“I've got more to offer”

Vince Maple has been the leader of Medway Council since 2023, and we have interviewed him in the run-up to the 2023 local elections, having won the local elections, after 100 days of running the council and at the halfway point of this administration. Having agreed to an interview in the final year of this administration, this was delayed whilst we waited for the LGR announcement.

Finally meeting up at the St George's Centre in Chatham, a mixture of new local government, a new Labour leader and Vince's inability to give a short answer means we present this interview in two parts. This first part focuses on local government reorganisation and the change in National Labour leadership.

In politics, life moves fast. 
Blimey, we're testing that at the moment.

When we booked this interview, we had one Prime Minister, and now we've got another. 
That's true. Sir Keir Starmer has left the role.

I could deal with no more changes for the foreseeable future, please

Where do you think history will rate him in the history of Labour Prime Ministers? 
Obviously, readers will know, I was the parliamentary candidate in 2019. If you'd said to me at that point that in the middle of 2026 we would have a Labour government, three Labour MPs for Medway and the Labour-run council, I would have questioned your judgement. But we've got all of those things, and I think a huge part of that is down to Keir Starmer, and his ability to get the Labour Party back into a position of being ready for government, both locally and nationally, under his leadership.
Clearly, he took the decision to resign. I wanted him to stay. I think he did a good job, but he's taken that decision, and I'm very supportive of Andy Burnham.
There's this joke around: Burnham goes everywhere politically. He's loyal to the Labour Party leader, as am I, and I think that's a good thing. Nobody votes for Labour because they're having a huge internal row with itself. I've been a councillor since May 2007. I've had everybody from Tony Blair up to, and including, Andy Burnham. I could deal with no more changes for the foreseeable future, please, but I have supported every one of those leaders. I will be on the record saying I support the leader, because that's what you should do. You should back your leader. 

Do you back your leader when he says we need electoral form and proportional representation?
Well, I don't necessarily agree with him on that. It depends when you're looking at that in the round. One of the things I want to see is bigger changes to the House of Lords. I don't think we've been brave enough there. We should get on with that. I think most people who take an interest in politics say, “How is this still a thing in 2026?” 
This is where I do give some ground on PR. I'd have a system not too dissimilar to the European elections, if you remember them, where you had a regional basis and elected representatives. Some people say with the changes to local government you're not getting that far away from where actually that may be a strong part of that. 
I think having a PR type system for the second chamber and retaining first past the post for the primary chamber is my preferred option. But as I've said before, I know in the Labour Party that is a minority view. The majority of my friends and colleagues take a different view, and that may well be where we end up as a country, depending on how much of a priority electoral reform is.

The new Prime Minister's first statement, and you've had a good couple of hours to think about this now, is ending rough sleeping. Which member of the cabinet would that fall under?
That would be Louwella [Prenter]. At 4.30 tomorrow morning, I'm going out with the rough sleeping team from Medway. I have to say that was already in the diary, but it's helpful timing. What it does show is that Andy Burnham, not least because of his time as mayor, has got his finger on the pulse of some quite granular issues, because there's not a simple solution to fix that. 
From that perspective, the ability to have that conversation and see what's happening on the ground will help inform me further. I'm expecting we'll hear stuff probably over the next few weeks around some priorities. People know that we've taken a priority to say we want to move away from paying ridiculous amounts of taxpayers' funding for not very good services with temporary accommodation. We're already in that place. I have to say, Louwella Prenter is a passionate supporter of council housing and tackling housing inefficiency, which we have at the moment because we have large levels of people having to use temporary accommodation.