Keith is a career politician. He’s spent his life making political calculations which were for his party, the community and himself.1 In local political terms he’s been very successful.2 Keith earns £66,390 as a GLA member plus his Havering allowance of £10,750. His calculation is probable oblivion with the Conservative Party, or, a Reform Party triumph.3
Keith is a career politician. He has his eyes on the Rosindell fiefdom, which is the Romford constituency. Keith licked his lips at Andrew’s nail-biting *victory* in 2024. It was the beginning of a trend. The tectonic plates of British politics have shifted and destroyed old certainties.4 The shift will destroy politicians who aren’t agile enough to go with the flow.
ULEZ and Brexit showed the powerful undercurrents of dissatisfaction in Britain. People are taking back control from career politicians who have failed them since 2010. The colonization of lamp-posts for the St George flag is another powerful symbol of a desire for fundamental change. People are tired of career politicians pivoting around focus groups.
Radical change is hated by career politicians. Their cute sound-bites are destroyed and they have to produce a new narrative, which sounds insincere to a sceptical public. Career politicians are a disaster. They live in a bubble, which is self-reinforcing and ignores the wishes and desires of the public. Well now they have a wake-up call.
Keith has gambled and Andrew is a born-again Thatcherite.5
Notes
1 Keith Prince vs Damian White: 2022 Conservative Leadership Contest – Politics in Havering
2 Salaries, expenses, benefits and workforce information | London City Hall
3 Havering’s election is in 2026 and the GLA in 2028
4 Julia Lopez and Andrew Rosindell ~ Back from the Brink, July 2024 – Politics in Havering
5 Andrew Rosindell and the Reform Party – Politics in Havering and see also BREAKING: Havering Has Its First Reform Councillor As Keith Prince Defects. – The Havering Daily
Politics in Havering 
It’s possible, for sure. And it will be grimly fascinating to see which councillors, from any party, are able to survive next year.
But a lot of councillor defections are intensely personal, and I wouldn’t want to rule that out here. Maybe Keith was just sore about no longer being Conservative group leader. (I must admit, I hadn’t clocked that he no longer was.)
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Political calculation is very difficult. Has Farage peaked? Will Labour implode? Will the Conservative hard-core voter defect en mass?
But the idea that Reform in Havering is anti-ULEZ in drag very enticing (to me at least). In which case HRA could well thin out quite a bit.
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HRA won’t win next year if the people I talk to are anything to go by. People in Elm Park are fed up with them as they don’t seem to do anything except get pot holes repaired and trees cut back. They aren’t very agile on finding fly tippers either. Not that I vote for them. If there’s a reform candidate they will win, but then voters will find that they can’t do anything either.
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The DNA of RAs is potholes, uneven pavements, dark street lights and abandoned cars. They have a tragic lack of imagination. They have also played the *victim* from day one as if the under-funding was a secret. But the tension is that they are Tories in drag and want *low Council Tax increases* and freebies like the Hornchurch carparking charges.
I think that Reform is the anti-ULEZ people in 2025. From what I read Havering is the Number One target borough for Reform and that is probably a good call.
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Successive governments have centralised funding and powers away from local government, but an informed few (councillors) realise they can get a nice wage for acting as the powerless window dressing for a defunct local democracy.
They hold fake public consultations, knowing little can change as it’s nearly all statutory spending topped up with unpayable government loans.
This explains the ease with which so many (26 out of 55) Havering councillors have changed sides (2 more than once) without holding by-elections since the May 2022 local elections, with Reform the latest change.
Only legal action can end the biased funding and all councillors who refuse to support legal action de facto belong to the same lame “UniParty” reduced to arguing over who’s best at litter-picking to win elections, on a reduced turnout, but remaining ready to change sides once in! Will Reform break the deadlock by supporting legal action?
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“….. informed few (councillors) realise they can get a nice wage for acting as the powerless window dressing for a defunct local democracy”
I completely agree with this. Reform will fail if they gain power because the game is rigged against them. Only pressing the nuclear button…..Attacking statutory services will change the balance of power. And that is very risky as Labour councillors found out in the 1980s….Remember Derek Hatton? ‘Red’ Ted Knight?
Reform is a resting home for clapped out Tories and without a principle between them. Your sort of change needs *martyrs*.
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Reform is a wild card, because all sorts could get elected and want to do their own thing once in, as we’re in revolutionary times, including taking legal action. This is not a nuclear option and is mostly painless and reasonably priced if shared with other councils and effective, because of the draconian 2010 Equality Act which bans discrimination and can be used by anyone. No need for Martyrs, not yet anyway, just backbone!
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“…mostly painless and reasonably priced if shared with other councils and effective…”
The key word is *if*. It wildly unlikely that LBH could rally support from London councils. Their influence beyond London is even less. Worse: Reform don’t have networks of relationships to smooth the discussions.
I carry on believing that martyrs are necessary. Would you volunteer?
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The biased funding impacts on the whole of Britain so there will be no shortage of recruits to a shared legal action, assuming genuine independent control.
The HRA Council Leader has said there is is no legal case possible, but refuses to disclose the legal opinion on which this is based, no doubt because its a fake cover story for inaction.
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To be fair, Rosindell was only under threat in 2024 because the Reform vote was so big. As a whole, the right bloc of voters still dwarfs the left bloc in Romford. With Rosindell setting the scene for his future Reform defection, he will win with ease in 2029. I am informed he is locally popular and a good constituency MP (even though he talks about nothing but flags and immigration, but I digress), something beyond my comprehension but it is what it is.
If Reform runs they will surely win here. ULEZ has saved thousands of lives from air pollution related deaths, but it is politically toxic here in Havering (I think unfairly, but whatever) and more people think Sadiq Khan is some Jihadist (rather than the milquetoast liberal he actually is) than support him. I cannot possibly imagine why they wouldn’t run. There are lots of Reform supporters here. They’ll do rubbishly in power, though, because there are no savings to be had, and the “DOGE” nonsense is a fantasy. The reason why councils around the country are screwed is because austerity deprived them of funding at a time when adult social care costs are shooting up as our population gets older, fatter, and less healthy (more sedentary lifestyles, more ultra-processed food), and as people have fewer kids to produce tax revenue for the council. Hence the reliance on regressive and unpopular things like council tax. Indeed, I think local government is a bit of a cursed chalice at the moment. Parties feel they have to run in them so they seem ‘serious’ and ‘ambitious’, but it’s nigh impossible to perform. Even a very rich borough like Wandsworth, with a competent batch of council leaders, are unable to meet the demand for social housing, to deal with anti-social behaviour, to command the nature of the high street in a way that pleases everyone, to manage green spaces properly, to provide satisfying adult and child social care, while also developing new community infrastructure. Let alone a place like Havering!
There is no real solution other than a radical change in the government’s macroeconomic policy away from the failed model of deficit-hawking and towards something more Keynesian, interventionist, and social democratic/Nordic, at least to keep the ship afloat in the short-term.
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The tour d’horizon that you offer is interesting and I can only make a partial reply.
1) Rosindell: I don’t think that he’ll defect because he is embedded with a *structure* that sustains him. The most visible aspect of that is Margaret Thatcher House.
2) ULEZ: This was the precursor of the Reform Party in Havering. The flags are another symptom. Havering is a working-class borough tarted up and they have been betrayed by successive governments.
3) Welfare: SEND and etc is entirely affordable if an only if the Council Tax descriptive boundaries are reviewed.
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