The LDV election results open thread

Here are the starting positions (as Stephen’s already described):

Scotland: the party is defending 16 seats (11 constituency MSPs, and five regional list MSPs), which was a drop of one compared to 2003. There are 129 contested seats for the Scottish Parliament.

Wales: the party is defending six seats (3 constituency AMs, and three regional list AMs), which was the same as in 2003. There are 60 contested seats for the Welsh assembly.

In the English local elections:

1,876 of the 3,948 Liberal Democrat councillors (48%) have been defending their seats today in –

  • 36 out of the 36 metropolitan councils (thirds)
  • 51 of the 56 English unitary councils (thirds and all-outs)
  • 192 of the 202 English district councils (thirds and all-outs)

as well as –

  • 5 of the 13 directly-elected mayors (all with other elections too)
  • and there’s also the Leicester South Parliamentary by-election.

The count for the AV referendum will start tomorrow at 4pm, with the result expected tomorrow night.

Use the thread below to add your own local results and comment away…

11:05pm Sad news as it’s reported that Liberal Democrat candidate Neil Hamilton, of Westerhope ward in Newcastle, died this afternoon. The election there is null and void, and a deferred election will have to be held.

12:24am Labour HOLD Sunderland: Lab 56; Con 14; LD 1; Others 4.

12:40am Nuneaton and Bedworth BC, Barpool by-election: Lab 1034; Con 519, BNP 204; LD 142; UKIP 65, Trade Unionists Against the Cuts 38. Lab HOLD

2:55am Stockport goes to No Overall Control – Lib Dems lose 4 seats.

3:53am Lib Dems hold Eastleigh

4:19am Kirsty Williams holds Brecon and Radnorshire

4:25 Lib Dems retain majority control of Portsmouth, losing only one seat

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This entry was posted in Local government, Scotland and Wales.
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29 Comments

  • toryboysnevergrowup 5th May '11 - 10:51pm

    I have a guilty confession to make – i decided at the last moment to vote LibDem rather than spoil my ballot paper in my ward where only the Tories and LibDems were standing. When push came to shove I just couldn’t spit on the memory of my Chartist ancestors who fought to win the right to vote away from the Tories – much as i would enjoy spitting on the current dishonest LIbDem leadership.

    Hopefully Labour/Greens/real Liberals will put up a candidate next time.

    So there you are I am still a LibDem voter – although possible the most relctant one there is.

  • Foregone Conclusion 5th May '11 - 11:03pm

    @toryboysgrowup,

    If you brought yourself to vote for us in the end, goodness knows what other miracles we might see this night! šŸ˜‰

  • Paddy Ashdown in good form on Question Time on Bin Laden / and the effects of the American action and getting some good support from the London audience.

  • David from Ealing 5th May '11 - 11:11pm

    Interesting Question Time. Labour and Tory reps VERY quiet, Paddy Ashdown doing well.

  • @David from Ealing

    and it went downhill from there.

  • Paddy Ashdown did less well on the LDs being in coaliton with the Conservatives. Mind you even when taking a lot of hits people were still being nice to Paddy.

  • Astonishing how few comments there have been (7), considering what’s happening. Or are there a few hundred more being “held in moderation,” together with mine?

  • It’s going to be a long cold and awful night, what a difference a year makes, eh.

    Sad to hear that a Lib Dem candidate has died.

  • Kevin Colwill 6th May '11 - 1:46am

    @toryboysnevergrowup – if you had just remembered more recent history like the press conference in Number 10’s rose garden!

    Fair play to you though, you are a far better democrat than I. If things get much worse I’m in the market for a black flag – and I’m only half joking!! šŸ™‚

  • Kevin Colwill 6th May '11 - 1:48am

    @ MI5…I was joking when I said I was only half joking!

  • Awful night….might reflect on that in a bit but have to say Tim Farron’s remarks (BBC1)were spot on. That is the message the Libdems need to start communicating.

  • George Kendall 6th May '11 - 4:34am

    @toryboysnevergrowup
    Glad to hear you didn’t abstain in a fight between the Tories and the Lib Dems.

    I fear, though, that these will be difficult results for the Lib Dems. When we entered the coalition, we knew we would face a storm. We’re now facing it.

