UK Local Elections 2022

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Full list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_Kingdom_local_elections

Birmingham is all up, having been moved off the thirds cycle used by most Metropolitan Boroughs four years ago.  Some other Metropolitan Boroughs will also be all up due to boundary changes.  Liverpool is following Birmingham in 2023, and its elections this year have been cancelled, while Rotherham and Doncaster have also been moved off that cycle and don't have elections this year (except for the metro mayor; see below).

Re-organisation of local government means elections for the new authorities in Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset.  In the latter two counties the districts are being abolished and the county is becoming a unitary, and there are elections there for the county councils.  Cumbria, OTOH, is being split into Cumberland, basically the historic county except for the bit around Penrith, and Westmorland and Furness, everything else; the split doesn't formally happen until April 2023, but elections for the new councils are being held this year.  I expect Westmorland & Furness to be No Overall Control, while Cumberland might be quite close between Labour and the Tories.

We also have the South Yorkshire mayoral election, but I don't expect it to be very interesting.  Oh, and Bristol has a referendum on abolishing the city's elected mayor position (not to be confused with the West of England metro mayor).

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Labour lost overall control of Sheffield last year, and lost another seat a few weeks ago when a left wing councillor left the party, leaving them with 40 out of 84.  Since last year's results they've continued to run the council but in coalition with the Greens (13 seats), who have developed considerable strength in the inner west of the city.  How much that Green strength will be damaged by coalition will be an interesting test; last year they won six wards and if they win them all again would gain three seats from Labour.  Meanwhile Labour and the Lib Dems (29 seats) will be the main constestants in several wards in various parts of the cit; Labour will need to do well against the yellows if they want their majority back.  Finally the Tories (1 seat) did much better last year than for some time and won one ward, Stocksbridge & Upper Don, where they gained the seat from a UKIP figure by then sitting as an Independent; they also came quite close in East Ecclesfield, but that was a close third in a three way marginal.

2018 results (and hence seats up this year):


2019 results:


2021 results (just party winners, whereas the other maps are shaded by majority):

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Let's do the rest of Yorkshire.  All these are electing a third of seats, except North Yorkshire which is the whole council.

Barnsley (Lab 49, Lib Dem 7, Con 3, Barnsley Independent Group 1, other Independents 3) It's Barnsley, so unsurprisingly Labour currently has a comfortable majority.  They will probably lose a handful of seats to Lib Dems and maybe to the Barnsley Independent Group (not the force they were) or some other random Independents.  The Tories only missed out on a gain in Rockingham ward on a coin toss last year, so might have an outside chance of breaking out of Penistone East.

Leeds (Lab 52, Con 23, Lib Dem 8, Local Parties For Local People 6+3, Green 3, Independent 2, vacant 2)  Leeds has tended to be fairly dull in recent years, with a lot of safe wards.  As such Labour's majority is more secure than it looks; assuming they regain two seats held by ex-Labour Independents and the vacancy in Roundhay they'd need to lose six seats and that doesn't look very likely.

Bradford (Lab 51, Con 22, Lib Dem 7, Green 3, various Independents 7) Labour would need to lose seven seats to lose their majority here.  There are five wards where they're defending and didn't win last year, and Bradford is very capable of surprising results, but seven losses doesn't look likely.  Several Tory councillors have turned into Independents.

Kirklees (Lab 33, Con 19, Lib Dem 9, Green 3, Heavy Woollen District Independent 1, other Independents 4) Labour is two seats short of a majority here, which is about where they've been for a few years.  They have several potential gains but also a number of awkward defences, so while they might win control they might also slip further from it.

Calderdale (Lab 27, Con 16, Lib Dem 5, Independent 2, vacant 1) Here Labour has a narrow majority.  There are two seats Labour are defending in wards the Tories won last year (Elland and Illingworth & Mixenden) and they don't have obvious targets of their own, so they are a little vulnerable, but would need to lose somewhere else to lose their majority.  The vacancy is a Labour seat in Ovenden, which will elect two councillors this year.

Wakefield (Lab 43, Con 16, Lib Dem 2, Ind 1, vacant 1) Labour had a poor result last year, but are still reasonably secure for control this year.  The vacancy is a Labour seat in South Elmsall & South Kirkby, which again elects two councillors this year.

(Kingston upon) Hull (Lab 30, Lib Dem 25, Con 1, Ind 1) Labour could easily lose control here: they are defending three seats the Lib Dems won last year.  Meanwhile the last Tory is defending in a ward Labour won last time.  If all goes as last year it'd be 28 each for Labour and the Lib Dems with the balance of power held by an ex-LD independent.

