As the results of the UK local elections are almost entirely called, what might an Alternative political perspective on the outcome be? Inevitably, the mainstream reporting of a contest of representatives is entirely party-political – wins and losses of one tribe against another. So is there a ‘bigger picture’ view that all sides might acknowledge as broadly speaking true?

Firstly, for those who didn’t participate – particularly our global readers – this was not a ‘national election’, although it was close to one in size. Usually local elections are staggered, meaning city or town councils face elections in different years. However, because of pandemic delays, this year (May 6th) saw the largest number of polls that could be conducted outside of a national general election.

“Super Thursday” saw contests take place for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd, 143 English councils, 13 city or city-region mayors, 39 police and crime commissioners, a Greater London Assembly, and the election of a Westminster MP for Hartlepool. Effectively, 50 (out of 66) million people were invited to vote.

The turnout for these sub-UK elections are usually low – just over one in three registered voters took part in the elections in 2018, which dropped to one in four in many areas. This year’s turnout was 41.04% - a significant hike – and quite likely to have been affected by the political narratives across these islands. Hartlepool was the lowest turnout in 2019 with 24.2%. It doubled to 47% this year, and brought with it a result where a Conservative candidate triumphed over Labour for the first time in 50 years.

While local elections, in theory, are about which councillors you wish to represent you in your town or city, this election was always likely to be a reflection on how the national parties have done over Brexit and Covid. Despite the record number of deaths per head of population making headlines in the middle months of 2020, there is a general recognition that the NHS’s rapid roll out of vaccines in the UK will have benefited the Conservative party less than a year later.

There were a number of other party-political dynamics being played out across the country. The first was the obligation, since the last General Election in 2019, for the Conservative party to make good its promise to what is called the Red Wall – mostly Northern voters that chose Tory for the first time to “get Brexit done”.

Johnson’s promise to move swiftly from “jabs, jabs, jabs to jobs, jobs, jobs” was part of a ‘levelling up programme’ aimed directly at them. With an 80-seat majority in Westminster, this government has been thus emboldened to borrow liberally from the manifestoes of others, with strong interventions from the state and the linking of growth to the Green economy. This has left the opposition with little to fight against – or for. See this pre-election piece from the victorious Ben Houchen, Mayor of Tees Valley, on the likely success of such a suite of promises.

Even so, there was a clear political undertow, evidenced by the movement and momentum of ‘independents’ of many stripes, at a number of levels. This was most obvious in Scotland and Wales where strong national self-determination movements, with different levels of militancy, wanted either to break up (Scotland) or demand profound reforms (Wales) to the Union.

Some local winners for a different kind of politics

Secondly, a number of cities were electing mayors who (at least in wider city-regions) have strong convening and pace-setting powers. And thirdly, there was a continuing wave of independent candidates in towns and parishes, covered substantially on the Daily Alternative, where individuals and groups stood outside of the party-political divide, trying to bring a new way of working at the local level.

These showed a different set of outcomes. Scotland won a majority for a second independence referendum, supporting the indy option, through the combined numbers of SNP and Scottish Green MSPs. Wales’s party of independence, Plaid Cyrmu, did less well, but the Welsh Labour Party has benefited from their confident national leadership of the pandemic response (in a similar way to the SNP).

At the local level in the UK, it’s harder to read: independents stand for widely varying policies, and many of them disillusioned party political leaders themselves. One might say however that, broadly, this body of political actors serve as a growing challenge to the Conservative party political hegemony.

Most interesting to us were the group of Independent councillors who emerged specifically from the Flatpack Democracy school of activism (we have profiled them regularly and recently). Our interest isn’t because, like the UK Independence Party in 2013, there was a sudden rush of wins orchestrated by a strong leader from the front. It’s because the ambition of each of the candidates to do politics differently, with full participation of local citizens, was well developed and often radical.

Take Bude-Stratton Town Council, where all 18 seats were up for grabs. A body called the Bude-Stratton Community Alliance (not a political party) stood candidates in 17 seats, based on a set of beliefs, values and ways of working that promised to overturn the kind of dysfunctional practice that made Jackie Weaver and Handforth District Council famous earlier this year. Thse values included Independence, Integrity, Positivity, Creativity and Respect. Amongst the beliefs were: “meeting the needs of future generations will be accorded equal importance to those of the current generation”.

