Local elections: Labour make gains in England and Wales

[LeftishBrit]

Labour have won a string of victories in English and Welsh local elections - with shadow ministers claiming Ed Miliband is now on course for No 10.

The party is set to add more than 700 seats and has taken control of councils including Birmingham and Cardiff.

Based on results so far, Labour are projected to end up with a 39% national share of the vote, up three points, with the Tories down four on 31%.

The Lib Dems' share of the vote is estimated to be unchanged at 16%.

More at link:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17920848

[LeftishBrit]

1. What were your local results?

In Oxford, Labour gained three seats from the LibDems, including my ward; one from the Greens; and an Independent candidate made one gain from Labour. Overall Labour increased its majority by 3 seats - and still not a single Tory councillor!

Total council composition post-election: Labour 29, Lib Dems 13, Greens 5, Independent 1.

Also, West Oxfordshire District Council (more-or-less the same as David Cameron's Witney constituency) had some seats up. Although they're still solidly Tory, there were a few gloat-worthy losses, including a Labour gain in Chipping Norton!

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. The Lib Dems regained 2 seats from Independents

(who had previously been Lib Dem councillors, but left over an internal argument. They didn't stand again). Everything else was unchanged, so the council is 4 Tories from the posh corner, and 40 Lib Dems from everywhere else.

T_i_B asked before if UKIP was standing in places. They stood in all wards here; most came 4th, but they managed 3 3rds and 2 2nds; in all cases, even if you added the whole Tory and UKIP votes together, you would not have changed the result.

[T_i_B]

3. Mixed news from Sheffield for UKIP

They came second in Manor Castle, a predominantly white, deprived, safe Labour ward.

However, in Dore & Totley, Sheffield's wealthiest, most conservative ward their candidate has been sacked after he endorsed Anders Breivik's extremist politics.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/may/02/ukip-steve-moxon-whistleblower-home-office-beverley-hughes

[LeftishBrit]

4. What a monster. Anyone who expresses any sympathy for Brevik's views is just vile

And UKIP complain at being associated by Warsi with the BNP (this was one of the very few occasions where I felt the slightest sympathy for Warsi!)

[T_i_B]

5. Google Steve Moxon

Last edited Fri May 4, 2012, 02:58 PM - Edit history (2)

And you'll see that he's clearly a very nasty piece of work.

As to the BNP, they have done very badly (hooray!) but it's noticable in places like Barnsley that candidates who stood for the BNP last time out are now standing for the English Democrats so there's clearly been mass defections.

No suprise that in Sheffield Labour continued to make significant gains off the Liberal Democrats. The thing I kept hearing was how underhanded and negative the Lib Dem's campaigning was in Sheffield. Former Council leader Paul Scriven got beaten into 3rd place by Labour & Greens in his ward.

Sheffield, like most places voted "No" to an elected mayor, although Doncaster voted to keep the position. Not suprising when the referendum campaign in Sheffield was pretty much non existant.

Personally I'm glad that Sheffield voted No. I'm not opposed to elected mayors in principle but the actual proposals were much too vague about the Mayor's powers, ran a severe risk of making the excutive less accountable then it should be, and also there was the question about whether the Mayor's remit might extend outside Sheffield's borders which would go down like a lead balloon where I live.

[fedsron2us]

6. Surprisingly little change in Adur District on the south coast

The Tories held on to all their Councillors with the only change being one Labour Councillor taking a seat from the Lib Dems. Strangely the Council historically is not as rock solidly Tory as it would appear, In the past the Lib Dems ran it for a number of years only losing control when in fighting in their own ranks led to mass defections of some of their Councillors and voters to the Conservatives at the end of the last century..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/vote2012/council/E07000223.stm

Needless to say the fact that the Lib Dems are the 'opposition' locally but are in the Coalition government nationally has not reallly gone down well with the voters.

I should add that this is quite an unusual Tory Council in that it still runs its own social housing rather than transferring it to Housing Associations etc which even a lot of Labour boroughs have done. Dont know if that helped the councillors get back in but it may have done in a few key places.

Has to be said that the turnout was pathetically low. I have heard that in some wards only 6% of those eligible to vote actually bothered to turn up to the polls.

[Ken Burch]

8. That kind of a turnout would have effectively turned a lot of the wards

into temporary de facto "rotten boroughs", wouldn't it?

I wonder what might have happened there if the Greens had made a push...they could potentially have taken a lot of votes simply by being the one party(due, of course, to their never having been in power in most of Britain)that wasn't responsible for any instances of governmental corruption or incompetence.

[fedsron2us]

7. Done some more detailed analysis of my local District results

The most interesting fact is that the Liberal Democrats came plumb last in all but one of the 14 wards contested with their candidate polling less not only the Tory and Labour but also coming in behind UKIP and Green candidates as well. In 10 of the wards the Lib Dem candidate could not even achieve 100 votes. This is simply an appalling performance by a party that dominated Adur Council for much of the 1980s and nearly all the 1990s

http://www.adur.gov.uk/electoral/2012-may-elections.htm

Clegg's decision to go into a Coalition government rather than trading support on a policy by policy basis as David Steel did in the Lib-Lab pact in the 1970s has been a complete disaster for his party. In my view the only way the Lib Dems can save themselves from total oblivion is to leave the government now. If that means ditching Clegg as well then that is the price of their survival.

[Ken Burch]

9. I suspect they'd be terrified to do that

out of fear that Cameron would retaliate by calling a snap election(which would force the LibDems to campaign on their record in the Coalition and cut their share of the popular vote by half, with their seat count cut to 1940's Liberal levels, if the polls I've seen are correct).

In this regard, Cameron's strategy(force the LibDems to vote for a large number of neo-Thatcherite policies in exchange for getting the referendum on electoral reform, then sabotage the referendum by choosing an alternative electoral system NO ONE wanted, knowing that only the LibDems would suffer for it)was brilliant.

[MichaelMcGuire]

10. Real numbers here, the bbc can't count.

SNP 424 (+61) (363 in 2007) = 61
Labour 394 (+46) (348 in 2007) = 46
Conservatives 115 (-28)
Liberal Democrats 71 (-95)
Greens 14 (+6)
SSP 1 (-)
Others 201 (+8)