2023 English and Northern Irish Local Elections

[Thirteen]

I can't imagine the Tories will be back in power as soon as five years after Election defeat even if Starmer proves to be middling especially since whoever takes over from Sunak will have the difficult task of detoxifying the party and that'll take a while.

 

[DarloRich]

I think there is an interesting story on the Lib Dems - they have won in affluent, remainer, commuter belt areas. Places near me like Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead and St Albans have gone yellow. These are fairly solid Tory areas and elected David Gauke for a long time. I know St Albans went yellow at the last General Election but to have that starting to leak out in to surrounding Tory zones is interesting.

Mid Beds council was lost by the Tories where they lost 23 seats . The local MP is Nadine Dories. However the Tories did win the Bedford mayoralty with a majority of about 100 over the Lib Dens who held it previously. The sensible vote was split three ways between Labour, Lib Dems and Greens sadly. The Tory vote also held up quite well in Bedford Borough.

Milton Keynes remained no over all control but Labour won 5 extra seats and the Tories lost 6

 

[DerekC]

It will be interesting to see the turnout figures. The local polling station crew (a couple who come every year) said at lunchtime on Thursday that they had been much busier than usual for a local election - and the LDs won here (by ten votes) for the first time ever. They did have a good local candidate which will have helped. Where |(and when) are national turnout figures published?

I think there is an interesting story on the Lib Dems - they have won in affluent, remainer, commuter belt areas. Places near me like Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead and St Albans have gone yellow.

My dad would have ben extremely chuffed. He lived in Berkhamsted a lot of his working life and was a tireless Liberal (and LD) campaigner with not a lot to show for it in his lifetime - a yellow poster amongst a forest of blue ones!

 

[Enthusiast]

A lot of people will be renewing mortgages next year. The Truss fiasco will likely still be on their front page.

The government, the leader they actually elected rather than Sunak, singlehandedly put the homes of millions of Britons at risk all for some weird Thatcherite fetishisation experiment.

People are not going to forget that in a hurry.

So do you believe the mortgage rate would still have been ~1% had the Truss premiership not occurred?

 

[Typhoon]

Trouble they've got is that any half decent policy they put out there is immediately stolen.

or made out to be something it isn't by the media. So, for instance, offering a school child a free reading book on their birthday might become forcing them to have one and the choice of books will probably be described as 'woke' or 'leftie' or 'communist' (is that still an insult) - all hell will be set loose if any might feature a single sex couple, cries of children being indoctrinated. A tax rise for the the most well off would be made out to be a tax on the likes of doctors because they have found a few Harley Street doctors who would be affected.

Keeping quiet is exactly the right thing to do IMO until an election is called an manifestos are written.

Agree. In any case, it is in Labour's best interest not to have too big a majority. They need to be kept on their toes.

If Labour's pitch is just that they are not the Tories they may well win, but in five years they will be wondering why no one is enthusiastic to vote them back in after presiding over exactly the same problems the country has now with minimal improvement.

But wouldn't it be better to only make very few promises and deliver them and more, than to promise a lot but only deliver some. At the end of the day, if nothing much has improved for anyone, they are unlikely to be voted back but at least they might be able to say that they kept their promises.

 

[MikeWM]

Labour 8-10% ahead is a very significant lead in share of the vote, and you'd normally expect a party that far ahead to easily win a general election outright, so I'm a bit surprised that John Curtice is only predicting Labour to be the largest party, not to have a majority of MPs.

Distribution of the vote matters - eg. 2017 where a 3% Tory lead in the popular vote over Labour lead to about 15% more seats. Labour recently seem to have a habit of piling on votes in already safe seats - which the Tories do too, but less so. I'm guessing Curtice has a reasonable model or two that tries to take that into account.

Looking more into the figures - the share of vote general election projection seems to be hovering around: Labour 35%, Tories 26%, LibDems 20% - that's pretty low votes for both the main parties and very high for the LibDems. So my suspicion is that the projection has a lot of LibDem (and perhaps, SNP) seats preventing Labour from getting a majority in Parliament. But the LibDems usually do a lot better in council elections than general elections, so I don't believe they will get anything like 20% next year (although they will do enough in key constituencies to take a number of seats off the Tories). I'm therefore still thinking a Labour majority is the most likely outcome at the next election.

