2023 English and Northern Irish Local Elections

[KashmireHawker]

May 4th and 18th sees two major sets of Local Authority Elections in England and Northern Ireland.

England will see over 8,000 seats in 230 Councils be contested, with most last being fought in 2019 when both the Tories and Labour took a hammering over the Brexit impass.

Nearly 50 LA’s, including mine of Wolverhampton are contesting new boundaries and represent around 1/5th of seats up this year.

Northern Ireland will see all 462 Council seats in all 11 District authorities up for grabs 2 weeks after England (due to not wanting to overlap with the Coronation), with the Democratic Unionist Party defending 122 and Sinn Fein defending 105 from 4 years ago.

These could be the last big test before a General Election and with Labour ahead nationally by 15%, results in England could go a long way to determining the big one next year and Northern Ireland’s outcome, could be a big factor on whether power sharing is restored at Stormont.

On 4 May, more than 8,000 seats will be contested at 230 councils across England.

Mayoral elections are also taking place in Bedford, Leicester, Mansfield and Middlesbrough.

In Northern Ireland, 11 council elections are being held on 18 May.

There are no elections in Scotland or Wales.

Local elections 2023: When are they and who can vote?

Local elections in some parts of England and Northern Ireland are taking place in May.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[MikeWM]

East Cambridgeshire District Council could be interesting. Fully re-elected once every four years, it seems rather safe Tory when I moved here - 36 out of 38 seats in the 2015 election - but came very close to being taken by the Lib Dems in 2019 on new boundaries, with the Tories scraping home 15-13.

Will be interesting to see if that was a 'Brexit effect' or whether the Lib Dems can actually take it this time. Somewhat complicating matters is the Labour party, who are distributing leaflets pointing out that they're currently the leaders in the polls in East Cambs according to some model or other, despite not having won a single seat on the council in the last 20 years. (I think that shows that an 'unofficial agreement' between Labour and the Lib Dems to get rid of the Tories is no more likely than ever). All three parties are making a big deal of the fact they oppose the proposed Cambridge congestion charge, even though it will be their parties on the county council that will push it through and their parties on the city council that are supporting it!

That said, unlike the national picture, the local Tories seem to run ECDC rather well, and on balance I think I'd prefer them to keep control on that basis. Personally I'll be spoiling my ballot, once again, as the only options are ConLibLabGreen, and I don't think any of them deserve my vote after the last few years.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

My council ward is up for election this time around. I used to vote Green in the locals but the Green Party as a whole seems increasingly detached from reality and quite bonkers. I'll probably do like I did last time around and vote for the Yorkshire Party. They're unlikely to gain seats but perhaps if their share of the vote increases we'll eventually end up with a more favourable form of regional devolution.

I hope I get some unintentionally comedic leaflets through the door again, like the one last time from a party calling itself the "Christian People's Alliance"... who claimed they were pro free speech yet wanted stricter blasphemy laws!

 

[GRALISTAIR]

Conservatives will get wiped out.

 

[Typhoon]

Conservatives will get wiped out.

If the number of councils they control is significantly down, expect a(nother) government squeeze on local authority revenue (such as freeze or !% limit on council tax - to help residents struggling with the cost of living, not for political posturing, of course).

 

[Snow1964]

I know a number of people that vote for mixed parties in local Council elections where they get 2 or 3 votes. Never all the votes to one party.

Maybe 1 for whoever seems to do most local lobbying of current lot, an independent (or ratepayers) candidate, and one other, from another party eg LibDem or Green

I do this too (but don't get to vote this time, as no local council elections), my theory is it keeps them on their toes rather than being complacent. If they have to fight for your vote, more likely to do what community needs.

 

[brad465]

I hope I get some unintentionally comedic leaflets through the door again, like the one last time from a party calling itself the "Christian People's Alliance"... who claimed they were pro free speech yet wanted stricter blasphemy laws!

Last year a candidate under that party banner in the Wakefield by-election, in an apparent attempt to show they're different to the disgraced former MP, said on his leaflet: "I've never sexually assaulted anyone".

 

[8A Rail]

May be I will just deface my vote! I have a choice of Labour or Green Party and neither are any good for the local people, as they don't care and they need voting out but I do not any further choices! May be we need a candidate under the 'None of the above' Party!

(before you ask I would never vote Conservative either).

