Elections will not be so simple for major parties
THE local elections in Rossendale should be a relatively straightforward affair.
For a long time, the council has been dominated by two parties - Tory and Labour.
It only takes a couple of seats to change hands for the whole council to switch.
Equally, it can only take a couple of seats to move the other way for one party to have an utter stranglehold.
But there’s always seemingly a but.
And having seen the nominations for this year’s local elections, there are two interesting developments which could throw a spanner into either party’s plans.
Lets start with the Tories, who go into the election only needing a few hundred votes in a small number of key seats to switch their way to take control of the council.
That assumption depends on the Tories’ retaining all of their seats of course.
And two candidates former Tories David Stansfield and Val
Roberts, are both standing as independents in Helmshore and
Greenfield respectively.
Both should be relatively safe seats for the Tories.
But both former Cllrs Stansfield and Roberts are well-known locally, and Mr Stansfield did damage to the Tories in the county council elections last year, standing as an independent and splitting the vote in such a way as to cost the Conservatives a seat they would have otherwise expected to have held on to.
Neither had success in the Rossendale elections last year, but both showed they could poll votes.
If, as predicted, partygate and the Prime Minister’s ‘sorry, not sorry’ routine plays on minds on polling day, does voting for people
known as being Tory of old act as a suitable alternative to casting a vote in support of the PM’s party?
(Local elections should always be fought on local issues, this column has always argued, but for some reason, national issues always seem to interfere – they certainly get blamed by parties if they lose and can point a finger elsewhere, such as when Labour lost control of the county council in 2017).
Cllr Stansfield had to leave the Tories when he refused to support the county council’s council tax rise in 2021, arguing that as benefit support from Covid meant people could ill-afford to pay
more. A year on, that stance feels more principled than ever – and council tax freezes are now party of Rossendale Tory policy, but sadly not part of Tory county council policy, or Tory police and crime commissioner policy.
Policy could also prove problematic for Labour too, with the Green Party putting out its highest number of candidates ever in Rossendale.
Their presence will be a worry to Labour, whose councillors have been accused of handing over the borough’s green field to developers by refusing to block planning applications for housing on green sites across the borough.
Their Local Plan also hands over huge swathes of green land to development, and has the potential to totally transform communities such as Edenfield, with little promise of proper support for roads improvements, school places or GP access.
Labour argue their hands are tied by government policy and don’t want to waste money fighting planning appeals they will lose.
You don’t have to look for long for find lots of other councils that will stand with their residents on planning matters.
For the Greens, the fact that four of the seven councillors - three Labour, one independent - who
voted to allow over 100 new homes be built on green land on the edge of Haslingden and Helmshore just weeks after making the land available in the council’s Local Plan, are up for election, is a golden opportunity.
It may also prove good news for the Tories.
A win for the Greens would be big news, but even a slight shift in votes from Labour to the Greens in protest at the council’s handling of house building on green fields could have a huge impact.
As ever, the most important thing is to get out and vote. It’s hard to really complain about the council if you don’t cast your vote.