I agree on these figures, though a low majority of around 20 would be my current guess, not a 1997-style rout. The implosion of the SNP makes that considerably more likely than a few months ago. But equally, that very collapse of the SNP shows how quickly things can change in politics nowadays.

--

The breakdown they kept showing predicted 70+ independent MPs if these results were translated nationally to a GE, which is frankly absurd.

I thought it was meant as 70+ non-ConLabLib, which seems fair enough. Once you add up the SNP, Plaid, the Northern Ireland parties, the Greens, and the odd independent who may get elected (Jeremy Corbyn being the obvious possibility), then 70+ is likely.

What happened in this election was outright rejection of the Conservative Party, including in proper traditional Tory heartlands, and painting it as anything else is misguided and verging on foolish. Nearly 1100 losses way beyond even the worst predictions of almost everybody.

Oh, I agree - my point is that it isn't clear that Labour are going to be as big beneficiaries as people may think. The figures in the run-up to 1997 showed a much larger gap. People don't like the Tories but they're not persuaded by Labour (yet) in the way they were in the mid-90s.

--

So do you believe the mortgage rate would still have been ~1% had the Truss premiership not occurred?

This does seem quite an odd argument. The main issue with mortgages is that interest rates have risen, and the reason for that is a misguided attempt by the Bank of England to control inflation, with no regard as to whether the things are being inflated will be affected by higher interest rates (and mostly they won't be). And the Government, incorrectly in my opinion, doesn't control setting interest rates - indeed Truss hinted that she may want to do that, and was oddly shouted down by just about everyone.

And the reason we have inflation is mostly due to printing vast quantities of money for the bizarre and totally insane response to a mild pandemic of a relatively unremarkable respiratory virus. Which yes, the Tories (under *Johnson*) are responsible for, but Labour wanted to do even more which would have required printing even more money.

 

[THC]

Which it probably will be. I can see the Tory government cutting funding to the councils, precisely to make them run out of funds and not deliver what they promise, turning people against the councils and increasing the chances of the Tories regaining them.

I hope though that people can see through such dirty tricks.

That is precisely what they have been doing since 2010 on a systemic level. People blaming councils for not fixing potholes are overlooking both a 40% cut in real-terms funding in the same period and that the Government has cynically outsourced the blame for all this to local authorities.

THC

 

[ChrisC]

I think there is an interesting story on the Lib Dems - they have won in affluent, remainer, commuter belt areas. Places near me like Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead and St Albans have gone yellow. These are fairly solid Tory areas and elected David Gauke for a long time. I know St Albans went yellow at the last General Election but to have that starting to leak out in to surrounding Tory zones is interesting.

I think there are many traditional Tory voters who were very much against Brexit who now find it difficult to know who to vote for. People who are very much centre-right, One Nation Conservatives, with views similar to people like Ken Clarke, now find it very difficult to vote for the Conservatives but would never vote Labour.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Labour 8-10% ahead is a very significant lead in share of the vote, and you'd normally expect a party that far ahead to easily win a general election outright, so I'm a bit surprised that John Curtice is only predicting Labour to be the largest party, not to have a majority of MPs.

I suspect that Curtice is taking into account the SNP factor here, which is that it's going to be very difficult for Labour to win the Scottish seats without substantial help from the Lib Dems and the Tories.

 

[Herefordian]

The groundwork for this was done in the 2004 Civil Partnership Act on which the DUP and Ulster Unionists were against and the Conservatives split.

The problem Labour had was they had to show that the legislation woul not result in the end of society as we know it. Give it, say, five years and we are in 'Banking Crisis' territory. Other things on their mind!

I wasn't aware of that. Thank you.

 

[Typhoon]

I think there are many traditional Tory voters who were very much against Brexit who now find it difficult to know who to vote for. People who are very much centre-right, One Nation Conservatives, with views similar to people like Ken Clarke, now find it very difficult to vote for the Conservatives but would never vote Labour.

