By Andy Ford
The County Council elections in Lancashire back in May showed a huge collapse in both Labour and Conservative support, and a massive win for Reform. They went from 2 seats to 53, out of a total of 84 single-member seats (or divisions), which gave them control of the County Council.
Lancashire is a bit of a mosaic, with many different areas – it has the cities of Lancaster and Preston; the retirement communities on the Fylde coast; deprived ex-mill towns like Burnley, Accrington and Nelson; commuter towns like Chorley and Ormskirk; Skelmersdale new town; and some very rural communities up in the Pennine hills.
It is a sort of northern England in miniature. The election results show the Labour vote fracturing all over the place, and the Conservative vote more or less collapsing – all to the benefit of Reform.
Lancaster, as a university city, went very Green, with the three divisions of Lancaster Central, East, and South-east being won with huge majorities. The Greens also won one seat in Accrington after a group of Asian councillors were expelled from Labour and shifted to the Greens rather than go independent.
The Conservatives lost 40 divisions to Reform! Even where the Conservatives held on, it was by thin margins – by 30 votes in Euxton, and by just one vote in Lytham North. The Conservatives, who had ruled the council since 2009 (with No Overall Control from 2013-2017), were left with just 8 seats, 4 of which came from the Fylde coast around Lytham and St Annes.
Labour conceded 14 divisions to Reform, mainly in the suburban fringes of towns like Chorley, Rawtenstall and Accrington, but also lost deprived towns like Fleetwood and Skelmersdale, the latter being won by Reform on a turnout of just 22%. Even up to 2024, Labour were getting 80% of the vote in Skelmersdale.
Starmer’s abysmal position on Gaza
The loss of 7 seats to ‘Gaza Independents’ just shows the gulf that has opened up between the Labour Party and another of its former key bases of support, the Asian communities in the former mill towns of Burnley and Nelson, mainly due to Keir Starmer’s truly abysmal position on Gaza. The Independents also won 3 seats in the eastern divisions of the City of Preston, which used to be safe Labour seats.
Labour ended up with just 5 seats in total across the county, down from 32 in 2021. It was a wipe out. And, worryingly, they won 4 of those seats with majorities of less than 100, retaining Chorley Central by just 7 votes. Their only seat with a respectable majority was Chorley Rural West, where the majority was 400. It would be interesting to know what the Labour Party did differently in Chorley. By contrast, in Nelson West, the Gaza Independent, Mohammed Iqbal, won his seat with 65% of the vote, and a majority of nearly 2,400.
The Liberal Democrats held their vote share at around 9% but gained 3 more seats, to reach 5 in the new council. There is also a small localist party, ‘Our West Lancashire’, (OWL), which gained 2 seats, one from Labour, one from Conservative.
The results show how the vice-like grip of Starmer and his lacklustre clique over the Labour Party, and their driving through of policies that no-one in the Party wanted and no-one voted for, has knocked away one base of Labour support after another.
Working class pensioners were long a bastion for the Labour Party – until Rachel Reeves cut the Winter Fuel Allowance. That definitely never went through any Labour Party conference.
Proposed cuts to PIP
About 20% of the working age population of Fleetwood are on PIP (Personal Independence Payment), and 22% of the people in Skelmersdale South count as disabled under the Equality Act, so Liz Kendall’s proposed cuts in PIP, even though they were withdrawn after a back bench rebellion, will have done nothing to build support for Labour there.
Reflecting the dismay amongst their constituents, six of Lancashire’s Labour MPs took part in that rebellion – which also means that five did not, placing loyalty to Starmer above the needs of their voters.
Judging by the results in Lancaster and Preston, Labour has well and truly lost the support of students. What a contrast to the days when Corbyn was leader.
And clearly, the Labour Party has lost the Muslim communities in Burnley, Nelson and Preston over its support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza – and the removal of Asian councillors in those towns on spurious disciplinary charges. What the Forde Report found to be a ‘hierarchy of racism’ in the Labour Party still has not been dealt with or even acknowledged [see here].
Incidentally, Nelson, where the Gaza independents romped home, is in the top 1% of deprived divisions in England, with the Bradley and Whitefield division almost 3 times the national average. Only Blackpool, which sits outside the County Council area (as does Blackburn), has higher rates of deprivation.
As for Reform, they now control the County Council, with 53 out of the 84 seats. The new leader was formerly the Conservative leader of Ribble Valley, and several more are ex-Conservatives. But one is the ex-Labour leader of Hyndburn Council!
There are, indeed, some Charlie Kirk fans, and many stress migration issues, but many of the other Reform councillors seem to be a ‘slice of local life’ with small business people, factory workers and even some NHS staff, with many building on community issues and ‘pavement politics’ such as opposing wind farms on the moors. But, showing the contradictions within Reform, another is a renewable energy consultant (!), and a Reform candidate in Pendle stressed “foodbanks, poverty and anti-social behaviour” as his key issues.
What they will do about social care, poverty and housing across the county remains to be seen, let alone regenerating towns like Fleetwood, Skelmersdale and Nelson.
Labour rout
And what now for the Labour Party? In the 14 divisions taken from Labour by Reform there were huge swings against Starmer’s party and its policies. The average change in vote share was minus 26%, which is bad enough, but in Skelmersdale it was a whopping minus 34%. In Burnley SW the party went from holding the seat, to fourth place, and in two other divisions – Morecambe Central and in Skerton (just north of Lancaster) sitting councillors came in third. It was a rout.
If nothing is done, Labour will lose all of its eleven MPs in the county, and likely Blackpool too. They have already lost Blackburn to a Gaza independent. But in most of the fourteen divisions lost to Reform there is still a core Labour vote of around 800 votes, and a couple of good second places – Mid-Rossendale (1292 votes) and Leyland Central (1099) – although others were truly terrible, such as in Burnley SW (494), and Skerton (584).
With a change from austerity and inaction towards the policies actually agreed at conference by members and trade unions, that bedrock could be built on. With a move towards socialist measures on the economy, education and foreign policy, the students and ethnic minorities could be won back.
It’s not as if Reform represent a mass movement – they got 36% of a one third turnout; around one ninth of the electorate. They even won three seats with less than a third of the vote. Most people did not vote, and this was quite pronounced in the working-class divisions in Preston, Nelson and Skelmersdale.
But we know that Starmer, Reeves, Kendall, and the rest of their dictatorial clique are bought, sold and paid for by the establishment, although much good it does them. They will resist any attempts to force them to adopt socialist policies and will, instead, prefer to carry on serving the interests of the bosses. But if that happens, and the leadership is not changed, then the Lancashire Labour MPs face the same fate as most of their councillors. Toast.
[All images from wikipedia – top image and inset image]
