The final results of the 2024 local elections are in and we had a fantastic result on ALDC’s doorstep in Salford. Cllr Jonathan Moore took a seat in Salford Quays. The result was:

Jonathan Moore: 39.2% (+13.1)

Lab: 37.4% (-9.8)

Green: 15.4% (-3.1)

Conservative: 8.0% (-0.3)

We finally have a brilliant piece of media coverage that I suspect we will be sharing far and wide between  now and the General Election. Someone at HQ has crunched a lot of numbers and discovered that we have gained more Councillors than anyone else over the past five years. From the Guardian:

The Lib Dems have added more council seats than any other party over the last parliament, gaining more than 750 in the last five years, largely in the south-west and south of England.

As Ed Davey’s party won more seats than the Conservatives in the local elections last week, the Lib Dems said Tories would be “looking over their shoulder terrified” as the general election approached.

Data analysis by the party shows that the Lib Dems have gained 768 seats, Labour 545 and the Greens 480, while the Conservatives have lost 1,783.

That is pretty impressive given that Labour and the Conservatives are much better resourced than we are.

Whitehall Editor Rowena Mason writes:

The party’s strong gains in local elections suggests its strategy of focusing on building up votes in key strongholds could help deliver seats at the election

.Someone was asking about last Thursday’s Council by-elections in a comments thread. I’m sure you’ll understand that we have had a huge amount of information to process over the past few days and we didn’t want them to get lost.  Don’t worry. We’ll get to them in the next couple of days but let us just have a wee rest first after a frenetic week.

We did have  very near miss in the St Helier West ward in Sutton. In 2022, it elected one Labour and two Tories. The Labour councillor resigned and we just missed out on gaining the seat by 6 votes – but we were behind the Tories!  Labour languished in 3rd place. ULEZ appears to have been an issue there. It’s always particularly disappointing to come so close.

Finally, again, just because I love a cheesy photo op, here are the dinosaurs. I might take a while to get over this one.

I hope you are all enjoying a restful evening and have the chance to rest a bit over the Bank Holiday tomorrow.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social