To what level do local council elections affect national government?

[Combat squirrel]

As title, obviously local council elections elect your local counsels etc - however I'm curious as to what level the council has an affect up the chain to government and how would the winning party for the council then have influence on a national level?

I'm aware of local issues, and we are all aware what's going on at a national level - I've little information how these 2 interact with each other in terms of influence, policy change, funding and all important matters,

Any info OCUK ?

 

[jsmoke]

Depends on circumstances, state of economy, state of infrastructure, public services, jobs, the weather etc, also add just simply sticking two finger up at the man. We are very spoilt. Make sure no one party dominates, I suppose it's in our mindsets and expectations now. According to this article(below) the governing party usually does not so well in local elections, though that is slightly different if LE's are on same year as the GE. Whereas if LE's are on same day as the GE the governing party actually do a lot better in the LE's. Different reasons for different people but probably not that sophisticated in many cases, just a popularity contest with factors ranging from what the candidate, looks like, wears, their accent, what school they went to, the way they talk, body language and hopefully what their message is. Take your pick.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politic...ocal-elections-tell-us-about-general-election

 

[Combat squirrel]

Right, but how do councils and gov interact with one another, in a more mechanical sense? Like, is it one way down from gov or ? How do they talk and solve issues?

 

[pepp77]

This is my understanding and could be completely wrong

Each local council MP is effectively a seat in Parliament which gives that member a vote on anything the government proposes. So Tories are in office but I vote Labour for my local MP and he wins his seat. This then gives him a vote on anything in parliament.

 

[Combat squirrel]

This is my understanding and could be completely wrong

Each local council MP is effectively a seat in Parliament which gives that member a vote on anything the government proposes. So Tories are in office but I vote Labour for my local MP and he wins his seat. This then gives him a vote on anything in parliament.

Yeah I thought that but I don't see any of my locally elected council members in parliament.

I think what you mention there is the county MP that does that ? - my local council elections are made up of 40-50 counsellors for a specific part of a county (a small section of the town I live in) - in sounding this out I think iv answered my own question !! haha,

I guess - each county is made up of 'x' amount of counsellors who report to the county wide MP ? (In my case Gwynedd) - I live in Bangor, which by the looks of the map has been split up into about 30-40 electable 'communities' ?

And then the one MP of Gwynedd is the guy who sits in parliament ?

 

[jsmoke]

The LC gets a budget and can pretty much spend on what they like(well obviously sensibly), in terms of authority I don't know if the national government has legal authority to overrule the LC on any desicions they make like in a federal system such as the States. Since New Labour not so much division between parties nowadays they will want to work together on the whole for good of country to a large extent, LC's are more managers of their local area whereas national governments deal more with the big issues such as immigration, taxes, overseas conflicts, legal issues and budgets. They interact in parliament by raising any issues they have and hope the ruling party will listen to them.

 

[pepp77]

You got me reading - There are about 650 constituencies in the UK each that has a seat in Parliament and are looked over by an MP - my MP is Clive Efford (Eltham in the borough of Greenwich). This is who I voted for when the General Election was done last and is who I vote for when the local elections come up.

 

[scorza]

This is my understanding and could be completely wrong

Each local council MP is effectively a seat in Parliament which gives that member a vote on anything the government proposes. So Tories are in office but I vote Labour for my local MP and he wins his seat. This then gives him a vote on anything in parliament.

Need to distinguish between national and local elections.

In a general election (or by-election) your parliamentary constituency votes for someone to represent them in the national Parliament (i.e. House of Commons). The person elected becomes the MP for that constituency and goes to Westminster to sit in the HoC as you describe.

In a local election (like the one today) you are voting for someone to represent you in your local council, typically at County level i.e. Surrey County Council, Lancashire County Council (CC) etc, or District level (Waverley District Council, South Ribble Borough Council etc). It's similar to the general election in that the winning candidate gets a seat on the council and becomes a councillor, however it's not considered a full time job and they don't get paid very much compared to an MP. CCs normally have a full time Chief Executive who isn't elected, and who is responsible for implementing the local laws that the councillors vote on in the chamber. Things that CCs are responsible for are things like provision of social care, major highways in the county. Things that DCs are responsible for include bin collections, council tips (or recycling centres these days), council tax collection.

