Conservative politics is the dominant force in English local government and is increasingly influential nationally. More than half of English local government is now run by Conservative councils and nationally the Conservative Party polled ahead of Labour almost continually between David Cameron’s election as leader in December 2005 and June 2007, when Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as Prime Minister.

SOLACE members are intellectually curious and professionally pragmatic individuals and it is right that as public service leaders they retain high levels of political awareness across the parties. In May SFI published a pamphlet with the left of centre think tank, the Public Services Reform Group.

Now the SOLACE Foundation Imprint has published a pamphlet bringing together a collection of essays from the leading figures of Conservative local government politics.

Pamphlet editor Mike Bennett said, “In commissioning these contributions Christina Dykes and I were looking both for examples of what Conservative local government looks like in practice, as well as a better understanding of what a Conservative government nationally would mean for local government policy and strategy. What is distinctive about the Conservative approach to local government, to localism, to public policy, to central/local relations were among the questions we posed. And do local government leaders agree with their Westminster counterparts about the answers to these questions?

“Politics of course never stays still for long but there has been feeling in pulling together these essays that the national scene is particularly dynamic. When SFI first started planning this pamphlet we were told that it was just too early for the Conservatives to start putting policies on paper. Good ideas would be copied and any poor ideas would be hung around their necks come election time.

“Things have changed very quickly with the arrival of Gordon Brown in Downing Street and the Conservatives now seem keen to show distinctive ideas, and to counter accusations of style and no substance. At the same time David Cameron’s strategy of change within the Conservative party has faced its first real internal challenge. Readers of the following essays will find our contributors grappling with some of the most persistent social and political issues of our time. I hope reading our pamphlet brings a fresh perspective on continuity and change in Conservative politics and sheds some light on the ideas driving the modern party.”

A pdf of the pamphlet is available here