Catching up on a couple of councils that I was watching…
Gloucester has certainly seen an upheaval from a clear Conservative majority to a slightly awkward NOC. The good news is that the Lib Dems are the largest party with 17 (an increase of 7), compared with Conservatives on 11, Labour 7 and Others 4. Let’s hope our Council Group can find 3 others they can work with to make a working majority.
I have now moved the news about Elmbridge here. Our team in Elmbridge increased their seats but were just two short of the number needed for an overall majority. They will continue to run a minority administration, no doubt with the support of some of the Residents Associations, which has been working well for the past year.
And then we left Woking at the point where we knew they had won, but before all the results were in. And a great outcome – Lib Dems hold 24 out of 30 seats on the Council – and that included defeating Michael Gove’s election agent. No Conservatives left at all, in fact.
As we wrap up for the night there appear to be five councils that are nowhere near a result, or may not have actually started counting yet. None of them carry much interest for the Lib Dems.
In terms of control of Councils, Lib Dems have held 10, gained 2 and lost none.
And finally, here is the score line for the number of council seats won so far.
Feels good, doesn’t it?
* 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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4 Comments
I’m encouraged by the results and the associated Skynews projection suggesting a hung Parliament with in a pivotal third place. Exciting times…
It’s also worth pointing out that at this stage we have won more seats and councils than the Tories.
Mary Fulton:
I mentioned that on another thread, but against that I listened to podcast discussions from Sky news and BBC Today in which the performance of Liberal Democrats was not discussed at all. Quite some feat on Sky when they emphasised that their projection did not give Labour an overall majority.
It is up to our leading voices to press our case now. Each of our constituencies need to tally the votes and work out whether the result corresponds to a FPTP win for us. Moreover we have to be lobbying the TV and radio outlets for decent representation. Currently Reform UK get more attention than us despite a miserable showing in the local elections; basically they do not have the organisation and active membership to sustain much of a national campaign; they are heavily dependent on tabloids and indulgence from national media.
I have also noticed a lack of reporting of Lib Dem gains on radio stations such as LBC and Times Radio. The Greens are getting far more coverage even though they have won fewer seats and on the latest count the gap is widening. And you would not realise from all of this coverage that the Lib Dems are second to labour in terms of seat gains.