Peter Bedford: In Leicestershire, the Conservatives will be a constructive opposition – holding Reform UK to account

Peter Bedford is the MP for Mid Leicestershire

After 24 years of continuous administration, Thursday saw Leicestershire County Council fall from Conservative control to a minority Reform UK Council. Having served as a County Councillor for eight years, from 2017-2025, before ‘retiring’ to focus on my parliamentary duties, the result was a particularly sad moment for me personally.

The issues driving this change, far from being local matters, stemmed from widespread disillusionment from voters with the political class and established political parties.

Having canvassed thousands of households since January, seldom did residents mention: Adult Social Care, Children’s Service, or even Council Tax. What they did mention, in spades, was the lack of action from the main political parties on immigration and its impact on local services.

On polling day I visited a dozen polling stations, within my Mid Leicestershire constituency, and whilst many voters gleefully smiled and raised their thumbs at those local councillors they have known for so many years; there was also a set of voters audibly angry about the state of our border security and the lack of action to protect our citizens. “REFORM!” some shouted, “Stop the boats!” others cried.

The disconnect between the liberal establishment at the centre from Labour, Conservatives, and the Civil Service; and the eminently reasonable demands of ordinary folk in wanting to have robust border security for the sake of themselves, their families, and their communities, drove the most dramatic backlash against the ‘establishment’ that we have ever seen at a national level (Brexit aside of course!).

The main political parties, including our own, need to wake up to the fact that voters are crying out for solutions to problems like uncontrolled immigration, and that excuses, be they legal, or because of international-treaty obligations, will not cut the mustard.

We need to be brave and challenge the liberal orthodoxy: putting British interests first will require us to absolve ourselves of historic treaty obligations on refugees – and refuse to allow the boats to even enter British Sovereign waters. After all, the French Republic is a safe country; the French know it, the UK government knows it, and most importantly the British public know it. Excuse after excuse is fanning the flames of Reform’s rise – which looks set to continue until the next General Election if not dealt with.

Across Leicestershire, seat after seat, long since assumed to be reliably ‘safe’ Conservative bastions, fell as voters turned out to, essentially, vote for “none of the above”.

Whilst my own campaigning was very much limited to my side of the county: in the middle and north; there is no denying that seats with active local candidates willing to knock on doors, write pledge letters, and ‘get out the vote’ on the day faired better than those who stuck to more traditional campaigning of shoving the odd leaflet out twice during the campaign. If we are to recover we need to smarten local campaigning to be more data-driven, social media savvy, and reactive to the issues that animate voters enough to ‘turn out’.

In my own constituency we ran a very effective campaign to “stop the city takeover” in response to the Labour City Mayor submitting plans to take in swathes of the county into the city authority area. This campaign motivated our base to turn out and overall we saw a 38 per cent share of the vote constituency-wide, up from the general election, and a 6pt lead over Reform. This tailored local campaign, although not enough to dissipate the Reform tide, ensured that we held four of the seven Conservative seats in play; and brought us within 150 votes of retaining all seven.

So what next?

Reform UK secured 25 of the 55 seats up for grabs and will now form a minority Administration. The Conservatives having secured 15 seats to the Lib Dem’s 11, and Labour’s two will form the Official Opposition. Whilst Reform’s victory was very much secured from their national campaign of stopping the boats they made it clear that they would: fix all potholes, freeze council tax, and scrap EDI roles.

It will be the job of local Conservatives to hold them to account for their performance against these metrics. Our aim is to be an effective, and constructive, opposition that holds this untested group to account for delivering local services; and to call them out when they fail to deliver on such high expectations.