Although these have perhaps yet to feed through, the public at large know this additional pressure is on its way. One of the things feeding the perception of the cost of living crisis has been the decision taken in the last national budget to freeze personal and other tax allowances until 2026. The difficulty of even getting to speak to somebody at GP surgeries has become a real irritant to voters, with the propect of actually getting an appointment to see a GP one of the reasons for higher demand at A&E – with the ripple effect throughout the NHS obvious. The paucity of primary care provision has been another major source of disquiet. The government claim that its housing targets are a ‘start point’ has done little to placate voters, in the knowledge that nothing of any real substance has been done to curb the power of the Planning Inspectorate to mandate what will be built and where.

This played into the hands of so-called Independents, and also our Labour opposition.Įlsewhere in Kent, discontent primarily over planning issues driven by those housing numbers has seen hard-working Conservative Leaders lose their seats in Canterbury, Thanet, Dover, and Folkstone. A major source of disquiet in Medway has been centrally-imposed housing targets, which can best be described in Medway’s case as excessively high and disproportionate to need, as evidenced by the latest population census. The mantra that all governments become unpopular is a truism, however, when that unpopularity becomes engrained, the prospects for local elections become more problematic than before. The review can best be described as a death by a thousand cuts, and even if all parties had an equal opportunity to put their case, there can be no doubt that Labour’s submission was far superior to our own. The creation of single member wards played to our advantage in two areas but at the expense of lost seats nearby. Rock-solid Conservative areas saw our ascendancy lighter than before, with the net number of our seats reduced. Conversely, safe wards saw the boundaries changed in order to pile up additional votes, whilst neighbouring wards had their majorities shaved wafer-thin. The boundary review was a disaster for us with some safe Conservative wards broken up, whilst several marginal wards were made even more marginal than before. Three main factors combined to see the first Labour victory in the 26-year life of Medway Unitary: an extensive boundary review which saw the creation of two more wards and four additional council seats the unpopularity of the Conservative government on a number of fronts together with an openly split Conservative Group and a corresponding somewhat fragmented election campaign across our three constituency parties.

However, the result is more nuanced than that, with a number of factors combining to create a perfect storm, allowing Labour to win control. There will no doubt be those who seek to use statistics as some sort of consolation, but even if our share of the vote did increase by a miserly 0.5 per cent that could not match the Labour increase of over five per cent. Not just because we lost control of the Council after 23 years, but the manner in which it was lost and the underpinning reasons, some of which could have been avoided. On a gloomy day for us Conservatives on May 4th, few places were gloomier than here in Medway. Cllr Alan Jarrett is the Leader of the Conservative Group on Medway Council

The conservative ascendancy coursenotes