The voting in Farnham has a 99.9% chance of being Conservative. I was talking for a friend who's lived there for five years today and he's only seen one person there who isn't white. :P

 

Oh yeah, and white British areas are more likely to be Conservative as well. The houses in Farnham are also very expensive!

Edited May 2, 201312 yr by Griff

Well I have done my bit and voted, went through one section of Norwich today and I don't think the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have a dog's chance there. Never saw so many Labour and Green Party support signs in my life.

Norwich is one of the Green Party's stronger areas so they may pick up something there.

Yes, it is. Though I do remember some fuss about a member who changed party and there was pressure for him to resign because of the support for the party's policies as opposed to the candidate.

 

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/green...tives_1_1157800

 

Found it and it was the Green Party.

Edited May 2, 201312 yr by Flatcap

Yes, it is. Though I do remember some fuss about a member who changed party and there was pressure for him to resign because of the support for the party's policies as opposed to the candidate.

 

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/green...tives_1_1157800

 

Found it and it was the Green Party.

What a bizarre decision :mellow: Interesting that he changed sides after the US lost their credit rating. Has he switched again after the same happened to the UK?

Secondly the vice chair of my uni Labour society is standing in a council by-election in the ward next to mine. She's not expected to win, and we came 3rd last time so even 2nd behind the Lib Dems would be a good result. If she were to somehow take it (and early signs are reasonably positive) then it would be a huge scalp given that the ward is in the constituency of a certain Mr. Clegg.

She came second, scored over 1,000 votes (Tories took 700, UKIP 500) but the Lib Dems walked away with it on about 2,500. We went a bit campaign mad over the last month and I think it prompted them to do something similar, apparently they sent out ELEVEN different leaflets. Having spent all day in student villages, where the turnout increased tenfold to about 600 out of 4,200, I am utterly knackered.

The UKIP gained a lot of votes last night. If they ever get in a position of power, I will think of leaving the country.

UKIP have gained a lot of seats so far. It may be that theses councillors will show themselves up as an incoherent rabble, particularly as the numbers suggest that a lot of them probably were not expecting to win. It certainly seems likely that some of them will demonstrate that they are a bit like the BNP but in nicer suits.

The nature of the areas being contested lends itself rather well to UKIP, It'd be disastrous for them if they weren't making big gains.

 

I'm not entirely sure that sitting Nigel Farage on the other side of the table from spokespeople from the three main parties is particularly clever when it seems to happen every time, only serves to help his mantra of "they're all the same". Doesn't help that the Labour woman was bloody useless.

Sadly, I think they're going to do really well in these elections. They do genuinely seem to have taken off over the last year, and most importantly, the polls are showing they're especially popular with the over-60s, who are the one demographic who vote in all elections, even the less important ones like these.

 

I don't expect Labour to make that many gains purely because so many of these are in -shire counties where the government has carefully avoided heaping the cuts onto, and I don't think the Conservatives are strong enough to gain many seats off the Lib Dems (or vice versa), so I fear Ukip will actually be the big story of these elections tbh.

 

Ugh, why did this have to be the one time I was right. Labour making OK but unspectacular gains, the regular Lib Dem thrashings are expected at this point, so Ukip as expected are the big story of the elections. I only see them going from strength to strength after this tbh.

Ugh, why did this have to be the one time I was right. Labour making OK but unspectacular gains, the regular Lib Dem thrashings are expected at this point, so Ukip as expected are the big story of the elections. I only see them going from strength to strength after this tbh.

 

To be honest, I see these local elections as UKIP's last hurrah. At the next general election, I very much doubt that UKIP will win any seats, unless some MPs defect from the Conservatives before then, and after that they should tail out.

To be honest, I see these local elections as UKIP's last hurrah. At the next general election, I very much doubt that UKIP will win any seats, unless some MPs defect from the Conservatives before then, and after that they should tail out.

 

I agree that they won't do that great at the general election (I think a lot of their policies will be exposed in a proper election campaign), but before that, I'm totally expecting them to come a clear first in next year's European elections.

Labour are still not making a lot of progress in the south which will be worrying for them.

 

Both the Tories and Lib Dems can point to some decent result. The Tories have held Staffordshire which they won four years ago after 28 years of Labour control. The Lib Dems have made modest gains in some of the areas where they hold parliamentary seats with the worst results, as expected, in the north.

To be honest, I see these local elections as UKIP's last hurrah. At the next general election, I very much doubt that UKIP will win any seats, unless some MPs defect from the Conservatives before then, and after that they should tail out.

 

 

They may not build up a massive Commons presence but in the same way as the SDP did in the 1980s they may win the battle of ideas and move the Conservatives away from the centrist position Cameron has been trying to build them into (the heirs to Blairs' centrism).

 

The SDP didn't really build up a Westminster presence until the gave up and joined with the Liberals but they did lead to 3 subsequent defeats of Labour in the 1980s and ended with Tony Blair and helped create a Labour party which changed from a Democratic socialist party to a Social Democratic Party of 1997!

Staffordshire is STILL Conservative WOT. On the other hand, it has actually managed to lose two UKIP wards, so swings and roundabouts I guess.

 

On the better side of Peak District, Derbyshire has flipped back to Labour. <3

The BNP lost all the seats they were fighting for. So minor victories and all that...

So UKIP want us out of Europe - why not go the whole hog and get us out of America.

 

I know which i'd rather be in

 

We had no elections here in Manchester

Edited May 3, 201312 yr by euro music

DONCASTER MAYOR BITCHES.

 

Labour more than doubled the number of councillors we won in 2009 and there was no Scotland 2011-esque fiasco, very good set of results. I'm reasonably confident that by this time next year the majority of the media will have done a hatchet job on Farage's mob, the Europeans will be their last hurrah and their local election results will be underwhelming. The true test of their mainsteam appeal will be whether they can back up their rhetoric and start taking seats off Labour as well as the Tories.

Hmm, personally I still wouldn't underestimate UKIP. Even though most people don't really give a shit about the EU one way or another, there's still a LOT of angry people who are disillusioned with the entire "political establishment", and unless another small party breaks through from somewhere, I really can see UKIP holding onto that pretty big "none-of-the-above" vote that the Lib Dems used to get. I certainly don't expect them to do what they did yesterday at the general election, but I could see them getting above 10% for sure.

Edited May 4, 201312 yr by Danny

If the "none of the above" vote is what's oushing them so far ahead of what they polled in 2010 then there's obviously a limit to how far that's going to take them. The fact that the Lib Dems had a strong local government base, popular local MPs, centuries of liberalism AND the "none of the above" vote in 2010 and still couldn't get above 25% suggests that it doesn't count for an awful lot.