfield development, as well as some general pablum about ‘supporting local businesses’ and cutting council tax, which they won’t be able to do.

Aside from getting rid of the Mayor, the rest is just standard conservative fare – campaigning against 20mph zones and housing developments hardly represents some radical new direction in politics, just a reheated version of what all the Tory councillors they’ve defeated have been doing for years anyway.

In Lancashire, Reform have promised to find an extra £30 million to fix potholes, but the only cost-cutting measure they mention is scrapping the Mayor, who I’m pretty sure isn’t on a £30 million salary. In Durham, they want to ‘slash politically correct woke nonsense’ in order to ‘reduce business rates’ and ‘freeze council tax’.

It’s all just fantasy politics, like they lies they told about Brexit – as with the Conservative party in 2019, there’s an irreconcilable tension between the low-tax views of the people at the top of the party, and the fact that their new-found supporters want more state spending in ways that benefit them. It’s an impossible circle to square, locally or nationally.

I suspect most Reform voters did so because they support national Reform policies, but ‘stopping the boats’ is not actually something that can be implemented by a local authority. I’ve tried to be guided by Labour values during my time as a councillor, but much of it is just not that party-political.

People want you to chase up missing bin collections, to sort out planters for the high street, to come to their residents’ association meetings, and all the other tasks that fill a local councillors’ diary. A disinterest in this stuff doesn’t come across as radical anti-establishment politics, it just comes across to voters like another person in the system who won’t reply to their emails.

READ MORE: ‘‘Labour has lost in Runcorn – here are the eight things the party should do now‘

‘The anti-politics sentiment might be turned back on them before too long’

One of the many pernicious aspects to far-right politics is how it embodies so much of what it claims to hate about mainstream politics. There is so much projection in their claims that most politicians are out of touch and ill-intentioned – I think people like Nigel Farage struggle to believe anyone really could into politics from a sense of public service, because the impulse is so lacking in themselves.

Parties need, at their base, to be held together by values – it’s what allows people to disagree on policies but still work as a team. But being ‘anti-immigration’ or ‘low tax’ are not values, they’re policies, and in Reform’s case, they’re not even coherent policies, because populists never acknowledge any trade-offs in politics. Without much in the way of shared values, or a shared belief in public service, it’ll be a hard task keeping local Reform groups together on councils, or the party together nationally, once the inevitable policy disagreements (and ego clashes) that come with power arise.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if some of the anti-politics sentiment the far-right have inflamed might be turned back on them before too long – if you go around telling the public all politicians are corrupt and lazy, then don’t be surprised when people start thinking the same about you a couple of years down the line, as you too fail to deliver Elysium, or perhaps even to sort out the local parking issues.

‘Reform are part of the system now’

Of course I could be wrong about all this, and it could prove an opportunity for a new cohort of Reform councillors to build political support through good local representation. There’s an opening there, and politics is, of course, unpredictable. But looking at the kinds of people attracted to Reform, and the party’s lack of infrastructure to support them in local government, somehow I doubt it.

So as unfortunate as these results feel, I do wonder if a fairly underwhelming performance by new Reform councils might dampen some enthusiasm for Farage et al. at the next election – and that’s before you get onto the potential for more spectacular failures.

Does anybody think Andrea Jenkyns has the skills to run the Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority well? She’s going to have to lead a cohort of councils, in partnership with their current council leaders (all three of whom are currently Conservative – that’ll be interesting), making decisions on transport, housing, the environment, economic regeneration and skills training across the county.

Does this seem particularly suited to her skillset? Does this task even interest her? What track record will she be presenting to the people of Lincolnshire in four years’ time? If all you have to offer people in insurgency, you can only offer it once.

READ MORE: ‘These lesser-noticed local election results show aid cuts are backfiring’

Across the country, new Reform council leaders are going to find themselves responsible for everything from waste services to SEN transport provision across cash-strapped local authorities, and they’ll have to deliver these leading teams of new Reform councillors with little experience of local government and no clear vision.

It’s not an easy task even for the most talented local leaders, and I think it’s fair to say the jury is still out on whether this new cohort contains anyone who would fit that description. You know that saying about remembering you’re not stuck in traffic, you are the traffic? I hate to break it to them, but Reform are part of the system now, and it will change how people see them.

Progressive objections to Reform of course go far wider than potentially running local authorities badly. But it’s still an attack line, and so as Labour activists, particularly those living in Reform areas, we need to keep paying attention what they actually do with the powers they now have, relentlessly highlighting their failures and contradictions.

That’s not to downplay their appeal, or be complacent about their advance, but to say that we already know the far-right don’t have answers, locally or nationally, and that some actual evidence of how they run local authorities might end up persuading some of their voters of that too.