Preston council leadership challenge to come from Lib Dems

The Labour leader of Preston City Council will be challenged for his job at a meeting on Thursday that will determine how the authority operates in the wake of this month’s local election results.

The Liberal Democrat main opposition group will try to replace Matthew Brown with their leader, John Potter, after the authority slipped into no overall control.

However, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) understands that Cllr Brown – who has been in charge for the last eight years – will comfortably secure a combination of the active support and abstention he needs from other opposition politicians in order to remain in the role.   

Following the poll on 7th May, Labour lost the majority grip it had held on the authority for the last 15 years – but it remains the largest party, with 21 out of the total 48 seats at the town hall.

That means Labour will always now need the backing or acquiescence of four non-Labour councillors to be sure of being able to pursue its policies – as it will to re-elect Cllr Brown as leader, along with the cabinet he has selected, both of which will be put to the vote at Thursday’s annual general meeting.

Cllr Potter – whose Liberal Democrat group holds 14 seats – told the LDRS that he would have a shot at wresting the role from the Labour incumbent.   He said there was an opportunity for Preston “to take a new direction”.

“Lots of people will have many opinions on the 2026 local election results in the city, but one thing is certain, Preston Labour were rejected by the electorate. Labour lost six of the 10 wards they won in 2022 and got just 21 percent of the vote. 

“Preston is no longer a true red Labour city – 79 percent of voters sent Preston Labour a message. All the other parties have only five councillors or fewer, [so] it’s up to the Liberal Democrats and our 14 councillors to lead the change Preston deserves. 

“I’ve not offered any secret back room deals nor any chair of committee sweeteners to the other parties. Who they vote for is their choice, Keir Starmer’s Labour man in Preston or change, with myself and the Lib Dem team,” said Cllr Potter, adding that he was promising “a new energy and vision for the city”.

Responding to the prospect of a challenge, Cllr Brown said:  “It does seem a bit eccentric that Cllr Potter – with 29 percent of the council seats – is challenging Labour, who have 46 percent of [them]. But that is his democratic right. 

“I’m confident that we will get over the line, but I’m not in any way, shape or form complacent.”

Cllr Brown secured the support of his own Labour group to remain at the helm last week.

Meanwhile, ahead of the meeting on Thursday, the smaller opposition parties have all indicated to the LDRS that they will enable him to stay in post – even though he will not be able to bank on their support for his policy platform in the remaining two years of the authority’s existence. 

The city council will be axed in April 2028 and replaced with a larger, yet-to-be-determined authority covering a wider area, as part of a government-ordered shake-up.

Reform UK group leader Stephen Thompson – who went from being the sole representative of his party on the existing city authority to part of a five-strong entity after the elections – said he had no problem abstaining on the leadership vote, because “Labour have the most seats”.

He added that while Reform had plenty of Labour policies “to go at” from their newly-strengthened position as the third-largest group, he believed that the Liberal Democrats were the most “anti-Reform” party in Preston – making it difficult to work with them.

Conservative group leader Harry Landless, whose party was shrunken to just three seats after the polls – having been the main opposition until just two years ago – said it would be “pointless” voting against Cllr Brown’s re-election.

“We’ve got to get on with it – we’ve got a very tricky couple of years ahead [before the council’s abolition], so a bit of stability will help,” said Cllr Landless.

However, he stressed his group was still “very far apart” from Labour and would be seizing the opportunity presented by a no overall control scenario to “hold them to account much more than we were able to in the past”.

The Green Party – which secured a presence on the city council for the first time at the elections – told the LDRS that it would vote to keep Cllr Brown in office.

The party’s chair, Avery Greatorex, said the two Green councillors who now sit on the authority – who will not be subject to a party whipping system, leaving them free to determine their own individual positions on any subject – had decided to support the Labour leader.

He added:  “We agree more with the Preston Labour platform than we do [that of] the Lib Dems when it comes to the economy and community wealth building. 

“[However, on] social issues, we definitely lean more to the Lib Dems – and that’s why we’re not entering any formal agreement [with Labour], because we can see ourselves working with either side.”

Cllr Brown said immediately after the elections that he was hoping to rely on the support of two former Labour councillors who now sit as independents to pursue the party’s agenda, along with that of the currently suspended Labour councillor Freddie Bailey, who is hoping to rejoin the fold after the conclusion of a party investigation into a matter which has not been made public.

One of the independents, city centre ward councillor Carol Henshaw, told the LDRS that as she was “more true Laboury than some of the [city council] Labour group and most of the Parliamentary group”, she suspected she would not struggle to support the future Labour agenda at the authority. She also said that while she would listen to Cllr Potter’s pitch for the leadership “with interest”, her vote would always go to “a socialist”.