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Every time there is an election, someone reaches for the same metaphor: it will be a Mad Hatter's Tea Party.It rarely is. Local government is far better at absorbing political change than that suggests.Riddles instead of policy. Clocks running backwards. 'Off with his head' as a management style. The imagery is familiar, especially in opposition briefings before and after local elections. It makes for a neat warning. It does not reflect how councils actually operate.Inside the first cabinet meetings after a change in leadership, things rarely resemble chaos. Not calm. Not frictionless. But not collapse either.The White Rabbit is already there in the system — not as theatre, but as behaviour. Urgency. Acceleration. Impatience. 'Why does this take so long?' 'Can't we just get on with it?' 'What's stopping delivery?'Hurry, hurry becomes the tone.In practice, the deputy sets the pace early. Big questions. Sharp challenges. Why are we structured like this? Why do we need so many layers? What would happen if we simply changed it?It is not policy detail. It is political signalling — a clear statement that things are expected to move faster and look different.The leader then sets the boundary. Yes, change is needed. Yes, improvement is required. But it must be done properly. With partners. With evidence. With process.The deputy drives momentum. The leader creates containment. The balance between the two is where most administrations find their operating rhythm.In practice, the chief executive becomes the system's translator — turning political urgency into operational reality without breaking delivery, legal process, or key relationships. Most chief executives have worked with multiple political parties over time. Different values, different priorities, different styles. The skill is not resistance or compliance, but interpretation.Around the table, other dynamics emerge quickly.The cynic introduces data — not as obstruction, but as grounding. Demand trends. Financial constraints. Workforce capacity. The structural realities that remain constant regardless of political change.The quieter, more experienced voices often offer the most deliverable solutions. Practical. Unshowy. Sometimes overlooked in louder discussions, but frequently closest to operational reality.A strong idea may pass without comment, only to reappear later in a more visible form, attributed elsewhere. That is also part of the system's rhythm.And then there is the wider system — particularly NHS partners under parallel financial and demand pressure.There is often an external assumption that a new administration will rapidly reset relationships, reassign costs, or redraw boundaries between organisations. Occasionally there is political pressure in that direction. But the operational reality is more constrained.Adult social care demand, delayed discharge pressures, mental health needs, and rising complexity in community provision do not move because political leadership has changed. Neither do NHS capacity constraints or funding limits.That is why experienced chief executives often act as system interpreters as much as organisational leaders — ensuring that political ambition does not unintentionally destabilise wider health and care partnerships, and that pressure is not simply displaced from one organisation to another.Because while rhetoric may suggest rapid transformation, the reality is adaptation under constraint.Local government is particularly good at this. It absorbs different management styles, political priorities, and working cultures without losing operational continuity. It has to.But that adaptability is not passive. It is actively managed.There will always be pressure for quick results. There will always be challenges to established ways of working. And there will always be tension between ambition and delivery. That is not new. It is constant.What changes is the tone, not the fundamentals.So when opposition narratives suggest incoming administrations will resemble a Alice's Adventures in Wonderland-style tea party of disorder and reversal, it misses the point.Local government is not a tea party.It is a system that has learned, repeatedly, how to work with political change rather than be defined by it.In that sense, the chief executive role sits at the centre — translating ambition into delivery, managing risk across organisational boundaries, and maintaining coherence when direction shifts.From the outside, it may look unpredictable.From the inside, it is something more familiar: adaptation under pressure, delivered by institutions that have been doing exactly that for a long time.Not chaos. Not collapse.Just continuity with movement. Blair McPherson is an author and former director in local government

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ELECTIONS

How local government absorbs political change

By Blair McPherson | 11 May 2026

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