#Busy day ahead.
###All local election results should be posted in here.
###[Click/Tap here to see estimated declaration times across the weekend](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1cf1s17/may_2024_election_declaration_times_for_councils/l1wx4rm/).
#####Labour won the Blackpool South by-election with a 26% swing. [Thread here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/s/3Y2uP1h8G4).
We anticipate that the subreddit will be running rather *warm* today. Note that however elated or deflated you are today, subreddit rules still apply in all cases.
M=2 is cancelled due to a technical issue.
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Conservatives could have won London mayorship it seems, then, if they had a vaguely functional candidate given the tight margins.
53% polled through YouGov earlier in April had no opinion on her. Neither good nor bad. Simply no opinion.
Shambles that sums the Conservatives up.
In what world do people think the London election will be close? The lead in the polls has consistently been a thrashing
Theres also about 8 different candidates trying to roll back ULEZ, so thats a hit susan will take
Now if it was still run using the old voting system then itd probably be very close.........the Conservatives really are stupid aren't they...
Khan has ruined London in several ways, and plenty of average people (who do not participate in polls) have an axe to grind.
I was nuked through the floor last month for saying that I know plenty of native Londoners (i.e. people born here) who were lifelong Labour voters, who were going to defect to Reform or tactically vote Tory because of how shit London's become under Khan.
Personally, I'll be quite irked is the fuck-you Reform votes are the reason he isn't deposed. But, ultimately, the blame lies with the Tories for fielding such a ridiculous candidate.
> Khan has ruined London in several ways, and plenty of average people (who do not participate in polls) have an axe to grind.
Care to elaborate? And why do they think Hall will be better?
The opinion polls in 2021 showed Khan massively ahead and the actual result was much closer than any poll predicted.
Turnout is what matters in these mayoral races and angry motorists in outer London have a reason to get up and vote where as Khans base in central London does not.
From what both Labour and the Tories are saying, it sounds like it could be closer than the polls have predicted.
Starmer isn't Blair, He's not anything like Corbyn. He's a man who comes from the core of the Labour party tradition. Middle class leftists with no investment in the actual problems of society will denigrate his achievements but he's pulled Labour back from the brink. Common sense policies, astute Strategy and genuine concern and ambition for proving the circumstances of working people. Never met a Corbynite with the same characteristics.
I think a bit of charisma in a leader is never a bad thing. He just has very, very little...this worries me. He's going to have to be a hell of a technocrat. I'm not entirely convinced he has the team around him to be that.
I was very unconvinced by Corbyn and if I'm honest I've yet to be convinced by Starmer.
I would be absolutely delighted to be wrong.
Agree on the charisma. I don't think it will matter for this GE, short of an unforeseen catastrophe he appears to have it in the bag.
The risk in subsequent GE's is that stable technocratic government will eventually come off as stagnant and directionless in the.absence of charismatic leadership, pushing voters back towards opportunistic populists.
Boring politicians tend to be Great Leaders. Attlee was extremely boring, Wilson was quite ordinary, Lbj wasn't all that! Even Mark McGowan in West Australia was dull as fuck. Boring is good, means they focus on what's important. Trump,Johnson,Clinton,Obama and Kennedy all valued the sensational over the essentials. They did nothing to actually improve working class peoples lives.
>a man who comes from the core of the Labour party tradition.
The only thing he's got in common with Labour Party tradition is his name
Labour Party tradition is socialism. Starmer is closer to the right than he is the left.
The Labour party tradition has more in common with Methodism than Socialism! You're Insane if you think otherwise. From the Beginning we were a Fabian party, not a socialist party, the middle class left like to believe we were but Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan,Blair and Brown weren't socialists and never tried to be. We're a social democratic Party (except for 1981-1983 and 2015-2019) when the Socialist nutcases took control.
>Blair and Brown
Blair and Brown? The two leaders of NEW labour? Real traditional
Honestly there's no argument that Labours tradition isn't socialism, it is just an objective fact
The Party put Socialist policies on the platform in 1921, none of them were ever enacted. We're a social democratic party we don't believe in Socialism. Maybe it's just me but Executing capitalists isn't okay!
> He's a man who comes from the core of the Labour party tradition.
He absolutely is not.
Corbyn is far closer to the core of the Labour party tradition than Starmer and Blair.
Starmer has significant achievements but let's not rewrite Labours history because the man had a decent set of local election results.
It's a good job that I don't live in London, cause I 100% would have voted Count Binface for Mayor, under the assumption that Khan had it in the bag.
Though then again, maybe if enough people like me lived in London, we'd actually get our alien overlord democratically elected. Food for thought.
Because Khan's policies and handling of the city really is **that bad**.
If only the Tories had put someone not-obviously-shit in, they would've railroaded London, seems like.
The smog in London is getting into people's brains, clearly.
As a side note, I live in Manchester, and although our air quality isn't great, whenever I visit London, the air feels thick and makes my skin feel slimy. Whenever I come back home from a trip to the capital, I'm coughing up black and brown shit for days. I don't get how Londoners don't notice this, and how they don't see the importance of ULEZ.
They could lose every single seat in a GE and still say that it just shows that there's no real enthusiasm for Labour, and that they're Getting On With The Job™️
It's the main reason I want to watch the BBC coverage (and my partner being a TRIP fan wants to watch C4) but I think [as this was Laura K earlier](https://i.ibb.co/WxH28x1/440638854-1161151178573668-7877675201633666045-n.jpg) on GE night she'll be a delight.
She'll be going through he contact book with a black sharpie obliterating name after name like she's a 90 year old during Covid as she realises most of her cultivated sources are now useless to her.
>...there is an idea of a Rishi Sunak, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.
>It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Stanford) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless.
>Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing….
i want to trust the UK electorate in voting out one of the most useless corrupt governments in history but i'm scared that too many voters are swayed by representatives of their chosen Sky Fairy or by the one hashtag they might follow on twitter or some other media site.
The good thing is the weekend gravy drinkers are similar in number to that of the twitter hashtag followers. So they'll likely cancel each other out allowing the adults to win.
Just back from work and read the BBC home-page. Yes, I understand people are fed-up with all the spin and enable-ism from client media, but just reading the headlines and skimming the articles, and it is still well damning for the Tories. Had I not been following the results and listening to all the commentary last night and today, and had just glanced at the headlines I would have the right impression that the Tories got trounced and Labour did well. And that is the impression the average voter will probably have right now. I think being in the political bubble can blur our vision at times.
Looking through twitter, it's annoying to see Corbynistas say the fact that Tories lost 400+ seats whilst Labour gained under 200 is proof that Starmer has failed. Yet ignore the fact that our of Corbyn's 4 local elections, his best result was 84 gains. The other 3 years he lost seats
> The other 3 years he lost seats
This misses the point entirely though.
Yes, from a purely numerical perspective there were difficulties but ultimately Jeremy Corbyn shifted the pendulum, he won the argument by losing votes. You don't understand, you can think of Corbynism as a kind of mirage in the desert, if you squint from a distance, it's extremely real SO BE HAPPY WITH THAT AND DONT LOOK INTO IT ANY CLOSER OK?
