Radical ideas should top our political agenda

The local government election results are counted and it’s fair to say there’s a sense of anti-climax about it all. Aside from the seismic shift in Northern Ireland, where there was victory for Sinn Fein in a vote for Stomont, the verdict of the electorate was not nearly as sharp or significant as many had predicted.

The Conservatives got a kicking, but a mild one. Labour did better, but not that much better. There was a soft Lib Dem resurgence, especially in southern and western English constituencies, and the Greens took a step forward after Cop26. The SNP continued, apparently without any real challenge.

Extrapolating the results on to a national scale suggests Labour would win with 35%, to the Tories’ 33%. In a general election this would result in a hung Parliament.

Right now, that’s a decent bet given that it’s hard to see Labour making sufficient gains in Scotland and the important “red wall” Tory seats in England seem to have some lingering Brexit loyalty to Boris Johnson, despite partygate.

So what could change the game? Ideas. The prime minister appears to lurch from month to month without any coherent policy vision, while the SNP has become a policy vacuum, with independence eclipsing all sense of how Scotland could move forward with its current powers. Labour seems to either want to back No 10 or oppose the government depending on which week it is, but without a central vision. The cost of living crisis should be a gift for a party that wants to support those who are struggling, but there is a lack of vision about what Britain would be like under Keir Starmer.

But that lack of ideas permeates all the parties and ideas are what we need as the country stumbles out of the pandemic, on to the war with Ukraine, and with soaring inflation and economic slowdown that could turn into recession.

While holding our leaders to account is important, we shouldn’t be talking endlessly about partygate and curry. We should be talking about radical ideas which can move the country forward.