It’s been another night of gains for the Liberal Democrats in local elections.
In Cornwall, we gained our 5th seat of the year, this time from UKIP whose vote tanked, in the Four Lanes ward, going from a standing start to getting 34.7% of the vote:
Four Lanes (Cornwall) result:
LDEM: 34.7% (+34.7)
IND: 16.6% (+16.6)
CON: 14.8% (-5.8)
LAB: 14.5% (-5.7)
MK: 12.8% (-0.9)
UKIP: 6.6% (-21.9)— Britain Elects (@britainelects) September 1, 2016
In Hampshire, a thrilling Parish Council contest saw Jack Davies elected after the drawing of lots. He and the Conservative candidate had 401 votes each. No doubt that will be brought up in training sessions ad infinitum to highlight the importance of keeping going until the polls close.
In Otley, we held two town council seats.
Meet your new councillors for #Ashfield in #Otley after a long polling day – Cllr Holmes & Cllr Robinson! pic.twitter.com/eo5VcZyzdW
— Leeds NW Lib Dems (@LeedsNWLibDems) September 1, 2016
In Stockton, Nick Webb flew the Lib Dem flag in a much more challenging contest. We were already in single figures but 44 people turned out to vote for him. If he hadn’t stood, they might lose that habit of going and voting Lib Dem. Thanks to Nick for putting himself forward. Every such contest fought is helping the party rebuild for the future. The seat was closely fought between Conservatives and Labour with the Conservatives gaining.
Grangefield (Stockton-on-Tees) result:
CON: 50.5% (+15.4)
LAB: 43.1% (-5.5)
UKIP: 3.6% (-8.8)
LDEM: 2.8% (-1.1)— Britain Elects (@britainelects) September 1, 2016
Again, the UKIP vote tanked. Labour should be very worried to be losing seats like this.
There were also three by-elections in Dorset, all Tory holds. We’ll update this post with the full results later.
All in all, not a bad night at all.
* 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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8 Comments
Some good news and perhaps some of lesser appeal. The Bournemouth and Dorset results were pretty meagre. Unfortunately it appears we have not got properly to grips with UKIP in that area.
At the moment Cornwall is exceeding expectations at this stage and bodes well.
We need that parliamentary by election in an place we can strike well.
” If he hadn’t stood, they might lose that habit of going and voting Lib Dem.”
I cannot believe this view is put forward by anyone who has ever been in any significant role in any winning campaign. Results below 10 per cent are trivial. They are quickly forgotten about by the handful of people who vote for us in them and they have no relevance at all to how these and other people will vote for us if we run a half-decent campaign. Winning campaigns can more easily be sparked off from a start-base of 15 to 25 per cent, so incremental efforts when you have this standing level already are well worth it. But if you are not going to campaign to a level that can get you at least 10 per cent of the vote (often only TWO or THREE per cent of the electors) then your efforts are immaterial. Concentrate them sensibly.
This Stockton result was not a paperless campaign: a good leaflet and some canvassing by a small but keen team. In these circumstances the result is depressing. I wish bI knew the answer in such seats but I don’t, and it seems no-one else does either.
I cannot agree less with Tony Daeson.
We must fight every seat and with all the resources each area has at its disposal. There are many of us who were present when Preston was fought by Gordon Payne, and when I returned to Gillingham we fought a seat and from there over time we ran the Council. If you take the attitude we might only get a few votes so we wont bother, the only way is down.
Each Constituency should target a seat and work it to its fullest , time will bring wins especially when the voters start to realise that you are the only ones listening
@bob sayer:
“I cannot agree less with Tony Daeson.
We must fight every seat”
But Bob, results less than 10 per cent are not ‘fighting’ seats. In many ways they are not even tickling seats. The reason is often a matter of lack of training rather than good intentions. I say yes, concentrate your resources, campaign properly (ie work for people, don’t just preach platitudes). Do NOT waste your time (and everyone else’s) putting out useless leaflets and knocking on doors to just smile.
Stand a candidate every single time. We as a party have a duty to give people the chance to vote for us.
We need to fight these seats, just because we had poor result (despite being reported as a good fight for what is probably not a strong local party) is no reason for giving up. Given the marginality of the ward and probable targeting by the Tories, made our campaign that much more difficult.
The Dorset results indicate that not fighting these seats, when they are normally up for an ordinary election, is definitely a recipe for a poor performance when they subsequently have a by-election.
Having struggled with many elections finding a full slate in rural Cheshire wards, and then getting the nominations signed know how depressing it can be, but at least on polling day we have given local people the chance to vote for – and to keep the habit up.
@ Tony Greaves
Dear party veteran Tony,
isn’t it by “losing depoasits” (not for nothing a stallwart’s song on our Glee Club) that the Liberals , like Caron implied, kept some “ground force” alive to build on when Labour and the Tories fell back into their old habit of internal feuding (Bevanites against Gaitskell; Tony Benn against Kinnock; present Labour leadership contest; and social Tories ans “wets” like Macmillan and Kenneth Clark against the Thatcherites)?
One advantage of Proportional Representation is exactly that constituency parties don’t have to decide (and don’t have to risk deposits) if they’ll run with a candidate; everybody all over the city, district, province or nation gets a chance to “vote for us” as Tim Hill says, and thus show support for us.
We have one small town in the Netherlands where for donkey’s years 90% votes orthodox-Calvinist parties and 2% votes for us, D66; we relish such diversity.