Conservatives lose control of their last borough council in Surrey
As the BBC reports:
Surrey’s last district and borough council with a Conservative majority has gone to no overall control.
Reigate & Banstead Borough Council, one of 11 lower tier councils in Surrey, had a Conservative majority of one after 2023’s local elections.
But with Councillor Zelanie Cooper, who represents Lower Kingswood, Tadworth and Walton, stepping away from the Conservatives, the council is left without a majority party…
Surrey County Council still has a Conservative majority and all 11 Members of Parliament for Surrey represent the Conservative Party.
“Currently” should perhaps be added before “represent” given the fears in the Conservative Party, and hope outside the Conservative Party, over the fate of seats such as Godalming and Ash, where Jeremy Hunt will be standing.
This does also raise the question about whether the Conservative Party is worry rather too much about people like Lee Anderson and not nearly enough about places like Surrey. At the moment, the government is chasing after support from a shrinking base. That worked in 2019 but how will it look if it fails at the next general election?
Or as I wrote in The Week in Polls:
How curious it is that – at least observed from the outside – so little of the debates in the Conservative Party over how to appeal to voters are over how to appeal to women, to young people or to Londoners.
Which is why my hunch is that the next Conservative Party leader to win power from opposition will do so by putting together a rather different voting coalition from the one the party’s current incarnation is trying to assemble to stay in power at the general election coming this year.
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I’m hoping that the phrase ‘the next Concervative Government’ will be consigned to history by the introduction of PR. The result of that will be that the different factions will form separate parties, one of which might carry the current name, but none of which will be big enough to govern on their own. Up to now they have always had a coalition of factions masquerading is a ‘strong’ party, relying on internal discipline to retain control. In future, to achieve government, they will need an open and honest coalition, whose individuals will be honestly and fairly elected by the electorate, who will expect to be represented..
The next Government must introduce PR for English Local Elections & UK General Elections else we will be consigned to suffering the Tories dominating both in perpetuity. An anti-Tory alliance must introduce this. Labour must sign up to this & not renege on their promises like they did after the 1997 General Election! Tony Blair did the dirty to Paddy Ashdown because the unions were against PR. Hopefully, things have changed!