They won 11 seats and now have control of the council. Similar achievements in Bexhill-on-Sea and Hexham set new standards for council engagement with local communities. These are bound to influence broader council practice.

For this editorial, we spoke to Peter Macfadyen, author of Flatpack Democracy 1 and 2 whose team had supported 36 council bids, some as individuals or small groups in alliance with others who shared values. And some – like Bude - with a big enough group to attempt a take-over of the council.

Peter described how huge and varied the contexts were that framed these challenges to the local-government status quo. Some had largely passive long-standing incumbents, some had small coalitions already in place, others were ready to partner with the Flatpackers to make a change. But they all had in common the Flatpack “way” - meaning their values and ways of working, as well as a commitment to tackling the climate emergency at the local level.

“We’ve made some great gains and progress across the country, but it’s early days for the revolution to take hold”, said Peter. “There are 10,000 councils and the vision of transformation is not yet achievable, but the ones we focused on have mostly succeeded.”

Some of the key Flatpack contenders for local elections 2021

“There were some notable results – like Sam Davies in Cambridgeshire, who one of our local election historians described as achieving possibly ‘the most spectacular result for any Cambridge City Council candidate in 50 years’”, continued Peter. “And there were some shifts in dynamics. For example around us there are now four independent/Green towns collaborating – Shepton, Frome Wells and Glastonbury” (see our blog on the Green advance).

“Those towns that have settled into the new ways of working have found they have surprising power to affect change. In Buckfastleigh for example, Councillor Pam Barrett was able to raise an extra 98% extra for her budget and respond meaningfully to the wishes of the community during Covid.”

Peter concluded: “Much of this activity sits below the radar of Westminster – the information is not collected centrally and you have to do your own Excel sheets to bring it together. But it’s there. It’s more like mycelial power, growing networks of roots to help communities become more resilient in the future.”

Little platoons, radical mayors and waves of independence

We may find in the coming year that Conservatives will try to promote – and therefore own - the growth of grassroots community self-organising, reflecting their own long-standing ideology of self-reliance. David Skelton’s 2019 book Little Platoons revives the Burkeian philosophy of family, community and character as the routes to a healthy polity – and may explain the strong history of Conservative run councils, all over England. (ref).

At the same time, a national structure that begins to devolve responsibility to the local communities needs to be carefully monitored. As we highlighted in our 2020 work with the Local Trust during Covid, it’s only too easy for governments to start to offload their care responsibilities onto capacious voluntary organisations, while continuing to spend their council budgets on national-party priorities or vanity projects. Or supporting incoming housing projects with no decision-making from local residents.

There’s a difference between a Downton-Abbey-like hierarchy, in which everyone has their allotted space in which to act – but in which social mobility is hard – and the genuinely bottom up transformation of society. But clarifying and asserting that difference has never been more difficult. While some Labour councils have a strong ideology about a wider distribution of power, others prefer to keep the citizens at bay, opting to make decisions along party lines rather than in consultation with the community.

And a few are really trying to break the mould: for example Preston City Council ( aka The Preston Model) focuses ever more on building community wealth and co-operative infrastructure. Their plans to build a worker co-op for taxis, a publicly-owned cinema and a council-run bank led to them retaining all ten Labour seats this time.

The same might be said of the growing strength of the devolved municipalities lead by progressive Mayors. However unless there are concrete plans to develop cross-community decision making, there is always a danger these Mayors will lazily replicate the problems at Westminster. They could be captured in debates around a One Nation narrative that distracts attention and focus from local transformations.

The way our national media has reported these results have been consistent with the party-political culture – joy joy joy for the Conservatives, gloom and doom for the Labour party. However, as we have described above, the shifting power dynamic is more interesting than that and can encourage those who seek a society and culture of more autonomy, at all levels.

All eyes will be on Scotland over the next year to see how they manage the 50/50 split in the electorate and the polls around the question of independence. Who know:s if the Indys can go deeper with community engagement and a culture of self-organising, they might find themselves appealing to both swing progressives and disillusioned conservatives!

Alternative Editorial: Shifting Dynamics