Many of these will have been appalled by some of the events of the Johnson era Paterson/ Pincher/ Partygate, having a strong sense with what is right and what isn't. They may not remember exactly what happened in the first two cases but they will know that something happened, and it reflected badly, Rather like Major and 'Back to Basics'. There have also been cases when the government has been far from competent (the complete Truss era for starters). Some may have stayed loyal to individual councillors who they know as straight-down-the-line Conservatives, but. at least locally, many existing councillors stood down or were not reselected and the new, unknown candidates fared badly.

I think you are right -these people are feeling politically homeless; some have suggested Reform as an alternative but that is very much not where they want to be, If Sunak is given the time (and shows the backbone) he could convince them. If ...
They are in much the same position as traditional Labour voters were in the Corbyn era.

 

[Enthusiast]

This does seem quite an odd argument. The main issue with mortgages is that interest rates have risen, and the reason for that is a misguided attempt by the Bank of England to control inflation, with no regard as to whether the things are being inflated will be affected by higher interest rates (and mostly they won't be).

Not really. I was responding to two posts which suggested that the Truss debacle was solely responsible for increased mortgage rates.

I entirely agree with your analysis of inflation.

 

[nw1]

I think there is an interesting story on the Lib Dems - they have won in affluent, remainer, commuter belt areas. Places near me like Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead and St Albans have gone yellow. These are fairly solid Tory areas and elected David Gauke for a long time. I know St Albans went yellow at the last General Election but to have that starting to leak out in to surrounding Tory zones is interesting.

Something very similar to that has happened in my ward. One of the more affluent areas, and true-blue Tory for as far back as I can remember (90s), in fact traditionally the most Tory ward in the authority. One Lib Dem got in last year, now we have three Lib Dems. In fact the Lib Dems polled around 2000 while the top Tory achieved around 1100, so not even marginal.

Other parts of the local authority are less affluent but voted in three Tories; areas which are about middle economically, but (AFAIK) more Brexity, if you know what I mean. There was a time when these areas were reliably Labour but my home ward was true-blue. The poorest wards this year were solidly Labour, as were the most multicultural.

Also in this ward there has been demographic change with more in the way of ex-students and younger renters than traditionally, turning it inherently less Tory.

 

[MikeWM]

Not really. I was responding to two posts which suggested that the Truss debacle was solely responsible for increased mortgage rates.

I entirely agree with your analysis of inflation.

Indeed - sorry for any confusion, I didn't think *you* were suggesting that Truss was solely responsible - it is *that* which is the odd argument in my opinion. It's like blaming a gust of wind for a tree falling down when a tornado blew through the previous day.

 

[DarloRich]

My dad would have ben extremely chuffed. He lived in Berkhamsted a lot of his working life and was a tireless Liberal (and LD) campaigner with not a lot to show for it in his lifetime - a yellow poster amongst a forest of blue ones!

It is pretty amazing that the Tories have been dumped in these areas. The map is changing. Lib Dems are winning in old school solid Conservative areas and Labour are looking at marginal southern constituencies. The tory focus has shifted, along with their policy base lower achieving communities in the old industrial areas.

The problem for the Tories is that Labour is winning back some of those northern areas, such as Middlesbrough, and they cant appeal to BOTH their traditional "shire" based Conservatives AND the new Johnsonian redwallers.

I think there are many traditional Tory voters who were very much against Brexit who now find it difficult to know who to vote for. People who are very much centre-right, One Nation Conservatives, with views similar to people like Ken Clarke, now find it very difficult to vote for the Conservatives but would never vote Labour.

I think you are right -these people are feeling politically homeless; some have suggested Reform as an alternative but that is very much not where they want to be, If Sunak is given the time (and shows the backbone) he could convince them. If ..

The problem those voters will have is the traditional Tory party is dead - they need to find a new home. The "Conservative" Party are a UKIP/Brexit/Nationalsit/Populist party with some authoritarian leanings and some bonkers polices and representatives. They are anything BUT Conservatives!