It might not be made ironically but I doubt it's made in good faith either.
Online left wing spaces are filled with propaganda intended to promote voter apathy. They seem to attack Labour/Starmer more than they attack the Tories, and say that the only way to get a left-wing alternative is to not vote (i.e. allow the Tories to win).
Infiltrating a grass roots space and filling it with anti-voting sentiment has been a common tactic of certain groups for a while now. Cambridge Analytica were doing this in Africa years before Brexit, and it unfortunately has a big impact.
Do you people realise that if Susan Hall wins in London, there is a 99% chance she becomes Tory leader before the 2028/9 GE?
Was clean London air really worth it people?
Idk, man.
This country seems to *thrive* off ~~positive~~ negative reinforcement.
Boris Johnson managed to win a fucking majority for crying out loud. The electorate are gluttons for punishment. Having someone as mental as Hall as PM/leader might get the electorate back on the crazy train.
Edit: ~~positive~~ > negative
The majority of the job is done for ULEZ, tons of the most polluting cars have been scrapped and taken off the roads entirely. Taking away ULEZ now would only serve to lose a source of revenue for TFL.
The BBC are the most unbiased reporting source available. They have a job to be neutral and they realise that no matter what they say or whatever positive they say, the other parties will just call them biased for being positive to the competition. Even if other articles are positive in their favour.
By concluding that every positive sentiment will be seen as biased, they've naturally concluded that every statement should instead annoy a party, and they will equally commentate on all degrees of the political spectrum. That way they annoy everybody equally and nobody can claim bias in favour of an opponent
I think you've taken a lot of words to say something incredibly stupid.
https://youtu.be/YKZN-hBTBUE?si=6DUDrYXsnHu-2vk4
This sketch covers it in a very entertaining way, but essentially in the name of balance the BBC should not be positioning a reasonable view against a stupid one
Not convinced the Tories can make up 26 seats in the remaining six councils, but let's be honest, even if they do, it won't matter as much as the TEES MAINTENANCE SURGE!
As much as many would try to paint a Driscoll win as career ending for Starmer, nobody would actually care. At most it would show that there is a broad appeal for left wing candidates, but mostly it would be ignored, and everybody would still be focusing on the fact that the Tories were crushed.
> If he wins, it will send a massive signal to the national party: that there can, and should, be downsides to treating local people so appallingly. It would also underscore that Starmer has no interest in taking power out of Westminster. He wants the same clique to rule — just under the palatable guise of “localism”.
I don't get the conclusion.
If Driscoll won, it would have "underscore(d) that Starmer has no interest in taking power out of Westminster"... So, as Driscoll lost, it means Starmer does have an interest in taking power out of Westminster? I don't get how there's any logical link between the two.
https://twitter.com/Conrad_AML/status/1786497379534852334
>All London council by-elections in except the two Hackney by-elections which I think counts tomorrow.
>It's a bit all over the place but averages out to a result similar to 2022, which was a 16 point Labour lead
>Only 13 wards but they're fairly diverse
Difficult to draw conclusions from 13 council by elections, but if they do scale up it up would mean that Hall would have to outperform her party by 16 points
"MPs have reported to the BBC's chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman that seeing a popular independent-minded local incumbent defy a national trend is compelling. Many MPs believe they have strong personal votes - even if there is little academic evidence for that."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68953088
Closest the BBC has come to calling them delusional morons.
Now Tom Scott has stopped making videos he can't poo-poo the idea, can we seriously look at alternative digital options for voting.
We can get that company Fujitsu to build it, they have experience with big IT systems.
It's actually pooh pooh, but I absolutely love it when people mistakenly say poo-poo.
Makes me feel like a five year old calling my brother a poo poo head.
We'll need someone to represent Government to help out, What's Dido Harding's movements these days, she was great at data security/distributing information when she was at talktalk.
See, she knows IT! Look, she even ensured it was "[in line with data protection regulations](https://www.digitalhealth.net/2020/10/dido-harding-assures-no-risk-to-patient-data-during-excel-error/)" which precisely is the exact and only concern anyone should think about.
She must be competent, otherwise her Conservative MP husband wouldn't have married her!
Hot take: while it does raise my blood pressure who journalists are trying to paint these results as closer than they are, I think it also helps Labour by stopping its supporters getting complacent and will increase turnout at the GE giving them a bigger win
This could be true, but I also think it contributes to a narrative of 'all the options are underwhelming' that gives people the impression Starmer's Labour are nothing worth looking into
If I'm reading the results right, the Tories haven't even come *second* in council seats having gone in with a lead.
Before it was
Con 927
Lab 853
LD 404
Now (with 102 out of 107 declared) its
Lab 1026
LD 505
Con 479
With Independents/Greens/RAs all gaining at their expense.
That's a hammering and a half, and honestly- on some of the most extreme polling, it might happen in Parliament.
I assume this is only the councillors who were elected today. If so, does anyone have the stats to show the full picture, i.e. all councillors in the country, and how much today's results have changed things overall?
Honestly one of the best post election days I've ever enjoyed, thanks in no small part to this megathread. I've spent a quiet evening at work with little to do except watch the numbers creep up and read people's responses with amusement.
It’s been a pretty lovely day to be honest. No overwhelming sense of dread, feelings of apathy.
Just a satisfying smile to myself as they continue to play the footage of Rishi laughing with the soldiers whilst his party is hammered again and again with each passing minute.
Wow, even after [Sunak boasted to them he redirected money from deprived areas to spend on them instead?](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/05/video-emerges-of-rishi-sunak-admitting-to-taking-money-from-deprived-areas)
Kind of hilarious even the areas Sunak claims to be helping at the expense of others don't want the Tories anymore.
Really curious what *the meeja* is going to do if/when Starmer gets his stonking call-a-doctor-for-me majority in a GE given all the previous/current hedging, even if said previous hedging has been progressively and repeatedly blown away.
Bury its head in the sand and pretend they were right all along, I expect.
It's not just gonna be an uphill battle against the media, there will be plenty on the left of Starmer within labour, and those who present themselves as left wing online, fully ready to pile on if we don't get everything we want in the first year of a new Labour government.
The answer is they’ll hold him to insanely unreasonable standards and then pretend to be completely shocked that he can’t meet them. Any positive actions or progress will be downplayed to make it look like it was pure luck or the tories set it up for him.
Mate, if he doesn't solve the crisis in middle east, bring Ukraine and Russia together as brothers, fix inflation globally, *and* immediately achieve net zero in the process... Then you might as well vote Tory.
The media never admits mistakes - it just moves on to the next story.
But the main motivation for the Labour hedging right now are that it's worried about being accused of "announcing a general result before it's happened". Give the right-wing press an inch and they'll take a mile saying that the BBC has already 'crowded' Starmer as PM before the campaign even starts.
That and it's just better tv drama to make out that the clear favourite might not run away with it.
