Just a quick update of where we are at 2am. We are currently on +14 seats and generally doing a little better than expected.
Every English local election night since the formation of the Coalition has been an absolute nightmare to sit through. Tonight is much more pleasant.
John Curtice says that we are having our best night at local elections since the formation of the coalition.
We look like we might gain Richmond, though it’s going to be close.
We’ll take a bit of a hit in Sutton and party sources are less sure than they were earlier that we will retain control.
We are making gains across the country from Liverpool to Oxfordshire to East Surrey to Peterborough
Gains from Labour are expected in Hull and Sheffield.
We’ve just passed the 100 councillor mark on the BBC’s chart and have gained 14 councillors so far. As a measure of how difficult this set of elections generally is for us, if we gain the 30 councillors that Rallings and Thrasher expects, that will be our 3rd best result in our entire existence.
Labour so far aren’t doing nearly as well as they had hoped and John McDonnell is getting very grumpy on the BBC election programme. The Tories are doing a bit better but we haven’t had all of London yet.
You can see the more detailed as it happened stuff on the open thread here.
I am going to have to go to bed very soon because I have to go to work in the morning, but I’ll check in again about 7 am.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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7 Comments
Just been looking at the Southwark results – so far a bit of a relief after the carnage of four years ago.
er – maybe cancel that, shouldn’t listen to rumours! …………….
Ukip collapsing. Where are there votes they got previously going?
their votes
The good news is that if repeated at a General Election we would be winning back a lot of seats we held previously.
It is likely when they are counted – the South West London seats. Winchester. Eastleigh. And within 1% of Labour in Portsmouth South (Lib Dems 34%, Labour 35%, Tory 25%, Green 5%, UKIP/others 1% in the local election vote in the seat this year).
Politicians and activists tend to underestimate how long political events take to filter through to the general public. If we leave the EU and Labour and Tories are still for staying out – we could be picking up a lot of votes in these seats which had strong remain votes and also see (current) leavers in the West Country moving back to remain.
Richmond !
We’ve held control of Sutton – despite losing 12 seats.