    Whoever formed the governmment last May was going to have to sort out this structural deficit. Whatever impression they give now, Labour’s comprehensive spending review last autumn would have been savage. And the backlash against them, and anyone they were in coalition with, would have been just as savage. Indeed, it would probably have been worse, seeing that Labour were the ones who bequeathed the structural deficit in the first place.

    As a result of this storm, very good councillors, MSP’s and AM’s will have lost their seats. But the party has been through similar storms in the past and emerged the stronger, we will again.

  • Barry George 6th May '11 - 6:13am

    Time to rethink this lurch to the right. Stop agreeing with the Tories as they talk about benefit scroungers and attack the disabled, stop happily nodding along to Tory idealogical changes that have nothing to do with cuts.

    Well said Amy…

    If Senior Lib Dems took your suggested stance then my vote would certainly be won back, and I am sure there are many more unhappy Liberal voters like me…

    There are a number of ways of processing this defeat. Blaming Labour , the electorate, or the fact that we are in Government would be beyond naive and bordering on insanity.

    The party is not taking a battering because of the mess labour left, It is taking a beating for the ‘actions’ it has taken in Government.

    The relentless pursuit of someone else to blame must stop.

    Massive misgivings in judgment have been made by the party in this coalition and it seems the voters are rejecting our rather pitiful excuses..

    You know , the excuse that we are only the baby party in the coalition when nothing can get through without our complicit support.

    The excuse that says its all Labours fault

    (The public are not buying it (true though it may be)

    When you face a defeat like this then the correct course of action should be one of inward reflection and not external blame games..

    Time to re-think how we approach this coalition , Time for the leadership to apologise to the many good councillors who lost their jobs tonight. For it is their actions that have brought this about…

    I am sure there are many rank and file members that believe that we lost so badly simply because we are in a coalition with the conservatives… This in my opinion is a myth. A myth that helps justify a pseudo perception that deep down all is fine…

    The real reason is that our behaviour in this coalition has damaged the very identity of the party and the public no longer trust us as an independent party and no longer understand what we stand for.

  • You’re all but wiped out in Scotland, losing 24 deposits!

    It was obvious this was going to happen once you decided that you were secret tories.

    It’s over for the lib dems as a national force, youll join the tories as a party of England now, and a minor one at that.
    There’s only one truly national party in the UK, and that’s Labour.
    Well done.

  • David jackson 6th May '11 - 6:51am

    It’s ironic but after tonight we won’t need AV or PR because we are back to two party politics in the uk. Lab v Con in England, Lab v SNP in Scotland etc.

  • martin sewell 6th May '11 - 7:45am

    As a Conservative supporter, I offer you the simple truth that the Lib Dems have spent so much time explaining why people should oppose the Conservatives that they have forgotten to explain why people should not vote Labour.

    Any sensible strategy would surely have been that Labour was/ is so awful that even Coalition with the Conservatives is prefferable. The votes you needed were always going to come from the Left of Centre and from inside the Coalition you could never out- left the Left. Explaining why The Coalition is still the only show in town for the country, and your party has failed to show the necessary maturity to justify its position within it.

  • Andrew Wimble 6th May '11 - 8:35am

    The Lib Dems are not the conservatives. We do not support many of their policies and should be constantly fighting in the coilition to make the government more Liberal and less Tory. Now maybe that has been happening behind the scenes, and certainly we have had some victories but the public perception is that all we are doing is allowing the the Tories to do what they want. Time for some of the disagreements to become more public I think. We have to educate the public to understand that it is perfectly right and proper for partners in a coilition to disagree on some issues without every disagreement threatening to bring down the government.

    At the moment if people support the government they will probably vote Tory, while if they oppose it they will probably vote Labour or one of the minor parties. We need to give them a solid reason to vote LibDem.

  • You need to become the party of No. No we are not changing the NHS, No we are not making any more cuts, No we are not following that Tory policy. With that change you may stand a chance, not a good one but a chance, if you follow your present policy you’ll become the UK version of the Irish Greens.

  • “Any sensible strategy would surely have been that Labour was/ is so awful that even Coalition with the Conservatives is prefferable.”

    ???

    Isn’t that what the party has been saying, in almost every breath?