North Yorkshire Another massive new unitary, covering the whole of the current county council area, but not the City of York.  There are new ward boundaries with 90 councillors, slightly more than the old county council has.  This is, for the most part, a very Tory area, so something will have gone wrong for them if they don't win control.  Lib Dems often do well in Harrogate, Labour tend to win some seats in Scarborough, and Independents will probably win some seats somewhere, especially in the remoter areas of the Dales.

No elections this year in York or the East Riding or, other than the Metro Mayor, in Doncaster or Rotherham.  Sheffield dealt with separately above.

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I have the opportunity to vote for the Northern Independence Party.  Aren’t you jealous?

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I do wish the system whereby only a third of councillors are up for election would be abolished.

It makes it hard to boot out rubbish councils.

That being said, I live in a rubbish council, we elect all our seats at once, and yet still the Tories are in power. But that's just testament to how useless the LolDems are.

I don't think it does, actually: the disadvantage that we can only kick out a third of the council each time is cancelled out, probably more than cancelled out, by the fact that we have three times the number of opportunities to do so.  (Compared with all up elections every four years.)

That said I would probably prefer all up elections every two years.  Electing by thirds means that all our wards have to be three seaters (well they don't quite have to be, but they are, and that's the LGBCE's strong preference) and that means they have to be enormous.

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Wakefield (Lab 43, Con 16, Lib Dem 2, Ind 1, vacant 1) Labour had a poor result last year, but are still reasonably secure for control this year.  The vacancy is a Labour seat in South Elmsall & South Kirkby, which again elects two councillors this year.

There may be a certain amount of extra attention on this one now.

Separately from the reason for that, there's a certain amount of chaos in the local Tories.  Their group leader, Nic Stansby, is up for election this year in Wrenthorpe & Outwood West ward, but she is defending her seat as an Independent after the local party deselected her and nominated someone else.  As of today she's still shown on the council website as Conservative Group Leader.

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Any guesses which party delivered this leaflet in North Tyneside?


Actually it was delivered by the Tories (and it has a Tory imprint) in an apparent attempt to split the anti-Tory vote.

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The Kensington constituency is made up of 13 RBKC wards and a portion of another. Those 13 wards return 35 councillors, of whom one is a Lib Dem, 13 are Labour and the remaining 21 are Tories. Earls Court ward (2 Tories, 1 LD) is somewhat marginal, but there's only one other ward that would fall to Labour on a 10% swing since 2018 and that only just.

The Tory wards are very safe, the Labour wards are mostly even safer and there are almost no swing voters - you didn't even see them in 2018 when the backdrop to the election was the council's incompetence and lack of interest in its tenants leading to the deaths of over 70 people in the Grenfell fire.

Wikipedia says that in 2018, there was media speculation that Labour could take the council.
With electoral geography like this, it's almost mind-boggling that Tory control was ever in question.
How many people could possibly believe it it's under threat this time?
Also: how did Linda Wade get elected in the Earl's Court ward and why does she do so well?

If there was media speculation about Labour taking control of RBKC then that says more about our media than it does about either the borough or the Labour Party.

I think it's also the case that the sort of Tory voters you get there are considerably less likely than most Tory demographics to shift to the Lib Dems or other non-Labour alternatives to the Tories; after all, as EAL pointed out above, they by and large didn't even in 2018 when there was a very obvious reason, specific to that council, to want to vote for a change of control.  I would be astonished if the borough went NOC.

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I wouldn't discount the possibility of concentrated swing, something that is becoming more and more common.  Essentially,  if the national topline is Labour + 4, then there will be some areas where it's Labour+10, and others that are no overall swing. That said, the way you describe it suggests that even a large swing is unlikely to affect overall control.

Even more so in local elections of course, where there are very likely to be plenty of places with detectably different patterns due to unpopular councils (or unwind of effects of councils which were unpopular four years ago).  I just don't see that being the case in Kensington & Chelsea, though, especially as you'd have thought that the council would have been being punished four years ago more than now.

What I expect, in general, is something like:
- Labour making advances against the Tories, but not overwhelmingly (this is not 1994/95/96) and with some disappointments.  And don't be too surprised if those disappointments include Wandsworth, which has been Tory for 44 years, including 1994, and where the ward boundaries are not particularly favourable to Labour.
- Lib Dems and Greens doing well in some places due to effective local campaigning and targeting, especially where they're targeting the Tories.  But some established Lib Dem groups might fall back.

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The five northern wards of Kensington & Chelsea -- Dalgarno, Golborne, Colville, St Helens, Notting Dale -- do all have some heavily deprived areas, and indeed are dominated by them.  But of course those are the wards which already vote Labour.

