British Local Elections, May 2024

[Oryxslayer]

Havant goes to NOC... Notably with some Reform UK gains. Though how much is cause of the reform brand is debatable, last time here the lack of a clear anti-Tory option just scattered voters to everyone.

Lib-Dems claiming they have a majority in Tunbridge Wells.

[Duke of York]

Labour lost 5 seats in Bradford. Were these Muslim heavy wards they lost?

[Duke of York]

Labour fails to regain Oxford.

loses five seats. Four to independents and one to Greens., Wonder why this happened in Oxford and not Cambridge.

Probably because the Oxford LTN scheme was more ambitious, and because Oxford is also demographically more primed for a backlash to it.

How so? Cambridge is a college town too.

It didn’t have anything to do with that. Labour narrowly lost one student ward to the Greens, but the rest were all to anti-LTN independents in the quite working-class south and east of the city. My point was that Oxford is more working-class than Cambridge.

What is LTN?

[Torrain]

It’s worse than last year - they’re trying to *project constituencies* from the PNS

I mean, look at this nonsense:

Wait a minute, is this just extrapolating to England - and leaving Scotland and Wales unchanged on the grounds that "there aren't any council elections there"?

So still a near clean sweep for the SNP, amongst other things??

If so, actually worse than useless.

It seems to be. Once you subtract Northern Ireland and the three Plaid seats, you’ve still got about 45 “Other”. Whether that’s localists, or SNP - it’s an implausible total to come to under current polling.

It’s garbage. 

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Anyway, the specific difference between Oxford and Cambridge on this is that the administration in the latter lost a by-election over the issue and dropped it like a hot potato, and the former did not.

[Duke of York]

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Anyway, the specific difference between Oxford and Cambridge on this is that the administration in the latter lost a by-election over the issue and dropped it like a hot potato, and the former did not.

well that makes perfect sense then. This was not a Gaza related result.

[Duke of York]

a disappointment for Greens in Bristol short of majority by two seats.

[Oryxslayer]

Dudley is in - Tied council. But not at the 50-50 line. With 3 Lib-Dems and 1 Indie Labour will form a minority.  Less Labour seats than desired but still the tight result suggested by past performance.

LibDems started doing well in a usually Labour but sometimes Conservative ward due to a planning dispute (they were against the development, naturally) and now hold all three seats there.

Reminder 3 councilors per ward, so some wards go 2-1 and some go 3-0. That's what the dots are for.

[YL]

Labour lost 5 seats in Bradford. Were these Muslim heavy wards they lost?

Yes. Labour did really badly in strongly Muslim wards in the Yorkshire Mets. They also lost Park ward in Calderdale to the Workers Party.

[Joe Republic]

If we take the vote shares from the Blackpool South by-election and project them onto the share of seats won at the upcoming general election:

Labour: 376
Conservative: 111
Reform: 108
Lib Dem: 13
Green: 13
OMRLP: 4

It would appear that SNP, Plaid, all the NI parties, and the Speaker are all projected to lose their seats.  However, this is math and you cannot argue with it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Labour lost 5 seats in Bradford. Were these Muslim heavy wards they lost?

Yes. Labour did really badly in strongly Muslim wards in the Yorkshire Mets. They also lost Park ward in Calderdale to the Workers Party.

The Muslim communities in West Yorkshire - which for those who aren't aware are a mixture of Mirpuri Pakistani (especially in Bradford) and Gujarati - are amongst the most (small 'c') conservative in the country, which may be relevant in this context given the resulting stronger communal ties and organization.

[YL]

a disappointment for Greens in Bristol short of majority by two seats.

It was always a tall order for them to actually take control so to come so close is a pretty good result.

[Duke of York]

a disappointment for Greens in Bristol short of majority by two seats.

It was always a tall order for them to actually take control so to come so close is a pretty good result.

with all seats up I would have thought they could have done it. Maybe they can take control in by elections before the next election.

[Oryxslayer]

a disappointment for Greens in Bristol short of majority by two seats.

It was always a tall order for them to actually take control so to come so close is a pretty good result.

Looking at the actual wards on the council site, there seems to be two stories. The first is the Greens making some gains off Labour, but not too many in a big shocking way. The second is the Tory collapse, which seemingly benefits all parties here, but the Greens less so. Which is the inverse of Shire Greens where the Tories opt for them, in urban areas the Greens have a different type of platform.




Lib-Dems come just short in Elmbirdge, another disappointment.

[afleitch]

Average vote share change in the English Police and Crime Commissioner elections declared so far

CON -12
LAB +9.2
LD +3.8

Tories led Labour 44.5% to 29.7% in first preferences in England and Wales back in 2021 (and remember some Labour friendly Mets with Mayors didn't have these elections) and still some strong areas for Labour still to come.

[JimJamUK]

FWIW there does seem to be a relatively good performance by Labour vs Lib Dems/Greens in a number of places. In the past few cycles once the latter were defending a ward it was very unlikely for Labour to actually regain any of these wards. Obviously spotty, but for once Labour is actually making up ground in a number of wards and even councils where you wouldn’t have expected them to given they didn’t in 2022 or 2023.

