Reform UK would be on course to win in May’s local elections – except Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has axed key votes. The Telegraph has more.
The first major survey to predict the May 1st votes has found that Nigel Farage’s party is set to win control of, or be the largest party on, eight councils compared with the Conservatives’ 10.
This suggests the ballot will be a significant success for the Right-wing party, which currently controls no councils, providing the first concrete evidence since the General Election of its surge in support.
However, had elections in a further nine areas not been delayed, Reform would have won 12 councils to the Tories’ 11. The poll findings are likely to spark demands for all the votes to go ahead without delays.
Last month, Ms Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, announced that elections in some counties would be postponed to pave the way for a huge local government reorganisation.
It prompted allegations that Labour was undermining democracy, and Mr Farage accused the Tories of “running scared” after a string of Conservative-run county councils requested that their elections be delayed.
The analysis for the Telegraph was done using the Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification method (MRP), which allows pollsters to take survey results and predict results in individual seats.
It involves talking to many more people than a typical poll – in this case, more than 5,400 – and drilling down into the demographic details of both respondents and constituencies.
The survey shows for the first time how support for Reform has grown since the General Election, with the party set to upend the political status quo at the local elections.
The polling was carried out as Reform became engulfed in civil war after Rupert Lowe, one of its MPs, was reported to police for allegedly threatening the party’s Chairman.
Mr Lowe has denied any wrongdoing and claimed the allegations were political revenge for his criticism of Mr Farage’s leadership. …
A Reform spokesman said: “As we have been saying all along, Labour has cancelled these elections to try and thwart the rise of Reform. We haven’t heard a big debate about this, because both Labour and the Conservatives are terrified of the rise of Reform.
“This denial of our democracy is something that is fundamentally un-British and undemocratic. It shows how rotten the whole system is now in British politics.”
Worth reading in full.
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The Government and the Conservative enthusiasts who have cancelled many County elections this year claim it is because of reorganisation of local government. There are no specific plans in place yet and no public consultation has been announced. We may safely assume reorganisation will not be completed before the end of 2026.
There are District Council elections due in 2026. Presumably those will be cancelled too.
If the new structures are officially in place (but not actually completed in any functional way) by the end of 2026 one assumes the next elections for the new unitary authorities (mega District Councils plus some undefined responsibilities from County) will be helpd in May 2027. We do not yet know the basis of those elections (PR, FPTP, all or thirds).
Despite the lack of any information on what responsibilities are to go from County to the new unitary authorities, in Essex they are already testing the water over a County Mayor. I have heard about this but I have seen no publicity and do not know when the consultation will begin. How can it if we do not know what responsibilities the Mayors will have.
Will Mayors be the Police etc Commissioners – probably. Will they have responsibilities for main roads – possibly but will they have any staff or other resources to do the work or supervise it or will the Mayors simply instruct unitary authorities what they must do.
Apart from road (which I speculate may be controlled by the Mayor in part, what other powers will they have to over ride unitary authorities.
Many local authorities are in arrears with their audited Financial Statements. Many are heavily in debt. I suspect many pension schemes are in deficit. How will mergers be done without knowing if one of the constituent parts is about to default. What about arrears of maintenance which is apparent in many areas of Essex – will Council Tax payers in the other parts of the new unitary authorities have to pick up the bill?
Lst of all, how much will Council Tax have to increase to pay for the inevitable higher costs after merger? There are bound to be many early retirements and redundancies with big pension cost implications. The overall headcount and the number of higher paid staff will rocket as it always does in the public sector.
My area changed to a Unitary Authority in 2020 and was supposed to hold elections almost straight away – but lockdown. We eventually got an election in 2021.
The old County council was the highway authority with various District councils doing bins and council tax and whatnot. The Unitary authority now does the whole deal (badly).
Many of the same faces populate the Unitary authority as the old County and District councils – the same time wasters and woke idiots as before. In our ward our Councillors have only attended about 30-40% of the meetings since the Unitary was formed but their election leaflet claims they’ve done marvelous things for us.
Given the same faces are likely to be in the new Unitary councils as the old ones why not hold elections so that councillors can have a mandate to hit the ground running when (if?) their Unitary Authority is formed.
I thought you said my area changed to a Uni-party — Freudian slip there!
Love it.
