May 2May 2 9 hours ago, Iz 🌟 said:Overnight results... Reform leading in councillors won, including some good performances in Northumberland, but as previously discussed all the councils that were due to declare overnight were expected to be good for them. We'll see other councils come through in the rest of the day.Andrea Jenkyns is the new mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, lol good luck all the people living under her now. Labour hold 3 other mayorships including the closely contested West Of England, though their vote share has dropped and Reform is snapping at their heels in all three - the sooner the government returns mayoral elections to the supplementary vote system the better, they should never have been made FPTP.The Supplementary Vote system was silly, AV would have been a lot better. I'm not convinced the change made much difference, assuming people would have used their first preference in the same way .It is likely that Reform would have picked up very few second preferences and all the second preference votes going to Tories, Lib Dems and Greens would have been wasted.One of the problems with the mix of First Past The Post and all-up elections is that a party can go form having no councillors to having overall control overnight. There will now be six councils run by people with no experience whatsoever. The one hope is that they are visibly a disaster, thereby dissuading people from making the same mistake in a general election.
May 2May 2 Author While it was a small number compared to this, UKIP won 139 councillors in this cycle of seats in 2013 and lost them all in 2017. Fringe parties have trouble keeping seats under some circumstances. There's now 500+ odd official elected representatives of Reform to farm negative news media stories from. Negative side of that is if they don't falter, then this might well cement them.67% of Reform UK voters said that “Services such as water rail and energy should be run by the public sector, compared to 57% for the general public.69% of Reform UK voters said that “Foreign ownership is a bad thing”, compared to 47% for the general public.75% of Reform UK voters said that “Britain should protect its key industries from foreign competition,” compared to 53% for the general public.68% of Reform UK voters said that “big companies in Britain pay too little tax”, compared to 63% for the general public.The above is from a poll surveying Reform voters - honestly, nothing too disagreeable in there. That's economic left stuff. How those kinds of voters will react to their Thatcherite leader putting in Thatcherite policies... though of course if we get there we've already lost.While the Conservatives and Labour are both losing roughly around 60-75% of the seats they've stood for in quite dramatic fashion, this is really going to hurt the Conservatives more long-term, they've lost control of so many councils they are going to struggle to rebuild without much momentum behind them and their main territory being encroached upon by Reform fast. Labour... they've got a massive warning and they need to meet the challenge or this time next year that could be them too. Hopefully by doing something other than negatively enthusing their own base for once in McSweeney's tenure.
May 2May 2 Some good gains for the Lib Dems, which is pleasing to see (trying to find some sort of positive in these results) and 2nd, overtaking the Tories too. I guess its good that there is still such a long way until the next GE and things can change.
May 2May 2 Labour have lost roughly two-thirds of the seats they were defending. The Tories have done even worse. The Lib Dems are in second place. Not that the BBC will bother to say anything about that. Tomorrow's papers will probably follow suit.
May 2May 2 Over 600 seats for reform now I agree the Lib Dem’s have done decent but even a lot of Tory seats they’ve won were only due to reform taking a lot of Tory votes
May 2May 2 13 minutes ago, Suedehead2 said:Labour have lost roughly two-thirds of the seats they were defending. The Tories have done even worse. The Lib Dems are in second place. Not that the BBC will bother to say anything about that. Tomorrow's papers will probably follow suit.Yup tomorrow's press will basically be endless mug shots of Farage's smug face
May 2May 2 Leadership challenge for the conservatives likely in the next year. I just don't see how Kemi can stay on much longer.Big wake-up call to Labour as well. Hopefully they'll listen and amend some of their policies. The autumn budget will be their big test.
May 2May 2 Feels wild that the news is going on and on about Labour losses as if that was the biggest story here when the Tories have lost NEARLY 700 SEATS which almost exactly maps to Reform's gain.That is, rightwingers have shifted their vote from the rightwing party with the Black woman leader to the one with the older white man leader.This is being treated as some kind of shocking turn with no way to explain why it could be; how have LABOUR SPECIFICALLY failed when it seems likely that if anything (some of) their voters have shifted to Lib Dem and Green.
