Guest Contributor: Pelham Consulting
This month on the GFP blog, we’re starting a special series of posts from guest contributors, spanning the worlds of public affairs, charities and sport.
Our first guest contributor is Pelham Consulting. Pelham Consulting is a specialist public affairs consulting service that provides manifesto trackers and briefings on key policies from the UK’s political parties.
Pelham discusses this week’s local elections and what to look out for in a changing political landscape.
Next month, it’s the World Cup, and we’ll be featuring a very special guest contributor from the football arena.
And over the summer, we’ll be turning the GFP spotlight on a high-profile charity boss as a guest contributor. Stay tuned!
Shifting Sands: Behind the UK’s May Local Elections
As we fast approach the local elections on 7 May, it is worth reminding ourselves that, despite feverish attempts by commentators to whip up excitement, on past measures, almost 65% of eligible voters won’t bother to turn out.
So, why do we get so exercised by the outcome of elections in which only a minority chooses to participate? General elections normally see more than 60% turning out.
One reason for the current flurry of excitement is that traditional two-party politics appears to be collapsing or, at the very least, in stark retreat. Fourteen years of Conservative governments, the first five of which were spent in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, followed by almost two years of Labour, have seen policy U-turns, soaring debt, tax hikes and what appears to have become a semi-permanent lack of economic growth.
Alternative Parties now in Poll Position
Big global crises from the financial crash through to Brexit, the Pandemic, Ukraine, soaring energy costs and now the Middle East war have badly hit the credibility of governing parties.
The consequence is the arrival of new and alternative players taking centre stage. Consequently, we now have Labour, Reform, Lib Dems, Conservatives and Greens all within a few percentage points of each other.
The lack of dynamic economic growth means ever-harder choices about spending and tax priorities. The Greens and Reform offer sharply divergent policy offerings, which have not faced any real tests. That may be about to change.
Of course, May 7 is not merely about local council elections. The scope goes much wider. Reform and Plaid Cymru are fighting it out to control the Senedd in Wales for the first time, and the SNP is looking to retain power in the Scottish Executive at Holyrood, having first taken power in 2007. In spite of the turmoil within the party since the last set of elections, opinion polls suggest that it will succeed in doing so and that this will be seen as an endorsement to seek a further referendum on independence. The devolved authorities also have a wide range of powers over health, education and social care and, in Scotland, the ability to set income and property taxes.
Going Green?
Across the UK, the Greens have been moving up in the polls. In the Scottish Council elections of 2022, they doubled their number of Councillors to 35. At the national level in Scotland, where the Greens support independence, the Party already had a taste of power when, after August 2021, they held two ministerial posts. In 2024, they left the Scottish Government following the abandonment of the target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030. They will be keen to be in a controlling position if the SNP falls short of an overall majority.
Across the border, in 2023 in England, the Greens won 200 council seats in the local elections, taking control of Mid-Suffolk, the first time that the party had ever won a majority. In the 2024 General Election, the Greens won 4 constituencies, including Brighton Pavilion, the single seat they had held since 2010. Winning almost 2 million votes, their share of the vote rose to 6.7%.
In February this year, in a hard-fought, often bitter contest with Reform, they took control of the former Labour stronghold of Gorton and Denton.
With former Conservative voters swapping to support Reform in the General Election of July 2024, former Labour voters are prepared to switch to Green. In London, Greens are hopeful of taking Hackney and possibly Haringey Councils from Labour. They are also reported to be performing strongly in Wandsworth, Southwark and Waltham Forest.
This strong performance creates an irony. The less emphasis the Greens place on purely environmental issues, the better they perform. Their manifesto, in many ways, provides a radical alternative to Labour.
In Scotland, for example, the Greens have pledged to expand free bus travel to every resident, to bring forward a Scottish corporate Accountability and Ecocide Bill which will make Scottish corporate executives liable for environmental harms, to establish a Scottish Environmental Court, to introduce a carbon emissions land tax to incentivise large landowners to manage carbon locked into land by restoring peatlands and woodlands, to oppose nuclear energy and fossil fuel developments in the North Sea, to establish a nationalised freight operator and to reduce speed limits on roads.
