John Oxley: A bruising night may help renew the Conservatives local government offering

John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.

Few in the Conservative Party will be relishing the thought of the local elections. With just over a month to go, our prospects in the contests look bleak. The party has never gone into a set of locals with such a poor national polling position. The rise of Reform also means we are likely to face challenges in areas where we were previously strong. Though the electoral geography this time leaves Labour more exposed overall, few positives are likely to come from the night.  

When talking about these shifts, we tend to focus on the shockwaves the results will send through Westminster. Commentators question how much jitteriness it will impart on MPs who see their local council fall away. Whether it will tempt more into defections or trigger another round of party regicide. But there is another question, less dramatic, more fundamental, that these elections ought to prompt – about what Conservatives are here to offer at the local level.  

Defeat in the 2024 election required an examination of where the party stands and how it relates to the challenges and voters in the current national political landscape. Our subsequent challenges in local politics should prompt the same sort of thinking about how we wield power where it most directly touches voters.  When it comes to delivering services, fostering communities, and making a difference that people see, the question is not just about how the party wins back power, but what it does with it.  

Localism, after all, should be close to the heart of the Conservative Party. Our suspicion of big government ought to incline us toward placing power in the hands of those who understand their areas best, the people who actually live in them. We should celebrate a government that is local, accessible, and human in scale. And local institutions should be central to any serious conservative vision of how the country works, the little platoons of boroughs and counties, trusted to know their ground, doing what distant Whitehall cannot. 

The reality of local government in 2026 makes that vision harder to sustain than it should be. The decades-long failure to address social care has left most councils unable to do much else. Local authorities are crushed under the burden of these obligations and funding shortfalls.  Even the most prudently run councils are struggling, and many are close to insolvency. Everything else that councils do, the small civic institutions that give communities their texture, seems unsustainable.  

This is a particular problem for the right. The traditional offering of local Conservatives has been fiscal prudence – less spending, and lower bills. That has now been pushed to the limit. Many of our councils have done well in adapting to constrained times and have found new efficiencies and savings they can pass on to the taxpayer. Now there is little fat to trim. Even Reform councils that replaced us have been forced to admit this, arriving with grand plans of cutting waste and instead colliding with fiscal reality.  

The other canard of local government campaigning, opposing development, has also now come to haunt the party. The instinct and the electoral calculus behind blocking housing were understandable, but their cumulative effects have exacerbated a national crisis. The shortage of homes falls hardest on the young, and in courting the settled, propertied voter, local conservatism has too often had little to say to anyone else. There is a deeper irony too: in resisting development, councils have sometimes prevented the very renewal that would keep their communities vibrant.  

These pressures have arrived alongside new political challenges rather than in spite of them. Reform has taken the most seats, but the Lib Dems and Greens have made gains too, in very different kinds of places, for very different reasons. The breadth of that squeeze suggests something more than a temporary unpopularity. The same offer, made in the same way, is unlikely to be enough, whether the goal is to win back councils or to give conservative local government a renewed sense of purpose. 

The Conservatives need a proper vision of what modern local governance looks and feels like. This should go beyond simply keeping council tax rates down and NIMBYism. Fiscal prudence is part of it, as is responsible development. But it should also be about delivering effective and responsive services, facilitating cohesive communities, civic trust and stewardship. In short, pushing towards councils that are truly Tory.  

This also requires a better conception of the relations between local and central government. When in power in Westminster, Tories have tended to be jealous guardians of power. We’ve favoured centralisation, lest loony Labour councils run away with it. Ultimately, we should be more comfortable with this risk, letting local voters decide who to trust. Equally, we should engage seriously with Rachel Reeves’ plans for greater fiscal devolution. Incentivising local authorities by allowing them to keep more of the proceeds of growth changes the dynamics of development, giving communities a clearer path to share in the upside as well as the costs.  

The local election results will captivate Westminster for a few days, but whoever wins may wield power for years. The actual business of governing our localities is forgotten, as are its challenges and impacts. For associations facing elections, the next six weeks will be a hard slog, and many of the results will be disappointing. But they may also offer an opportunity for renewal, re-examining what the Conservatives offer, and making our case in more volatile electoral politics. The night itself matters less than what the party does with it, and whether it advances our understanding of what Conservative local governance can offer.  

While this election season may be bruising, there is, nonetheless, reason for optimism. Reform’s polling is declining, and where they have won local power, they have proven unimpressive. Their gains last year have been dogged by scandal, infighting, and failure to deliver on many of their proposals. The insurgent offer is already looking tarnished, and the Conservatives can maintain their position as the serious party of the right. That creates a genuine opportunity, but only for a party that has done the harder thinking about what it believes, what it will build, and what kind of local government it wants to be trusted with.  

The Conservatives have a long and proud history in local government. It should be central to what drives us: the Toryism of local communities and networks, of prudent stewardship and genuine civic belonging. That tradition is worth recovering, not merely because it wins votes, but because it reflects something true about what the party is for. It also means regaining our sense of how, at all levels, we use politics to make things better. The local elections will come and go. The question of what conservatism is for, in the places where people live, will remain. It deserves a serious answer.