  • Regular readers will know I have a touchstone issue, drug law reform. It’s a good touchstone issue as it has, as someone put it above, nothing to do with cuts. The Lib Dems don’t have to go along with the Conservatives on this. But they have. When the issue came up, when the Home Secretary announced that there would no longer be scientific expertise on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the Lib Dems were silent.

    When they got into power, they didn’t just fail to implement party policy, they failed to even try. They did nothing to represent me on the issue which has kept me supporting Liberal parties for decades.

    I’ve been told by a prominent person on this website that Lib Dems in government CAN’T implement party policy on issues like this, because of collective cabinet responsibility! I’ve been told that the election outcome shows there is no demand for drug law reform in the country. The people in question seemed blissfully unaware of the shattering implications of these statements. What the hell is the point of supporting a party, making policy, if NOTHING will change when they get into power?

    I’ve never felt so angry going into a polling booth, and I voted for a Green councillor.

  • Yesterday, in BBC’s Question Time, when Paddy Ashdown (or was it Philip Hammond?) was trying to discuss the alleged bust up in the cabinet meeting between David Cameron and Chris Huhne, Andy Burnham asked, ‘why didnt you have a bust up when tuition fees were raised? why didnt you have an argument when schools budgets were cuts? why didnt you say anything when EMA was stopped?’ (or something to that effect).

    in reality, that question encapsulates the prevailing mood in the country. people are not stupid, they understand Lib Dems are in a coalition and that they wouldnt be able to get all/most of what they wanted in their manifesto. but Lib Dems are perceived as too cosy with Tories, especially Nick Clegg with his privilaged upbringing. So, people are thinking, underneath all that talk about liberalisms, in reality, Lib Dems are really ‘Tory-lite’. Lib Dems should have been as passionate about (for example) tuition fees as they were about AV. only then poeple would have cared about AV (which is very low on people’s agenda).

    I will give you another bit of bad news to the Lib Dems. I doubt that Lib Dems will recover from this slump in the foreseeable future. there is an increasing trend in the country toward ‘floating voters’ who are less loyal to any particular party. over the last 10 years, Lib Dems has been increasingly popular with poeple like me because of their principled position on issues, such as Iraq War — even though people knew that vote for them is essentially a ‘wasted vote’ because they will not be in the government. now that Lib Dems are in the government, they are perceived as ‘business as usual’ party. So why bother voting for Lib Dems? I would rather vote conservatives or labour, depending on the major issue of that election.

    more worryingly, if Lib Dems are not perceived as principled, then there will be problem recruiting future political talents. I would rather do small compromises and join a party where I would have some oppurtunity of being in the government, than be in Lib Dems where I will not be in the government.

  • As someone who voted Lib Dem in the general election after consistently voting Labour since 97, I’m not entirely surprised by this result, and I worry that unless the Liberal Democrat party does something dramatic with the coalition in the very near future it will face oblivion as we will undoubtably return to two-party politics.

    A third party can only ever realisitically look to be coalition partners and there’s nothing wrong in that. I don’t regard the Lib Dems as traitors for forming a government with the only available realistic partner in the Tories. I even agree with the need for deficit reduction and much of the cuts programmes being bought forward. I was worried when there were no significant cabinet posts for liberal leaders – okay not the big three but at least one of the major government departments with a real budget (home, health, education, social security or pensions) should have had a lib dem minister. I wonder greatly what role Nick Clegg has in Cabinet.

    Since last May evidence for actual liberal involvement in executive decisions has been scant. Where Tories have made little or no sacrifices to their manifesto, huge compromises have been made from a Lib Dem perspective. Programmes that are largely ideological in nature – such as the NHS reforms – have not been challenged, even though their effect on the deficit is debatable. And finally, as one of the other posters had noted, real liberal causes such as drug law reform, which have nothing to do with the deficit, have not been addressed at all.

    Its been a year now. Unless the Lib Dems can show the electorate that they are doing more than just propping up a Tory government in the next twelve months I’d seriously suggest a significant portion of your parliamentary party considers defecting to Labour. This will be even more important if the referendum votes No as this will effectively kill PR for a generation, and with the now ever more realistic spectre of scottish independence on the horizon will mean that the only Lib Dem role left will be to split the anti-tory vote plunging us into an abyss of tory control for future decades.

