Wrexham: Liberal Democrats become largest party.
Reading: Liberal Democrats defeated Labour council leader – congratulations to Warren Swaine.
Liberal Democrats making gains in Swansea: up three seats.
Party looks set to be running more councils after these elections than before – gaining Burnley, Sheffield, Hull and St Albans, whilst losing Pendly and West Lindsey.
London Mayor election turnout: BBC says it is looking to be 45%, which would be up 8% on last time. That’s a big increase, but – as mentioned before – not into the league of really high turnouts suggested by some of the more excitable Conservative chatter yesterday.
How to tell how bad the results are for Labour: the TV news keeps on using footage of John Major to illustrate the story…
Northumberland: big Liberal Democrat gains – up by 12, becoming largest party.
Sheffield: Liberal Democrats making gains. Very hopefully about gaining control and defeating the last Conservative.
Conservatives talking down their prospects: saying they won’t get Reading and they’ll lose control in Purbeck.
Three Rivers: also confirmed Liberal Democrat hold.
Newcastle: confirmed Liberal Democrat hold with net gain of three seats.
Burnley: Liberal Democrats gain control, confirmed. Takes Liberal Democrats up to no net change in number of councils under Liberal Democrat control.
BBC TV coverage: do you like it? did you hate it? You can vote in Lynne Featherstone’s online poll.
Highgate ward by-election, Camden: Greens won (in a split Green/Conservative ward). Turnout 56% – which is a little on the high side though not at the heights of some London turnout talk.
Solihull – another Liberal Democrat gain from the Conservatives. Good news again in a Liberal Democrat MP’s area where the fight is with the Conservatives.
Liberal Democrats have missed out on gaining control of four councils by one seat each – Warrington, NE Lincs, Cheltenham and Oldham. Gains made in all, but not quite enough.
Burnley: other good news – BNP failed to make headway.
Burnley: steady flow of Liberal Democrat gains coming in. Might it be enough to take control?
Newcastle: Liberal Democrats making gains from Labour – so will keep control, and with an increased majority.
Eastleigh: there are now no Conservative councillors in Chris Huhne’s constituency following last night’s results.
Turnout news from Lambeth & Southwark GLA seat – looks set to be in mid-40s which, if confirmed, would be a sharp increase on 2004 when it was 33%.
It could be a long, long day in London as the counting machines for Merton and Wandsworth have already run into problems with paper jams.
We kick off with one piece of common agreement – the BBC’s TV coverage has been widely slated on all sides. Mike Smithson on Political Betting says, “This thread is illustrated with a picture from the overnight BBC coverage because I was going to have a rant about it’s awfulness. I am still furious and will probably be returning to the theme. Licence-payers deserve better”.
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Raising a flap about letterboxes
Arriving at one of East Finchley's ghost platforms
Restrained
Chase Park fair photos
A swamp of lies and disinformation
Nigel Jones
Katharine Pindar
16 Comments
Greetings from Preston – our vote up 3% from last year, although we did lose one damn fine councillor, in the constituency of Preston we are so-near-as-doesn’t-matter to 2nd now !
On the BBC coverage, I was quite sickened by it. Childish doesn’t cover it. The BBC should really check on the feedback and never return to that again. How patronising, childish, silly, and unhelpful.
If only to wind up Chris Paul, here are the results from Whalley Range:
CANDELAND Mary Rosalind Green Party 381
GRANT John Liberal Democrats 1683
HUSSAIN Fawad Conservative Party 945
LONE Amina The Labour Party Candidate 1271
Lib Dem website now reporting that we have taken control of Burnley.
Interesting point on that thread about the BBC coverage contrasted with that in the US.
Certainly CNN’s election night coverage is very very in depth with analysts looking at polling data in detail and often examining vote share and turnout within states on a county by county basis. The US is often accused of dumbing down politics but in that regard it isn’t the case.
In Oldham Labour seem to have suffered a near meltdown winning just 5 of the 20 seats
Did Lib Dems win Oldham or not? If we look at BBC’s result page, the title says “NOC no change”, but if we look at the numbers, Lib Dems have 30 seats against other parties combined 29. Is there a fault in the title or in the numbers?
As the important thing is clearly the LDV prize all these gains are disastrous!
Looks like Sheffield is a definite gain – and the Tories have lost their last Sheffield councillor.
Sheffield Lib Dems gain of 6 seats.
BBC ticker on their website is saying Cons have gained Solihull???
Delighted with Warren’s result in Reading and the Redlands gain. Also in Reading East but in Wokingham – a Lib Dem hold by 400 votes in a seat won by the Tories for the last two years!
Yep – Solihull is CON gain =/
Solihull is CON Gain, by taking seats of Labour in Caroline Spelman’s constituency, I think.
Currently Lib Dems up 11 in Northumberland
Technically Swansea Liberal Democrats had a net gain of four seats. We won 19 in 2004.
The London results are starting to appear on http://results.londonelects.org.uk/, and look pretty poor for us.
The BBC quotes Paddick as hoping for 15%, but his highest percentage among the 6 constituencies reported on the official site is 10.04%, in Greenwich and Lewisham.
Chris Phillips