As pointed out in the comments on a previous posting, the Liberal Democrats have retained control of two parish councils this week: Bradfield in South Yorkshire and Kidlington in Oxfordshire.
Why “unfortunate”? Well, these two electoral triumphs are due to the hard working local Focus team delivering numerous leaflets with bar charts failure of other parties to put up enough candidates. Right results, but a pair of contested elections would probably have been the better route to it.
UPDATE: Ther are some more councils to add to the list – Abbots Langley Parish Council and also, curiously, Hedge End Town Council. Given that it is in Hampshire (a county that is the scene of many close Liberal Democrat-Conservative Parliamentary contests) I was rather suprised to see that the Conservatives could only find three candidates for the twenty-one seats.
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I was actually slightly misinformed earlier – we’ve had 13 out of 13 candidates elected unopposed in Bradfield, not 11 as previously stated!
So for the second four-year term running, we’ll have no opposition on the parish whatsoever.
However, as one of our local party staff says: “Don’t worry – we’ll be providing our own opposition”.
I agree. We would have preferred a contest across all of Kidlington. Keeps us on our toes.
2. Amen.
RH.
Just a shame that there are five principal authorities (including a unitary) where the Tories have retained control without a vote being cast…
My brother lives in Bradfield, so I know that the headline should be “Lib Dems sweep to victory in one of England’s largest councils”: Bradfield Parish is enornmous.
“Just a shame that there are five principal authorities (including a unitary) where the Tories have retained control without a vote being cast…”
Do you mean due to lack of nominations or places with elections by thirds where the seats fall in such a way that there aren’t enough Tory seats up for election for them to mathematically lose control?
I have always thought that they had the right idea in Fair Oak (also in the Eastleigh constituency) where for years we have only put up enough Lib Dem candidates to ensure comfortable control, thus ensuring that there is still opposition to keep us on our toes. Internal opposition can be a route to self-destruction.
6 – Lack of nominations – see pb.c or Vote 2007 for details…
And Great Baddow Parish in Chelmsford. The only contested ward has five LDs for the five places plus one UKIP.