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Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has appealed to Lancashire residents to “put their trust” in the Tories at next month’s county council elections.
During a campaign visit to the Springfields nuclear fuel site in Salwick, she said she recognised that faith in the party would have to be re-established after it was kicked out of power at the general election last year.
However, she claimed Labour could not be trusted with local taxes or services – and warned that Reform UK has “never run a council before”.
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Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) on Thursday, just 24 hours after the latter party’s leader, Nigel Farage, had also visited the county, Ms. Badenoch said she was “very sad” to have lost two Conservative members of Lancashire County Council – and the leader of Ribble Valley Borough Council – to Reform last month.
Asked what she could say to persuade Tory voters not to follow the same political path at the local poll on 1st May, she said: “ Right now, having suffered a historic defeat, what we need to do is rebuild trust with the public – that means making sure people understand what the Conservative offer is at this election.
“Conservative councils deliver better services for lower taxes…and we need to show people that we are running for the right reasons, so that we can deliver for them, not just to win elections.”
When it was put to her that the financial challenges currently faced by local authorities lay at the door of her national party’s actions during the 14 years it was in office, she said she disagreed with that assessment.
While Conservative-controlled Lancashire County Council has raised its share of council tax by the maximum amount usually permitted without a referendum in three out of the last four years, Ms. Badenoch said: “Even when we have rises, they are lower than what’s happening elsewhere.
“All of the money that gets given to local government comes from taxpayers. We currently have the highest tax burden ever.
“What we need now is to start making life easier for people – and what I’m telling people is that when Labour were campaigning in the [general] election, they promised to freeze council tax – where is that freeze? It hasn’t happened anywhere – they broke promises.”
The Tory leader highlighted the rubbish gathering in the street in Labour-run Birmingham City Council during the ongoing bin strike there – and claimed that Lancashire County Council was set to become “bankrupt” the last time Labour was in charge.
“That’s [why] the Conservatives got voted in, they inherited a very difficult financial situation and they have made it a lot better,” she said.
The state of the finances at County Hall at the time Labour lost power to the Conservatives in 2017 is still a hotly contested issue by both parties – and was even revisited during this year’s budget debate.
While the Tories point to analysis from the time suggesting that the authority would have run out of money before the end of that decade, Labour say that would only have been the case if they had failed to act – adding that they would have addressed the looming financial challenge had they remained in control in the authority.
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