May 2May 2 I guess it’s because it was only 10 months ago they won one of their biggest landslides, it shows how people are voting all over the place in 2025 and literally anything can happen in the next election unless events take over.
May 3May 3 2 hours ago, Steve201 said:I guess it’s because it was only 10 months ago they won one of their biggest landslides, it shows how people are voting all over the place in 2025 and literally anything can happen in the next election unless events take over.Exactly this. Local elections are always slightly different to general elections as most places do the merry dance between parties. Be interesting to see what Reform do with their councils (not a lot) before going back in to the hands of the Tories/Labour in the next cycle.
May 3May 3 Farage already being allowed to spin this as if it was a Parliamentary election victory 'Reform are the official opposition now' - no you're not.
May 3May 3 Author 5 minutes ago, J00prstar said:Farage already being allowed to spin this as if it was a Parliamentary election victory 'Reform are the official opposition now' - no you're not.Well, he's right in one way:and before any bores come at me, yes some of that has gone other ways but a good majority of council seat swaps in this election were Conservative -> Reform. New Tories, same as the old Tories.otherwise of course he can get to fuck, Official Opposition is a word that has a meaning in our democracy. Also as Reform councillors are about to discover across the country, governing is actually quite difficult.
May 3May 3 A reaction from a Labour minister which I definitely agree with. There was never a greater opportunity for the Green Party than this moment and they really offered or did nothing different than ever. This also made reform the easy choice for anyone done with the two main parties
May 3May 3 11 minutes ago, Liam S said:A reaction from a Labour minister which I definitely agree with. There was never a greater opportunity for the Green Party than this moment and they really offered or did nothing different than ever. This also made reform the easy choice for anyone done with the two main parties Reform are also shit though and will end up being dogged down by their own policies, much like the Green Party do.
May 3May 3 Author Yeah, the Green Party being underwhelming is unfortunate. Most green parties are, because while environment is a very important single-issue and it's why green politics is a common motif around the world, single-issue parties or parties founded with the intent of being a single-issue have trouble building the coalition needed to carve out a real ideological niche. They've got everything from socially conscious shire Tories to queer progressives and while in some areas they've done well, they're not the common alternative that they should be.They also block out political space for a left-wing party outside of Labour, any new one is competing with the Greens (and also some minor splitter parties and in some constituencies, "Gaza Independents"), and that's not going to bring together the votes necessary. If we had PR then I'm pretty sure left-wing Labour MPs would have already split and formed a party that would regularly get ~10% of the vote in elections a la Germany's Die Linke, Norway's Socialist Left Party or Spain's Sumar, sometimes in coalition with Labour and sometimes not, under FPTP there isn't the impetus for them to do that without the media backing that Reform got.These weren't really the elections to test whether Labour has troubles on its left flank (more specifically the 'socially left, economically left' flank that Greens are supposedly attacking) with so many of the votes being right-wing areas, where they were potentially left-wing, like Doncaster, Reform have moved into that 'economically left, socially right' space - though as I referenced in an earlier post, I think they are going to have trouble holding those voters, though they could certainly hold them until the next Westminster election.
May 5May 5 Reform have already lost one of their newly-elected councillors in Shropshire.Shropshire councillor resigns from Reform UK after suspension - BBC News
May 5May 5 58 minutes ago, Suedehead2 said:Reform have already lost one of their newly-elected councillors in Shropshire.Shropshire councillor resigns from Reform UK after suspension - BBC News676 to go!
May 8May 8 On 05/05/2025 at 20:14, ElectroBoy said:676 to go!Nottinghamshire Live'Regret' as Nottinghamshire Reform councillor steps down...Desmond Clarke said he is 'unable to deliver' what people need675 to go!
Create an account or sign in to comment