There are also significant pockets of deprivation in Earl's Court ward and around the interestingly named World's End estate in Chelsea Riverside ward.  And those are the two wards which are the most plausible candidates for Tory losses, but even losing the five seats the Tories hold there would leave them on 31 out of 50.  The other ward which might just be vulnerable is Holland, which has some moderately deprived areas along the border with Hammersmith & Fulham.  Even that wouldn't be enough, so we have to start looking at wards like Norland, Pembridge and Stanley, and look at the results in those last time...

There are a few other pockets, especially on that western border, but not big enough to dominate any wards (or split between wards).  There are, however, no census areas in the borough which have really low deprivation scores, because most of it scores quite highly on crime, living environment and barriers to housing and services.

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Especially if the first results will be them losing control in Sunderland - mainly to local issues but said result will obviously be conflated given it came first.

Though possible it's a long way from being a certain outcome - a lot of wards were tight in all directions last year and the national atmosphere is rather different.

What about the local atmosphere, which I'd got the impression was a large part of the problem for Labour there?  After all, seats were being lost in all directions, not just to the Tories.

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Andrew Teale has written a preview:
https://medium.com/britainelects/andrew-teales-2022-local-election-previews-e9fe434dc869

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It's interesting to note that the leaflet circulating on Twitter pleading for voters not to punish "local Conservatives for local people" for "the mistakes made in Westminster" is from Hartlepool.

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The first Sunderland ward is in: a Labour hold in Silksworth with a substantial swing to them since last year and even a small swing to them since 2018. If that’s typical they’ll be fine there.

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Double blow for Sunderland Tories: they've failed to gain Washington South (which they were intensely targeting and stressed that they were to journalists from national newspapers) and have lost Fullwell to the LibDems.

And Labour have now held the Council.

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Nine Elms is a new ward in an area of expensive new developments and has a tiny electorate, because it was deliberately drawn small to allow for growth.  So it was always likely to be a bit odd.  I doubt the Lib Dems will be a factor elsewhere in Wandsworth.

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Colchester council has seen the Tories lose two seats already- including their leader.

Is significant as it’s a major Lib Dem target in the General election.

The Colchester town constituency (which doesn’t cover the whole borough) is actually more of a Labour target now, though it was Lib Dem in the not too distant past.

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Labour win both seats in Wandle ward, Wandsworth.  According to Adam Gray’s notionals in another place, the Tories were about 14 percentage points ahead there in 2018.

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Hull is confirmed as a Lib Dem gain.  The Tories lost their last seat as well.

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Labour have comfortably won control of the new Cumberland unitary, with the Tories performing poorly.  Labour have 30, the Tories 7, Lib Dems 4, Greens 2 and Independents 3.

(All now in.)

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Tories failed to win a single seat in Stockport.

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Confirmed: Labour take Wandsworth after 44 years of Tory control

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It’s official: Labour have control of Westminster.  First time ever.

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Results in Sheffield:


Four seats changed hands, but they went in different directions and the net effect was one Green gain from Labour.  Labour now have 39 seats out of 84, the Lib Dems 29, the Greens 14 and the Tories 1; the 84th seat is held by a former Labour councillor now sitting as an Independent.  The Tories fell back substantially from 2021; e.g. in East Ecclesfield, which they made a genuine three way marginal last year and is in the Penistone & Stocksbridge constituency they gained in 2019, they got less than half Labour's vote.

Barnsley (Lab 49, Lib Dem 7, Con 3, Barnsley Independent Group 1, other Independents 3) It's Barnsley, so unsurprisingly Labour currently has a comfortable majority.  They will probably lose a handful of seats to Lib Dems and maybe to the Barnsley Independent Group (not the force they were) or some other random Independents.  The Tories only missed out on a gain in Rockingham ward on a coin toss last year, so might have an outside chance of breaking out of Penistone East.

Labour did indeed lose two seats to Lib Dems, but didn't lose anything to Independents this year.  But that ward the Tories lost on a coin toss last year actually voted for them this year, which I think is the first time they've ever won a non-Penistone seat on Barnsley council.

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The current line the the Tories are doing fine outside of London is going to collapse once we get the Scottish and Welsh results.

It's not really true anyway, is it?  There are lots of places outside London with bad Tory results: Portsmouth, Southampton, Worcester, West Oxfordshire (look at the 2018 results in some of those wards the Tories lost), Cumberland to name a few.  Some of those are quite Brexity, too.

It is true that there are some places where they held up quite well and even gained seats: most obviously several Greater Manchester boroughs and some Midlands districts (and that random Barnsley ward).  But that's far from being the general story in England outside London, even in "Red Wall" type areas.