Thursday nights are fun at the moment.
Look at that swing!
Congratulations to Andrew Doherty & @CotswoldLibDems on another GAIN!
LD Andrew Doherty: 68.1% (+40.2)
CON: 30.1% (-20.9)
GRN: 1.8% (+1.8) pic.twitter.com/hYbtdoQlEJ— ALDC (@ALDC) February 9, 2017
And one more!
A 2nd GAIN of the night – In North Norfolk DC, Waterside where Marion Millership makes it another win from the Conservatives. pic.twitter.com/gveKwJIWJV
— ALDC (@ALDC) February 9, 2017
The full result is here:
Waterside (North Norfolk) result:
LDEM: 55.1% (+19.8)
CON: 34.8% (-4.8)
UKIP: 6.5% (+6.5)
LAB: 3.5% (-8.5)
No Green this time round.— Britain Elects (@britainelects) February 9, 2017
Well done to Andrew, Marion and their teams. They may like to reflect that they were elected on the 11th anniversary of a spectacular and historic Lib Dem parliamentary by-election victory – when Willie Rennie won Dunfermline and West Fife back in 2006.
Elsewhere, in Tendring, we managed 14.1% of the vote from not even standing a candidate last time as UKIP snatched a council seat.
Great & Little Oakley (Tendring) result:
UKIP: 36.8% (+14.1)
CON: 29.1% (+1.4)
LAB: 19.9% (+5.5)
LDEM: 14.1% (+14.1)
No Independent as prev.— Britain Elects (@britainelects) February 9, 2017
And we didn’t stand in the other two by-elections in Fylde and Corby. The former was held by the Ratepayers and Labour managed a strong hold in the latter, surprising as their previous councillor had been disqualified for non attendance.
* 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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Changes in status: Local Elections wrap up
AM
Ben Wood
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17 Comments
And credible performances elsewhere, despite not standing in all contests!
Sadly we couldn’t win a Town Council seat in Prescot, Knowsley (Merseyside) off Labour, the only plus being the Greens took it off them instead, with our young candidate Rachel coming 2nd I understand. Previously this was a 100% Labour run TC.
Well, well, well. Even Fairford. I have cousins who own land in this area. They will not like this result one little bit, I can tell you. They will find it deeply annoying and unsettling, I suspect, as will many of their neighbours. Fairford Parish Church is the setting for many a society wedding, including that of a distant cousin to a top aristocrat. Four-by-fours fill the carparks here and green wellies squelch in the mud. Everywhere, Waitrose bags. American tourists gaze on in admiration and amazement at the picture postcard scene, and the Cotswold stone really does gleam in the occasional rays of sunlight. The Liberal Democrats have raided the inner sanctum of the old money elite. “Bravo!” I say to that!
Congratulations to both!
Without wishing to harp on about it too much, I hope those who said that “setting ourselves against the will of the people” would be electoral suicide are rethinking their position….
For those who might have missed it, also look at our membership figures in London…
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/liberal-democrat-membership-nearly-doubles-in-london-after-brexit-vote-a3461386.html
At this point, the only mystery is why the national polls seem slow to react to what is happening on the ground. FWIW, I guess is that people are listening to us again (having stopped during the Coalition years) and when they listen, a lot a liking what they hear but this is slow to filter through in areas without a strong Lib Dem presence.
It’s amazing how the party can achieve a 40% swing in a real election (not an opinion poll filtered through the pollsters’ assumptions of likeliness to vote etc) and someone will still come on here and post a negative.
Certainly the coalition period did real damage to our capacity, but the renewed ability to campaign is evident in, well, the results of the campaigns. The membership surge is relevant to ability to campaign, and I say that because I joined after the 2015 election and now I go out campaigning. Maybe the capacity is still lower than in say 2010, I wouldn’t know. What is surely undeniable is that it is a sight better than it was in 2014.
And don’t let anyone think that Fairford is the sort of place that LDs have always been strong, because it isn’t. It is a rural village of the sort that has voted Tory since the Corn Laws. We do have the advantage of being the established opposition party on Cotswold District Council but hitherto our vote has been very much concentrated in Cirencester.
A lot of these elections where we are not winning is about establishing ourselves as a credible opposition so that next time round we are able to capitalise on that.
“I hope those who said that “setting ourselves against the will of the people” would be electoral suicide are rethinking their position….”