 

[brad465]

Like with all FPTP elections, most voters will vote for who they least oppose, not who they most want.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Last year a candidate under that party banner in the Wakefield by-election, in an apparent attempt to show they're different to the disgraced former MP, said on his leaflet: "I've never sexually assaulted anyone".

To be fair, that's a pretty clever move under the circumstances- it got them some headlines after all... I just remember getting the leaflet through from the CPA and being somewhat bemused by the contradictory pledges.

I'm not religious myself, so would be unlikely to vote for a party that put religion of any flavour front and centre, but if their policies were ones that appealed to me I wouldn't rule it out. The idea of stricter blasphemy laws would rule them out, simply because I'm not convinced that any deity exists- so therefore does not need the protection of the law. The fact that they claimed to support both these contradictory policies on the same leaflet was quite amusing in itself, though given the demographics of my area (and a recent local controversy involving a teacher at a local school that related to the idea of blasphemy) I was suspicious of who the party was trying to reach with these two policies.

 

[Revilo]

Like with all FPTP elections, most voters will vote for who they least oppose, not who they most want.

That’s as it should be. Much better for individual voters to make the compromise in deciding who to vote, than getting some coalition cooked up behind closed doors after the event. Plus PR makes it more likely that extremists on the hard left and right have a chance of power, like the Greens in Scotland, who are the tail that wag the dog.

 

[brad465]

That’s as it should be. Much better for individual voters to make the compromise in deciding who to vote, than getting some coalition cooked up behind closed doors after the event. Plus PR makes it more likely that extremists on the hard left and right have a chance of power, like the Greens in Scotland, who are the tail that wag the dog.

That would make sense if it weren't for the fact that in recent years extremist group's have hijacked larger parties and made them adopt their more extreme agenda anyway. UKIP/ERG type politicians have done this to the Tories, while Momentum did this to Labour.

 

[JD2168]

I think a big question is how the Voter Identification requirement will work as I can see this putting people off voting.

 

[dangie]

We are getting the party leaflets through the door. Always makes for good fairy tale reading.

One candidate is standing by a street sign. Apparently over the past months/years they have been campaigning for it to be repaired. Now our town like many is plagued by potholes, litter, unsocial behaviour, unreliable public transport, empty shops etc etc etc…… and what is their major talking point …… a damaged street sign…!!

 

[Andyh82]

The locals are always a strange one because popular opinion and media coverage suggests you are supposed to vote for your local councillor based on what you think of the Westminster government

So you could end up with a situation where your Labour council or councillor is rubbish or has introduced an unpopular scheme, and you vote them back in as you want to give the Tories a kicking

Or you have a Conservative councillor who is ok and you vote them out as you want to give the Westminster Tories a kicking

 

[Revilo]

That would make sense if it weren't for the fact that in recent years extremist group's have hijacked larger parties and made them adopt their more extreme agenda anyway. UKIP/ERG type politicians have done this to the Tories, while Momentum did this to Labour.

But while Labour and the Conservatives tilted towards the extremes (Labour more so because they changed their rules to allow entryism), they have now returned largely to the moderate centre. Whereas in a formal coalition the larger party has to pander to the extremists, who they rely on for power. FPTP ensures moderate Government.

 

[Horizon22]

Conservatives will get wiped out.

They won't. What they will suffer is a bad defeat.

Labour will probably do OK and the Lib Dems will do quite well in Southern England, both at the expense of the Tories.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Apr 2023 ==

But while Labour and the Conservatives tilted towards the extremes (Labour more so because they changed their rules to allow entryism), they have now returned largely to the moderate centre. Whereas in a formal coalition the larger party has to pander to the extremists, who they rely on for power. FPTP ensures moderate Government.

FPTP is a barmy system for any democracy. Proportional systems are much better and truly allow moderate government through compromise.

 

[75A]

I think a big question is how the Voter Identification requirement will work as I can see this putting people off voting.

Doesn't seem too here in N.Ireland.

 

[Horizon22]

I think a big question is how the Voter Identification requirement will work as I can see this putting people off voting.

I imagine not much. Some boroughs did trials of this I think pre-Covid and yes people were turned away but often returned.

Whilst I disagree with introducing Voter ID as it's a solution looking for a problem (we need higher % turnout, not less and polling station voting fraud is practically non-existent) pragmatically the vast majority of people have the relevant ID and of those who don't, I'd happily bet many of them never vote anyway. Whether it's been well advertised is a different matter.

 

[KashmireHawker]

I know a number of people that vote for mixed parties in local Council elections where they get 2 or 3 votes. Never all the votes to one party.

