Lib Dems talking to 'everyone' in no-majority area

Discussions are ongoing about a possible coalition at a council where no party has a majority for the second successive election.

Huntingdonshire District Council had been run by a so-called "rainbow coalition" of Liberal Democrats, Independents, Greens and Labour prior to this year's local elections.

The Lib Dems are now the largest party with 20 seats, with the Conservatives losing seats and dropping to second on 15, while Reform UK - which had no councillors previously - took 10 of the 52 seats available.

Leader of the Lib Dem group, Sarah Conboy, said: "We will be talking to everybody. I'm sure that our Conservative colleagues and our Reform colleagues will be doing the same."

But she said her "instinct is there are a lot of things that Reform have stood on that might make it quite difficult to partner with them".

The Lib Dems gained four seats while the Tories and Labour lost three and two respectively.

There are four independents, two Greens and one Labour councillor on the authority. Twenty-seven councillors are needed for a majority.

"We've previously worked with independents and Labour and Green, but obviously people change, personalities change and local priorities change," said Conboy, prior to all the results being announced.

With local government reorganisation on the horizon, the council will cease to exist in two years' time.

Conboy said: "We have to make sure that the residents of Huntingdonshire have a fully functioning administration that will get us through the next two years until we become a unitary authority."

Ross Martin, leader of the council's Conservative group, said: "We're going to talk to every party.

"Going into the election, my group were very clear that we preferred to not go into any coalition whatsoever," he said, while votes were still being counted.

"We have elections coming up next year and we just think it's best for everyone to be completely separate going into those elections, so there's no muddied water going into the unitaries.

"But obviously the numbers that have turned out... are very, very different to how we expected it and how everyone else expected it, including the other parties."

Ryan Coogan, one of the new Reform councillors, said he was "very disappointed" that, prior to the election, "every other party said they would not work with Reform".

He said: "I find that really, really sad when we've got good genuine local people trying their best for their communities and you've got other councillors suggesting that they're going to scupper any plans of working with us whatsoever.

"That's really sad I think that's potentially slightly disingenuous but that's the disconnect between the current political class and ourselves and that's the kind of thing we need to change."

But he said he expected there would be discussions behind closed doors and hoped Reform could be part of these.

Lara Davenport-Ray, one of the two Green councillors, said her party was "very clear in our minds that we have nothing in common with the Reform Party and any coalition that involved them would not include us".

She said the Greens had "achieved a lot" together with their coalition partners over the past four years, and that "there are lots of conversations to be had".

Meanwhile, the only Labour councillor, Alex Bulat, said shortly after being elected that she had "different views around the campaign and how it has been conducted by certain parties – I think I'll just take a day to reflect on this."

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