By Pete Kenny

In the local elections in Leicester, completely against the national trend, Labour has turned in a dismal performance. We lost 22 council seats. The Conservatives went from 0 to 17, their best showing in decades and the Labour Mayor saw his vote fall from 61% to 39%.

We also lost seats to the Green Party and the Lib Dems.

For the first time in many years, I didn’t lift a finger in these elections; I went on strike, if you like, and I guess that decision, along with other activists across the city, played its part in our dismal performance, against the national trend.

I have no regrets in not actively supporting candidates chosen by the NEC and imposed on local Parties. The contempt with which we’ve been treated has its natural consequences, and disengagement is one of them.

So, we’re on the back foot here, now, and frankly I have no confidence in our ability locally to change that any time soon.

The Mayoral system was imposed on Leicester by our Party. We were the only place not to hold a referendum, so that system doesn’t have the real solidity of democratic consent. We are responsible for that.

It has also become irretrievably linked with the incumbent. He personally has failed, frankly, to go when the going was good, and the Party machinery repeatedly failed to have an open reselection process, which could have renewed the role.

We clearly needed to act against Modi supporters, and that may well have resulted in some losses. By whatever processes, this also became a clear-out of dissenting voices. If you deselect 19 councillors by diktat a few months before an election, this is what happens, to be honest.

Mayor Peter Soulsby was quoted in the press as saying we needed to speak with more of a united voice; well, for the first time in years, we’re going to be hearing a lot from other parties in Leicester politics.

So, what’s the way forward? We need a commitment to democracy in our party, that the process we’ve just been through won’t happen again.

We need a referendum on the mayoral system. If we don’t hold this, our opponents will make it happen through the 5% petition. We should do this on the same day as the general election, to minimise costs and maximise turnout.

It should be clearly understood that this question isn’t a partisan one. Many Labour supporters are opposed to a mayoral system, and many support it. Councillors should be free to vote on this, in consultation with their local Parties.

We also need some hard thinking, and talking, about how we ended up with so many councillors who slipped so easily into the Conservatives.

Pete Kenny is a member of Leicester West CLP

Image: Leicester Town Hall. Source: Flickr. Author: zaphad1,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.