The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) All-Britain Steering Committee has produced a new summary guide for candidates and election agents who are thinking about contesting the local council elections that are taking place in 2025 on Thursday May 1st. 

The guide contains information on the official regulations governing the elections, based on publications produced by the Electoral Commission, along with some tips and pointers drawn from the previous experience of TUSC election campaigners. 

As well explaining the official election rules, the guide also includes information on the procedures agreed by the steering committee on how to get to use one of the descriptions available from TUSC on your local ballot paper.  For the first time the options include the newly registered description, Independent Trade Union and Socialist Candidate, a far clearer identifier of what someone stands for than the bare label, ‘Independent’.

There will be around 2,150 councillors elected in May 2025 – see the TUSC elections directory for which councils have elections this time (at https://www.tusc.org.uk/21162/06-09-2024/where-will-there-be-elections-in-2025/).

These contests will be the first big electoral test of the new Tory-lite Starmer government.  With no deposits needed to stand for a local election seat, the question is: why couldn’t YOU be on the ballot paper to help build an alternative to the establishment parties?  The guide shows how it can be done. ■

The 2025 Guide for Local Council Election Candidates and Agents is available as a downloadable PDF at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2025-Guide-for-Candidates-Agents.pdf

An application form for candidates to use the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition name and emblem on the ballot paper, or any of the other eight descriptions TUSC has registered with the Electoral Commission, is available on the TUSC website at https://www.tusc.org.uk/2025-application-form-cllr/.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has produced a report examining the broad financial position of the 32 local authorities that will form the ‘election battleground’ for the first scheduled ballot box test of the Starmer government in May 2025.

With the Tories controlling the majority of these councils, against the backdrop of Labour’s new austerity agenda, it will be necessary for anti-austerity campaigners not just to say ‘no cuts’ but to explain how councillors could defy the government and defend local public services. 

This report – available at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/2025-Reserves-Report.pdf – provides the detail for the battleground councils to supplement previously published TUSC material on how it is possible to prepare a no cuts People’s Budget (see the 55-page briefing document at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/450.pdf). ■

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) directory of the elections taking place in May 2025 has now been published and is available as a PDF at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Elections-2025-directory.pdf.   

The directory, an annual production by TUSC referenced once as a resource by the House of Commons Library, provides a breakdown of the councils with statutory elections scheduled for the year ahead, the number of councillors up for election, and the current political control in each council listed – a tool for forward planning in the battle to get a socialist, anti-austerity alternative onto the ballot paper next May in the first big electoral test of the Starmer Labour government and its ‘tough choices’ Austerity 2.0 agenda.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) All-Britain Steering Committee has republished the Preparing a No Cuts People's Budget briefing document we first produced in January 2016.

The new briefing document is available as a PDF at https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/450.pdf.

Now Sir Keir Starmer has revived Tony Blair's New Labour, once again working class voters face being effectively disenfranchised. But the crisis of local public services has not gone away and the need for a fighting alternative is even greater. The re-published TUSC briefing, new and updated, is a contribution to building that alternative.