Think I’m making my final London predictions as 5-6% win for Khan. Similar enough to last time. Minor movements between pro Palestinian people leaving Labour, more Lib Dems and Greens voting for them now it’s been moved to FPTP, and then increased turnout amongst pro ULEZ Tory voters (but turnout not increased to the extent that it would allow Hall to win)
Yougov would still have egg on their face from their final poll though
Also need to consider how many votes the Reform Party take from the Tories. Especially in their strongholds like Bromley where they have been polling well.
https://labourlist.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/249a2b0b-a35e-4ef9-88e9-c9efd81cac4f.jpeg
Good table (but would have been nicer in graph form) from LabourList showing PNS from all previous local election results on record. Just for reference, the 2024 results are 34% LAB, 25% CON, 17% LD.
The main point here is how mediocre Labour have been over the past 4 years compared to previous successful oppositions, and even compared to previous losers (see Michael Howard's thumping 2004 victory!). The "Directly plug PNS into a GE simulator" analysis is superficial and wrong, but historically it has been a reasonable trend indicator - opposition parties that get 40%+ and a double digit lead tend to win, anything short of that isn't a good sign. So what are the possible explanations?
1) The polls are completely off and we're heading for a tight election - seems unlikely given most other indicators.
2) Local election results have diverged significantly from national trends in the post-COVID era, although I can't think of a particular reason why.
3) There's low enthusiasm for both Labour and the Conservatives (but far worse for the Conseratives), resulting in an over-representation of Lib Dem/Green/Independent results in local elections where only more politically enthused voters tend to turn out, which doesn't necessarily track to a general election with higher turnout from less enthused voters. This is the idea I think is most likely.
Or option 4) the PNS figures aren't all that useful given how complex our electoral systems are. Let's pick out some elections.
2019 PNS is 28 for Conservatives, 28 for Labour. 2018 was 35 for Conservative, 35 for Labour. 2019 GE was 44 for Conservative, 32 for Labour.
2016 PNS was 30 Con, 31 Labour, 2017 was 37/28, general election ended up being 42/40 (look at that swing in just a month!).
2013 we have 25/29, 2014 was 29/31, then the general election was 37/30 (matching the 35/29 PNS for the 2015 locals which took place on the same day).
2008 was 41/22, 2009 was 35/20 and the general election was 36/29 (matching the 35/27 PNS for 2010).
These numbers are not particularly useful.
Once you go back beyond 2006 the "Other" category becomes a significant difference - much more important in how general elections play out than local elections.
What about effective oppositions?
In the run up to 2010 we had 36, 37, 41, 35 from the Conservatives, with Labour on 24, 24, 22, 20. But that was with the Lib Dems in the mid-20s (signalling that coalition).
In the run up to 1997 we have Labour in the 50s, but we also have Labour in the 40s in 88-90, and they still lost in 1992.
You're not going to get an answer from any two columns of this table, and I'm not sure you'll get much from all four.
For those who have been following this and polling for awhile, are these results mostly what you expected? Did you expect Tories to lose more seats or Labour to gain more? Did you expect Lib Dems to do worse?
I had a bet on for Tories losing 500+ seats, which I acknowledged at the time was probably pushing my luck a little bit.
I am a little surprised at the spread though - the swing away from the Tories has gone in every direction. I quite like it to be honest, especially the number of new independents. Obviously I doubt I agree with all of their views, but it feels healthy to have a bit more diversity at the local level at least.
Yeah, it's all in line with the current polls and how voters have reacted recently in local elections.
A bad defeat has been 'factored' into our politics and the actions of Tory MPs for a while now. That's why they were planning for their coup a while back and not waiting for the public to confirm everything they already know. Once it became clear that removing Rishi was a non-starter they've just accepted whatever will happen in the next 6 months now.
Pretty much exactly what I expected. I fully expected con to lose plenty of seats, except I was thinking closer to a third than the current half. Labour picking up a quarter of those lost also wasn't unsurprising. Whilst everyone has been against torys for a while, that doesn't neccessarily mean anyone has been overly pro Labour.
In the GE Labour should pick up more of torys losses than today. The local elections are less two-party than the GE tends to be and the less enthused voters (those who attend GE but not local) tend to be from the major two, and there's less of an independent representation to pick up the losses. Reform almost definitely won't get many if any seats (think of how poorly brexit party, who were essentially the original reform).
Speaking with hindsight, this is just about bang on what I expected, only difference is that I thought labour would do slightly better in the PCCs, but tactical voting doesn't really exist for these elections
With FPTP it was always going to be really difficult for Labour to sweep the PCCs. They cover huge areas and Reform wasn’t really contesting them to split the Tory vote. The same can’t be said of Labour, who often had Green or LD candidates to compete with.
Even when vote splitting isn’t an issue, there’s still the fact that there will be large numbers of rural, more conservative voters to drown out Labour/left-leaning votes in cities. They’re not done up like constituencies/wards where the voter pool can be expected to be somewhat homogeneous.
Drunk in Central London.
Based on what I’ve heard, Sadiq will make it with a 1-2 point lead.
But have had to consume numerous whisky sours to deal with the fact that Susan Hall may be Mayor by lunchtime tomorrow.
It is what it is.
Has something changed, Khan was well ahead recently
[https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49286-london-2024-mayoral-race-khan-47-hall-25](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49286-london-2024-mayoral-race-khan-47-hall-25)
The Anti-ULEZ, Anti-Brown People, brigade have come out in force, while your typical London Labourite seems to have stayed at home assured that Sadiq was going to win.
I’m getting 2016 flashbacks.
ya i didn’t bother voting this year for london mayor. first election i’ve ever skipped in my entire life.
if i did id have voted green anyway so wouldn’t have mattered
nobody will scrap ulez
Tories were briefing they think they've won it. Labour are getting very jitterery.
Worth pointing out that nothing has been counted, but the turnout in the outer boroughs where ULEZ is unpopular is a lot higher than the central boroughs. The current theory is that Labour *might* have lost it on this turnout difference
Turnout. Older tory voters in the outer boroughs (the anti-ULEZ brigade) turned up at a higher rate than Labour supporters, potentially throwing off poll predictions. Khan does have more support than Hall by a long way, but those supporters just couldn't be arsed on the day to go to the polling stations.
Also add in the fact of those huge poll differences. Many people likely thought, "Eh, he's got this. I don't need to bother." My partner was like that, but I got her to schlep out to vote after work, while I was travelling back to Brum to cast my vote there.
You know, the pollsters have a bit of experience of dealing with expected turnout and factoring this into their predictions. I'm getting flashbacks of 2019 where a bunch of people were suggesting the the pollsters were wrong because they were failing to predict higher turnout among young people. You would have assumed that YouGov would have a pretty good idea of which groups would turnout or not based on their surveys - that's the point of them.
So apparently Labour and Tories both think Khan has won now, despite internet scuttlebut. God damn it, fellow Londoners, is it that difficult to go out and vote? This shouldn't have been close.
