New Colour, Same Asks: Holding a Coalition Together When the Council Flips

There's a particular kind of email that lands in a coalition inbox the week after local elections. It's warm, it's effusive, and it says something like: The new administration shares your values and looks forward to working closely with you.

Read it twice. Then read your own constitution. Because the next two years of your group's reputation may depend on how you answer it.

The morning after the count

Local political control changes. Councils go from no overall control to a majority, from red to blue to yellow to green, from a leader who knew your members by name to a cabinet member who has been in post for nine days and is already behind on their 100-day plan.

What does not change, in our experience, is most of the machinery. The officers who run the housing team are still there. The regeneration timetable is still there. The ward budgets, the scrutiny calendar, the asset transfer policy, the leisure centre that's still leaking — all still there. Members change; the machine mostly doesn't.

That's the first thing to hold on to. Control shifts. The work doesn't. And neither should your asks.

Write the asks down before you need to

We've written before about what makes a campaign 'community-led', and the same test applies to surviving a change of administration. If your asks only exist in your head, or in a set of meeting minutes nobody's read since March, they will get rewritten by whoever is keenest to be seen delivering something.

So: publish them. A short, plain-English document. Three to five specific asks with a reason attached to each, written in the language residents use — not the language of a cabinet report. Who asked for it, how many people, what would change.

The point of writing it down is that it becomes the thing you can point at when the question shifts from what does the community need? to what does this administration want to announce?

The four co-option traps

New administrations are often genuinely friendly. That's not the danger. The danger is the four invitations that arrive dressed as partnership:

The photo opportunity. A cabinet member wants to be photographed at your community garden. Fine — but ask what happens before and after the shutter. A visit is not a commitment. Ask for the commitment in writing, even a paragraph, and put the photo in the newsletter alongside what was promised.

The 'partner' label with no resource. You get named in a strategy document as a key partner. You get no funding, no staff time and no decision-making power, but you do get blamed when the strategy stalls. Being listed is not the same as being resourced. Ask, politely and repeatedly, which one this is.

The seat at the table. A community reference group, an advisory panel, a task-and-finish board. All can be useful. None are useful if they meet quarterly, have no budget and no route into a decision. Before you take a seat, ask three questions: who else is on it, what can it actually decide, and who sees the minutes?

The endorsement request. At some point a party will ask your group, or one of your members speaking as the group, to back a candidate or a budget line. Don't. The short-term gain is never worth the long-term cost, and the cost is this: half your members stop trusting the room.

Rules that protect the residents, not the politicians

Our view, for what it's worth, is that coalitions should adopt a small number of standing rules and stick to them regardless of who is in charge:

• No endorsements, ever, of any party or candidate. Not in elections, not in budget season, not on social media.
• Symmetry. If you invite the cabinet member, invite the opposition spokesperson. If you attend one party's community event, attend the others'. Same format, same scrutiny.
• Report back publicly. Publish who you met, what was asked and what was said. This is dull, and it is also the single best protection against being described as somebody's group.
• No surprises. Tell the council what you're going to say publicly before you say it. It's basic courtesy and it keeps lines open when things get rough.
• Residents speak. Wherever possible, the person who lives with the problem should be the person presenting it. Coalitions that become interpreters — professional, articulate, always available — gradually replace the people they were meant to amplify.

Rebuilding, not renegotiating

A new administration needs early wins. That's not a weakness to exploit; it's an honest piece of information about how councils work.

So look at your asks and find the one that is both genuinely needed and deliverable inside a year. Push that one first. Give the new cabinet member a credible, claimable, resident-backed win — and take the credit for the community alongside it, not instead of it. That trade buys you something far more valuable than goodwill: a track record. When the harder ask comes, you're the group that delivered, not the group that complains.

At the same time, keep a warm, professional relationship with officers. They will outlast this administration and the one after. The officer who runs the lettings team is not a political actor, and treating them like one is how good coalitions lose their access to basic facts.

When they say no

The hardest part of a change of control is the group that believed the new lot would be different. Sometimes they are. Often they're not — or they are, but the budget isn't, and the thing you were promised in opposition becomes a difficult decision in power.

Do not take it personally, and do not spend your credibility on the personality of the person who disappointed you. Go back to the asks. Ask the question again. Put the residents in front of the answer. A council that can't say yes in year one can often say yes in year three, and the groups that are still standing in year three are the ones who didn't burn the bridge in month two.

A short checklist for the first hundred days

• Re-send your asks to every new councillor for your wards, all parties, the same day.
• Request a meeting with the cabinet member for communities, and with the relevant opposition spokesperson.
• Find out who sits on scrutiny, and when the next relevant item is scheduled.
• Reconfirm every officer relationship in writing, gently, and ask what's changed.
• Book your AGM, publish your neutrality rules, and tell your members what they are.

The colour of the rosette in the council chamber is not the point. The point is whether the leisure centre stays open, the bus route survives, and the residents who did the work are still in the room next time.

Ask again. Same asks. Whatever the colour.