Cambridgeshire looks like being a testing ground for coalition government and tactical voting in all elections this year. The next test, on 2 May, will be in Peterborough. Councillor Lucy Nethsingha, the Liberal Democrat leader of Cambridgeshire County Council, has urged Peterborough voters to consider which party they should back to prevent the Conservatives taking back power.
Cambridgeshire County Council is not holding local elections this year, but in Peterborough, voters will elect one third of the City Council. Currently, no party has overall control since the defection of a large number of Conservative councillors, though the Conservatives remain the largest single grouping with 22 seats. Labour is the second largest group with 14 seats. Six Conservative Councillors in wards due for election this time have announced they are standing down.
Councillor Nethsingha said:
It does actually matter who you elect for your local council. It makes a difference to the quality of your council services. And my perception of Conservatives in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is that they’re much more interested in reducing the capacity of local authorities.
I would suggest that if you want to have an authority which is focused on making sure that the services are there for the people who are the most vulnerable when they need them, you probably want to try and work out how to not have a Conservative.
She said that she would encourage anyone in Peterborough who doesn’t want a Conservative Councillor to examine what other candidates are offering and to consider what they could do to make a difference in their town.
A rainbow coalition at work
Ahead of these crucial local elections, Cllr Lucy Nethsingha spoke to cross-party campaign group Compass about her experience of working as part of a coalition on Cambridgeshire County Council, and her hopes for the future. Watch the whole interview here.
After the Conservatives lost control of Cambridgeshire County Council in 2021, Labour, Liberal Democrats and independents came together in a ‘rainbow coalition’, able to outvote the Conservatives. Since then, this coalition has increased its majority, after the Liberal Democrats won a mid-term by-election and one Tory councillor defected to the Liberal Democrats.
Cllr Nethsingha said that forming the coalition was hard work, but that the parties found a surprising amount of common ground once they got around the table.
She said:
One of the first things we did, was put the manifestos of the different groups next to each other. And there was an extraordinarily large amount of overlap. So actually, setting out a kind of direction of travel and a set of things that we wanted to achieve was not so difficult.
She said working as part of a coalition helped them to achieve things they wouldn’t have been able to as a single party. They agreed that child poverty is a huge and rising problem across the whole country, so one of the key priorities for the joint administration, was on free school meals. Working with the Labour grouping had led them to pay the real living wage not only to council staff, but also to many of the contracted staff as well.
She also spoke about her frustration of working alongside the national Conservative government over her last few years leading Cambridgeshire County Council.
Having a change of government, getting rid of the Conservatives at national government level, would be completely wonderful. I mean, it has been the most extraordinary, frustrating three years in terms of dealing with national government, because you just never feel as if there’s any sensible direction of travel; there’s no long-term thinking whatsoever.
They’ve been not only wrong but also deeply incompetent, and I am just really hoping that a different government would at least have a slightly more long-term perspective than this one has.
Material from Joanna Taylor via Local Democracy Reporting Service