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Im in Tory heartland in Surrey and whilst some wards were clear cut plenty kept the Tories despite losing considerable level of votes because every switched vote was then spread between Labour, Lib Dems and Greens. Labour, Lib Dems and Greens all say getting Tories out is what matters so if they are serious they better have a pact public or not otherwise its not a done deal as Labour certainly think and a hung parliament is a distinct probable outcome.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

I voted Lib Dem simply because they were the only ones that tried to win my vote by posting a leaflet. It was radio silence from Lab/Con/Greens. At the last lot of local elections I voted for the Yorkshire Party, but they weren't standing this time around.
In any case, my ward (Batley East) stayed Labour with a massive majority of 14 votes from the Tories.

 

[Typhoon]

Something very similar to that has happened in my ward. One of the more affluent areas, and true-blue Tory for as far back as I can remember (90s), in fact traditionally the most Tory ward in the authority. One Lib Dem got in last year, now we have three Lib Dems. In fact the Lib Dems polled around 2000 while the top Tory achieved around 1100, so not even marginal.

Other parts of the local authority are less affluent but voted in three Tories; areas which are about middle economically, but (AFAIK) more Brexity, if you know what I mean. There was a time when these areas were reliably Labour but my home ward was true-blue. The poorest wards this year were solidly Labour, as were the most multicultural.

Also in this ward there has been demographic change with more in the way of ex-students and younger renters than traditionally, turning it inherently less Tory.

I'm wondering whether it is anything to do with the leadership, whether Ed Davey is the right man for the time. He's 'reasonable', a 'safe pair of hands'. You can't imagine him doing anything outrageous, whereby the likes of Ashdown, Kennedy, Farron were always likely to come up with some policy which alienated voters. They also appear to be going back to the grass roots, 'local' politics. After years in the wilderness the LibDems locally seem to be making a come back (just after one of their stalwarts retired) winning some of the rural wards that had hitherto been Conservative

I voted Lib Dem simply because they were the only ones that tried to win my vote by posting a leaflet. It was radio silence from Lab/Con/Greens. At the last lot of local elections I voted for the Yorkshire Party, but they weren't standing this time around.

I voted Green for a similar reason. The candidate started leafletting the area around the autumn, about four or five in total. Nothing from Labour, LibDems did not stand. I rather get the impression that there was an (informal) arrangement for quite a few wards and we (Canterbury) have ended up with 18 Labour, 9 LibDem, 8 Conservative and 4 Green.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Labour had control of the council in Slough for many years. Noting how matters have gone nationally, is there any particular local issue there that caused Labour to lose so many councillors in this election. Anyone local to that area with information about it?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The maps of who has won what councils looks impressive for the LibDems. On the BBC map (link) It's basically a sea of yellow LibDem and gray no-overall-control across a swathe of what would normally be blue Tory countryside. If I've read the map correctly, you can now walk from the Southernmost tip of Devon, the coast around Salcombe, to the North coast - say, Ilfracombe, while staying entirely within LibDem controlled land. More impressively, you can almost do the same by walking from Selsey Bill in Sussex to Earlswood on the outskirts of Bimingham, almost entirely within LibDem controlled councils: Except you'd need to walk for about a mile across Wokingham (No overall control). You can keep that distance down to about a mile by crossing the NOC area near Shiplake.

I'm not sure if you can add to those mileages by including any councils that didn't vote this year, and so are not shown on the BBC map.

Somewhat reminiscent of 1997 when someone spotted that you could walk from Lands End to John O Groats, only needing to cross one Tory-held parliamentary constituency (Richmond, EDIT: actually Ryedale Yorks). Although I don't believe the LibDems will do this well in the general election next year.

 

[yorksrob]

The problem those voters will have is the traditional Tory party is dead - they need to find a new home. The "Conservative" Party are a UKIP/Brexit/Nationalsit/Populist party with some authoritarian leanings and some bonkers polices and representatives. They are anything BUT Conservatives!

They've not been true Conservatives since they started flogging everything on "the markets".