It’s almost like having a distinctive and easily explicable position attracts voters. Who knew?
We have a lot of dead areas. Luckily each one of these huge swing victories enthuses a few more people and increases capacity.
Where we are not standing a candidate could not ALDC contact the local Association and urge them strongly to do so ? Perhaps they are already doing this. If any ALDC person is reading this , please let us know.
Sesenco’s comment shows how widely misunderstood places like Fairford are. It’s not far from Chipping Norton and Witney, and I think the same would apply to them as well. Widely assumed to be populated entirely by posh people (hence “Chipping Norton set”), these actually only form a small part of the population. The real local people are not necessarily rich, and they tend to speak with westcountry-ish accents. I canvassed and delivered the by-election in parts of the Witney constituency that were anything but posh. As noted by Adam Cain, a lot of them vote Tory out of habit, and may simply need to presented with an organised alternative.
The Casual Vacancy (in the TV adaptation) is set in a Cotswolds community that would be very like Fairford; it shows up well the contrast between the posh Londoners and the locals.
Great result in the Cotswolds and very encouraging for nearby Minster Lovell in the Witney seat with a by-election next month.
The Evening Standard article is also hugely encouraging but begs the question what initiatives can be developed to support constituencies where party membership is as low as 12 or 15 as is the case in Dagenham & Rainham, although even there they have experienced 25% growth recently!!
Michael – this is something which is, shall we say, a known issue. The main issue seems to be with making sure there’s someone on the ground to put the hours in for nominations and legal stuff (even for a paper or paper-less candidate) in an area with no or little volunteer network. There’s definitely a feeling that this is something Regions and ALDC can help with though, but the nominations/agent stuff is a big hurdle in places with no existing volunteer base.
There are some areas, though, where the local party actually makes a decision not to field a candidate. (I don’t know if this was the case in the two last night).
I’m willing to believe there are some occasions where this is the right decision, strategically. Not many though! And certainly not as many as actually happen. All too often it’s wrong-headed thinking like ‘oh we shouldn’t put up a candidate if we can’t run a campaign’ or ‘I know that ward. We can never win there.’ or ‘we don’t want to split the anti-Tory/Labour/UKIP* vote’ (*delete as applicable). The results we are seeing at the moment are surely enough to convince anyone that it’s worth having a go. Can all local parties PLEEEEASE take note. ALWAYS put up a candidate. ALDC is there to help you. If you’re a ‘black hole’ area, this is how you make progress. If you’re an active local party, it should be a no-brainer.
Alex McFie wrote:
“Sesenco’s comment shows how widely misunderstood places like Fairford are.”
I am well aware of the demographic make-up in Cotswold. Shortly after the Referendum, I commented on this site that Cotswold is an area that while not being hugely wealthy overall has a minority of very wealthy people whose presence explains the small Remain majority.
I was being witty with a view to winding up Tories, but not everyone recognises humour.
It is important to appreciate that in areas like Cotswold it is the very wealthy minority that dominates local politics and ensures that things are done in their interests. In my experience, Liberal Democrats have often been too scared to stand up to the rural very wealthy, and some Liberal Democrats actually belong to that stratum themselves.
People perhaps ought not to comment when they have no local knowledge! The Fylde contest was very unusual, if not quite unprecedented. The swing to the winning candidate (who had been disqualified for not attending for six months) was also unusual, if not astonishing if you don’t know the local story. Certainly a one-off
In Corby it may be that we just haven’t got anyone? An unusual town.
Tony
It is reported that at Corby there were more postal votes returned than visitors to the polling station.
See the comments on ConHome
http://www.conservativehome.com/localgovernment/2017/02/council-by-election-results-from-yesterday-113.html
The Tendring contest was not in a promising area for us. I’m disappointed we didn’t beat Labour, but consider 14% a fairly good vote from scratch on a campaign of deliberately limited effort given the looming county council elections. While this is an area with UKIP support, their candidate was well-known in the community and the Tory was reportedly not very popular, so the result is very much a local thing.
Tony J There are times, of course, more importantly than not splitting the vote etc, where fielding a candidate can split the local activist / member / supporter group. That can be catastrophic, and is a very potent reason why sometimes it is not the right decision to field a candidate. I am sure other “old timers” will know of cases where such a decision has led to years in the wilderness.