Lib Dems pip Labour to the post in Milton Keynes

Labour has lost control of Milton Keynes City Council after shedding 11 seats in the local elections, making the Liberal Democrats the largest party on the authority.

Labour, which previously had 30 councillors, won 19 seats in Thursday's poll, while the Lib Dems won 20.

The Conservatives took 12 seats, an increase of two, while Reform UK went from zero seats to nine.

Liberal Democrat group leader, Jane Carr, said it was "a fantastic result".

"The party have worked really hard on the doorsteps week in week out," she said.

"We're talking to residents all the time and they seem to have appreciated what we can offer - and that's an alternative to, perhaps, Reform."

Deputy Labour group leader, Lauren Townsend, said: "We are very proud in Milton Keynes that we've managed to hold a kind of a progressive majority."

Labour and the Lib Dems will appoint leaders on Saturday, and one of those will subsequently be voted in as the new leader of the council.

Townsend said the two parties have worked together "very closely" over the past 12 years.

"We have a good relationship with them locally," said Townsend.

"We are very aligned in terms of how we see the future for Milton Keynes, our ambitions for the city, and basically wanting to do the best by our residents and communities."

Shazna Muzammil, leader of the Conservatives, said she was "very pleased" with the party's showing.

"I think we are absolutely bucking the national trend for the Conservatives," she told the BBC.

"The dynamics in the council will be very interesting because we've got Reform as well, so it won't be just us.

"Previously it has felt like we were the only opposition, even though Lib Dems were the main opposition.

"So, hopefully, we will be able to hold them to account so they deliver what the residents really, really need."

Newly elected Reform councillor, Finlay Hughes, said: "It is obviously a brilliant result for us.

"It was great to go out and speak to people and reach people that have been feeling very frustrated and left out.

"We need to get a good summary of what is actually going on financially in Milton Keynes Council."

Hughes, 21, is a civil servant in the Prison Service and said: "That's what kind of drew me into this.

"I can see the difference that good management makes, and I'm hoping to bring that to Milton Keynes in some regard."

Milton Keynes is famously "different by design" and is seemingly now different when it comes to election trends.

Reform may have won well over 1,000 council seats nationally, but they had to be content with just nine in Milton Keynes, and most of those were in Bletchley.

In the end it was really more of the same, as the city returned to its old routine of Labour and the Liberal Democrats working together to run the authority.

Only this time, the Lib Dems will be the largest party for the first time since 2010.

There were Labour losses, of course, although the red politicians I spoke to seemed relieved to have come through relatively unscathed.

But maybe spare a thought for the Greens, who had been tipped by many to pick up a councillor or even two in a city that prides itself on being progressive.

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