In ‘Beyond Good and Evil: prelude to a philosophy for the future', Friedrich Nietzsche observed that if you stared long enough into the abyss, then the abyss, eventually, would also eventually stare into you.  The woefully conceived and managed Conservative campaign has over the past six weeks was an exercise of Olympic level abyss-gazing. 

In the aftermath of the western world's most successful political machine most abject performance, Sunak's haul of 121 seats falling before the previous historic low watermark of 156 in Balfour's landslide loss of 1906, where does the party stand?

The best that can be said is that this was not quite the fate of the Canadian Conservatives in 1993 or the Wagnerian ‘Götterdämmerung' of complete Conservative annihilation or the ‘zero seats'.  This goes beyond the loss of Red Wall seats whose votes were lent in the 2019 Brexit election.  Whole swathes of rock-solid Conservative heartlands across the South East, South West and the midlands have evaporated.  It is a very reduced parliamentary party that emerges from its date with Starmergeddon. If the Conservative Party is to recover from the charred wreckage of its most humbling encounter with the electorate, it will have to rip it up and start again from a local government base and choose whether to be serious or not.

On devolution, there will be some mopping up to do in finalising the devolution deals in train for Lincolnshire, Hull and Lancashire that didn't get over the line before the general election was called.

For the meantime, though, it's a case of goodbye to all that.  The abyss, in all likelihood sees this passage of recent political history flow by with stony indifference as the old order changeth and yieldeth to the new age of Sir Keir Starmer's government that is to come. 

A new Labour government armed with an astonishing three figure parliamentary majority to deliver its electoral mandate.

And on the basis that there is stability in the transition from team led by deputy prime minister and new Levelling Up secretary Angela Rayner, there will be an immediate chance to bed in pre-prepared plans to redefine the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and reintroduce strategic planning, moves which could be a gamechanger for housing supply.  Significant announcements in this direction might come as early as the King's Speech set for 17th July where 20 Acts are promised.

On devolution, there will be some mopping up to do in finalizing the devolution deals in train for Lincolnshire, Hull and Lancashire that didn't get over the line before the general election was called.

The greater task will be to deliver on the very ambitious constitutional and economic reforms that would among other things, if enacted, see English mayoral combined authorities enjoy parity with the devolved governments in the Council of the Nations and Regions.

This begs the question as to how soon will the Labour government be able to fill in the gaps in the map and cover the whole of England with a total devolution settlement to harmonise with the new statutory local growth plans, how these mesh with regional ambitions and are to be connected in turn within the overarching ambit of a revived industrial strategy?

As new Number 10 chief of staff Sue Gray assembles the centralised set of advisers gathering to deliver on the Labour government's missions, the need to restore stability to local government finances and staunch the wounds to prevent a further cascade of section 114 notices will be high among her snag list of immediate inheritance problems.

The manifesto promised a much-desired multi-year financial settlement an end to the tournament bidding for local growth funds that bedevilled the levelling up years and served as an enemy of long-term prudential planning.

It is unlikely the sequence of fiscal events new chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver this before December, let along unblock the glut of audits from a system that needs the regulatory equivalent of Dyno Rod.

This will have to wait until the next full Spending Review that will take us beyond the current fiscal fantasy island of cliff edge spending cuts and perhaps even set out a direction for the promised land that would be a radical reform of business rates."

This will be a parliament radically different in its composition to its immediate successor than any before when we factor in the 132 members of the 2019 parliament who chose not to stand and the huge influx of new Labour MPs alone.

However, one form of hope for local government arises in the very large number of new Labour MPs whose selection as candidates was bolstered by the fact they were proven serving councillors.   With recent serving knowledge of how councils work through all challenges in front of them to deliver tirelessly for people and place, now would be a good time for the sector to have friends in high places.

 

Jonathan Werran is chief executive, Localis