The Liberal Democrats are a protest group masquerading as a party
I looked at my watch, and realised we had all been sat in the council chamber for over an hour. I glanced at the agenda. What next? A petition for the council to divest from companies with connections to Israel, and to stand with Gaza 'on the right side of history'.
Will this make a jot of difference to the lives of people in Dorset? Such a question seems not to have crossed the mind of those who sat alongside me in our most recent council meeting. Local Government is often mocked for obsessing about bin collections and potholes, bus timetables and library hours. But that, understandably, is what local people care about. Councils are given a defined set of responsibilities; voters expect their local representatives to deliver on them effectively.
Over the last two years, voters have taken a punt on the Liberal Democrats governing in some fifteen councils across the country. The motivation for this can be traced back to events in Westminster: people in rural areas wanted to send a message to the Conservative Party that their support cannot be taken for granted. A smaller number perhaps thought that a change in local government could bring a change in the quality of their neighbourhood services.
The truth, however, is that Liberal Democrats in local government seem to be mimicking the farcical TikTok-friendly persona of party leader Ed Davey: they love performance, petition, pontification. What they hate is actually governing.
I'm a Conservative councillor in the beautiful county of Dorset, the place where I grew up, and I know that I have an opportunity to make a difference to local people. Getting involved here with the minutiae of community life – from raising money for village halls to getting developers to meet their planning obligations – is a source of great satisfaction. We lost overall control to the Liberal Democrats last year, so I sit on the opposition benches amongst Conservatives with years and years of experience in local government.
It has been quite remarkable to observe how divorced the interests of some Liberal Democrats are from those of the people they are meant to represent. Every week, I speak to people who want to see potholes filled, residents who are worried that there's no real plan for the development coming Dorset's way, businesses owners who are buckling thanks to the scourge of rural crime, and locals who just want their verges to be properly maintained.
These are the vital concerns of local government. But they are the ordinary concerns of locals – and probably too boring for the Liberal Democrats who would rather spend their time and council taxpayers money on saving the world.
A typical council meeting involves an evening spent discussing hedgehogs, planting trees in solidarity with the United Nations (to whom I was told we owe all our most inviolable rights), and applauding each other for our self-righteousness. We were required to sit in silence while a wholly partisan and substantially erroneous petition on Israel-Palestine was read. And when we finally got to the moment to discuss something that genuinely matters to Dorset people – how we can best support local businesses suffering from the Government's tax changes – the Liberal Democrats simply amended the motion in order to congratulate themselves on the work already being undertaken.
This is symptomatic of a general shift in local government business under the party's watch towards a version of activism that uncomfortably smacks of student politics. I'm told by a colleague that he still receives reminders to complete his online DEI training modules. Meanwhile, the Labour government has whacked up council tax and increased borrowing at the same time budgets for libraries, highway maintenance and communities and public protection have all been cut in real terms.
We know the pressures that local government is under. We know that well over half our budget is consumed by statutory services over which we have little control. We know that the current funding formula for local authorities is intensely unfair for rural councils like Dorset. But with control over just a third of the budget, a good council could greatly improve the lives of the residents it represents.
Soon, Liberal Democrats will be up for election in councils they control, and they will have to defend their record. Voters, who just want better maintained roads, regular bin collections, and sensible use of their tax contributions, might well feel just a little bit of buyers remorse.
James Vitali is a Conservative councillor in Dorset and a senior fellow at Policy Exchange
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