Why did Slough Lib Dems decide to support the Tories on Slough Council following the 2023 local elections?
Anyone reading the local news in Slough recently will see that Slough Lib Dems have entered into a cooperation agreement with the Tories.
Why?
This is a question that I’ll be hearing a lot in the coming weeks — please do try to read this before forming an opinion about our decision.
As the current Chair of Slough Lib Dems and having been present throughout the negotiations, I’ll do my best below to explain what happened.
Many people may have strong opinions about this (in my own party and in other parties). Please read this to the end before passing final judgement.
Local elections are meant to be local (but usually aren’t)
Let’s start from the beginning. Much as the national parties might desperately pretend otherwise, local elections are meant to be about local issues.
Often the national mood of the country outweighs this (we saw this with a Tory vote boost in Slough during the vaccine rollout).
But sometimes the local issues generate enough attention to become the driving factor behind how people vote.
2023 in Slough was one of those years.
For those unfamiliar with Slough, there needs to be a bit of context. Historically it is a staunchly Labour town and as such is something of an anomaly in the South East of England outside London. In so many general elections Slough is a tiny island of red in a sea of blue.
It bucks the national trend. In 2019, when Labour’s vote share fell disastrously, in Slough it rose by 26% (the third highest in the South East region after Oxford East and Hove, at a time when in 75 out of 84 constituencies the Labour vote share fell (from 2017).
In the 2019 Local Elections, Lib Dem campaigners in Slough saw a surge in votes for our party in many of our neighbouring local authorities, but despite our campaigning, it felt that we barely nudged the dial here.
In the 2023 local elections, most would accept that the Conservatives generally did disastrously compared to 2019 (which was already a bad year, during the dying days of May’s ministry). In 182 out of 230 local authorities, they lost seats or made no gain.
Once again, in 2023, Slough was an anomaly. It was one of only three local authorities where the Conservative gains were in double digits (the others being Leicester and Sandwell).
Looking at the other examples above, in Leicester, the outcome followed deselection of 19 Labour councillors.
And in Sandwell, the story was oddly similar.
Why did Slough voters change direction in 2023?
So, what happened in Slough in 2023? There was much speculation on social media mostly unsubstantiated by facts, ranging from the notion that Asians were more likely to vote for the Tories now that the party had an Asian PM, to the idea that people here were just a bit stupid.
The reality is that this year’s local election was all about local issues. Slough had had a Labour led administration for 15 years and in recent years various problems had emerged.
In 2021, a failed audit of the annual accounts revealed debts of £56m.
This led to the council issuing a Section 114 notice which restricted its spending to essential services.
During subsequent investigations, the debt levels discovered increased massively to £760m.
To try and reduce this debt, various changes were made by the council, which the town’s residents were not happy with.
First, residents learned that they would have to pay £50 p/a for their garden waste to be removed (previously a free service).
Then, charges were introduced at the civic amenity site for residents wanting to dispose of household waste there.
And it was announced that bin collections would switch from weekly to fortnightly.
For many residents, their frustration came to a head when the council tax went up by 9.99% during the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.
This was only possible due to special permission granted by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities.
Nationally there was a council tax rise cap of 4.99%, and a local referendum should have been required for any increases above this.
The government allowed this requirement to be bypassed by Slough, along with Thurrock (Con) and Croydon (Lab).
All this (along with other longer running local issues such as frustration with bus lanes and the decline of the town centre) drove a set of election results that bucked the national trend.
One final factor contributed to the scale of the swing in the results was that as another cost saving measure, the council switched to all up elections every 4 years with 2 member wards, rather than the previous system of elections by thirds every year with one fallow year in a four-year cycle.
With the old system and Labour’s level of dominance on the council, it was highly almost impossible for a single year of bad results to swing things for another party. This year though, three was everything to play for and all parties knew this.
The 2023 Slough local election results
The results of an all up local election on 4th May 2023 meant that Labour lost control of the council, with its seat count 50% of what it was before the election.
Conservative: 21 (+16)
Labour: 18 (-18)
Lid Dem: 3 (+3)
Independents: 0 (-1)
The town went into the election with a council dominated by Labour, much as it had been for as long as most people could remember, give or take a few seats nibbled off occasionally by other parties at the edges.
The Conservatives took 21 seats (out of 42), giving them a 50% share, but leaving the council just in No Overall Control (50% + 1 is needed to control a council).
When any party dominates a council and is perceived to have made mistakes, the electorate is likely to turn on them once they realise what is going on (which sometimes longer to happen than political activists who are closer to the coal face than the general public realise).
In 2019 in Windsor and Maidenhead, voters turned away from a failing Tory administration.
In 2023 in Slough, they turned away from a failing Labour administration.
There has been a thought circulating nationally for some time amongst progressive parties — that under FPTP people should strategically vote for whichever party is best placed to remove the Conservative run government from power — AKA Get the Tories Out.
In the same way, many people locally just wanted to get Labour out. Like I said earlier, Slough doesn’t always follow the national trend.
Notwithstanding this though, I believe that the town itself still remains staunchly Labour (for now).
