Election blues + red, green, gold, and turquoise

One can read too much into local election results, of course, but Labour leaders’ response to their electoral pounding suggests that, like the Bourbons, “they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing”.

Keir Starmer will cling to power as long as he can, helped by Labour supporters who believe he should stay until Andy Burnham can secure a route to the Commons. But Sir Keir’s response – private acknowledgment that Labour has been too technocratic -suggests he’s far from realising his attempt to reposition Labour as a centre-right, neoliberal party has left its supporters cold.

Bringing back Gordon Brown to sprinkle New Labour glitter is symptomatic. Brown and Blair began that tack to the right and initiated, from 2001, the Treasury’s 25-year onslaught on our planning system which party leaders still pursue, Tufton Street lobbyists having successfully spread the lie that planning explains builders’ reluctance to build fantasy numbers of houses.

Angela Rayner’s lengthy tweet urging “going further on planning reforms” and building roads and her bizarre claim there has been a social housing building boom make it abundantly clear the Starmer government really has become what she fears – “a party of the well-off, not working people”.

So what of the opposition? Kemi Badenoch claimed her party did well by winning a few London seats, despite losing a third of the councillors who stood elsewhere. It still has much to learn from the Johnson and Truss years – including its part in eroding our planning and public services.

The Greens and LibDems at least made token noises about protecting nature, but although both made gains, neither achieved the hoped-for breakthrough. Plaid Cymru seized the Welsh Assembly and the SNP held the Scottish Parliament; hopefully the public transport progress in both countries can continue.

Which brings me to Reform UK, the election’s big winners. Candidates around the country made welcome noises about protecting the countryside from development and solar farms, but are now discovering (like previously elected colleagues elsewhere) that Whitehall has trashed the planning system and local government finance and they must now manage councils’ huge responsibilities despite functional bankruptcy.

Reform has too many extremists who make it kryptonite to other parties with whom it might like to work. Like Labour, it also suffers from a leadership besotted with wealth. It also has a Treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick, who tried to reduce the planning system in England to smouldering ruins in his 2020 planning white paper.

They’re things newly elected Reform councillors will need to address urgently if they seriously hope to protect our land.

Jon Reeds