I am aware that most local council election results have not been counted as yet at the time that I am writing this morning.
I am, of course, aware that most results will not arrive until Friday afternoon.
I am just as aware that only a little over 100 net changes in seats have been announced as yet.
So I know everything that I note here is decidedly provisional.
Any observation is also influenced by the fact that it is the hard core electorate who turn out for local elections, and they do not always predict general election outcomes as a result.
But, all that being said, what I do note is that there is talk that there may still be a swing to Labour of 10%, with the LibDems and the Greens also doing well.
Only weeks ago we were talking Labour leads of 20% and majorities in the hundreds. Now we are down to swings of 10% (which is much lower) and Labour maybe being in parliamentary majority territory.
Labour will do well today. But is it the next government? That is not at all clear this morning. It may be this afternoon. But what I actually think likely is the expectation that Labour might, if it is lucky and the Tories keep shooting themselves in the foot, struggle over the line in Westminster next time around, and then only if the SNP do lose a lot of seats in Scotland.
That is an outcome that I could happily live with. A Labour minority might be even better. Then we might get electoral reform.
As the day progresses we will get a better picture. But this does not feel like a day for Labour euphoria, as yet.
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I absolutely agree with you.
If you look at the percentage changes it is certainly not a Labour landslide. If they were really offering a hopeful vision for the future Labour should have wiped the floor with the Tories.
As it is, I’m as hopeful as you are that this bodes well for electoral reform after the General Election.
I can’t wait to check out the final results later.
Well said.
I’m not into false dawns. I’ve seen too many of them over the years.
Can anyone answer a simple wuestion please? On the BBC News website they have a banner across the top of the live election page, showing the number of seats and =?- change for each of the following
LAB; CON, LD; IND; GRN; RA
I can work out the first 5, what on earth is RA?
I don’t know!
RA is Residents Asociation I think.
Residents Associations. You could included them with independents if so minded. I think that is where UKIP and Reform and others have been relegated.
If Labour manage to form the next government – majority or minority – but don’t use the opportunity to introduce PR for general elections they are idiots. Winning power is one thing, but any changes they make may be undone by the next government that can win a majority of 80 on 43% of the votes from 25% of the electorate. To pick a case in point, where is SureStart today?
We have several ‘Residents Associations’ in our neck of the woods. Maybe it’s a general pattern but they seem to be breakaways from Tories, who are not nimby enough for them. Objecting to any kind of housing or development.
Our choice was between 2 Tories, an Independent but still a Tory, and fortunately a Green. One can but hope that they picked up a decent number of votes.
In deeply Tory places like Epsom and Ewell the RAs dominate the council
As you say – deeply NIMBY
Residents’ Association. I don’t know why they wouldn’t be counted as independent though.
Residents Association
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2023/england/results
Ah. The Epsom and Ewell effect.
Greens gain 15 seats in East Hertfordshre! Toris lose control – hurray!
Quite a few “No overall control” councils being declared. It would be good if if the Progressive parties got together, where they can, to take control. Hopefully, working together it will bring us closer to PR.
Unfortunately that’s what happened in County Durham in 2020. It had been labour controlled. All the other parties now combine against labour, which means the tories get exactly what they want. It would only take 9 of the independent or LD councillors to vote with labour, out of a total of 126 councillors, to get a labour view through, but they never do. The tory councillors, 23 of them, always get their way, despite there being 55 labour councillors.
While on my laptop I have the Bright-Green livestream in the background.
https://bright-green.org/2023/05/04/bright-green-local-elections-live-blog-2023/
One good thing is that UKIP/Brexit/Reform have not won a single seat so far.
Greens also won three seats in South Tyneside and became the official opposition to Labour there.
“One good thing is that UKIP/Brexit/Reform have not won a single seat so far.”
Good that they don’t win yes, but I do want to see them take votes from the Tories. Under FPTP anything that weakens the Tory vote is fine by me.
My hope is that Labour will end up as no more than a junior member of a Coalition, maybe a GNU. Certainly not with Starmer as PM!