 

[nw1]

The maps of who has won what councils looks impressive for the LibDems. On the BBC map (link) It's basically a sea of yellow LibDem and gray no-overall-control across a swathe of what would normally be blue Tory countryside. If I've read the map correctly, you can now walk from the Southernmost tip of Devon, the coast around Salcombe, to the North coast - say, Ilfracombe, while staying entirely within LibDem controlled land. More impressively, you can almost do the same by walking from Selsey Bill in Sussex to Earlswood on the outskirts of Bimingham, almost entirely within LibDem controlled councils: Except you'd need to walk for about a mile across Wokingham (No overall control). You can keep that distance down to about a mile by crossing the NOC area near Shiplake.

Interesting, it brings to mind a recent thread about (and I realise it won't be your preference ) non-suburban train services which don't call at any stations inside constituencies with Tory MPs. Following the Wakefield byelection last year I have the feeling Kings Cross-Leeds was the furthest.

It sounds an interesting walk, anyhow.

I'm not sure if you can add to those mileages by including any councils that didn't vote this year, and so are not shown on the BBC map.

Somewhat reminiscent of 1997 when someone spotted that you could walk from Lands End to John O Groats, only needing to cross one Tory-held parliamentary constituency (Richmond, Yorks). Although I don't believe the LibDems will do this well in the general election next year.

I do think they will do well in the south, in affluent but socially-liberal seats which favour a closer relationship with the EU. Particularly if an effective programme of tactical voting takes place. Winchester is a dead-cert, for example. Esher is likely, particularly given all the Raab shannanigans. Guildford must be fairly likely, particularly as it's a university town. And it wouldn't surprise me if the St Albans island expands to cover some of the Watford-Hemel Hempstead area.

I can also see something of a comeback in the southwest, in the more socially liberal constituencies - albeit not turning it into a sea of yellow.

 

[Gloster]

Labour had control of the council in Slough for many years. Noting how matters have gone nationally, is there any particular local issue there that caused Labour to lose so many councillors in this election. Anyone local to that area with information about it?

Slough council has gone effectively bankrupt. Before the usual criticisms about profligate and incompetent Labour and the praises for wise Conservative councils appear, I will just mention Northamptonshire, Thurrock, etc.

 

[nw1]

They've not been true Conservatives since they started flogging everything on "the markets".

It's interesting, the word "conservatism", as it literally means "preserve what was there before".

Are those of us who preferred the way life was in the late 80s, 90s and 00s (and even the 10s to some extent) over the 2020s actually "conservatives" because we wish to preserve the way things were done in that era? Are those of us who are remainers (or now, pro-closer-relationship-with-the-EU) "conservatives" because we wished to preserve, and now wish to at least partially restore, the way things were from 1973 to 2019? And are the Brexiters and the Truss-ists actually the "radicals"? Interesting.

The word "conservative" is associated with right-wing and/or anti-minority politics - but if the real meaning of the word is considered, does it actually mean that? Arguably it means "preserve the ways of the recent past", and depending on the era, and the context, that could either be right-wing or left-wing. So "conservatives", by this meaning, in the 1960s or 1990s were on the whole right-wing, whereas perhaps, "conservatives" in the 2020s are actually liberal and/or left-wing, because we wish to see a return to a more liberal, left-of-centre era!

Another example: in railways, the "conservative" approach is arguably to keep running the railway as it was done up until 2019. But the economically right-wing, or "radical", approach is rather different; to radically change the railway is operated and implement cuts, as the government are indeed doing.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 May 2023 ==

Somewhat reminiscent of 1997 when someone spotted that you could walk from Lands End to John O Groats, only needing to cross one Tory-held parliamentary constituency (Richmond, Yorks).

Not sure you'd even need to do that, thinking of the way things were in 1997. At a guess (and it wouldn't necessarily be the prettiest route) you could have routed yourself from the Red Wall through Preston, Lancaster, Westmorland and Lonsdale and on via West Cumbria, which was at the time, unlike now, solid Labour. Then on into Scotland.

 

[yorksrob]

It's interesting, the word "conservatism", as it literally means "preserve what was there before".