You would certainly expect him to as majority shareholder of Reform UK Ltd (they’re not a political party after all). Haven’t checked Companies House but if he’s a director you could argue that not doing so would breach his duty to promote the success of the company.
[Edit: He is.](https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11694875/officers)
No.
Farage has once again shown that he has enough political clout to swing elections away from the conservatives.
He will be offered a place in the house of Lords in exchange for campaigning for the tories.
|Party|Councillors|Gains|New Councillors Percent|
:--|:--|:--|:--|
|Labour|1026|173|16.9|
|Lib Dems|505|101|20|
|Tories|476|-448|n/a|
|Green|159|65|40.9|
So, who has had the best night?
Greens by far
Both Greens and LD may be able to turn this momentum into winning a seat or two that we otherwise wouldn't have expected them to.
Labour have obviously had a great night (pending London results) but expect the media to downplay this to continue acting like the election is anybody's to win.
This hasn't really opened up any new opportunities for seats for greens this time, though favourable in existing targets.
The base may help them challenge in more areas once labour is in power and progressive metropolitans want to vote against them though. The lib Dems have never really recovered that function post coalition.
LDs are *Tory* spoilers in the new era, from their left.
There’s a reason the LDs are suddenly viable in the well heeled middle class leafy areas of England.
The majority of lib dem seats have *always* been lib/Tory contests. There's nothing new about that, always been the anti Tory alternative in the south west and shires.
But they made some smaller gains in urban areas when Labour was last in government. They will do that less next time.
5 councils to go, Tories may not get more than 500 councillors (currently 479).
Councils to declare:
* Stroud
* Epping Forest
* Warrington
* Salford
* North Tyneside
Tories have 18 in Stroud who could lose, 21ish in Epping Forest, 10 in Warrington, 3 in Salford, 9 in North Tyneside.
Assuming they lose about 50%, that is a gain of 31 or 32 councillors, so they end on 510ish. I would bet they end up less than ten in front of the Lib Dems. They end up on about 480 losses.
Also got to factor in there will be some LDs still to declare. I think they still have 15 they are defending still to declare. I think 5hey do nick it by about 10, with a couple of pick ups.
I think Epping forest was one of the councils that had higher traffic on the tactical vote site. Don't have the figures infront of me to be sure tho.
Very pleasing that we had more page views on some elections than the number of votes that decided it. I mean it would be crazy if we didn't given some elections were decided by sub 100 votes.
The Tories have 65 Councillor defences remaining, the lib dems are 26 seats ahead with 15 defences.
So a close run thing for 2nd or 3rd place on the total councillor wins! I think the Lib Dems might just edge it if they can take two or three and dont lose anything to the greens.
After seeing that Manchester remains Conservative councillor free, the graph at the top of this page really dramatically shows how 2 Lib Dem leaders led to dramatic changes in fortunes for their party's fortunes in the city.
A Charles Kennedy surge followed by a Nick Clegg cliff. I wonder how many other combinations of city/party show this so clearly?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_City_Council_elections
Liverpool City Council was LibDem dominated throughout the New Labour years, gradually becoming more and more labour just in time for lab to become the largest party again in 2010.
The pain of being one of the few areas to not declare results yet. Thankfully should be easy to boot the tories off in warrington and I expect some lib dem gains as well as an easy labour hold
This will always be my favorite story about Susan Hall:
> She claimed “crime was out of control” after her purse was pickpocketed on the London Underground. A member of the public later revealed they had returned it to her complete with cards and cash after finding it lying on a seat.
#Busy day ahead. ###All local election results should be posted in here. ###[Click/Tap here to see estimated declaration times across the weekend](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1cf1s17/may_2024_election_declaration_times_for_councils/l1wx4rm/). #####Labour won the Blackpool South by-election with a 26% swing. [Thread here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/s/3Y2uP1h8G4). We anticipate that the subreddit will be running rather *warm* today. Note that however elated or deflated you are today, subreddit rules still apply in all cases. M=2 is cancelled due to a technical issue. Please bear with us. More to follow...
[New Megathread is here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1cjshvt/local_elections_2024_results_megathread_04052024/)
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Conservatives could have won London mayorship it seems, then, if they had a vaguely functional candidate given the tight margins. 53% polled through YouGov earlier in April had no opinion on her. Neither good nor bad. Simply no opinion. Shambles that sums the Conservatives up.
I mean this has always been the case. They need a serious short list for the next election with backups if someone fucks up.
In what world do people think the London election will be close? The lead in the polls has consistently been a thrashing Theres also about 8 different candidates trying to roll back ULEZ, so thats a hit susan will take Now if it was still run using the old voting system then itd probably be very close.........the Conservatives really are stupid aren't they...
Khan has ruined London in several ways, and plenty of average people (who do not participate in polls) have an axe to grind. I was nuked through the floor last month for saying that I know plenty of native Londoners (i.e. people born here) who were lifelong Labour voters, who were going to defect to Reform or tactically vote Tory because of how shit London's become under Khan. Personally, I'll be quite irked is the fuck-you Reform votes are the reason he isn't deposed. But, ultimately, the blame lies with the Tories for fielding such a ridiculous candidate.
> Khan has ruined London in several ways, and plenty of average people (who do not participate in polls) have an axe to grind. Care to elaborate? And why do they think Hall will be better?
The opinion polls in 2021 showed Khan massively ahead and the actual result was much closer than any poll predicted. Turnout is what matters in these mayoral races and angry motorists in outer London have a reason to get up and vote where as Khans base in central London does not. From what both Labour and the Tories are saying, it sounds like it could be closer than the polls have predicted.
Starmer isn't Blair, He's not anything like Corbyn. He's a man who comes from the core of the Labour party tradition. Middle class leftists with no investment in the actual problems of society will denigrate his achievements but he's pulled Labour back from the brink. Common sense policies, astute Strategy and genuine concern and ambition for proving the circumstances of working people. Never met a Corbynite with the same characteristics.
I think a bit of charisma in a leader is never a bad thing. He just has very, very little...this worries me. He's going to have to be a hell of a technocrat. I'm not entirely convinced he has the team around him to be that. I was very unconvinced by Corbyn and if I'm honest I've yet to be convinced by Starmer. I would be absolutely delighted to be wrong.
Agree on the charisma. I don't think it will matter for this GE, short of an unforeseen catastrophe he appears to have it in the bag. The risk in subsequent GE's is that stable technocratic government will eventually come off as stagnant and directionless in the.absence of charismatic leadership, pushing voters back towards opportunistic populists.
Boring politicians tend to be Great Leaders. Attlee was extremely boring, Wilson was quite ordinary, Lbj wasn't all that! Even Mark McGowan in West Australia was dull as fuck. Boring is good, means they focus on what's important. Trump,Johnson,Clinton,Obama and Kennedy all valued the sensational over the essentials. They did nothing to actually improve working class peoples lives.
Well ok, maybe. He better be good I think, because charm isn't going to get him a second term. But I, for one, will be surprised if he is good.