Maybe 1 for whoever seems to do most local lobbying of current lot, an independent (or ratepayers) candidate, and one other, from another party eg LibDem or Green

I do this too (but don't get to vote this time, as no local council elections), my theory is it keeps them on their toes rather than being complacent. If they have to fight for your vote, more likely to do what community needs.

I experienced that when running in the safest Tory ward of my city in Wolverhampton in 2021, when there was a double vacancy. I had lots of votes alongside a Conservative, which was a slightly strange feeling but not surprising.

Probably will be like this again, with all 60 seats in Wolverhampton up in 13 days, with me being 1 of 3 Labour candidates, alongside 3 Tories and 1 Lib Dem in the ward of Penn.

Some people like to just put the X in top boxes, so being 2nd on the ballot paper makes me quietly pleased.

 

[jfollows]

In Cheshire East, and probably in many other places as well, it's going to be interesting to see how independent candidates get on.
In 2019 we ended up with 34 Conservative, 25 Labour and 19 Independent councillors, and the latter two ran the council in coalition.
The Conservatives did a dire job (my opinion!) since the unitary council was established in 2011, and relatively recently a report has been published (https://www.cheshireeast.gov.uk/pdf...eshire-east-council-final-17-january-2023.pdf) which corroborates a lot of the allegations such as bullying by the then-leader of the council, which we all kind of knew anyway. So this plus the national situation aren't going to help the Conservatives.
The independents are also geared up better now - in my area they have fielded a full list of candidates for "Residents of Wilmslow" for all the seats, and I think in the last election they had fewer candidates than available seats.
So I think here they'll improve, I think there are 82 seats now, so if Labour+Independent get 42 or more combined I'd expect them to re-form the coalition, which was temporarily broken for the purpose of the election.
If the independents get more seats than Labour then the only change I’d expect would be that the current deputy leader (Craig Browne) would become council leader.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Apr 2023 ==

The main Conservative support will continue to come from the south of the authority - in the 2016 referendum the results were tabulated from Crewe (leave) and Macclesfield (remain). So the Conservatives won't be wiped out, indeed, but they'll increasingly represent one part of the council area.

 

[jfollows]

Following on from my last post, the BBC has something about Cheshire's elections (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-65398385).
For me, it's interesting that it observes that Labour isn't standing in Alderley Edge, Wilmslow and Prestbury - that's because even though the coalition has been temporarily dissolved they're preferring the election of independent candidates over Conservative ones. In general elections Labour comes second to Conservatives, generally, in these areas - not Liberal Democrats - but in local elections, at least in my area of Wilmslow, the independent vote has been strong for a while now in local elections.

Local elections 2023: Cheshire councils hang in the balance​

• • Published
    2 hours ago
• • England local elections 2023

By Kaleigh Watterson
Cheshire political reporter, BBC News


Voters living in parts of Cheshire will on Thursday be heading to polling stations for the first time in four years.
A lot has changed in politics and in the wider world since 2019 of course, so how will that translate in terms of what our councils will look like?
There are two "all out" elections in Cheshire - with all seats up for grabs on both Cheshire East Council and Cheshire West and Chester Council.
There are no elections in Warrington this year since the borough council held "all out" elections 12 months ago.
The issues in play vary from hyper-local concerns over potholes to wider worries about the cost of living.

Labour is confident of taking full control of Cheshire West and Chester Council, with party insiders in upbeat mood.
It was a Conservative-run authority until 2015 when it was gained by Labourafter a recount in the final ward.
At the last election in 2019, there were extensive boundary changes and Labour lost its majority and has only been in minority control ever since.
The current make-up of the council is 33 Labour councillors, 28 Conservatives, three grouped independent councillors, three unaligned independent councillors, two Liberal Democrats and one Green.
We'll certainly be seeing some new faces, with Chester City and the Garden Quarter set to elect successors for the two Labour councillors who are not standing for re-election.
One of them is Samantha Dixon, the former council leader who in December became the city's MP in a by-election.
A total of 11 candidates are going for this ward, making it very keenly contested.

Across the council, the Conservatives are targeting every seat, with 70 candidates vying for election.
Labour are putting up 65 candidates. While they are contesting each of the 45 wards, in some areas they are not going for all of the seats.
The Liberal Democrats have 62 candidates standing, while the Greens are contesting 27 seats.
Independents and smaller parties have a total of 22 candidates.

