Councillor Paul Bellenger: Politics past, present and future

The result for the Liberal Democrats was a major success. There are now 72 Liberal Democrat MPs, more than at any time in the party’s history. Photo: Getty ImagesThe result for the Liberal Democrats was a major success. There are now 72 Liberal Democrat MPs, more than at any time in the party’s history. Photo: Getty Images
The result for the Liberal Democrats was a major success. There are now 72 Liberal Democrat MPs, more than at any time in the party’s history. Photo: Getty Images
​For those of us involved in politics, the last few months have been very busy, with the local elections in May being followed swiftly by the calling of a general election.

Greetland & Stainland Ward Councillor, Paul Bellenger, Liberal Democrat Group Leader, writes:

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Everyone was expecting a general election to be held this year, but the announcement of a July election took many by surprise – including, it seems, the Conservative Party which still had to select candidates in around 190 parliamentary seats. Some closer to the Prime Minister than I apparently saw the calling of an election not as a way to set the future direction of the country but as a way to make a few pounds at the bookies.

Anyway, the election came and went, and the result was very much in line with what the opinion polls had been telling us for quite a while.

The result for the Liberal Democrats was a major success. There are now 72 Liberal Democrat MPs, more than at any time in the party’s history and more than its predecessor Liberal Party achieved at any time within the last 100 years or so. The party made gains in England, Scotland and Wales. Hard work on behalf of local communities will have been the bedrock on which every one of those victories was built, as it always is.

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There is no denying that the Labour Party did well locally and nationally. They were, though, aided substantially by the actions of the Conservative government and by the Conservative election campaign. There was a widespread feeling that the Conservatives had to go and go they did. In my column early this year, I warned against a party coming to power simply because of the poor record of its predecessor but that is pretty much what happened.

Not everything went Labour’s way, though, and they lost a few seats to independents and to the Green Party. They even lost a seat to the Conservatives, and I guess that the one Conservative who gained a seat from Labour is feeling rather pleased with herself.

At the July meeting of Calderdale Council, the Labour group took great delight in telling us all – twice – that Calderdale now had a Labour-run Council, a Labour Mayor of West Yorkshire, two Labour Members of Parliament and a Labour government. I felt that I had to point out that this meant that, should they fail to deliver on their promises, Labour would have no one else to blame but themselves.

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Not all the Labour councillors took kindly to my pointing out what I consider to be self-evident truths.

I also pointed out the inherent weakness of Labour’s position in Parliament, with them taking 63 per cent of the Commons seats on less than 34 per cent of the votes cast. Labour’s vote was down about half a million on what was widely seen as a disastrous result for them in 2019.

Politics is about the future, and it remains to be seen what Labour will deliver. They have certainly made an energetic start if not always in ways I would agree with. As the Conservative leadership contest unfolds, we will see what they have learned from their time in government and what they intend to do next, but the last time the members of the Conservative Party voted for a new leader they thought Liz Truss was a good idea.