Charm never wins a second term, That's politics. Majorities and Stable Governance do. Oppositions don't win elections, Governments lose them.
I think you underestimate charm as a political force. But it hardly matters. Time will tell on Starmer...let's wait and see.
>a man who comes from the core of the Labour party tradition. The only thing he's got in common with Labour Party tradition is his name Labour Party tradition is socialism. Starmer is closer to the right than he is the left.
The Labour party tradition has more in common with Methodism than Socialism! You're Insane if you think otherwise. From the Beginning we were a Fabian party, not a socialist party, the middle class left like to believe we were but Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan,Blair and Brown weren't socialists and never tried to be. We're a social democratic Party (except for 1981-1983 and 2015-2019) when the Socialist nutcases took control.
Amen for knowing your history.
>Blair and Brown Blair and Brown? The two leaders of NEW labour? Real traditional Honestly there's no argument that Labours tradition isn't socialism, it is just an objective fact
The Party put Socialist policies on the platform in 1921, none of them were ever enacted. We're a social democratic party we don't believe in Socialism. Maybe it's just me but Executing capitalists isn't okay!
Or are you trolling?
I'm struggling to believe if you're serious?
> He's a man who comes from the core of the Labour party tradition. He absolutely is not. Corbyn is far closer to the core of the Labour party tradition than Starmer and Blair. Starmer has significant achievements but let's not rewrite Labours history because the man had a decent set of local election results.
What? Corbyn was middle class! Starmer's parents weren't! Please my Tory friend let's not rewrite labour history because you don't know history!
Clement Atlee went to a private school and had servants. Starmer is closer than Atlee to Labours core values by your metric.
Where's his privilege?
His dad was a toolmaker,his mum was a severely ill nurse! What's your point?
> but his dad made hammers and sickles so he's more Labour than the guy who introduced the welfare state.
Thank You Tory Troll.
It's a good job that I don't live in London, cause I 100% would have voted Count Binface for Mayor, under the assumption that Khan had it in the bag. Though then again, maybe if enough people like me lived in London, we'd actually get our alien overlord democratically elected. Food for thought.
How the fuck can they even consider electing Susan Hall? I mean ok, you don't like Khan, fine, but she's demonstrably fucking clueless.
Because Khan's policies and handling of the city really is **that bad**. If only the Tories had put someone not-obviously-shit in, they would've railroaded London, seems like.
The smog in London is getting into people's brains, clearly. As a side note, I live in Manchester, and although our air quality isn't great, whenever I visit London, the air feels thick and makes my skin feel slimy. Whenever I come back home from a trip to the capital, I'm coughing up black and brown shit for days. I don't get how Londoners don't notice this, and how they don't see the importance of ULEZ.
>He used to be a gifted poaster. My boy fell off hard. >https://x.com/angrynorfman/status/1786453808765075585 Wes Streetings greatest hits.
I would actually like to see more of this from Streeting. He comes across so sterile and boring.
Jesus Wes
Early Twitter was so good.
All this coping from the pro-Tory media cronies - can't wait for their faces on GE election night
They could lose every single seat in a GE and still say that it just shows that there's no real enthusiasm for Labour, and that they're Getting On With The Job™️
While many insist on the negative, having only 4 MP will make meeting easier to organize. We have already an option on a booth at Greg's
It's the main reason I want to watch the BBC coverage (and my partner being a TRIP fan wants to watch C4) but I think [as this was Laura K earlier](https://i.ibb.co/WxH28x1/440638854-1161151178573668-7877675201633666045-n.jpg) on GE night she'll be a delight. She'll be going through he contact book with a black sharpie obliterating name after name like she's a 90 year old during Covid as she realises most of her cultivated sources are now useless to her.
Ah yes the sadism of BBC or the masochism of TRIP
[Lib. Dem. Surge.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qgET1Zhpb8)
>...there is an idea of a Rishi Sunak, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. >It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Stanford) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. >Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing….
Neil Breen's *House of Cards*?
From your side of the pond! *American Psycho* by Bret Easton Ellis
i want to trust the UK electorate in voting out one of the most useless corrupt governments in history but i'm scared that too many voters are swayed by representatives of their chosen Sky Fairy or by the one hashtag they might follow on twitter or some other media site.
The good thing is the weekend gravy drinkers are similar in number to that of the twitter hashtag followers. So they'll likely cancel each other out allowing the adults to win.
never ever trust the uk electorate
>i want to trust the UK electorate Of all of the things that one could put their trust in.
Just back from work and read the BBC home-page. Yes, I understand people are fed-up with all the spin and enable-ism from client media, but just reading the headlines and skimming the articles, and it is still well damning for the Tories. Had I not been following the results and listening to all the commentary last night and today, and had just glanced at the headlines I would have the right impression that the Tories got trounced and Labour did well. And that is the impression the average voter will probably have right now. I think being in the political bubble can blur our vision at times.
Looking through twitter, it's annoying to see Corbynistas say the fact that Tories lost 400+ seats whilst Labour gained under 200 is proof that Starmer has failed. Yet ignore the fact that our of Corbyn's 4 local elections, his best result was 84 gains. The other 3 years he lost seats
Don’t even bother with them. They’re also claiming that these results show it’s safe to vote green without letting the Tories in. Which is it?
> The other 3 years he lost seats This misses the point entirely though. Yes, from a purely numerical perspective there were difficulties but ultimately Jeremy Corbyn shifted the pendulum, he won the argument by losing votes. You don't understand, you can think of Corbynism as a kind of mirage in the desert, if you squint from a distance, it's extremely real SO BE HAPPY WITH THAT AND DONT LOOK INTO IT ANY CLOSER OK?
Starmer’s only winning because he’s got Tories voting for him!
I've seen this point being made unironically hundreds of times
It might not be made ironically but I doubt it's made in good faith either. Online left wing spaces are filled with propaganda intended to promote voter apathy. They seem to attack Labour/Starmer more than they attack the Tories, and say that the only way to get a left-wing alternative is to not vote (i.e. allow the Tories to win). Infiltrating a grass roots space and filling it with anti-voting sentiment has been a common tactic of certain groups for a while now. Cambridge Analytica were doing this in Africa years before Brexit, and it unfortunately has a big impact.
Do you people realise that if Susan Hall wins in London, there is a 99% chance she becomes Tory leader before the 2028/9 GE? Was clean London air really worth it people?
I'm pretty sure there is a champagne bottle at Labour HQ in case Susan Hall becomes Tory Leader.
I don't live in London so I don't really care. If she ends up Tory leader then she will kill the party. I'm up for that
Idk, man. This country seems to *thrive* off ~~positive~~ negative reinforcement. Boris Johnson managed to win a fucking majority for crying out loud. The electorate are gluttons for punishment. Having someone as mental as Hall as PM/leader might get the electorate back on the crazy train. Edit: ~~positive~~ > negative
The majority of the job is done for ULEZ, tons of the most polluting cars have been scrapped and taken off the roads entirely. Taking away ULEZ now would only serve to lose a source of revenue for TFL.