But stretching beyond environmental and energy issues, the manifesto sets out a number of radical alternative economic policies. For example, Council Tax would be scrapped and replaced with a Residential Property Tax (RPT) following a revaluation of properties. A mansion tax of 15% will be placed on properties valued at over £1m with two new Council Tax bands introduced. There will be a surcharge on overseas owners of second and empty homes. Rent controls will be introduced with a higher tax on landlords’ income.
The Land and Buildings Transactions Tax (LBTT) would see reforms to the core rates and exemptions, and a surcharge will be introduced on purchases of land holding above 500ha to force the break-up of larger estates at the point of sale. The Additional Dwellings Supplement will rise to 10% with a multiplier applied to every additional property bought. Proposals for a Scottish Wealth Tax will be developed. Any deal with other parties, such as the SNP, is likely to involve accommodation of some of these policies.
Fixing our Energy Efficiency Problem
Policies alone, though, are not enough. The electorate is clearly becoming increasingly disenchanted by the seeming inability of the main parties to deliver on their promises. The mechanics of introducing a new policy are often ignored, overlooked or delegated.
This is illustrated below by a glance at what the political parties were promising to do nationally in just one area, that of energy efficiency, as recently as the 2024 General Election.
Effective measures to insulate Britain’s notoriously draughty, energy-seeping homes should be making a real contribution to cutting our dependence on energy from unstable parts of the world. It would greatly reduce carbon emissions if we used less domestic and commercial heat and power.
The problem is that many of the measures must be delivered by energy companies, regulators, local authorities, and other public bodies. That means a lengthy, time-consuming process requiring access to properties, buy-in from homeowners and landlords, reliable technology and complex contract negotiation. It requires constant Government pressure and follow-up.
Take a look at the 2024 post-election manifesto tracker on energy efficiency in the table under this article.
Since the election, the progress (as seen in the table below) has been somewhat underwhelming. Guidance to councils and landlords, and details about grants, are not going to deliver a step-change in energy consumption behaviour. The big energy companies, seeing consumption and profits fall, are unlikely to be enthusiastic partners. It requires fresh and sustained thinking with incentives.
Here, the Green agenda appears ground-shiftingly radical, but as with any serious player, radical thinking alone is not sufficient if the means of delivering the promised change remain unconsidered.
Similarly, Reform has found itself cross-examined on how precisely it will “stop the boats” on immigration or cut subsidies to wind generators. Policy detail is a hard grind and needs challenge before it sees the light of day in a manifesto.
So, May 7th could provide some interesting outcomes as the political landscape shifts. What will really matter, though, going forward, is the competence of governments, whatever their political colour, at the national and local levels, to deliver on their promises.
Written by: Nick Paget-Brown, MD, Pelham Consulting
For more information or queries, please email: npb@pelhamconsulting.uk.
Table: PELHAM CONSULTING 2024 GENERAL ELECTION: UK POLITICAL PARTIES – MANIFESTO TRACKER – ENERGY EFFICIENCY [colour coded by political party]
SOURCE: PELHAM CONSULTING: JULY 2024 MANIFESTO TRACKER – AND SUBSEQUENT GOVERNMENT ACTION.
About Pelham Consulting: After years of low growth and amid rising international tensions, the UK is experiencing extreme political volatility. The long-standing two-party system is being challenged by new parties with very different agendas.
Pelham Consulting provides essential tools for monitoring policy developments in the UK. Our Manifesto Tracker classifies policies on almost 200 key issues by topic. Manifesto pledges, policy developments, consultations and new policy announcements are grouped by topic. Notes provide additional information or links to relevant websites.
Pelham’s Trackers provide essential information for policy analysts, risk managers, consultants, investors, research departments and diplomats. They are available directly in electronic format for distribution or in printed form.
Users can access the complete Tracker covering all 2024 manifesto pledges made by all parties (more than 2,200) or just subscribe to the Government Tracker, which updates on implementation. Pelham also offers a range of briefings and seminars on key topics.
Email npb@pelhamconsulting.uk for more info.
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