Local election campaigns have never been less about local issues

Local election campaigns have never been less about local issues

Now they have stopped even pretending. Reform UK has announced that their slogan for the local elections will be: “Vote Reform, Get Starmer Out.” Hmm. Would that really help us? The successor would probably come from the Left. Ed Miliband? Angela Rayner? Would either of them lead us to sunlit uplands? But I wish to make a wider point. For as long as I can remember, there has been the lament that local election results are heavily influenced by n…