When Bob Johnson found out, on a sweaty afternoon at Sheffield Town Hall in May 2021, that he had lost his seat in Hillsborough and been deposed as Sheffield’s Labour council leader, he thought to himself: “This is soul destroying”. He then watched as the university lecturer Christine Gilligan Kubo claimed victory for the Greens by 300 votes.
“It came as a bit of a shock,” Johnson says, admitting his party had “underestimated the Greens”. Five years on, he’s “hoping Labour have learned from that mistake”. Are we in the same place again? As a dyed-in-the-wool politician, he knows the surest way to predict a local election: “seeing posters in people’s windows.”
If that’s right, Labour have good reason to feel nervous about Walkley, the next ward along from Hillsborough. Several windows sport green posters, and activists fear Tom Hunt, Sheffield city council’s leader, might lose his seat to Andy Davies. Might history repeat itself?
This year’s local elections could be some of the most consequential in a generation. The rise of Reform and the Greens and the decline of Labour and the Conservatives are big national stories, for sure. But they are all also being played out on the ground in Sheffield as well.
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