What are the issues?​

Speaking to people on the streets of Chester, a wide range of issues came up, including everything from the cost-of-living crisis to empty shops, recycling, house prices and potholes.
Many of these may be local, but they're similar to those seen across the country. And when asked, many voters told me their main focus at the polling station would be on national issues.
"If there was a strong local issue, that would override national but at the minute but there's not a strong local issue for me, so I'll go with the national trend," one voter in Chester said.

Meanwhile, over in Cheshire East, a lot has changed in the local authority's relatively young life.
This council - and its counterpart on the other side of the county - were only formed in 2009. So, if it was a person it wouldn't even be old enough to vote.
For its first decade, Cheshire East was a flagship Tory council.
That all changed in 2019 when the Conservatives lost seven seats and with it their majority, mostly to independent candidates.
Since then, it's been run as a coalition between the second biggest party - Labour - and the Independent Group.
The council is made up of 82 councillors covering 52 wards.
Currently, the Conservatives hold 30 seats while Labour have 24 and their coalition partners the Independent Group have 17.
There are also four Liberal Democrats and four non-grouped councillors.
This time around, the Conservatives have put forward the most candidates - 81 across the borough. Meanwhile, Labour have 60 candidates. The third biggest is independents, with 44 standing.
The Lib Dems have put forward 30 candidates, while the Greens - who have had no councillors on Cheshire East - have put forward slightly more candidates, 34 of them.
Smaller parties are fielding five candidates.

So while the Conservatives are contesting every seat, Labour have chosen not to.
Seats in the "Golden Triangle" area of Alderley Edge, Prestbury and Wilmslow do not have Labour candidates.
This is similar to last time, where Labour fielded just one candidate out of the seats available across Wilmslow's four wards. They say they're targeting resources where they think they have a more realistic chance of winning.
The key to this election will more likely than not be independent candidates. Currently there are 17 grouped independents and four "independent independents", as it were.
Many of them are standing as a group or part of a hyper-local party.

Rise of independents?​

One independent councillor I spoke to said they believed people were turning to independents because they're "fed up with party politics".
This is not just the case here in Cheshire East of course; the Local Government Association says there are about 2,300 independent councillors in England and Wales - 13% of the total.
Compare that to the UK's third largest political party, the Lib Dems, who make up 14.3% of all councillors nationally.
So independents are definitely a force to be reckoned with. Hyper-local and non-party affiliated councillors could make a big impact here in Cheshire, and not for the first time.
In terms of key issues, those out knocking on doors have told me they were hearing about things such as the cost of living, potholes, housing development, HS2 and the closure of Congleton's tip.
But will it be those local issues, or the national picture, that ultimately matters more when voters hover their pencil over the candidates' names on the ballot paper/
Stay tuned to find out!

The Guardian/Observer reports on "dodgy" Conservative candidates(https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ended-alleged-racism-standing-local-elections), which is par for the course I guess, but I do wonder about "political correctness" if one of them was suspended for describing Enoch Powell as “the greatest prime minister we never had”.
To me, there's some truth in this, Enoch Powell was a clever, albeit conflicted, man. Maybe I'd not go as far as this, but I went to listen to him speak once he'd been banished and moved to Northern Ireland. Of course, Ted Heath was right to sack him and I'm glad he wasn't prime minister, but it seems to me that expressing admiration for him shouldn't be seen as offensive.

The Observer
Local elections

Five Tory councillors suspended for alleged racism standing in local elections​

Conservative candidates in this week’s polls include several who were reinstated after accusations of racism and Islamophobia

Chaminda Jayanetti and Michael Savage
Sun 30 Apr 2023 10.00 BST
Five Conservative councillors standing for the party in this week’s local elections in England, have been suspended for alleged racism and Islamophobia in recent years – including one who suggested banning mosques and another who accused Muslims of being on a “quest to turn the world Muslim”.
They are among 13 councillors identified by the Observer, drawing on research by the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate, who have been suspended over racist comments and social media posts in the past four years before being reinstated.

Among the five standing again is Danny Scott in Blackpool. He was one of 25 former and sitting Conservative councillors accused of making offensive comments online named in a 2019 dossier released by an anonymous Twitter account. Scott posted on Facebook at least two years earlier that “Muslims have been terrorising anyone who isn’t Muslim for 1,000 [years],” and that “it is their quest to turn the world Muslim”.