We have three tiers where I live – town, district and county (albeit town does very little). I can’t get too excited about it either way – County is bigger so there may be more scope for economies of scale and concentration of expertise, District is supposedly more accountable and representative as its local. When I first heard about this, I assumed that they would either give everything to County (which would make a bit more sense) or split County into the Districts. But apparently the plan is to form some new bodies, bigger than District but smaller than County, who will collaborate on things and maybe have a Mayor. It seems like fiddling around for the sake of it and whatever happens it will cost extra money and distract productive people from real work. And it has been used as an excuse to cancel elections. Seems nuts to me.
We have the Unitary Council and Town. Town council is just a bunch of grifters trying to organise free events for the peeepul and make sure the Christmas lights get put up on time. Just an overblown (civil) Parish council. They do nothing worthwhile.
I quite like the Christmas lights. I think the events they organise bring people to the town, which is good for local businesses. But I expect we could live without them.
It is also a reminder that there is some semblance of Christianity left before it becomes Islamified.
Town (aka Civil Parish) Councils vary enormously. Some seem to be close to the voters and organise a lot of well liked local events. Others not. The scale of activities does not seem to be related to the population.
Ours used to be non-party but became so about 30years ago. For many years it was 100 per cent Tory. Recently LibDems have been getting elected. It hasn’t improved.
As has been said, the councillors are usually well meaning but the Tories struggle to fibnd talented candidates at all local government levels. Some use it as a means of getting on CCHQ approved candidate list while others seem to use it as a way to stay out of their house.
Not sure who is to blame – Heath in 1974 I think – but central government has taken away most of the powers from local councils and so made it an unappealing job for people so the talented ones avoid it and it has become the bottom of the greasy pole for wannabee MPs. It may be connected but I recall Dr North telling of a respected Conservative MP complaining that all she got were problems that the local council and councillors should be dealing with and had had enough. Also the publicity from the MP here reads like a council fluff piece. I know given how poor they are many would oppose moving the power back to the councils but it would bring things closer to the people while this half-baked Ranting Raynor ‘plan’ does the opposite. Note the 1974 changes took EIGHT years of consultation and planning to introduce.
According to Sandy Adams (the go to lady on anything Agenda 2030 related) this is in the UN sustainable development book. So basically long in the planning.
Maybe that should read “Unsustainable development”.
Just rearranging the deck chairs. It will either mither useful people or they will bring in expensive consultants, or both.
During the Rona Plandemic Fascism, I heard all sorts of slogans about ‘Our Thriving Democracy’. ‘Our values’. ‘We are in it together’. Same with the NATO Deep State war in the Uketopia as NATO and the German empire attempt to ingest the Ukelands. ‘Fighting for our values’. ‘Stand with the Uketopia or Vlad will crush democracy ‘ (of a dictator and his 1 party state).
Will any and all elections soon be cancelled in ‘Our Thriving Diverse Democracy’? Would the sheeple notice?
In matters of real importance, arguably immigration apart, they’re all the bloody same.
All obey TheRPTB/Soros/Banking families when it comes to eg Covid, jabs, fiat currency and especially Ukraine.
Quite why we must spend billions we haven’t got rearming to defeat Russia, lol, I know not.
Is Putin really threatening our streets for God’s sake?
I can think of much bigger threats much closer to home.
Clarkson on the Land Grab:Jeremy Clarkson rages ‘it’s the end’ for British farming as he rips into ‘astonishing’ Labour measure
““I could wake up one morning in the very near future to be told by West Oxfordshire District Council that they now own my farm,” he feared.
Predicting what he would get in return, Clarkson reminded readers of the name of his farm: Diddly Squat.
He compared the “truly astonishing” policy to those of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe – who cause chaos in the African nation through a brutal policy of land confiscation.”
We have a parish Council and a County Council and both ask you to contact the other one, every time you have an issue.
Between the two, our lovely City is running down with the Parish Council unable to keep the public toilets open and now facing a huge backlash.
The local Councillors will come out of the shadows like cockroaches to seek our votes on 1st May.
Personally I would close all local Govt and leave us to pay privately for rubbish collection, private security etc and save on yet another tier of waste and a Mayor.
If the turnout in ANY governmental, council, or parish election is below 50%, the result is not binding and the motion is dismissed, we don’t go ahead with any version of whatever they were proposing. This is the way to get rid of all these USELESS layers of bureaucracy
Ms Nobrayner overdue cancellation since well before all that dodgy dealing in former council houses.
Councillor’s and Chief Executive at Norfolk were so eager to get their noses in the trough of a combined authority and Mayor they took great delight at denying democracy
I believe Cornish politicians wanted a mayor etc but consulted the electorate who said no. Let’s hope we don’t get nose in the trough mayors who appear to be as useless as the police commissioners