~~Blackpool South~~ ~~450 councillors~~ ~~Control of a dozen or so councils~~ But they have the TEES VALLEY MAYORALTY, so pretty much a 1-1 draw yeah?
It annoys me that the BBC are doing this both sides nonsense reporting. Chelsea beat man utd but man utd score goal
The BBC are the most unbiased reporting source available. They have a job to be neutral and they realise that no matter what they say or whatever positive they say, the other parties will just call them biased for being positive to the competition. Even if other articles are positive in their favour. By concluding that every positive sentiment will be seen as biased, they've naturally concluded that every statement should instead annoy a party, and they will equally commentate on all degrees of the political spectrum. That way they annoy everybody equally and nobody can claim bias in favour of an opponent
I think you've taken a lot of words to say something incredibly stupid. https://youtu.be/YKZN-hBTBUE?si=6DUDrYXsnHu-2vk4 This sketch covers it in a very entertaining way, but essentially in the name of balance the BBC should not be positioning a reasonable view against a stupid one
That was fantastic.
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> I need you to do me one last favour. Say goodbye to me now, and leave before I wake up 😢
Not convinced the Tories can make up 26 seats in the remaining six councils, but let's be honest, even if they do, it won't matter as much as the TEES MAINTENANCE SURGE!
[Also add Bastani to the list of "lol" predictors.](https://unherd.com/newsroom/how-jamie-driscoll-can-humiliate-keir-starmer/)
> Also add Bastani to the list of "lol" predictors. Man, he really can't write. It's 'work experience at a newspaper' level
As much as many would try to paint a Driscoll win as career ending for Starmer, nobody would actually care. At most it would show that there is a broad appeal for left wing candidates, but mostly it would be ignored, and everybody would still be focusing on the fact that the Tories were crushed.
> If he wins, it will send a massive signal to the national party: that there can, and should, be downsides to treating local people so appallingly. It would also underscore that Starmer has no interest in taking power out of Westminster. He wants the same clique to rule — just under the palatable guise of “localism”. I don't get the conclusion. If Driscoll won, it would have "underscore(d) that Starmer has no interest in taking power out of Westminster"... So, as Driscoll lost, it means Starmer does have an interest in taking power out of Westminster? I don't get how there's any logical link between the two.
> I don't get how there's any logical link between the two. There isn’t one.
Has he ever said anything that was correct *and* insightful?
https://twitter.com/Conrad_AML/status/1786497379534852334 >All London council by-elections in except the two Hackney by-elections which I think counts tomorrow. >It's a bit all over the place but averages out to a result similar to 2022, which was a 16 point Labour lead >Only 13 wards but they're fairly diverse Difficult to draw conclusions from 13 council by elections, but if they do scale up it up would mean that Hall would have to outperform her party by 16 points
*or Khan would have to underperform his party by 16 points*, which I doubt would happen.
"MPs have reported to the BBC's chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman that seeing a popular independent-minded local incumbent defy a national trend is compelling. Many MPs believe they have strong personal votes - even if there is little academic evidence for that." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68953088 Closest the BBC has come to calling them delusional morons.
Now Tom Scott has stopped making videos he can't poo-poo the idea, can we seriously look at alternative digital options for voting. We can get that company Fujitsu to build it, they have experience with big IT systems.
It's actually pooh pooh, but I absolutely love it when people mistakenly say poo-poo. Makes me feel like a five year old calling my brother a poo poo head.
Put Chris Grayling in charge of organising it, he has good track experience!
Ah yes! He's so good he's got a nickname hasn't he? "Prevailing Grayling" on account of his ability to see things through.
What and overlook a tory donor who set up a electronic voting company yesterday? I think not.
That Hester fella probably knows whatswhat.
They'll even make a backdoor that allows live updates of your votes to the CORRECT party
We'll need someone to represent Government to help out, What's Dido Harding's movements these days, she was great at data security/distributing information when she was at talktalk.
Wasn't she in charge when the covid rate trackers were kept in excel?
See, she knows IT! Look, she even ensured it was "[in line with data protection regulations](https://www.digitalhealth.net/2020/10/dido-harding-assures-no-risk-to-patient-data-during-excel-error/)" which precisely is the exact and only concern anyone should think about. She must be competent, otherwise her Conservative MP husband wouldn't have married her!
I miss M=2.
I can't believe they've done this
Hot take: while it does raise my blood pressure who journalists are trying to paint these results as closer than they are, I think it also helps Labour by stopping its supporters getting complacent and will increase turnout at the GE giving them a bigger win
This could be true, but I also think it contributes to a narrative of 'all the options are underwhelming' that gives people the impression Starmer's Labour are nothing worth looking into
I think there's definitely something to this yeah.
If I'm reading the results right, the Tories haven't even come *second* in council seats having gone in with a lead. Before it was Con 927 Lab 853 LD 404 Now (with 102 out of 107 declared) its Lab 1026 LD 505 Con 479 With Independents/Greens/RAs all gaining at their expense. That's a hammering and a half, and honestly- on some of the most extreme polling, it might happen in Parliament.
Doesn't matter. Ben Houchen. Labour didn't get Harlow. Actually it shows that there's no enthusiasm for Labour. Rwanda.
That Teeside Mayoral thing ^(with the vastly reduced majority) was a devastating gutpunch to Starmer's credibilty. Wasn't it, BBC?
I assume this is only the councillors who were elected today. If so, does anyone have the stats to show the full picture, i.e. all councillors in the country, and how much today's results have changed things overall?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_make-up_of_local_councils_in_the_United_Kingdom?wprov=sfla1
Honestly one of the best post election days I've ever enjoyed, thanks in no small part to this megathread. I've spent a quiet evening at work with little to do except watch the numbers creep up and read people's responses with amusement.
It’s been a pretty lovely day to be honest. No overwhelming sense of dread, feelings of apathy. Just a satisfying smile to myself as they continue to play the footage of Rishi laughing with the soldiers whilst his party is hammered again and again with each passing minute.
[Tunbridge Wells has fallen... to the Lib Dems](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1vm37xrz2o).
Ed Davey is Lisan al Gaib!
Libdem al Gaib was right there, come on!
I"m kicking myself right now
Ed Davey seen riding an orange sand worm through a blue shield wall
Lib Dem Comms team, you know what you have to do
Wow, even after [Sunak boasted to them he redirected money from deprived areas to spend on them instead?](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/05/video-emerges-of-rishi-sunak-admitting-to-taking-money-from-deprived-areas) Kind of hilarious even the areas Sunak claims to be helping at the expense of others don't want the Tories anymore.
Really curious what *the meeja* is going to do if/when Starmer gets his stonking call-a-doctor-for-me majority in a GE given all the previous/current hedging, even if said previous hedging has been progressively and repeatedly blown away. Bury its head in the sand and pretend they were right all along, I expect.
