Reform needs the Tories - but it's just annihilated them

T is, as yet, too soon to say who will end up running Cornwall Council in the wake of last week's elections.

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Newcomer Reform UK has the most seats of any individual party or group, with 28, but that's nowhere near the 44 required to form a viable administration and so far none of the other parties has said it's prepared to work with Reform: the opposite, in fact.

Reform UK has complained it would be undemocratic for the largest party to be excluded from power but politics, as has been said many times, is the art of the possible; votes are cast on principle (often on the principle that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend") but, where principles conflict with practicality, then practicality usually wins in the end, which may mean a coalition in which Reform is not welcome.