Scott was subsequently suspended from the party, but he has since been reinstated and is listed as the Tory candidate for his council ward at this week’s election.
The dossier also revealed Beverley Dunlop, a councillor in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, commented on Facebook that “Until [Muslims] are more frightened of the British government (because they and their families might get deported) than they are Isis nothing will change”, and separately posted, “I hate to ban anything really but I’d suggest we start with mosques!”.
After the dossier was published, the Conservatives said they had suspended anyone who was a party member, but Dunlop, who was suspended in 2019, is listed as the Tory candidate in her ward for the ballot on 4 May.
Three others are running again. Portsmouth councillor Lee Mason was suspended in 2020 after a leaked photo from his Snapchat account showed a hot cross bun with what seemed to be a swastika baked on it.
Robin Popley, a councillor in Charnwood, Leicestershire, was suspended in 2019 after describing Enoch Powell as “the greatest prime minister we never had”. Ian Stokes, a councillor in South Kesteven, Lincolnshire, was suspended in 2021 after using a phrase about there being an N-word “in the woodpile” at a meeting. He subsequently apologised, had diversity training, and his membership was restored.

None of the five responded to a request for comment. Dunlop has said her comments were “written in jest” and taken out of context “to make me appear something I am not”. She also subsequently recieved death threats. Stokes has said he meant to say “needle in a haystack”. Mason has claimed at the time he baked nothing with a Nazi symbol.
Georgie Laming, director of campaigns at Hope Not Hate, said: “There is an alarming trend of Conservative party candidates and councillors who have been exposed for racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism and as crank conspiracy theorists. Their vetting and disciplinary systems either don’t work or are inconsistent. All mainstream parties must have a zero tolerance policy. The Conservative Party has a long way to go to prove this.”
In 2019, the Guardian revealed the Tories had quietly reinstated 15 councillors suspended for Islamophobia or racism. Under internal and external pressure, the Singh investigation found anti-Muslim sentiment remained a problem in the party and said the complaints procedure was under-resourced and lacking in transparency, but denied the party was institutionally racist.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has so far decided not to conduct its own inquiry into Islamophobia in the Tory party, having dropped plans to do so in 2020.
The Conservatives have been repeatedly accused of failing to deal with racism and Islamophobia in their own ranks, with concerns raised by former Tory cabinet minister Baroness Warsi and Mohammed Amin, a former chair of the Conservative Muslim Forum who left and joined the Lib Dems when Boris Johnson became party leader.
“Once the individuals are exposed, they are typically suspended and then quietly reinstated a few months later,” Amin said. “Because the party is non-transparent about almost everything, including its disciplinary processes, the public is never told about what re-education the suspended councillors have received, or whether they have given adequate assurances that they have changed their ways.”
The Conservative party did not respond to a request for comment.
It comes as Suella Braverman is accused by a Tory MP of “emboldening the far right”, after she repeatedly pointed to the Pakistani ethnicity of grooming gang members. The home secretary said she was only citing “unfashionable facts” after a backlash to her suggestion that grooming gang members are “almost all British-Pakistani”.
However, Rehman Chishti, a former foreign office minister, writes in today’s Observer that he doesn’t know why Braverman seeks to “zero in on a particular ‘string of cases’ that received extensive media coverage, rather than acknowledging the full scale of the problem based on the data we have about all such cases”. He writes: “Braverman’s comments aren’t ‘unfashionable truths’, they’re simply inaccurate – and emboldening the far right.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “As the home secretary has said, the vast majority of British-Pakistanis are law-abiding, upstanding citizens, but independent reviews were unequivocal that, in towns like Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford, cultural sensitivities have meant thousands of young girls were abused under the noses of councils and police.”

 

[Intercity110]

the conservatives will do better then they would've last october. Polls are showing that the conservatives are actually regaining some support. it's up 6% from liz truss, but they'll still need a while to get back to where they were before liz truss and this cost of living crisis.

 

[Typhoon]

the conservatives will do better then they would've last october. Polls are showing that the conservatives are actually regaining some support. it's up 6% from liz truss, but they'll still need a while to get back to where they were before liz truss and this cost of living crisis.

What will be interesting is how well independents do. In my area (Canterbury), several former long-standing Conservatives councillors have quit and are standing as independents. The neighbouring council area (Swale) currently has a 'rainbow coalition (ie just about everyone except Conservatives) lead by an Independent Group - the imaginatively titled 'Swale Independents' (headed by a man who used to be UKIP if I remember rightly).

