Metropolitan Boroughs

Metropolitan boroughs are an interesting type of government within England. Only occurring with the largely urban areas of Merseyside, Manchester, West and South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear and the West Midlands, they are clearly delineated to be for cities and built-up areas. One might think, for those who created them in 1974, a good way to get out from the obsolete county-tier structure for these areas ahead of the time to reform them.

Though this may be the time Reform hits them. Any good? No? Meh.

This is the map of current control, as you can see, mostly Labour with a couple of minority administrations, and Conservatives still alive in parts of the West Mids, the last election for these was 2022 which makes sense:

Also roughly split between electing them all and electing in thirds, can't see much rhyme or reason here, Tyne and Wear are all up except for North Tyneside doing it in thirds, West and South Yorkshire are all up except Leeds and Sheffield also doing it in thirds, West Midlands are all up, but the western two let the side down. At least Greater Manchester is consistent. Four of the metropolitan boroughs, Liverpool, Wirral, Doncaster and Rotherham don't have any election at all.

This being in an election where we might have needed Liverpool. Last year the only metropolitan borough up, Doncaster, had 37 of its 55 seats won by Reform - a city containing potential saviour of the Labour Party Ed Miliband for all the good that mattered. The traditional Labour heartlands are here to a very large extent and recent history has proved that large parts of what you see on this map is quite willing to flirt with economic populism no matter which wing it comes from.

I expect quite a few councils in this area to show Reform allegiances soon, but Greens also. Either way, metropolitan areas and councils may soon have a lot of councillors from outside the central political spectrum, Manchester electing in thirds could either save them for now, or just cause the tide to slowly change.

District Council Elections

in which I get a little bit too much into the minutiae of elections, if I start talking about parish council elections someone ban me x

My handy map creator doesn't even have these as separate, so best I can do is steal it from Wikipedia and point at the purple ones, you'll just have to imagine they have an incumbent party on them:

These are the second-level councils that successive governments are desperately trying to do away with, as I found when growing up after the Cornish district council I lived in and was on murals suddenly didn't exist anymore. But they'll still, I believe, count for the overall council count that big news websites like to use, so any political parties looking for big rhetorical wins will still value taking control of some of these. They seem to also have a higher rate of being under no overall control (NOC), possibly because everything is so localist that candidates are generally known by people in their district - I know that when I've canvassed for district council elections before people on the doorstep knew the candidate personally. Though of course the same is quite often true for other council elections.

The only district elections this cycle that have every seat up are two in Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and South Cambridgeshire, and Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire. Both areas seem like places that may add to either the Conservative or Lib Dem count of councils.

A number of places, Adur, Cheltenham, Fareham, Gosport, Hastings, Nuneaton & Bedworth and Oxford have half of their councillors up, and quite a lot of those councils are currently in NOC.

The rest of them are in thirds, I won't list them, but if any of the purple places here are of interest to you, vote and/or keep an eye out on their composition before and after the election. Will spare you my forecasts for Brentwood and Three Rivers.

The local elections are now in one week time. If you're voting my post, best get those votes in ASAP.

Recently moved house and didn’t think to update my address, I’m only 5 minutes away though so will I still be on at my old address to vote?

35 minutes ago, Lukuzz said:

Recently moved house and didn’t think to update my address, I’m only 5 minutes away though so will I still be on at my old address to vote?

Depends. You're probably still registered at the old address but not certainly, if there was any sort of update of electors at that address then it would have taken you off - you won't have a poll card either. If you are on that list for this election, and I mean at the poll station if they see that you are on the list of eligible voters, then I believe there's no problem with voting, if you're on the list, but it's something you should sort out.

~

As I have covered all the local elections so far, and I don't want to diminish the Scottish and Welsh elections by bundling them in with the locals (new threads for these I think), nor could I realistically give any good preview on them, I'll say that that's the end of the previews. Briefly considered writing a mayoral preview but the only mayors up this time are the local mayors of London boroughs and that's really just a glorified leader of the council innit (London residents correct me). Though the Aspire guy from Tower Hamlets is running to be mayor there which is mildly interesting.

Good time too as election forecasts are coming out:

I would be surprised at something this making this big of a change, but that's one expectation to keep an eye on.

BritainElects is slightly less out there but still big:

2 hours ago, Lukuzz said:

Recently moved house and didn’t think to update my address, I’m only 5 minutes away though so will I still be on at my old address to vote?

If you completed registration last year (around August), you should still be registered. Assuming you know where the polling station is (it will almost certainly be where it was the last time you voted), go to the polling station and you should be able to vote. You don't need a polling card, but you will need some form of ID.

Tomorrow officially marks the date of the local elections.

I voted… and outside the polling station was someone from Reform and someone from the Lib Dem’s.

I was basically torn between Green and Lib Dem. In the end I went Lib Dem as in Chelmsford it’s probably more likely to stop Reform.

Decided to go with Labour as my councillor and her team have been absolutely wonderful with their help in my nightmare housing situation.

As things stand, I certainly wouldn't vote for them in a general election though.

They have a huge stronghold where I live anyway.

I went Independent this time. We have 3 councillors in our ward and one of which is already Independent, the other two are Greens. This vote was to replace a Green seat and the Independent candidate has been very strong in their community work leading up to this vote. I haven't seen anything from the other candidates at all so my vote went where I felt like the community was being seen and heard. It felt very refreshing not to vote for a specific party and their politics and just vote for an individual who cares about getting things done rather than political bias.

There were 3 seats up in my area so I voted for 3 candidates - 1 Labour, 1 Lib Dem & 1 Green.

The Lib Dem candidate came very close previously so hoping she will likely get elected this time round. I'm expecting Labour to win 2 seats + 1 Lib Dems. Not sure about the greens winning a seat but they should see a bigger vote share. Although granted the turnout for these elections is fairly low so even small changes in the voting can cause big swings in the votes!

I went Green this time but my area tends to be very strongly Labour anyway so I don't expect the overall picture to change.

Our local voting office said there were more people turning out to vote than ever before.

I voted for Green in this election.

Almost forgot to vote but remembered as I was making my way home! I also voted Green - although I expect the Conservative candidate will win in my ward.

I wish I could vote you lucky bastards, my area isn't up until next year. Hope you all get the councillors you want and we don't inexplicably see a Reform wave in the most urban areas of the country.

Polls closed! Hoping we'll see reform do slightly worse than predicted, with slightly less losses for labour and bigger gains for Greens/Lib Dems.

Edited Thursday at 21:082 days by Envoirment

So many Reformers believing this is a General Election and that Nigel will be PM tomorrow sums up their voter base perfectly!

I see Jonathan Gullis is standing as a councillor in Newcastle Under Lyme for REFORM, surprising, not!

39 minutes ago, Tafty said:

So many Reformers believing this is a General Election and that Nigel will be PM tomorrow sums up their voter base perfectly!

It's how they've marketed their whole campaign isn't it? Expecting a bad night for Labour and the Tories.

Always find with council elections a lot of it is fuk about and find out. All very low impact stuff. Unfortunately people just always want more. Labour have made some gaffs and had some unfortunate events, but on the balance of things they're doing a pretty good job. Yet of course everyone thinks they can do better from both ends of the spectrum.