Today: 10 Reasons To Vote Your Local Technocrat Out

Britain is a country with 20,000 councillors. Nobody knows who they are or what they do, until they turn up in the headlines for idiotic reasons like taking a "fact-finding trip to the Bahamas," billing expenses back to the taxpayer, covering up abuse of children by Pakistani rape gangs, or running out of other people's money to pay for experiments in trying socialism one more time. Every few years we have an opportunity to kick these meddling bureaucrats out and replace them with someone, anyone, who is more sensible.

The elections today are consequential for a lot of reasons. But the main one is Herr Starmer and his band of religious nutters didn't want you to participate in them, lest you show them up. Even the useless Electoral Commission made it clear the idea was cynical. Today is a day to punish him, them, and all the lackeys attached to the death spiral machine which never listens.

And in case one was feeling groggy, needing a reason or two to motivate oneself to get to the polling station and use a large marker in the "literally anyone else, please" box, try some of the following.

Bankruptcy Is Now Normal

Since 2018, at least eight English councils have issued Section 114 notices: the closest thing local government has to declaring itself bust. Croydon did it three times. Birmingham, the largest council in Europe, went in 2023. These were not freak accidents. They were the logical outcome of years of financial recklessness by officers whom nobody elected and nobody removed.

Your Council Became A Hedge Fund

Thurrock borrowed over a billion pounds and poured it into solar farms owned by a man who spent the proceeds on a yacht and a country estate. The council is still owed nearly £700 million. Woking racked up £2.6 billion in debt through speculative property deals and an energy company which never turned a profit. The pitch was "innovative finance." The result was catastrophe.

Billions Spent On Housing Made Things Worse

Temporary accommodation costs are climbing across London boroughs. Families remain parked in hotels for months or years. In Croydon, financial collapse gutted housing delivery entirely. The money was spent. The houses were not built.

Children's Services Are Failing Children

Ofsted has rated multiple councils "inadequate" for children's services in recent years. In several cases, control has been removed from the council entirely. This is the most basic obligation of local government (protecting vulnerable children) and it is breaking under the watch of people paid six figures to prevent exactly this.

They Cannot Collect The Bins

Bristol, among others, has endured repeated disruption to waste collection. Residents are paying more in council tax for visibly worse services. When a council cannot manage a bin lorry, everything else it claims to be doing is noise.

They Ignored Pay Until It Bankrupted Them

Birmingham's collapse was triggered by equal pay liabilities that had been accumulating for nearly twenty years. The estimated cost reached £760 million, growing by up to £14 million every month. This was not a surprise. It was a known legal exposure successive officers chose to leave for someone else to deal with. Nobody was held to account before the bill came due.

They Outsourced Everything, Then Lost Control

Carillion held around 450 public sector contracts when it collapsed in 2018, owing £2 billion to 30,000 suppliers. The government had to spend £150 million of taxpayer money just to keep services running. A parliamentary inquiry called it a story of recklessness and greed. Councils learned nothing. The dependency on large contractors, and the accountability vacuum it creates, remains.

Planning Has Nothing To Do With Community

Residents are routinely overridden on developments. Objections are absorbed, noted, and ignored. The planning process exists to serve developers, not the people who actually live in the place being developed. Nothing fuels distrust of local government faster than watching a council approve something the entire street opposed.

Pay Rises At The Top, Cuts At The Bottom

The TaxPayers' Alliance Town Hall Rich List for 2026 found 4,733 council employees earning over £100,000: nearly double the figure at the start of the pandemic. 320 of them earned more than the Prime Minister. One unnamed employee in Staffordshire took home £457,500. Meanwhile, frontline services are being cut, libraries closed, and council tax hiked above inflation. The people making the cuts are not sharing in them.

Nobody Is Accountable When It Goes Wrong

When Woking collapsed, its former CEO had been director of fourteen council-owned companies and was being paid £750 a day as a consultant to one of them. When Thurrock's investments imploded, the finance director who oversaw them had already left. When Birmingham issued its Section 114 notice, commissioners arrived to find no credible savings plan, no working IT system, and no explanation for how it had got so bad. Leadership moves on. Consultants remain embedded. Voters are left with the bill and a shrug.

Because You Were Told You Couldn't And Shouldn't

In the run-up to the 2024 general election, Keir Starmer suggested Labour voters should not support independents or protest candidates: a signal, however gently framed, voting outside the approved structure is irresponsible.

That instinct, that your vote needs to be managed, is exactly the problem.

This is not about party labels. Conservative councils have gone bust. Labour councils have gone bust. The through-line is not ideology. It is a class of local governance which borrows without restraint, spends without result, and fails without consequence.

Today, the only leverage you have is your vote.

Use it.

Harshly.