I regard Starmer’s Faux-Labour as a “clear and present danger” to democracy (he is, after all, a member of the Trilateral Commission, which believes democracy has gone too far, and needs to be reined in, something SKS has done ruthlessly in the Faux-Labour Party, via his General Secretary, David “Dzerzhinksy” Evans’s resurrected CHEKA. I mean, they’re even trying to ban Councillors from watching “TheBig Lie” defence of Corbyn film, ffs!!), and to decency, the attack ads against Sunak showing an alarming value-free lack of decency.
Yuk! “Pass the sick-bag please, Alice!”
Local election party abbreviations.
The abbreviations below are used by the BBC to describe the main parties standing in the local elections held across England on 4 May 2006.
PARTY ABBREVIATIONS
Abbreviation Party name/ meaning
CON Conservative
LAB Labour
LD Liberal Democrat
BNP British National Party
CPA Christian Peoples Alliance
GRN Green Party
IKHH Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern
LIB Liberal
MK Mebyon Kernow
RA Resident or Ratepayer
RES Respect-Unity Coalition
SALT Socialist Alternative
UKIP UK Independence
OTH Others/ independent
NOC No Overall Control
(Mebyon Kernow is a progressive party striving to build a confident and outward-looking Cornwall that has the power to take decisions for itself.)
From – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4974416.stm
Thanks
I happened to hear on BBC Radio a phone-in on the Coronation; which I confess is not a subject I find compelling, or likely to produce profound illumination of anything at all. I chose to listen, because over the last few days some bizarre opinions have been expressed by the public on this eccentric subject. Even I was rendered near stupified in disbelief when I heard a lady complaining that she would be working in a shop during the ceremony; however, she believed the shops should have been closed so she could watch or attend the event. I can understand her frustration, if that is her preference, but the implication is a little drastic (even for Britain). That was not the cause of my stupefaction.
The Coronation, need we be reminded is symbiotically linked to religion; held in Westminster Abbey, and complete with the anointing of Holy OIl, in the wrods of the Archbishop of Canterbury, demonstrating “the deep historic link between the Coronation, the Bible and the Holy Land. From ancient kings through to the present day, monarchs have been anointed with oil”, brought indeed from the Holy Land. The King, after all is. In England, “The Sovereign holds the title ‘Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England’. In Scotland the King, “does not hold the title ‘Supreme Governor’ of the Church of Scotland; when attending Church services in Scotland His Majesty does so as an ordinary member.” (Royal Family website, both quotations).
I think we can say religion has been quite crucial to the position and security of the monarch and the dynasty that wears the Crown. The stupefaction struck me, when the shop worker protested that the priorities were all wrong; because, after all, the Coronation …. was far more important than Easter.
I have to lie down in a darkened room. The astonishing thing about the British people who are typically most obsessed by Royalty and the history? They know precisely nothing bout Britain’s history, and understand even less. They are, however among the 24% that (I am persuasively compelled to believe) vote Conservative and return 80 seat majorities for people like Johnson, who are not fit for Government (how else could such catastrophes happen?). This is Britain. Today.
Now, where is my darkened room?
Well said
I’m sort of hoping that we’ll end up with a Labour-led coalition or one with a wafer-thin majority so they are reliant on the LibDems/SNP/Plaid Cymru to enact legislation and are ultimately forced to implement a proper proportional electoral system.
It would be helpful if Starmer was bold/daft enough to make some sort of pledge before the next election that he’d step down if he didn’t win a strong majority, so we could be rid of him as well, not that there are too many queueing up in the Shadow Cabinet who look as though they could do a much better job. If you’ll excuse my metaphor, Reeves would be a case of same shit, different sandwich. Much as Starmer is compared to the current Tory government.
I suspect we’ll end up with a small Labour majority, enough to keep them in power for 5 years, tinkering around the edges without the courage to face up to the many, many parts of our economy and services which need to be fixed. The halfwits don’t think the bankers will let us afford any of it.
