Momentous May 7th will be big – and brutal
THE Post’s annual local elections column: it used to be, if not easy, at least formulaic, especially in a ‘Birmingham year’ – in the past three years in four, but now just one: which happens to be this year. I’d start with ‘the Biggie’ – the city council itself; then the other metropolitan West Mids councils with elections, focusing mainly on any that might possibly see a change in political control.
On then to any interesting-looking adjacent counties or districts, before concluding with a couple of national ‘round-up’ paragraphs. Informative, I’d hope; exciting, possibly less so.
In total contrast, this year’s Thursday, May 7th locals, both individually and collectively, are quite simply the most fascinating, intriguing, and, above all, potentially most consequential since, some reckon, the 1970s. There’s no remote chance of doing them justice in this single column, so my main aim is to stimulate your interest and thereby encourage you to catch the results as they’re published at various times during the ensuing couple of days.
You could stay up, but the only West Mids results you’re likely to catch are Redditch (est. 1.45am) and Dudley (3.30am). The rest are mainly later Friday afternoon: Solihull 3pm, Sandwell and Walsall 5pm, Walsall and Birmingham, last maybe but absolutely NOT least, 6pm – recounts permitting!
This column, therefore, will start by illustrating the exceptional scale and importance of next Thursday’s ‘big picture’, providing hopefully at least a sense of the hundreds of momentous electoral battles happening across England, before gradually homing in on some of those in the West Midlands.
More than seven million voters in England, Wales and Scotland will elect over 5,000 councillors – including almost a third of so-called ‘principal’/top tier council representatives – and are widely expected to produce a set of results the like of which the UK has rarely, if ever, seen before.
The English results could collectively, as Proportional Representation campaigners Make Votes Matter put it: “be the most chaotic yet, with power won on tiny vote shares and whole swathes of the country left unrepresented”. Sounds bad, if exciting. However, serious students of these things reckon the Scottish and Welsh national results could
They are quite simply the most fascinating, intriguing, and, above all, potentially most consequential since, some reckon, the 1970s
“open the way” to the break-up of the whole UK, so it seems right to start with them.
All 129 Scottish Parliament members are up for re-election, 73 representing constituencies, 56 their respective eight regions. Each voter casts two votes on separate ballot papers, deploying two different electoral systems, designed to make it harder for one party to secure a majority. The Nationalists just managed it in 2011, paving the way for the 2014 independence referendum (55% ‘No’, for those with short memories), and they’re going for a more successful ‘breakaway’ repeat.
The Welsh Senedd elections are, potentially at least, equally consequential. In the biggest parliamentary change since powers began being transferred to Wales in 1999, Senedd Members will increase from 60 to 96, with parties able to list up to eight candidates per constituency. Voters choose a single party or Independent candidate.
In contrast to Scotland, though, no party has ever won a Parliamentary majority, and the new system seems unlikely to change that. Currently, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru are neck-and-neck on an estimated
36/37 seats, with Labour some way adrift, prospectively ending a century of dominance in Welsh politics.
And so to the 5,000-plus seats across England’s unitary, county, district and London councils – and, of course, the six directly elected mayoralties. Always difficult to summarise, this year’s hundreds (of contests) and thousands (of candidates) are clearly impossible. PLUS, this year – surely the most exciting, and utterly unpredictable, bit – many contests will have candidates from no fewer than five parties currently polling between 10% and 29%, and therefore in with least a chance.
Oh yes, and just a few weeks ago, 30 councils whose elections had been postponed to 2027 due to forthcoming local government reorganisation – including Cannock Chase, Redditch, Rugby and Tamworth – were told, following Reform UK’s legal challenge, that they must reinstate them on their original schedule. Affecting 4.6 million potential voters, if you were wondering – you could hardly make it up!
And so, in this reverse-order column, we’re back in the metropolitan West Midlands, with room left for only the briefest of numerical overviews of PollCheck’s most recent (March 30) seat projections; 2022 comparisons, though some were elections by thirds; as many as space permits. They are, I hope you’ll agree, fascinating.