May 23, 201411 yr ...and made gains of 4% in the locals from where they were in 2006. EDIT: It was actually 1% from 2006 because Wikipedia is stupid. The 4% rise was compared to 2009. Do you really think a 4% gain from the utter nadir of 2009 is encouraging? According to Sky News' projection (obvious caveat), Labour would not even get a majority next year on these figures. Edited May 23, 201411 yr by Danny
May 23, 201411 yr Do you really think a 4% gain from the utter nadir of 2009 is encouraging? According to Sky News' projection (obvious caveat), Labour would not even get a majority next year on these figures. I'd be interested to see how they do the projection. 4% up in a year was impressive no matter how bad the 2009 results were.
May 23, 201411 yr Why are voters prepared to vote UKIP? Farage mostly, a politician who doesn't spout endless meaningless soundbites designed to avoid alienating any potential voter or critic or actually saying much (or if they are it gets lost in the double-speak). Any politician who utters the phrase "hard-working families" ever again should be immediately consigned to Room 101, because by inference everyone else doesn't matter, they don't have a family, they don't work hard and they don't vote. Just to stress I don't in any way agree with anything UKIP stand for, but you can count the number of MP's willing to talk plainly on one hand. If anything, that's the lesson all parties should taking away from this.
May 23, 201411 yr Why are voters prepared to vote UKIP? Farage mostly, a politician who doesn't spout endless meaningless soundbites designed to avoid alienating any potential voter or critic or actually saying much (or if they are it gets lost in the double-speak). Any politician who utters the phrase "hard-working families" ever again should be immediately consigned to Room 101, because by inference everyone else doesn't matter, they don't have a family, they don't work hard and they don't vote. Just to stress I don't in any way agree with anything UKIP stand for, but you can count the number of MP's willing to talk plainly on one hand. If anything, that's the lesson all parties should taking away from this. Lynne Featherstone Lib Dem) was saying something similar last night. Of course the problem is that as soon as an MP says anything slightly different from party policy it is portrayed as a major split. There is also the fact that too many people want two totally incompatible things at the same time. People complain that politicians never listen to what people want but also that there is no difference between the parties. However, if politicians simply went along with majority opinion on everything, there really would be no difference between the parties. It has been very noticeable that Nick Clegg has been the only party leader to be unequivocal in support for the EU. Ed Miliband has said very little and Cameron just keeps banging on about a referendum without giving any clue which side he would support.
May 23, 201411 yr Lynne Featherstone Lib Dem) was saying something similar last night. Of course the problem is that as soon as an MP says anything slightly different from party policy it is portrayed as a major split. There is also the fact that too many people want two totally incompatible things at the same time. People complain that politicians never listen to what people want but also that there is no difference between the parties. However, if politicians simply went along with majority opinion on everything, there really would be no difference between the parties. It has been very noticeable that Nick Clegg has been the only party leader to be unequivocal in support for the EU. Ed Miliband has said very little and Cameron just keeps banging on about a referendum without giving any clue which side he would support. Yes you're right, and politicains should just get used to turning round and saying to the media "stop portraying this as a split, you're essentially muckraking a minor opinion by one person who in a democracy is allowed to not be an automaton but still support his parties aims overall". The media equally needs a slap for trying to make stories out of non-stories, or scandal-mongering instead of providing actual news. :o
May 23, 201411 yr Any politician who utters the phrase "hard-working families" ever again should be immediately consigned to Room 101, +1 Lynne Featherstone Lib Dem) was saying something similar last night. Of course the problem is that as soon as an MP says anything slightly different from party policy it is portrayed as a major split. There is also the fact that too many people want two totally incompatible things at the same time. People complain that politicians never listen to what people want but also that there is no difference between the parties. However, if politicians simply went along with majority opinion on everything, there really would be no difference between the parties. Yes, it would be portrayed by the idiot media that way, but surely the last few weeks have shown how the media has no impact (or perhaps even a counterproductive impact) on how people think about politics? The media (including even the Sun and the Mail) have piled into UKIP, and it's not dented them at all. Is it really incompatible for people to want the parties to not say the same thing, but also to listen to people? If there was a real choice between the mainstream parties with them both offering completely different types of policy, in a way we haven't had since the mid-90s, people would felt they were being "listened to" because there was someone in the mainstream who was stating their own views.