The MP is popular and took a big vote share in 2019.
So many times on social media, I read variations of “vote anything but Labour in the locals, vote Labour in the nationals”.
The public is capable of holding a more nuanced view on politics than the media perhaps credits them with. As an aside. perhaps we would even be capable of ranking parties in order — of adopting a system where every vote would count. It’s not that difficult…
Taking back control (from the Commissioners)
There is one further point that is important to understand here. The scale of the financial issues facing Slough Council meant that the government appointed Commissioners to oversee the processes of getting the town’s finances back on track.
The commissioners took away some of the normal financial decision making from the elected councillors, with a scope that would vary depending on how much progress was being made.
Whilst they were there (their term is due to end in November 2024 if things stay on track), the democratically elected councillors still didn’t have the same level of control over financial decision making in the town as most other councils might expect to have.
Questions were also raised as recently as March this year by the Commissioners about the viability of Slough as a Unitary Authority in its current form without “a fundamental shift in the attitude and behaviour of the council and its leadership”.
An example where this has already happened before, is Northamptonshire County Council, which was effectively dissolved and reformed into two new unitary authorities in 2021 following financial collapse in 2018.
Could an all party joint administration work?
In our 2023 manifesto, based on the extent of the financial crisis facing the council, we called for all parties to work together as a joint administration until the town’s financial issues were resolved.
With input from those better experienced than us in the details of Local Government affairs, we worked it up into a more detailed draft proposal for all party cooperation, which was issued to the leaders of both main parties and publicised by local media.
We proposed to start with consensus building exercises, looking at what policies we hoped all parties would be able to support jointly.
I spoke with the council’s chief executive and he offered further advice about what might make this proposal work.
I met jointly with the council group leaders from both Labour and the Conservatives and despite the narratives some may which to push, both listened in detail to our plans, engaged with them and took the ideas seriously in the days that followed.
Nobody wanted a coalition
Interestingly, one of the first things that we could all agree on was that we didn’t like the idea of a formal coalition.
Nobody is more anti-coalitions than the Lib Dems post 2010, but neither of the other parties were that comfortable with the idea either.
Not only would it be a hard sell to their own members, but it would likely be vetoed by their regional or national parties.
Some form of looser agreement was what was required.
Neither of the main parties explicitly rejected this plan, but it became clear from our first meeting, that whilst we might be able to work with either party, the possibilities of them working with each other were tiny. There was too much bad history between them.
Despite a lack of clear progress, we made a second attempt at moving our initial proposal forward, expanding initial list of consensus building measures after examining the manifestos of all parties to see where we might find common ground.
Both parties engaged in detail with this process, but we could still see no way they could work together (and I don’t think either side would dispute this fact), but time was running out, with the council’s AGM scheduled for a few days later.
We re-evaluated our options, listened to the input we received from residents, both during the election campaign and in response to our earlier cooperation proposals.
People wanted change, but they also wanted stuff to be dealt with sensibly. Pragmatism not idealism.
In assessing the opinions of the voters, we did not just look at the election outcomes, but also at the percentages of vote share for each party, just to confirm that the First Past the Post system had not produced the sort of distorted results it is infamous for (it hadn’t).
Finding an alternative
What were our choices at this stage?
We could align with Labour, but that would leave the council as a 50:50 split, meaning almost every vote would be deadlocked.
This wouldn’t be the best approach to reassure the Commissioners that things were moving forward smoothly.
And nor do I think it would be what voters wanted.
People pay their TV license to watch EastEnders. When they pay their council tax, they are expecting smoothly running local services, not more drama to read about second hand in the local press.
We could have taken a position of independent constructive opposition — while perhaps better than the last option, it still wouldn’t have done much to re-assure the Commissioners that things were going to get back on track in a sensible timescale.
The makings of an agreement?
Then the Conservatives presented us with a draft for a bilateral deal between our two parties.
When I read through it, I could see that while there were good intentions behind it, there were bits that would make it utterly unpalatable to our party, both locally and nationally.
I explained to their leadership our multifarious concerns and the issues we would face selling this to our own party. We should not forget though that our negotiating partners were likely considering similar internal challenges too.
We did not want to accept such a deal, but we had to also consider what was in the best interests of the town. After seeing the level of discomfort with the deal from our party exec, I led an exercise where we looked at how it could be improved, to the extent we might accept it.
Getting an agreement that worked for us
We removed sections which we felt we felt would be seen as nothing more than inflammatory attacks on the previous Labour administration. Now was not the time for pragmatic governance, not electioneering (let’s hope they remember this before attacking us for what we did).
We added measures to protect ourselves as a party. We wanted to ensure we did not end up in a position where we would be forced to support something that went against Liberal Democrat values, or our own manifesto pledges.
We made clear that the deal was a cooperation agreement, not a coalition. We were not accepting cabinet roles, but were supporting the party with the largest vote share, in order to ensure a smooth-running council.
The deal is about giving stability to the council during the period of the Commissioners’ presence, ending at the first convenient administrative break point after they are currently due to leave. It runs for two years, not the full 4-year council term.