The relationship between Westminster and the local authorities (County Councils) is complicated. Westminster can and do pass laws that require CCs to do certain things, and they provide the CCs with extra money because our council tax doesn't cover the running costs of the County Council. That gives Westminster a lot of power over the CCs. CCs that are considered failing by Westminster can be taken over by UK government officials, though this happens very rarely. Both national and local elections are important, however most people tend to ignore local elections as it does tend to be a bit less dramatic.

 

[Combat squirrel]

Thanks for the info all, it's help build a better picture. Iv got it down to two candidates who are neck and neck imo but I wanted to know how they interact at a national level to help in my decision due to how important the national one is currently and how it will dramatically affect all our lives going forward.

 

[scorza]

Local councillors don't generally have much to do with national politics or MPs in Westminster. Nothing to say they shouldn't have an opinion or interacting with an MP but it's not really their job. Occasionally you will see them interact e.g. recently Surrey CC planned to hold a referendum on a 15% council tax rise to pay for adult social care services, which caused questions to be asked in parliament and resulted in that council getting some extra funding from the government instead of the referendum (which was controversial to say the least). MPs and councillors are similar in that the only people they are answerable to are the people who elected them.

 

[ubersonic]

As title, obviously local council elections elect your local counsels etc - however I'm curious as to what level the council has an affect up the chain to government

Zero.

and how would the winning party for the council then have influence on a national level?

They wouldn't.

I'm aware of local issues, and we are all aware what's going on at a national level - I've little information how these 2 interact with each other in terms of influence, policy change, funding and all important matters

They don't, which political party (if any) a council candidate is a member of should be irrelevant to your voting decision.

 

[h4rm0ny]

Westminster can and do pass laws that require CCs to do certain things

As an example of this for the OP, the Conservatives recently forced through a law forbidding local councils from running their own bus services.

https://weownit.org.uk/blog/government-just-got-away-banning-new-public-bus-companies.

You get a pass if you already run a public bus service (e.g. Nottingham and Reading) but new ones are prevented from being set up. People tried to stop it but with Conservative majority they disregarded public opinion and just pushed it through. (Good example of why it might be a good thing for the Conservatives to lose some seats in June even if you generally support Tories - too much power is bad for anyone!).

So whilst there is no direct management of local councils by parliament, they can govern behaviour both through overt laws like this and, of course, by managing the cash-flow that local councils get. That's the reason why you pay general income tax and VAT up to the government who then hand it back down rather than having more of a balance between local and national government - by running the cash flow through the national government it has more sway on influencing local government.

 

[scorza]

Just a reminder to all that polls stay open until 10pm. As long as you are in the queue (either inside or outside of the polling station) by 10pm you will be allowed to vote*. I urge everybody who is eligible to go and cast your vote - even if you don't know who to vote for or don't like any of the candidates then go and spoil your ballot paper (e.g. by putting one long line through all the candidates). Don't let them write off your opinion as apathy. You can still vote even if you've lost the piece of paper they send through the post.

*There won't be a queue.

 

[RDM]

even if you don't know who to vote for or don't like any of the candidates then go and spoil your ballot paper (e.g. by putting one long line through all the candidates). Don't let them write off your opinion as apathy.

The problem is that deliberately spoilt ballots just get lumped in to the same category as "too dull to fill in a ballot paper" and make no difference to the election. Whilst spoiling your ballot may make you feel better it has zero impact electorally.

 

[Uther]

There really should be a 'none of the above' option.

 

[scorza]

The problem is that deliberately spoilt ballots just get lumped in to the same category as "too dull to fill in a ballot paper" and make no difference to the election. Whilst spoiling your ballot may make you feel better it has zero impact electorally.

That's because there's usually only a handful of spoiled ballots at each counting station - imagine if there were thousands. Each spoiled ballot gets checked by the returning officer and the candidate's agents to make sure it's really spoiled and you can spoil your ballot by writing a message on the ballot paper (preferably not an abusive message). There's huge potential there for the electorate to organise themselves and send a clear message if necessary.

 

[VincentHanna]

Spoiling your ballot paper has no effect whatsoever. I have counted votes in the past...spoiled papers go in a pile that are then binned. No-one with any influence would see them.