COMMENTARY: ‘FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS THE COUNCIL WILL BE AN ENTIRELY FUTILE EXERCISE IN LIBDEM SELF-CONGRATULATION,’ SAYS REFORM CANDIDATE
Dr Alex Starling has lived in the borough since 2010. He is the Acting Chair of the Richmond & Twickenham Branch of Reform UK and was a candidate in Heathfield ward in last week’s local elections.
Here he provides a personal commentary on the outcome and possible repercussions of last week’s ‘one party’ result for the Liberal Democrats.
Reform UK is now unrecognisable from the ramshackle party I first represented back in July 2024 as the parliamentary candidate for Twickenham.
The results in last week’s local elections speak for themselves – cry as the left might, voters across much of the country do not seem to care much for left-wing virtue-signalling nonsense any more. Even London – in many ways less representative than ever of the country – now has its first Reform-controlled council, with a smattering of councillors getting elected across the metropolis.
Except, of course, in my home borough, leafy Richmond-upon-Thames, which achieved the unusual – if not entirely unprecedented – feat of electing an entirely monochrome slate of councillors.
Every single one of the politicians elected on 7 May is a Liberal Democrat, and for the next four years the Council will be an entirely futile exercise in LibDem self-congratulation – paid for by your Council Tax, of course, which will most likely go up by the maximum possible increment every year.
Going forward you will, no doubt, be able to continue to check in on how the council is doing in getting people to stop smoking, one of about a hundred council ‘key’ (ho hum) performance indicators, none of which seem to be in any way connected to achieving value for money spent.
The cradle-to-the-grave carping and virtue signalling will continue, as will the war on motorists; the so-called climate crisis will be used to justify further restrictions and there will be continued pretence (here in Barnes at least), that digging new wetland mosquito breeding grounds – at eye-watering expense – will somehow provide ‘flood resilience’.
It’s democracy, Jim, but not as we know it: the 54 Liberal Democrat Councillors will now be paid a salary for the next four years to further ingratiate themselves with their electorate, with absolutely no incentive whatsoever to curb their spending habit.
Any upstart de facto opposition will have to come from the equivalent of the back benches, ordinary people like you and me giving up our family evenings to secure a three-minute speaking slot in staged Council ‘debates’, perhaps taking the lead from citizen journalists such as Richmond Council Watch who meticulously shone a light on the Liberal Democrats’ murky Pensford Field controversy.
Superficially, the outcome of last week’s local vote implies that the good burghers of this borough seem more interested in Reformer pilates than in political Reform.
But perhaps therein lies the clue to the Richmond conundrum – historically, great wealth has often led to a disconnection with reality (“let them eat cake!”), enabling those with agency to hold on to economically suicidal views for longer than those who are precariously clinging on to family life as inflationary policies push them ever closer to the poverty line.
Dig a little deeper, and Reform appealed – even amidst the yellow landslide – to a broad swathe of voters. Reform came a credible second place in all of its target wards in this local election, and the leading candidates are themselves from all walks of life, covering a spectrum of political backgrounds that underpin its broad appeal.
This is how it is done, painstakingly building up a genuine counter to the top-down propaganda from the ruling hegemon. This amateur politician has been joined by a broad church of volunteers, activists, professionals, youngsters and retirees – a growing group of enthusiasts who will, I suspect, form the core of what will become a successful branch that will hold its Council to account.
The seeds of such a sea change were evident in the atmosphere at last week’s Count, which was very different from the left-wing jamboree back in 2024.
The Lib Dems swept the board, but enthusiasm was muted; Labour – cock-a-hoop two years ago – was down, out and dejected, and the Conservatives were just as unsuccessful as everyone else. And spare a thought for the Greens, nurtured by the Liberal Democrats for four years of kayfabe ‘opposition’ only to be unceremoniously and ruthlessly eviscerated by their former Council colleagues.
As for next time?
The pertinent truth here is that all of the mainstream parties have been complicit in selling the electorate a false prospectus, and have done so with brazen disregard for the consequences. Exhibit one is the fanciful idea the unreliable and intermittent sources of energy (what we could refer to as a “futility”) can provide the backbone of a reliable and cost-effective electricity supply (i.e. what we have traditionally known and referred to as a “utility”). The Liberal Democrats are a core part of the uniparty consensus on this matter and will ultimately be answerable to the electorate.
If Reform is able to continue to demonstrate competence and convince voters that they are a genuine alternative, then there is no reason why it should not enjoy electoral success in what is – currently at least – a Liberal Democrat heartland.