UK Local Elections 2022

[jeron]

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.

Generally the Tories did better in the north and  suffered losses in the south.

[jeron]

First Scottish results coming in.

• Mostly Independents being elected in Orkney, (which has few party-affiliated politicians outside of Westminster and Holyrood elections), but a couple of results in the Borders.
• Tweeddale West (of the Borders Council) has reported, with 15% swing away from the Conservatives. A single result, but given how Conservative leaning the Borders has become post 2016, a potential sign of what’s to come…

It’s worth noting that all Scottish Councils use Single Transferable Vote, which, combined with our reputation for closely-fought marginals, is the reason that no party held a majority on a council between 2017-2022.

The real story is going to be in the shift. Will previous polling, showing a slight dip in SNP support and collapse for the Tories equate to the Labour gains they need to prove that the party is on the recovery? Or does the country just reshuffle a bit, with no material gains made for anyone?

Can Labour make enough progress in Glasgow to convince party HQ to invest in flipping key seats in the next election? What happens to Edinburgh - which has a plurality of Tories, but is somehow run by a shaky SNP-Labour minority administration? It’s going to be a fascinating morning.

Tories losing accross Scotland. So far they lost seats in Edinburgh, Lomond, Kilmarnock, Annandale, Kirriemur and Forth & Endrick