[Oryxslayer]

Last two councils counting tonight are Dorset (seemingly going to fall to Lib-Dems) and Gloucester (Lib-Dems seemingly the benefitiary of the enviornemt, unlcear if enough gains though).

[CumbrianLefty]

Havant goes to NOC

Wow, that was *not* widely expected.

[Tintrlvr]

We're not quite done counting everywhere yet, but it looks fairly certain that the Tories will have come third in seat count behind the Lib Dems and of course Labour. This last happened in 1996, which should feel appropriately ominous for Tory chances at winning the next GE. (The Lib Dems did manage to come second in councillors once since then, in 2009, when Labour had a calamitously bad local election performance and fell to a distant third.)

Edit: In fact, 1996 appears to be the only other time the Tories have come third in councillors. They were second in the early-to-mid 90s local elections.

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1786510544133923228
Well… I wish Alex Chalk all the best in his next career.

[CumbrianLefty]

a disappointment for Greens in Bristol short of majority by two seats.

Coldstream wasn't that far out then.

Thought that the Greens were being overhyped a bit, but evidently not.

[Bono]

While we didn't have any normal elections in Brum, we did have a special one. Apparently if the swing was replicated the council would be under Tory control. Of course this is a very vague analysis, and the ward itself is Selly Oak where all the UoB students live so not that representative. Possibly impact of the bankruptcy tho. I guess we'll know more tomorrow once we know the Mayor results.

[Oryxslayer]

Gloucester ended up as fairly dramatic loss for the Tories, as rumored pre-election, but the Lib-Dem beneficiaries did not get a majority on their own.

Havant goes to NOC

Wow, that was *not* widely expected.

Yep. Even with backlash expected, past result suggested they hold a bit more turf  in the council's NW for the minority. Instead, it joins the list of places that pre-election I wondered "WTF happens now." The scattering of seats mean councils like this are going to have difficulty building viable working relationships given so many groups, and if the coalitions have any long term electoral viably is extremely unclear.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

An especially foul result for the Conservatives came at Worcester, where they're down to just one seat now as their usual wards have been lost to the Greens and LibDems and Labour have down well in the sketchier areas. Who is this solitary councillor, this group of one? Because reality is entirely and absurdly unrealistic, it is somehow Alan Amos. Mr Amos, who had previously been a councillor in Enfield, was elected as the Conservative MP for Hexham in 1987 and seemed set for a fruitful career as cartoonish hard-right culture warrior and public moralizer until he was rather unfortunately given a police caution for public indecency on Hampstead Heath just before the 1992 General Election. His parliamentary career over, he attempted to return to Enfield council, but the local party would not have it. Shortly afterwards he had one of those Damascene Conversions, he said, and joined the Labour Party and, after diligently running as a candidate in a hopeless constituency in 2001, returned to elected office as councillor for the rapidly gentrifying Millwall ward in Tower Hamlets in 2002. Having lost that seat in 2006, Amos relocated all the way to Worcester (geography, as we have already seen, being no barrier) and was elected as a Labour councillor in 2008. His relationship with the group leadership deteriorated as soon as it became clear that they did not wish him to become the Mayor of Worcester for a year. Then, in 2014 and with the control of Worcester City Council on a knife-edge, Amos quit the Party to become an Independent, was elected as Mayor with Conservative votes and then himself voted to allow for the formation of a Conservative administration. A year later he rejoined the Conservative Party and, once again, became a cartoonish, hard-right culture warrior.

[Oryxslayer]

An especially foul result for the Conservatives came at Worcester, where they're down to just one seat now as their usual wards have been lost to the Greens and LibDems and Labour have down well in the sketchier areas. Who is this solitary councillor, this group of one? Because reality is entirely and absurdly unrealistic, it is somehow Alan Amos. Mr Amos, who had previously been a councillor in Enfield, was elected as the Conservative MP for Hexham in 1987 and seemed set for a fruitful career as cartoonish hard-right culture warrior and public moralizer until he was rather unfortunately given a police caution for public indecency on Hampstead Heath just before the 1992 General Election. His parliamentary career over, he attempted to return to Enfield council, but the local party would not have it. Shortly afterwards he had one of those Damascene Conversions, he said, and joined the Labour Party and, after diligently running as a candidate in a hopeless constituency in 2001, returned to elected office as councillor for the rapidly gentrifying Millwall ward in Tower Hamlets in 2002. Having lost that seat in 2006, Amos relocated all the way to Worcester (geography, as we have already seen, being no barrier) and was elected as a Labour councillor in 2008. His relationship with the group leadership deteriorated as soon as it became clear that they did not wish him to become the Mayor of Worcester for a year. Then, in 2014 and with the control of Worcester City Council on a knife-edge, Amos quit the Party to become an Independent, was elected as Mayor with Conservative votes and then himself voted to allow for the formation of a Conservative administration. A year later he rejoined the Conservative Party and, once again, became a cartoonish, hard-right culture warrior.

Lol, Would you expect him to try joining the Worcester Labour now that it would give them a majority? I doubt they would accept, but there is glory in the attempt...