May 3, 20197 yr Brighton and Hove is one of the few places in the country where a Lib Dem candidate beating a Green candidate is vaguely newsworthy! Indeed, I assumed that much from Brighton having the only Green MP. Having said that, there's only so much you can compare local elections to general elections. The Lib Dems dominate the councils here but the Conservatives had more than half of the vote in our constituency for the last general election.
May 3, 20197 yr In pathetic minor party news: the continuity Liberal Party has won 7 council seats, comprehensively outperforming the continuity Social Democratic Party, who, despite endorsements from Rod Liddle in the Spectator and Giles Fraser in the Cow Website, won zero.
May 3, 20197 yr Brighton and Hove is one of the few places in the country where a Lib Dem candidate beating a Green candidate is vaguely newsworthy! Yes. But the scale of the Tories' losses makes Labour's results look particularly bad. The governing party lost over 1,300 seats but the main opposition party also managed to suffer net losses. That is a failure on a pretty spectacular scale. Congrats for standing - I take it you stood as a LD?
May 4, 20197 yr It is quite amazing that given this entire results process being gains for anti-Brexit parties, in particular the Lib Dems, certain parties (Conservatives, the BBC in some areas of their reporting) are trying to spin this as a call to 'get on with Brexit'. That doesn't seem too outlandish to me - all it would take is a lot of Tory/Leavers staying at home. If there had been elections where I am, that certainly would have been my motivation. However, the Euro elections should tell us far more... Edited May 4, 20197 yr by vidcapper
May 4, 20197 yr The good news is that I did something very few Lib Dem candidates managed in Brighton & Hove - I beat a Green candidate. The bad news is I didn't beat anyone else :lol: That just means my original assessment of my chances of winning - somewhere between extremely remote and zero - proved to be accurate. But it will look great on your JD - "officially more popular than a Green in Brighton" :) Well done anyway!
May 4, 20197 yr It weird how the results are being interpreted as 'people want us to get on with Brexit' by May and other Tories The two biggest opposition parties to leaving the EU (Lib Dem and Greens) have gained nearly 1000 seats between them. Whereas pro Brexit parties (Troy/ UKIP) have lost nearly 1500 seats between them. To me those results indicate people don't want Brexit rather than they want us to get on with it It's panic and desperation. They are trying to turn a kicking into a threat to the ERG that if they don't do what they promised to do they are going down and may not get Brexit at all, while simultaneously trying to calm down all the angry Tory voters who didn't vote for them. Claims that ardent Brexiters voted Green or LibDem to "send a message to get on with it" is to blatantly lie yet again, or else it's admitting that their supporters are so stupid they can't tell the difference between Brexit and Remain. There is no other alternative explanation.
May 4, 20197 yr That doesn't seem too outlandish to me - all it would take is a lot of Tory/Leavers staying at home. If there had been elections where I am, that certainly would have been my motivation. However, the Euro elections should tell us far more... So you're claiming that people who don't vote show that means supporting Brexit? Well, in that case, I'm claiming the large proportion of people who didnt vote in the referendum didn't bother because they thought it was shoo-in we'd stay in the EU and it wasn't necessary to vote. There was a UKIP candidate on my ballot sheet and she won comfortably.......
May 4, 20197 yr James O'Brien "Corbyn & May would both have described a good result as vindication of their Brexit policy. Corbyn & May are both describing a terrible result as vindication of their Brexit policy. Have a lovely weekend!" Drops microphone and walks off stage.....
May 4, 20197 yr So you're claiming that people who don't vote show that means supporting Brexit? No, all I was claiming was that that would have been *my* motivation.
May 4, 20197 yr That doesn't seem too outlandish to me - all it would take is a lot of Tory/Leavers staying at home. If there had been elections where I am, that certainly would have been my motivation. However, the Euro elections should tell us far more... Well, that's the sort of thing you'd need stats to support. Because the only stats I see are pro-Remain parties gaining seats and parties against staying losing seats. Without those stats, declaring the narrative of these results as a need to 'get on with Brexit' (whatever that means, get onto where, down the next disastrous Tory strategy?) is nonsense.
May 4, 20197 yr Author That doesn't seem too outlandish to me - all it would take is a lot of Tory/Leavers staying at home. If there had been elections where I am, that certainly would have been my motivation. However, the Euro elections should tell us far more... Except that the figures don’t really support that theory.
May 4, 20197 yr Author Indeed, I assumed that much from Brighton having the only Green MP. Having said that, there's only so much you can compare local elections to general elections. The Lib Dems dominate the councils here but the Conservatives had more than half of the vote in our constituency for the last general election. She makes a big difference. Caroline Lucas is very popular throughout Brighton and Hove. Congrats for standing - I take it you stood as a LD? Yes.
May 4, 20197 yr In pathetic minor party news: the continuity Liberal Party has won 7 council seats, comprehensively outperforming the continuity Social Democratic Party, who, despite endorsements from Rod Liddle in the Spectator and Giles Fraser in the Cow Website, won zero. The Residents Association also did very well. I don't know much about their political stance but I am guessing they are left wing as a residents association does sound like a socialist endeavor. There was a UKIP candidate on my ballot sheet and she won comfortably....... UKIP despite the two factors of a. not fielding as many candidates and b. their recent controversies should still have done better than they did I think, especially without the Brexit Party as competition - it would be expected that many disgruntled Brexiteers would hold their nose and vote for them as a protest despite the direction they are going under Batten. The main election success obviously belonged to the Remainer vote, which begs the question, perhaps as Suedehead is saying that perhaps the Brexiteer vote isn't quite as high as many think. The European elections will be the test of that though. Edited May 4, 20197 yr by TheSnake
May 5, 20197 yr Except that the figures don’t really support that theory. Hence the reason for the 2nd part of my previous post.
May 15, 20197 yr Author In a parish council in Swindon the Tory candidates all managed to win more votes than the number of ballot papers issued. As nobody seemed to notice at the time, the declared result is legally binding. https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/highworth...ocal-elections/
May 16, 20197 yr In a parish council in Swindon the Tory candidates all managed to win more votes than the number of ballot papers issued. As nobody seemed to notice at the time, the declared result is legally binding. https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/highworth...ocal-elections/ Farcical!
June 9, 20197 yr Author It's too early to start a thread about next year's local elections, but here's a side issue relating to them. The government has announced that next year's early May bank holiday will be on Friday 8th rather than Monday 4th. This is to fit in with the 75th anniversary of VE Day. I had been wondering about this date since the 2015 election, After all, if we hadn't had an unnecessary election in 2017, 7 May 2020 would have been the date of the general election. That would have caused some complications, not least relating to who would attend various events as Prime Minister. However, 7 May is still the date for local elections on many places as well as the London mayor and Police and Crime Commissioners in England and Wales. If the count is held on the Friday, that mean paying staff bank holiday rates. Perhaps more significantly, many councillors would expect to attend both the count and VE Day events. I'm sure the London mayor will be due to attend something. This all means that the logical thing to do would be to move the elections to either Wednesday 6 May or Thursday 14 May. If that happens, I hope it is done in time to avoid some of the problems encountered with the European elections.
June 9, 20197 yr I think Salford are due an all up election due to a set of boundary changes which could be interesting. Scotland have nothing on the cards, 2020 is our rare election-free year! Well, until Sturg puts the date for IR2 in 2020 that is.
June 22, 20197 yr Author In the last couple weeks there have been a few contests postponed from May following the death of a candidate. The Lib Dems have made further gains with the Tories losing a few more seats.
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