May 23, 201411 yr Sad to see Kingston Upon Thames fall to the Conservatives from Lid Dems, should've seen it coming what with their general huge flopping though :( I just hope that my home borough of Waltham Forest stays under Labour control and UKIP-free. Edited May 23, 201411 yr by Chez Wombat
May 23, 201411 yr Do you really think a 4% gain from the utter nadir of 2009 is encouraging? According to Sky News' projection (obvious caveat), Labour would not even get a majority next year on these figures. The point of how we did well in 2010 wasn't to do with vote share. We gained 17 councils and 417 councillors in 2010. That's the kind of result that would've been heralded as a good comeback in any other year when all eyes weren't on the general election.
May 23, 201411 yr Official projected shares for the locals: Labour 31% Tories 29% UKIP 17% Lib Dems 13% Not quite as bad as feared for Labour, but a 2% lead is still pretty poor, especially since, contrary to the spin, the BBC said before the swing to them in most of the real swing areas (the Midlands, Yorkshire, Essex) was actually LESS than the average, with London the obvious exception. UKIP actually DOWN on last year, but probably would still get a few MPs on this type of figure. The Lib Dems have hit a new low for local elections...yet again. Edited May 23, 201411 yr by Danny
May 23, 201411 yr The Lib Dems have hit a new low for local elections...yet again. They got 0.5% in my seat *.*
May 23, 201411 yr They got 0.5% in my seat *.* They've apparently lost every single seat in Liverpool -- a council they controlled a few years ago!
May 23, 201411 yr They've apparently lost every single seat in Liverpool -- a council they controlled a few years ago! They've lost all the seats they defended. They still have a few left. However, they have lost all their seats in Manchester so that council is now 100% Labour.
May 23, 201411 yr Official projected shares for the locals: Labour 31% Tories 29% UKIP 17% Lib Dems 13% Not quite as bad as feared for Labour, but a 2% lead is still pretty poor, especially since, contrary to the spin, the BBC said before the swing to them in most of the real swing areas (the Midlands, Yorkshire, Essex) was actually LESS than the average, with London the obvious exception. UKIP actually DOWN on last year, but probably would still get a few MPs on this type of figure. The Lib Dems have hit a new low for local elections...yet again. Electoral Calculus gives the Lib Dems 39 seats and UKIP none on those figures. UKIP will need to concentrate their support in a very small number of seats in order to win any. If their support is as evenly spread as it was yesterday (with the notable exception of London) they won't win anything.
May 23, 201411 yr They've lost all the seats they defended. They still have a few left. However, they have lost all their seats in Manchester so that council is now 100% Labour. Correction - Twitter misled me. There is one Independent on Manchester City Council against 95 Labour.
May 23, 201411 yr Electoral Calculus gives the Lib Dems 39 seats and UKIP none on those figures. UKIP will need to concentrate their support in a very small number of seats in order to win any. If their support is as evenly spread as it was yesterday (with the notable exception of London) they won't win anything. But UKIP's support ISN'T evenly spread -- as you say, London is a big exception, but there's also other places (for example, round here, they seem to have gone nowhere in leafy affluent places like the Wirral, Sefton and Trafford, whereas they've been performing much better in working-class northern places). We'll have to wait for the experts to crunch the detailed numbers, but I'm expecting there'll be quite a number of parliamentary constituencies where UKIP topped the vote in these elections, especially in places like Essex which are swing areas so UKIP can get through on a low vote because of Labour and the Tories splitting quite evenly.
May 23, 201411 yr UKIP'll be dangerous in Rotherham next year... Still not going back there. Interesting that Labour's vote seems to be holding up well (and UKIP not doing brilliantly) in the big cities. It's the towns near them - the likes of Rotherham - that UKIP are really making headway. Ironic given their uber-Thatcherite manifesto and the fact that many of these places really suffered in the 1980s. For Labour at least that has to be the main thing now - assuming UKIP don't rapidly tack left economically they just have to keep stressing how awful their policies are outside of the obvious vote winners. Meanwhile Trafford seem intent on recreating a 1950s General Election on miniature scale. 33 Tory, 27 Labour and 3 Lib Dem now with Labour probably having the highest vote share again.
May 23, 201411 yr Author Well, spoke too soon. UKIP just topped the poll in Mournes, getting their 1st Councillor. Hopefully that's as much as they'll get.
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