A weak Labour government would be very bad news
Wow! Where I live the Tories lost control. If Lab, who won the most seats, and the Greens work together they can take the Council which has been Tory forever. 8 Greens were returned, up from 1 last time. I can’t see the Greens supporting the Tories, surely not? They will be kingmaker unless Labour are stupid enough to try and go it alone.
The local Tory MP must be sweating that his gravy train might be pulling into the station.
GREENS win their first council Mid-Suffolk
Very good indeed
And massive gains in East Suffolk too
Richard wrote: “But what I actually think likely is the expectation that Labour might, if it is lucky and the Tories keep shooting themselves in the foot, struggle over the line in Westminster next time around, and then only if the SNP do lose a lot of seats in Scotland.”
I just don’t see any major swing from SNP to Labour in Scotland: the SNP may be mired in all sorts of scandal, but much of this manufactured by the Unionist media and the real facts will not truly emerge for some time. Also the SNP is the only credible vehicle for the delivery of independence, which is consistently shown to be supported by around 50% of the Scottish population regardless of events here or elsewhere in the UK. That nation-wide desire is not going to melt away just because the Daily Express runs lurid headlines about “SNP scandals” daily. It’s far more fundamental than that. We see daily evidence of the completely inept and damaging governance of the Tory UK Government and, given Starmer’s stated policies, who (in Scotland or rUK) can have any confidence that Labour will do any better?
We also weigh up the advantages we have as a result of SNP’s policies of mitigation of Westminster’s egregious policies despite the paucity of economic powers of any Scottish Government under the devolution settlement. There’s also the matter of Labour, when it governed devolved Scotland in the McConnell era, returning unspent Block Grant because they couldn’t find anything to spend it on; that’s not easily forgotten and was without question a factor in the sizeable swing towards SNP and its independence agenda. So, in the next UK General Election, I can’t see any swing from SNP to Labour in Scotland being significant enough for Starmer to win unless there is a very sizeable swing from Tory to Labour in rUK.
I agree
I really can’t see Labour advancing far in Scotland
People remember Jim Murphy
And tonight Labour feels like it’s bullshitting in the face of being a minority government
Emily Thornberry’s claims of no deals today seem as realistic as any promise from Starmer
I’m very pleased. Who I voted for won but no Tories won any seat. May it long continue.
Pleased to say that my borough council in West Hertfordshire, Dacorum, has passed from tory control to LD. A shame no Green councilors were elected, but it’s progress. And 3 labour councilors elected when there were none before. And in my ward, one of the labour councilors was elected; not ideal, but better than a tory. I recognise that the tory councilors are probably decent people dragged down by their own rotten party, but there it is.
Overall though Richard, you are correct. I’m delighted to see the increase in Green councilors throughout the country but labour can’t take these results, as John Curtice said, as a sign that they can win the next GE. A vote share of 35% is not particularly impressive.
Agreed
In Babergh (South Suffolk) where Greens are now the largest party the Tories ran under the label ‘Local Conservatives’ disassociating themselves from the shambles of Downing Street. But it didn’t help them. It will be interesting to study the actual voting figures and compare with the past. I suspect that a lot of the Green vote came from disgruntled normally Tory voters.
Agreed
Leaflets where I am from the Tories were in green and had a small Conservative logo almost hidden at the bottom
No voting here, but I’ve seen copies of tory leaflets in red but with the local candidates names on. They were not pushing Sunak.
Let’s be honest – this is NOT a true Labour opposition at the moment – that disappeared when the right-wing press managed to persuade the gullible electorate that Corbyn was a public danger. One or two of the slightly more intelligent ones are beginning, maybe a bit late, to wake up to the fact they were well and truly fooled.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/06/labour-will-not-need-to-forge-coalition-after-general-election-senior-mp-says
Peter Kyle just looking at Brighton and Hove, where they lost 13 green councillors. Hasn’t checked the rest of the country.
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/05/05/report-into-misleading-electoral-advertising-slams-conservatives-labour-and-libs-dems-for-dirty-tricks-on-the-doorstep/
The Green Party thinks this is why they lost all four seats in York, labour MPs promising that the council can do what central government does.