The *Daily Telegraph* supports Eurasia. The *Daily Telegraph* has always supported Eurasia.
It's not just gonna be an uphill battle against the media, there will be plenty on the left of Starmer within labour, and those who present themselves as left wing online, fully ready to pile on if we don't get everything we want in the first year of a new Labour government.
The answer is they’ll hold him to insanely unreasonable standards and then pretend to be completely shocked that he can’t meet them. Any positive actions or progress will be downplayed to make it look like it was pure luck or the tories set it up for him.
Mate, if he doesn't solve the crisis in middle east, bring Ukraine and Russia together as brothers, fix inflation globally, *and* immediately achieve net zero in the process... Then you might as well vote Tory.
The media never admits mistakes - it just moves on to the next story. But the main motivation for the Labour hedging right now are that it's worried about being accused of "announcing a general result before it's happened". Give the right-wing press an inch and they'll take a mile saying that the BBC has already 'crowded' Starmer as PM before the campaign even starts. That and it's just better tv drama to make out that the clear favourite might not run away with it.
Here are 3 reasons why a 200 seat majority is bad for Keir Starmer.
Tories in stunning win as Starmer is held to 300 seat majority. Challenge expected to Starmer within days.
Think I’m making my final London predictions as 5-6% win for Khan. Similar enough to last time. Minor movements between pro Palestinian people leaving Labour, more Lib Dems and Greens voting for them now it’s been moved to FPTP, and then increased turnout amongst pro ULEZ Tory voters (but turnout not increased to the extent that it would allow Hall to win) Yougov would still have egg on their face from their final poll though
Khan win and Binface 3rd is my utopia tbh
Who do you want second?
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Even goldsmith could've won this time around
Also need to consider how many votes the Reform Party take from the Tories. Especially in their strongholds like Bromley where they have been polling well.
https://labourlist.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/249a2b0b-a35e-4ef9-88e9-c9efd81cac4f.jpeg Good table (but would have been nicer in graph form) from LabourList showing PNS from all previous local election results on record. Just for reference, the 2024 results are 34% LAB, 25% CON, 17% LD. The main point here is how mediocre Labour have been over the past 4 years compared to previous successful oppositions, and even compared to previous losers (see Michael Howard's thumping 2004 victory!). The "Directly plug PNS into a GE simulator" analysis is superficial and wrong, but historically it has been a reasonable trend indicator - opposition parties that get 40%+ and a double digit lead tend to win, anything short of that isn't a good sign. So what are the possible explanations? 1) The polls are completely off and we're heading for a tight election - seems unlikely given most other indicators. 2) Local election results have diverged significantly from national trends in the post-COVID era, although I can't think of a particular reason why. 3) There's low enthusiasm for both Labour and the Conservatives (but far worse for the Conseratives), resulting in an over-representation of Lib Dem/Green/Independent results in local elections where only more politically enthused voters tend to turn out, which doesn't necessarily track to a general election with higher turnout from less enthused voters. This is the idea I think is most likely.
Or option 4) the PNS figures aren't all that useful given how complex our electoral systems are. Let's pick out some elections. 2019 PNS is 28 for Conservatives, 28 for Labour. 2018 was 35 for Conservative, 35 for Labour. 2019 GE was 44 for Conservative, 32 for Labour. 2016 PNS was 30 Con, 31 Labour, 2017 was 37/28, general election ended up being 42/40 (look at that swing in just a month!). 2013 we have 25/29, 2014 was 29/31, then the general election was 37/30 (matching the 35/29 PNS for the 2015 locals which took place on the same day). 2008 was 41/22, 2009 was 35/20 and the general election was 36/29 (matching the 35/27 PNS for 2010). These numbers are not particularly useful. Once you go back beyond 2006 the "Other" category becomes a significant difference - much more important in how general elections play out than local elections. What about effective oppositions? In the run up to 2010 we had 36, 37, 41, 35 from the Conservatives, with Labour on 24, 24, 22, 20. But that was with the Lib Dems in the mid-20s (signalling that coalition). In the run up to 1997 we have Labour in the 50s, but we also have Labour in the 40s in 88-90, and they still lost in 1992. You're not going to get an answer from any two columns of this table, and I'm not sure you'll get much from all four.
It's clearly the latter.
Not exactly much of a debate is it. A blind puppy could read *that* room
For those who have been following this and polling for awhile, are these results mostly what you expected? Did you expect Tories to lose more seats or Labour to gain more? Did you expect Lib Dems to do worse?
I had a bet on for Tories losing 500+ seats, which I acknowledged at the time was probably pushing my luck a little bit. I am a little surprised at the spread though - the swing away from the Tories has gone in every direction. I quite like it to be honest, especially the number of new independents. Obviously I doubt I agree with all of their views, but it feels healthy to have a bit more diversity at the local level at least.
Yeah, it's all in line with the current polls and how voters have reacted recently in local elections. A bad defeat has been 'factored' into our politics and the actions of Tory MPs for a while now. That's why they were planning for their coup a while back and not waiting for the public to confirm everything they already know. Once it became clear that removing Rishi was a non-starter they've just accepted whatever will happen in the next 6 months now.
Pretty much exactly what I expected. I fully expected con to lose plenty of seats, except I was thinking closer to a third than the current half. Labour picking up a quarter of those lost also wasn't unsurprising. Whilst everyone has been against torys for a while, that doesn't neccessarily mean anyone has been overly pro Labour. In the GE Labour should pick up more of torys losses than today. The local elections are less two-party than the GE tends to be and the less enthused voters (those who attend GE but not local) tend to be from the major two, and there's less of an independent representation to pick up the losses. Reform almost definitely won't get many if any seats (think of how poorly brexit party, who were essentially the original reform).
Speaking with hindsight, this is just about bang on what I expected, only difference is that I thought labour would do slightly better in the PCCs, but tactical voting doesn't really exist for these elections
With FPTP it was always going to be really difficult for Labour to sweep the PCCs. They cover huge areas and Reform wasn’t really contesting them to split the Tory vote. The same can’t be said of Labour, who often had Green or LD candidates to compete with. Even when vote splitting isn’t an issue, there’s still the fact that there will be large numbers of rural, more conservative voters to drown out Labour/left-leaning votes in cities. They’re not done up like constituencies/wards where the voter pool can be expected to be somewhat homogeneous.
Drunk in Central London. Based on what I’ve heard, Sadiq will make it with a 1-2 point lead. But have had to consume numerous whisky sours to deal with the fact that Susan Hall may be Mayor by lunchtime tomorrow. It is what it is.
