Local elections: Green vs Reform heats up as Starmer comes out swinging

Now, I know that you're not sadly actually in the room with us, but Cleo's excitement is genuinely tangible, ladies and gentlemen.

Cleo, get us up to speed with what's going on this week.

So this week, we have some local and actually some national elections going on in the devolved nations up and down the country on Thursday.

So let's just have a quick reminder of what these local elections are for because I think with all the chat about leadership contests and so on, we can kind of lose sight of what the purpose of these elections even are.

So fixing potholes, providing care for the elderly and disabled, let's agree that's pretty important, collecting rubbish, providing libraries and leisure services, things like that, and a matter close to my heart, overseeing planning applications.

So it's actually quite important, and it is really tangible.

These are things that we feel around our local communities, and that is essentially what we are voting on.

Although I'm not voting on that.

There is-- there are no local elections in my area this week, so I'm, I'm just a voyeur.

Now, I mentioned that these are tangible for people on a kind of local level, but everyone will have seen in the press that these are also being treated as a bit of a referendum on Keir Starmer's leadership, and we will be getting into that later in the episode.

So there are five thousand seats at play.

Um, a hundred and thirty-six councils are up for grabs, and there are two sets of elections in nations.

So both the Welsh Parliament and the Scottish Parliament will be elected again on Thursday, and those are slightly a level up from potholes.

That's, uh, decisions affecting the NHS, education, and in Scotland, the Scottish Parliament has tax-raising and s- big spending powers.

So these are very significant elections in those countries.

Yeah, that's right.