  • I’ve just watched a clip of an inteview with Nick Clegg who says the Lib Dems are being blamed for unpopular spending cuts.
    I disagree. I think you have 2 major problems.
    The first is that if I vote Conservative or Labour I know what I’m getting. If I vote Lib Dem I haven’t a clue whether you’ll support Conservative or Labour.
    The second is the broken election pledges. Don’t you remember the tuition fees incident? I’m sure you’d rather forget it, but I suspect there is a whole generation of voters who will never forgive you for that betrayal. At least the Conservatives didn’t break a pledge on tuition fees.
    I’ve voted for each of the 3 main parties in the past, but in future I won’t even consider Lib Dem.

  • coldcomfort 6th May '11 - 11:19am

    Good old ‘g’ , a true representative of the intelligence of the British Voter – especially a Labour one. For 13yrs his party followed Tory Policy to the extent that even the blessed Margaret was envious & he/she still thinks Labour is the answer. Well electorally it might be I suppose in which case may whatever God you believe in help us all.

  • All I ever hear from Lib Dems is we are not getting our message acrossā€¦ let me explainā€¦ we can hear you, and we can hear what you are saying, the message is quite clearā€¦

    Some who voted LD 12 months ago posted on here warning of what would happen on May 5th as long ago as 8 ā€“ 9 months ago, and kept warning until a few months ago and were ridiculed or moderated off LDV, they even warned what would happen with the AV vote, and constantly we were barraged with ā€œLib Dems are not getting the message acrossā€ even last night we had LD MPs repeating the mantra on TVā€¦ we also know what you are going to say over AV if it is lostā€¦ blame Labour, sadly Mr Ashdown started to blame Labour last night, sorry guys you need to grow up and stop blaming others for your own problems

    I want to say, we hear you, we hear your message, but we donā€™t like what you are saying and you have ignored us when we said you are not doing what we voted forā€¦ so my question to Lib Demsā€¦

    Can you hear us now, when we say we are not happy with what you are doing, or are you going to ignore this message we are sending to Lib Demsā€¦

    You can of course do the same as you normally doā€¦ you knowā€¦ ā€œWe are not getting our message across; we need to do better at getting what we do in government acrossā€

    Guys the bad thing is you have got it wrong, you need to listenā€¦ not shout louder.

  • @coldcomfort I’ve previously stated on here my concern that the lib dems risked becoming an English party rather than a national one. I don’t want to see that. I’d also like to see the lib dems reflect on why the coalition has been an absolute disaster for them, what they said and did, and why the voter despises them. Accusing the voter of being thick, or reflexively blaming labour, is probably not the best approach,

  • @coldcomfort

    ”The more they attack eachother the more they sound the same.’

    Do you remember this from Clegg in the debates? This is what he said and the party is suffereing because, once in power,the Lid Dems have fallen in tho this trap. Rather than arguing positively and making key in their message the Lib Dem poloices that have put into action in the Coalition and what they have done to moederate the Tory excessives that would have made the inecitable cuts even worse, they have instead spent way too much time attacking.

    Attacking Labour for the last ecomonmic mess. Sorry, guys that’s subjective not objective. Instead,stress the mess ‘inherited’. This can be done without tribal attacks on Labour. Blaming Labour is the continuation of the ‘red team, blue team’ tribalism that has existed for past 70 years. ‘Blame the last lot for all our unpopular decisions’ etc etc. This inevitably make Lib Dems just look like Tories.

    The same is true on the AV campaign. By turning it into some sort of attempt to bring together a tribal anti-tory coalition the Lib Dem’s have missed the point. Sorry to admit but I found myself agreeing myself Wiith Nigel Farage (BBC1) last night on this matter. The Lib Dems and Yes campaing should have been much more vocal in spreading the message that voting reform was about the VOTERS from right across the political spectrum who are not appropriately respresented at Westminster, includiing UKIP.

    By failing to argue these points correctly, and by being seduced by the tribalsim that always has and always will be the Lib Dems biggest electoral enemy , I’m afraid the Lib Dems are doing more to damage the cause of genuine reform in this country than reactionary elements of the both Labour and the Conservatives parties could only dream of achieveing on their own.

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