Green candidates could thwart the Tories in council elections next year, a senior councillor has said.
At the Conservative Party’s conference in Birmingham, Phil Broadhead told activists that voters had “got a lot of their anger out of their system” at July’s general election.
The Conservative Councillors’ Association chairman described Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as a potential threat to his party’s electoral success in May 2025, but added that Green Party candidates have won victories in “posh Tory areas”.
He said: “We have a lot of issues that are kind of cross-party nowadays, you know, environmental issues, for instance. I know that there are some people that are on the kind of opposite side of it.
“But I can tell you, being out there in communities, travelling around the country as we did for the general election, this is a huge issue and actually politically we’re talking a lot about the threats, and who knows what the threats might be when they manifest themselves in May, but of Reform etc.
“I’m more worried about the Greens actually.
“In my campaigning at this election, I was going to places as far apart as Bristol and Bury St Edmunds where we have Greens running the council now.
“And these are areas that – it’s not because they’re… socialists, these are kind of posh Tory areas but people care about these particularly environmental protection issues.
“So I think we need to occupy that space and regain it.”
Mr Broadhead, who sits on Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council in Dorset, accused councils in Bristol and Suffolk of having started “vanity projects or kind of ideologically driven ventures”.
The authority which Mr Broadhead led rolled out electric bin lorries, which he said was an example of “doing things that are providing the services, doing it in a Conservative way, saving money and making better services at the same time”.
Essex County Council leader Kevin Bentley said his party “lost lots of councillors because of behaviour that was going on in Parliament” over recent years and added “that cannot happen again”.
Of his party’s leadership election, he said: “Whoever the winner is, we all get behind them. None of this five families and all that nonsense. I don’t wanna hear it.
“All I want to hear about is getting Conservatives into power at the town hall, county hall, Parliament or wherever we possibly can, so we all rally around that new leader and no backbiting, no arguments.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel