Think tomorrows local elections is worth its own thread as, even though nobody has really cared for them in the past, this one is drawing huge coverage.
Will it be local issues such as social services, or will it become national issues like small boats that wins through?
All will be revealed.
I think the trend of conflating local and national politics has been going on for quite a while now and is really quite dysfunctional. The number of people voting for 'policies' that are nowhere near the remit of local government is deeply unhelpful. Decent separation of local and central government is healthy imo but that has, in various ways and for various reasons, collapsed in on itself.
That said I think there is good reason for the national coverage, because these elections will play a significant part in our broader national politics...
Spoke to a couple of officers at Birmingham City Council this week who think Reform, Greens and a significant number of (mainly Muslim) Independents are going to make huge gains from Labour, which was simply unthinkable a few years ago.
I think everyone, including the Labour party itself, are taking it as a given that this is going to be an absolute bloodbath for Labour. The interesting question then is how do Labour as our governing party respond ?
At this point it seems unlikely, barring a miraculous turnaround or suicidal obstinacy, that Starmer can survive to the next election so quite possibly we'll once again be in the position of the incumbent party choosing a new PM for us, with the potential for policy shift that that implies. It strikes me that (assuming that if nothing else they've at least worked out that trying to outreform reform doesn't work) Labour can go one of two ways:
1. Continue down their current 'grown-ups' model of incremental technical change whilst offering a political narrative of vague, sometimes changing, goals designed to minimise the target on their backs, whilst at the same time indulging in some very un-grown up trashing of the two populist parties in the hope they frighten enough people back to the fold. The issue with this model is twofold to me (a) it lacks an easily understandable positive political identity which in our crappy short-form world is deadly (b) you can't win by actually 'competencing' your way out of our current malaise anyway, because the maths doesn't work, you can only really make the rate of decline slower.
2. Undertake a reset that really addresses the parties identity both in terms of who it represents and how it goes about that (Lucy Powell all but admitted they had lost their way on this whilst canvassing in Leeds recently). This would probably need to involve a rapprochement with the other more progressive parties.
I think pursing the first option will very likely lead to a Reform/Conservation coalition government at the next GE, which I think will end in the kind of chaos that makes our current situation look good.
The second option is difficult, because it probably involves being more honest with the British people about where we are than is politically 'sensible' and risks the valid accusation of why didn't you admit any of this before* (simple answer - because we wouldn't have got in 'cause people don't want to hear the truth). Who wants to hear that decades of under/misdirected investment in the UK along with some very poor strategic decisions have screwed us over and there is no easy answer and it's going to be a long hard road to get out of the mess we're in? It might be difficult to undertake the pivot but it might be the only way Labour can save itself and the country from slipping into further irrelevance.
So I think the battle for the soul of the Labour party that is about to commence is actually a battle for the soul of the country because the Reform/Conservative coalition that may come to pass will I think take us down a poundshop Trumpian route that would all but destroy the Britain that we have known since the war. Tbh I don't think Labour is in any way capable of turning things round on it's own, the best it can achieve is to create an alternative coalition that takes Britain in a better direction.
The battle lines have already been drawn, I see Luke Akehurst has already waded into Andy Burnham for agreeing to share a platform at an upcoming event with both the Greens and the Lib Dems. What happens next within Labour in the following months/years to the GE, will have a profound effect on the country for a minimum of a decade which is why I think if not the elections themselves but certainly the aftermath is being viewed as so important.