I thought it might just be round here but it appears to be more widespread https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/othe...p&cvid=cfd408b17a2f415bda0fc4c950eca161&ei=20

 

[ainsworth74]

Got myself to the polling station just after half seven this morning. Usual level of disorganisation (no-one having any clue which table is actually going to issue my ballot paper, with one of the staff seemingly extremely put out by me not bringing my non-compulsory polling card) but as I was the only voter there this was sorted quite quickly. Two ticks in two boxes (Labour and Independent for anyone interested) and off we go. ID check was quick but he did have a good look at the driving licence and then my face. The tables all had taped to them instructions on how to contact the relevant Westminster department if you had concerns about the ID requirements. I assume that that's an attempt to head off at the pass anyone who gets upset by it!

 

[brad465]

The council that I think will be most interesting to watch out for I think is Bracknell Forest: It is very strongly Conservative controlled (they have all but 5 seats), but there is a suspected electoral pact between Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens to the point they are not standing against each other:

Frustration at Labour and Lib Dem HQs as local parties ‘go rogue’ to create progressive alliance

List of council candidates in Tory heartland of Bracknell reveals de facto pact between opposition parties, undermining national positions

www.theguardian.com

in terms of the issues dominating the campaign trail, there is nothing unusual about the battle taking place to win seats on Berkshire’s Bracknell Forest council in May’s local elections. Potholes, council tax and sewage are among the hot topics on the doorstep.

Yet a closer inspection of the candidate list in the Tory stronghold reveals an odd quirk that some political pundits believe is unprecedented – and has also led to furious accusations from party leaderships that the local parties involved have “gone rogue” in their quest for electoral success.


You won’t hear any local party figures broadcasting it – in fact, none are prepared to talk about it publicly – but Bracknell Forest has emerged as the unlikely scene of a de facto progressive alliance between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, attempting to make gains on a council where the Conservatives hold 37 of 42 seats.


In 12 of the council’s15 wards, only one of the three progressive parties are standing candidates. None of the 15 wards features Labour candidates taking on the Lib Dems. “It’s not unusual to have alliances between two or three parties at local level,” said local election expert and Tory peer Robert Hayward. “To have it as total as it is in Bracknell Forest is very rare, if not unique.”

To believe that this arrangement is the result of some bizarre coincidence stretches credulity, yet when asked how it came to pass, local party figures clam up. “You might think that,” said one party figure. “I couldn’t possibly comment.” Several people said a combination of the struggle to raise enough candidates and cash, together with the local knowledge of where they have the best chance of winning, had led to the unusual election choice.

While the local party bosses admit to “getting on well” with each other, they insist there has been no secret meeting to carve up the council contest between them – something they all know would lead to fierce condemnation from party headquarters.

“It’s not like we came together in a dark room saying, ‘you have this one and I’ll have that one’,” said one local party figure, on condition of anonymity. “It’s really a story about how to make the best of it in a borough which is heavily skewed [towards the Tories]. Focus your attention on where you’re going to win. And that’s what’s happened.”

It is frustration at the Tory domination, as well as a desperation to improve the diversity of the council, that has fuelled the unusual set up. “We’re just all fed up with it,” said another. “We’ve had really good people with something to offer – a real commitment, intelligence, capacity, insights and the knowledge to make a big difference. Instead, Donald Duck with a blue rosette gets voted in.”

 

[DanNCL]

From some early results, we can see that the Tories are taking the battering expected, whilst it’s a good night for Labour, Lib Dems and Greens.
For the most part Labour have been making large gains, although they’re not doing so well in Newcastle where they’ve lost four seats (two to Lib Dems, two to Independents).

 

[duncanp]

From some early results, we can see that the Tories are taking the battering expected, whilst it’s a good night for Labour, Lib Dems and Greens.
For the most part Labour have been making large gains, although they’re not doing so well in Newcastle where they’ve lost four seats (two to Lib Dems, two to Independents).

Except for my local council (Sandwell) where there was, er, a swing TO the Conservatives.

Not surprising really when you consider the bunch of Muppets we have in charge, who think they own the place, are so incompetent that the government had to send in commissioners to run the place instead

 

[Snow1964]

Only 64 councils were counting overnight
166 councils aren't starting counts until Friday morning

Going to be many more hours before all the results are known.

 

[deltic]

In proportionate terms its been a very good night for the Greens, doubling their seats so far, a good night for the Lib Dems and Labour gaining about 20% more seats each and a disastrous night for the Tories losing a third of their seats but still early days.