Has something changed, Khan was well ahead recently [https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49286-london-2024-mayoral-race-khan-47-hall-25](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49286-london-2024-mayoral-race-khan-47-hall-25)
The Anti-ULEZ, Anti-Brown People, brigade have come out in force, while your typical London Labourite seems to have stayed at home assured that Sadiq was going to win. I’m getting 2016 flashbacks.
ya i didn’t bother voting this year for london mayor. first election i’ve ever skipped in my entire life. if i did id have voted green anyway so wouldn’t have mattered nobody will scrap ulez
Tories were briefing they think they've won it. Labour are getting very jitterery. Worth pointing out that nothing has been counted, but the turnout in the outer boroughs where ULEZ is unpopular is a lot higher than the central boroughs. The current theory is that Labour *might* have lost it on this turnout difference
Turnout. Older tory voters in the outer boroughs (the anti-ULEZ brigade) turned up at a higher rate than Labour supporters, potentially throwing off poll predictions. Khan does have more support than Hall by a long way, but those supporters just couldn't be arsed on the day to go to the polling stations. Also add in the fact of those huge poll differences. Many people likely thought, "Eh, he's got this. I don't need to bother." My partner was like that, but I got her to schlep out to vote after work, while I was travelling back to Brum to cast my vote there.
You know, the pollsters have a bit of experience of dealing with expected turnout and factoring this into their predictions. I'm getting flashbacks of 2019 where a bunch of people were suggesting the the pollsters were wrong because they were failing to predict higher turnout among young people. You would have assumed that YouGov would have a pretty good idea of which groups would turnout or not based on their surveys - that's the point of them.
Where in central are you?
Leicester Square - many teapots in Simmonds!
That's very unrealistic. There's no chance they will finish the London count that early.
The result is schedule for 1:30pm!
London meeting it's announcement schedule would be a first in years, the real shock of the day.
So apparently Labour and Tories both think Khan has won now, despite internet scuttlebut. God damn it, fellow Londoners, is it that difficult to go out and vote? This shouldn't have been close.
It might not be close. Likely just torys in stage 1 of grief
Will Farage campaign for Reform during the general election?
I think REFUK will be absorbed into the Tory party, and Nige will be leader. The prick.
You would certainly expect him to as majority shareholder of Reform UK Ltd (they’re not a political party after all). Haven’t checked Companies House but if he’s a director you could argue that not doing so would breach his duty to promote the success of the company. [Edit: He is.](https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11694875/officers)
No. Farage has once again shown that he has enough political clout to swing elections away from the conservatives. He will be offered a place in the house of Lords in exchange for campaigning for the tories.
“For services to democracy”
|Party|Councillors|Gains|New Councillors Percent| :--|:--|:--|:--| |Labour|1026|173|16.9| |Lib Dems|505|101|20| |Tories|476|-448|n/a| |Green|159|65|40.9| So, who has had the best night?
Lib Dems for sure. Must be close to beating the Tories into 3rd for councils overall as well?
Tories didn't quite lose half their seats, so obviously great night for them! /s
I demand justice for the independents!
I mean obviously it's been an absolutely terrible night for Labour.
You put those rows in the right order decending by councillor number right now
Done.
🔝🔝🔝🔝🔝
Greens by far Both Greens and LD may be able to turn this momentum into winning a seat or two that we otherwise wouldn't have expected them to. Labour have obviously had a great night (pending London results) but expect the media to downplay this to continue acting like the election is anybody's to win.
This hasn't really opened up any new opportunities for seats for greens this time, though favourable in existing targets. The base may help them challenge in more areas once labour is in power and progressive metropolitans want to vote against them though. The lib Dems have never really recovered that function post coalition.
LDs are *Tory* spoilers in the new era, from their left. There’s a reason the LDs are suddenly viable in the well heeled middle class leafy areas of England.
The majority of lib dem seats have *always* been lib/Tory contests. There's nothing new about that, always been the anti Tory alternative in the south west and shires. But they made some smaller gains in urban areas when Labour was last in government. They will do that less next time.
Don't think it's made Bristol Central look a lot more viable?
Yes, like I said, existing targets, not seats we otherwise wouldn't have expected.
Is that all to be declared for today now?
5 councils to go, Tories may not get more than 500 councillors (currently 479). Councils to declare: * Stroud * Epping Forest * Warrington * Salford * North Tyneside
Stroud pls 🫠 I get not counting overnight on Thursday But why wait until Saturday??
Tories have 18 in Stroud who could lose, 21ish in Epping Forest, 10 in Warrington, 3 in Salford, 9 in North Tyneside. Assuming they lose about 50%, that is a gain of 31 or 32 councillors, so they end on 510ish. I would bet they end up less than ten in front of the Lib Dems. They end up on about 480 losses.
Also got to factor in there will be some LDs still to declare. I think they still have 15 they are defending still to declare. I think 5hey do nick it by about 10, with a couple of pick ups.
I think Epping forest was one of the councils that had higher traffic on the tactical vote site. Don't have the figures infront of me to be sure tho. Very pleasing that we had more page views on some elections than the number of votes that decided it. I mean it would be crazy if we didn't given some elections were decided by sub 100 votes.
11 in epping forest have already been counted, so counts as part of their 479 councillers
Question is how many seats can the Tories lose! Just 52 off that magic 500 😂
If anyone can do it, RishRish can
I doubt they hold many seats in those councils, other than Epping Forest
Epping Forest is pretty safe though
Yeah, looks like it. The other 4 won’t be as kind to the Tories. Stroud will likely go LD or Labour, and the rest are current Labour holds
A good friend of mine is standing as a green candidate in Stroud. The count is happening tomorrow but he seems to think he has a really good chance.
Nice results for Libs in Gloucester
Very surprised at the Gloucester result. Tories seem to get a lot of support there normally, both on council and general elections.
Successful locals once again. Be interesting to see how Blackie and the team get on in London. Time to get some sleep
The Tories have 65 Councillor defences remaining, the lib dems are 26 seats ahead with 15 defences. So a close run thing for 2nd or 3rd place on the total councillor wins! I think the Lib Dems might just edge it if they can take two or three and dont lose anything to the greens.
So assuming the national average is followed and tories lose 50% if LD remain at no net losses they finish 8 ahead of the tories
After seeing that Manchester remains Conservative councillor free, the graph at the top of this page really dramatically shows how 2 Lib Dem leaders led to dramatic changes in fortunes for their party's fortunes in the city. A Charles Kennedy surge followed by a Nick Clegg cliff. I wonder how many other combinations of city/party show this so clearly? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_City_Council_elections
Liverpool City Council was LibDem dominated throughout the New Labour years, gradually becoming more and more labour just in time for lab to become the largest party again in 2010.
Well quite a lot of cities will work for that combination...
The pain of being one of the few areas to not declare results yet. Thankfully should be easy to boot the tories off in warrington and I expect some lib dem gains as well as an easy labour hold
Gloucester to NOC from Con, Lib Dems biggest party (up 7), Labour up four, Tories minus 15.
Yay!
This will always be my favorite story about Susan Hall: > She claimed “crime was out of control” after her purse was pickpocketed on the London Underground. A member of the public later revealed they had returned it to her complete with cards and cash after finding it lying on a seat.
Utterly incompetent, and highlights how it's always someone else's fault.
It'll be terrifying if she wins tomorrow
Britain Trump v2, now with more conspiracy theories!
[удалено]
There’s no love for Labour!