Just a year ago we won the Parliamentary seat of Wokingham with a huge swing. And today, as a result of a Council by-election, we have gained overall control of Wokingham Borough Council.
By the way, don’t confuse Wokingham in Berkshire with Woking in Surrey, which we also control.
The received wisdom was that Lib Dems had to win a Council before they could hope to win a constituency, but now we are seeing the reverse effect. The key thing is that a winning campaign at either level, if carried out with care and foresight, can build local capacity which can be sustained into any future elections.
It didn’t take too much of a swing (just over 3%) to take the Council seat from the Conservatives, helped by the disruptive factor that is Reform. Before this by-election there was a fine political balance on the Council with Lib Dems holding 27 seats, Tories 19 and Labour 8, which we managed with the casting vote of the Mayor. As of now we hold a clear majority with 28 seats out of 54.
Congratulations to new Councillor Mike Smith!
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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6 Comments
“The received wisdom was that Lib Dems had to win a Council before they could hope to win a constituency, but now we are seeing the reverse effect.”
This isn’t what happened as our new seat is in the Earley and Woodley constituency.
I do hope that the local party now tries to majorly expand in this constituency as one of the ways we can make new seats winnable despite having so few second places right now, is for our stronger local parties, who already have one constituency locked down to turn their guns on other seats that they partly cover, especially those where we already have a few councillors.
I think the conventional wisdom is not far wrong. We had a majority of councillors before winning the constituency and we probably need to make local gains before Earley and Woodley is a realistic prospect. It’s a close marginal and we got squeezed.
Labour 39.7
Conservative 37.8
Liberal Democrats 13.4
We need to go into the election with either Tories or Labour having lost all credibility. The Reading bit is small and almost all Labour but we only have one ward in Reading and it’s the other end.
Following in from yesterday, are we also not the majority party in opposition in West Sussex?
@Peter Davies
The part of Reading that falls within Earley and Woodley although Labour has a history of very low levels of activism combined with poor voter turnout.
Any campaigning there at a time when a Labour government is hitting the poorest hard would be bound to increase support for our party.
@Ian Patterson
We now have 10 councillors on West Sussex compared with 9 for Labour so we are indeed the largest opposition group. The Conservatives are a long way ahead with 41.
Clive benefited from Earley and Woodley support in Wokingham at the last GE. Tahir in Earley and Woodley suffered because of this and also a contractor failing to deliver over half his pre election material. Shinfield is a rock solid Labour area.