Election results were a message to Government

David Taylor-Gooby

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THE results have been declared for the local government elections.

The Labour and Conservative parties are licking their wounds and wondering what they need to do next. But I want to draw some wider conclusions from these results.

It certainly was a wipe-out for Labour in County Durham. I can remember when Labour had a large majority on the county council, and people made remarks about “weighing” rather than counting the votes, and if you put up a donkey with a red rosette he would win.

Not so now. Labour is down to four seats, Reform has an absolute majority with 65 seats. Hard to believe.

I live in County Durham, and both the newspaper and the BBC have visited Peterlee, where I live, to find out why this happened. All the answers were about the present government’s performance, and how it did not seem to understand a deprived area like County Durham with measures like withdrawing the winter fuel payments. It was not the actual financial loss of taking away the benefit (there was also a substantial increase in the old age pension) but what it symbolised: Not caring about the less well off.

None of the answers were about the performance of the council or individual councillors. People were treating the whole exercise as a massive public opinion poll about the Government.