There are local elections taking place in England, Scotland and Wales on Thursday. Except there’s nothing particularly ‘local’ about them, at least in England.
Even in Scotland and Wales, the elections for the devolved administrations are being seen as a referendum on the Government in Westminster.
Given that we don’t have American-style ‘midterms’ under our parliamentary system, it’s the first chance voters have had in almost two years to pass judgment on Keir Starmer’s dismal premiership.
The result isn’t in doubt. It will be a well-deserved massacre for Labour, which is expected to lose anything up to 2,000 council seats.
All the fevered media commentary has centred on what this means for the Prime Minister’s immediate future, as rivals including Angry Ginge Rayner and Wes Streeting prepare to stick the knife in.
There’s even talk of parachuting Manchester mayor Andy Burnham into a safe seat so that he can glide into No 10, which only goes to prove how much the navel-gazing political class has lost touch with reality, decency and morality.
When Britain went to the polls in 2024, no one – even those who voted Labour – was under the impression that our next PM could be a man who wasn’t even on the ballot.
Elections should be about the real bread-and-butter issues that concern tens of millions of council taxpayers and their families but they have become subsumed in the self-serving psychodrama which infects British politics like a permanent outbreak of hantavirus.
Sir Keir Starmer boards a plane following the European Political Community summit in Yerevan, Armenia today
Starmer’s rivals, including Angry Ginge Rayner (pictured), are preparing to stick the knife in, writes Richard Littlejohn
Never Here Keir himself has demonstrated his disdain for everyday domestic concerns by scuttling off to Armenia in furtherance of his real mission to drag Britain back into the EU, for which he has no democratic mandate.
In Scotland and Wales, the main beneficiaries of the widespread loathing of this incompetent, dishonest Government are likely to be the separatist parties Plaid Cymru and the Scottish Nationalists.
The other big winners will be Reform UK and the poisonous Greens, a hateful alliance of anti-Semites, Corbynistas and Islamists.
Reform UK is on course to wipe out Labour in its old Red Wall strongholds in the Midlands and the North. And while Reform is likely to assume control of dozens of councils, the Faragistas are marching to the polls under the nationwide slogan ‘Get Starmer Out’.
The Greens – whose vile, fantasist leader Zack Polanski was elegantly sliced and diced by Trevor Phillips on Sky at the weekend – aren’t even bothering to campaign on local issues. They’re going big on Gaza, the war in Iran, Net Zero and soaking ‘billionaires’.
This is a party, don’t forget, which publishes its election leaflets in Urdu to pander to the Muslim vote.
Local elections, which should be about bringing people together for the common good, are being used cynically as platforms for naked sectarianism.
When Peter Mandelson declared smugly 25-odd years ago that ‘the era of pure representative democracy is coming to an end’, it was probably the most honest statement he has ever made.
Even so-called ‘local’ councillors embrace national and international policies, rather than address the mundane problems which plague the people who put them into office.
The concept of public service is a distant memory. Councils today believe they are our masters, not our servants, and their main role in life is to control and punish us at every turn.
Contentious planning decisions are taken in secret behind closed doors, in the absence of the taxpaying public and what’s left of our local Press.
Jumped-up councillors give themselves preposterous titles like ‘Cabinet Member for Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability’ and then use Miliband’s deranged Net Zero crusade as an excuse not to empty the dustbins and prosecute people for putting the ‘wrong’ kind of waste in the ‘wrong’ recycling bin.
They introduce Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and 20mph limits on main roads in the teeth of opposition, seriously inconveniencing everyone from young mums and the disabled to the bus and ambulance services.
As the Daily Mail has exclusively revealed, parking fines could soon rise as high as £160 outside London – where mayor Genghis Khan’s war on the motorist means, thanks to ULEZ and congestion charges, it can already cost £30.50 a day to take your car into town, even before you are rinsed by a fiendish parking app – that’s if it actually works.
The Greens – whose leader Zack Polanski was elegantly sliced and diced by Trevor Phillips on Sky at the weekend – aren’t even bothering to campaign on local issues, writes Richard Littlejohn
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RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Good luck enjoying a sunny Bank Holiday when councils try to ban everything
Councils continue to indulge themselves in matters way beyond their remit. I only discovered this week, thanks to Reform UK, that my own (currently Labour-controlled) North London borough of Enfield has announced it is becoming a ‘Borough of Sanctuary’ – welcoming ‘refugees and migrants and vulnerable people fleeing violence’.
I don’t suppose there’s any chance of them tackling the violence on our own doorstep – such as the machete gang fight outside our neighbourhood chip shop, which I wrote about a few months ago?
The ‘Borough of Sanctuary’ revelation was contained in Reform’s election leaflet, which is the only one actually to address local issues, such as over-development near the Tube station and the loss of green space.
The Conservative leaflet concentrates on national issues, including stamp duty and banning social media for under-16s. No mention of potholes or rubbish collections or fly-tipping or the dangerous state of the pavements.
From Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens, nada. Too busy worrying about Gaza, probably.
That’s one reason why Reform will clean up, if not in Enfield – where I’ll be voting for them – but across great swathes of the country.
On Friday, with the battlefield strewn with the bodies of both Labour and Tory candidates, local issues will quickly be forgotten and the Bubble will be back banging on about Starmer’s future and whither Andy Burnham.
Thursday’s local elections are indeed our first – and for now, only – chance to give this Government a good kicking.
But what we really need is a general election.
