A group of Conservative Party councillors have joined up with left-wing parties in a European-style “cabinet of chaos” grand coalition to keep Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party out of power at all costs in one English county.
Reform UK lost the control of Worcestershire County Council on Thursday, despite being the single largest party in chamber, to a European-style rainbow coalition of parties opposed to either other on practically everything except a shared opposition to Nigel Farage. While such a tactic is new to the United Kingdom, where the two-party system has generally produced relatively stable governments from the local to the national, the slow dissolution of that status quo over the past 15 years has seen the importation of this foreign style of politics.
Seen across the continent, the so-called grand coalition, rainbow coalition, firewall, or cordon sanitaire is used by pro-status quo parties to keep reformist parties out at any cost. It has seen sworn enemies from the left and right work together to block populists like Marine Le Pen in France, the AfD in Germany, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and the Sweden Democrats.
Unless Reform’s Nigel Farage wins an outright majority nationally in the next General Election for Westminster, exiting the race with the largest party but falling short of a majority, the other Westminster parties could put the democratic result aside and put the left in power just to keep Nigel Farage out of Downing Street, just like Europe.
Described as a “unlikely new alliance” by local media, the Conservatives on Thursday lent the votes needed to hand control of Worcestershire County Council to the hard-left Green Party, ending a year of Reform minority government. The report notes the Reform group has suffered from a year of internal disagreements, leading to some defections.
The new leader of the opposition, Reform’s Alan Amos, still controls the single largest party in the Council but was outnumbered by a catch-all alliance of the hard left Greens, centre-left Liberal Democrats, centre-right Conservatives, and a group of independents. He said of the change: “This will be a cabinet of chaos that will not last. The people who will suffer will be the people of Worcestershire… I’m the leader of the opposition now, it is our duty to scrutinise. We are united and will provide robust opposition.”
While the County Tory group was happy at a local level to work with the hard-left Greens to taken down Reform, interestingly it appears this was not sanctioned by Conservative headquarters in London. The BBC reports the leader of the Worcestershire Conservative group was immediately suspended by the national party for having ignored their orders not to go into government with the Greens.
They report a spokesman said:
The chairman was very clear on a number of occasions that the Conservative Party was totally opposed to the proposed arrangement at Worcestershire County Council… Conservative campaign headquarters has made clear to our councillors that this arrangement must not go ahead.
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