Are those of us who preferred the way life was in the late 80s, 90s and 00s (and even the 10s to some extent) over the 2020s actually "conservatives" because we wish to preserve the way things were done in that era? Are those of us who are remainers (or now, pro-closer-relationship-with-the-EU) "conservatives" because we wished to preserve, and now wish to at least partially restore, the way things were from 1973 to 2019? And are the Brexiters and the Truss-ists actually the "radicals"? Interesting.

The word "conservative" is associated with right-wing and/or anti-minority politics - but if the real meaning of the word is considered, does it actually mean that? Arguably it means "preserve the ways of the recent past", and depending on the era, and the context, that could either be right-wing or left-wing. So "conservatives", by this meaning, in the 1960s or 1990s were on the whole right-wing, whereas perhaps, "conservatives" in the 2020s are actually liberal and/or left-wing, because we wish to see a return to a more liberal, left-of-centre era!

Another example: in railways, the "conservative" approach is arguably to keep running the railway as it was done up until 2019. But the economically right-wing, or "radical", approach is rather different; to radically change the railway is operated and implement cuts, as the government are indeed doing.

I think some of it boils down to whether we think things are progressing compared to twenty years ago, in terms of living standards, opportunities, affordability of education etc.

If one only sees things getting worse, they are likely to want to conserve the status quo.

 

[nw1]

I think some of it boils down to whether we think things are progressing compared to twenty years ago, in terms of living standards, opportunities, affordability of education etc.

If one only sees things getting worse, they are likely to want to conserve the status quo.

And I would say that without a shadow of a doubt, life in 2023 is worse than it was in 2003. On the other hand I would say that life for an adult in 2003 was, on the whole, better than that for an adult in 1983 (though I was still pre-teen, and thus someway off adulthood, in 1983 so it's difficult to make anything other than a comparison based on second-hand sources).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Not sure you'd even need to do that, thinking of the way things were in 1997. At a guess (and it wouldn't necessarily be the prettiest route) you could have routed yourself from the Red Wall through Preston, Lancaster, Westmorland and Lonsdale and on via West Cumbria, which was at the time, unlike now, solid Labour. Then on into Scotland.

Not possible I'm afraid. You can check out the 1997 results map here. If you wanted to go up via Lancaster or anywhere on the West Coast, you'd have had to to cross TWO Conservative-held constituencies - one just South of Lancaster, and one just North of Lancaster. If you head up the East coast, you can do it crossing just the one Tory constituency that bridges the gap between the Labour-held clumps around York and Teeside - although looking at the map, I'm not sure if that is Richmond or whether I might have named the wrong constituency (the names aren't shown on the map).

 

[nw1]

Not possible I'm afraid. You can check out the 1997 results map here. If you wanted to go up via Lancaster or anywhere on the West Coast, you'd have had to to cross TWO Conservative-held constituencies - one just South of Lancaster, and one just North of Lancaster. If you head up the East coast, you can do it crossing just the one Tory constituency that bridges the gap between the Labour-held clumps around York and Teeside - although looking at the map, I'm not sure if that is Richmond or whether I might have named the wrong constituency (the names aren't shown on the map).

Ah ok. Key thing is that Westmorland and Lonsdale was Tory in 1997, odd given it's been solid Lib Dem recently.

The other Tory constituency was probably something like Fylde, though it does look like there was only a very small distance you had to cross, Preston and Lancaster (I presume) almost touching but not quite.

I think Richmond is further east/more inland. The one you're referring to (as it's the only case where you have to cross a single Tory constituency) is that large one which reaches the coast, which I'd guess would be Scarborough, or some such.

 

[Gloster]

After the 1997 General Election it was possible to travel from Land’s End to John o’Groats and only pass through one Conservative-held constituency: Ryedale. If only…

 

[DynamicSpirit]

After the 1997 General Election it was possible to travel from Land’s End to John o’Groats and only pass through one Conservative-held constituency: Ryedale. If only…

Yes that was the one. It was Ryedale, not the Richmond that I'd previously said.