It is about getting the town back into the full control of its council as swiftly as possible and ensuring the continued viability of Slough as a Unitary Authority.
After that time, we will review our options — a lot can change in two years.
Once we heard that our amendments had been agreed to, time was running out and there began a frantic period, during which we sought feedback from our regional party on it, together with assembling items for a joint press release.
During this time, I was contacted by the leader of the Labour group who (through her attention to detail) had worked out what was going on. I briefed them on our decision and shared with them the final text of the agreement, in advance of its details being released to the media.
At every stage, we have tried to be as open as possible with all stakeholders — this is not some sort of “grubby backroom deal”, but a single page that sets out our ongoing operational relationship in the council over the next two years.
We are happy to share it within any who needs to see it, so that they can understand exactly what has or hasn’t been agreed to — and don’t feel a need to misrepresent it.
Are we now the only Lib Dem local council group in England in an agreement to support the Tories?
It’s a situation pretty unique in the country — as I understand it, Slough is currently the only instance where a Lib Dem council group is operating to formally support a Conservative led council.
This represents the unique circumstances of Slough after the 2023 local elections.
Our original all-party solution was far and away our first choice — but when it proved to not be viable, we had to consider other options — and enter into a deal that not that not long before, many of us could not have imagined doing.
I would like to thank all parties involved in the discussions that got us here — and in particular to congratulate Slough Labour on having already achieved one of our consensus building goals, but not being able to reveal it at the time under the election purdah rules.
At the end of the day, I want people to judge us in four years’ time on what we have achieved, rather than to attack us with cheap soundbites that we’ve heard hundreds of times before, like “coalition of chaos” and “vote Lib Dem get Tory”.
We need to move forward from tribal politics — think about what our voters really want and how this can best be achieved in the circumstances. This was a time for political pragmatism, not idealism.
Thank you to everyone who voted for us. Thank you to everyone from inside and outside Slough who engaged with the process that led us here and thank you to our new councillors who will be the ones who take over the baton of responsibility from this point forwards.
Is what we ended up with perfect? No.
Does it keep everyone happy? Again no.
Is it a sensible solution for the town at this point in time though? Yes.
Did the Lib Dems just do what they always (supposedly) do (but in reality rarely do)?
There will be some people who even after reading all this (or claiming to) will still fall back on the idea that Lib Dems will regularly fall into line and support the Conservatives given the slightest opportunity.
I would suggest that these people maybe look at my background, about what I have said and written about their party in the past. Go back through my old twitter posts and you will see that I have frequently criticised the actions of their party on everything from taxation to migrant rights to Europe. I founded the Slough for Europe campaign to try to reverse Brexit.
Locally our party spent huge amounts of time deliberating over the options. It was far from an easy decision for us to reach.
I still believe that the Conservative led austerity programme was the wrong solution to the problem. Not only that, but its cuts in Local Authority funding have directly contributed to a recent increase in the quantity of councils becoming insolvent. Nationally they are one of the root causes of the problems that led to them winning locally over a party that campaigns nationally to reduce these problems. Politics can sometimes produce outcomes that you don’t expect.
At the same time though, I’ve always been wary of being too tribal. Never be too willing to dunk on a good idea just because it comes from a party you don’t like. Attack the ideas, not the people. For many problems there are pragmatic solutions and sometimes it means having to align with people who are not your natural allies.
Set aside disagreements from the past and talk to people in good faith. Often, they will be more willing to listen to your concerns than you imagine.
At the same time though, always remain on guard for traps that are being laid. Some may be unavoidable, but at least you will be prepared for them.
At every stage in the above process, I tried to put myself in the heads of the other negotiating parties and their activists. How might they react, how might they portray what was being said and done in their campaign literature, how might we mitigate against this.
Final thoughts — try to make a difference
Following any set of local elections, there will have been negotiations like this going on between different parties across the country. Often between people who were barely on speaking terms with one another beforehand.
Nationally a hung parliament is seen as a major thing, producing many and varied opinions. At a local level though, rebranded as No Overall Control it is common and, in every instance, unique solutions have to be found. Different forms of alliances are made, or in some cases a party governs as a minority.
Take enough people and in any group, there will be bad faith actors out there. Local politics has its fair share. On the other hand, most do genuinely want to improve the place that they live, they just have different ideas of what is the best way to achieve this. Behind each councillor paid a (small for the workload the job entails) allowance, there is an army of unpaid volunteers.
Most of the people you meet (from all parties) are decent people. Engage with them rather than attacking. Try and understand things from their point of view (even though you may disagree with it). Think about what you would do to make your local area a better place for everyone who lives there. Think about simple ways that you could engage with things and feel more in control, whether it is making sensible comments on Planning Applications (Rants on social media remain unseen by the Planners) or reporting pot-holes and fly tipping. This may all seem like boring stuff, but it has the potential to make a big difference to the world around you. Make the most of the tools available to you.
Local government never gets the attention that national government does — but day to day, the effects of it are much more noticeable to most people. Sadly, the turnouts at local elections (especially in Slough) are incredibly low. If Did Not Vote was a party, they would have won every seat.
Take the opportunities given to you to make a difference — and use them wisely.