Another Thursday, another unlikely result…
Watton-at-Stone (East Hertfordshire) result:
LDEM: 67.0% (+67.0)
CON: 30.1% (-36.4)
LAB: 2.9% (-8.3)LDem GAIN from Con.
No UKIP (-14.7) and Grn (-7.7) as prev.
— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) August 23, 2018
Yes, that’s a 51.7% swing, for the aficionados out there.
For the Conservatives, who had previously held all fifty seats on the council, they’ll just have to get used to having an opposition in the Council chamber. Well done to Sophie Cook, one of our younger members, and her team in a part of the county where success has been traditionally hard won.
Elsewhere, a solid defence in Bude, on Cornwall Council…
Results of Bude By-election are in
Lib Dem 1010
Independent 475
Conservative 264
Labour 148Bude returns a hard working Lib Dem to Cornwall Council
— Jacquie Gammon 🔶 (@therapyjacquie) August 23, 2018
See, not all gammon is bad… Again, congratulations to David Parsons and the North Cornwall crew – a lovely bunch from my memory as Presidential consort.
Elsewhere, whilst there weren’t any more wins, there was a reassuring uptick in our vote in Bromborough, on the Wirral, where Vicky Downie and her team have laid down the foundations for next time. Nice hi-vis jacket, by the way.
Bromborough (Wirral) result:
LAB: 47.1% (-3.4)
CON: 28.1% (+15.8)
LDEM: 17.1% (+12.8)
IND: 5.5% (-22.0)
GRN: 2.2% (-1.4)Labour HOLD.
— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) August 23, 2018
We ran candidates in Gotham, Rushcliffe, where Jason Billin scored 7.2%, and in Halewood South, Knowsley, where Jenny McNeilis tallied 6%. Those results might not look exciting, but running candidates tells the public that we’re still out there, so many thanks to both of them for doing the honours.
Finally, no candidate in the North Warwickshire ward of Newton Regis and Warton, although we seemingly didn’t run a candidate in any ward in the District in 2011 or 2015, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. Are the Regional Party on top of this?
So, in summary, two good wins, one somewhere we have a long tradition, one somewhere new, a solid improvement on the Wirral, and green shoots in less promising climes.
Winning is nice, and the underlying improvement is grounds for some optimism, but there’s still some way to go to rebuild our local government base. Luckily, the will is there, and the enthusiasm too.
Once again, thank you to all of you who have stood, helped, or contributed in any way.
* Mark Valladares is Monday Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice.
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26 Comments
And amongst the also-rans (also-stoods) congratulations to Jennie in Knowsley Halewood South for getting slightly more than twice as many as the Tory!
It’s good to be in five out of six contests – and occasionally even the Tories and Labour miss the odd one. There’s just one by-election next week, and we’re in that. But the following week we’re in just one out of four, and that’s disappointing. Regional and national parties need to get on top of the gaps and resuscitate dormant parties – this week it was North Warwickshire. In a couple of weeks time, Carlisle has no candidate for city and county elections, and nor has Tameside for a borough seat. Local voters notice these things, we mustn’t give them that chance.
Of course
… we should be winning in Cornwall anyway.
… you do sometimes get flukes due to it being August with everyone being away.
… if we can’t win in urban seats with Corbyn doing so badly, we are doomed as a party.
… not standing in a seat where we have before shows how much this party has declined.
… it was better in the halcyon days of the 60s/70s/80s/90s/2000s when you had real Liberals standing.
—
Sorry just getting in the spurious reasons people give in one go! Obviously an excellent set of results with a Lib Dem increase in every seat where we stood. Congrats to everyone involved.
A more thoughtful response might be that Mr. Raab’s ‘No deal Brexit’ press conference rather rattled a few people who, having not thought much about it, suddenly didn’t like the sound of it all…… hence Tory vote melts away for now….. as it often has done in the past.
The other more thoughtful response might be that where Lib Dems get off their derrieres and do some work they tend to get more votes than if they don’t. It’s not rocket science and it goes down better with the electorate than the so called flag flying paper person (by definition, the term ‘candidate’ is too strong to describe these ghost like figures of the night.)
A great win & improvements everywhere else. We seem to be doing better than we did in May though we are still doing much better against Tories/in The South than against Labour/in The North.
The big failing is still all those places where we arent standing even “Paper” candidates.
We are doing better though even if the improvement is frustratingly slow.
Bude was a relief after Newquay. East Herts was correspondingly a nice surprise. But as has been said previously performance elsewhere is patchy at best. And the next couple of Thursday’s election rounds have fewer LD candidates to go around.
@David Raw – it’s really simple. No candidate = no votes. Even a paper candidate will pick up some votes, and those who go to vote will notice our candidate on the ballot paper regardless of how they vote themselves. Impressions count, and absence hurts us far more than paper-only candidacies.
On which note, I should say that in three weeks time we’re in 5 out of 6 byelections, and the week after that a full house of 6 out of 6. None of which are LD defences, so anything we win is a gain, and that stretches into the future beyond that for the moment.
Yes I got my comment in early this week so put it on the end of last weeks result comments, as this one was a bit slow getting up, given it was the best week overall for some time! The Bude result was a bit of a relief after the last two results in that part of the world (Torridge, and more recently Newquay) had been losses and another result like that would have been a bit difficult to explain away as local circumstances. This one was complicated by an independent intervention where the candidate had been both a former Conservative candidate not very far behind the Lib Dems, and also a town mayor. The Indy came second and pushed the “official ” Tory down to third, but I am glad to point out we comfortably beat the combined vote of the “two Tories”, and indeed with the Labour vote added in as well.
As for East Herts- this was not just a win from a standing start, but an overwhelming win where there has been no Lib Dem candidate for a very long time if ever. And the the rising vote share wherever we had a candidate. As I have said before I am not keen on the idea of paperless do-nothing candidates, but all of these were campaigns that were worth doing.
These are indeed encouraging results and this is a time when they are very much needed. I was disappointed to read a guardian column on Brexit today saying ‘where are the Liberal Democrat’s’ and belittling Vince Cable .Well the LDs are out there working extremely hard to be heard. Following the great demise of 2015 it has been so difficult to be heard. It is everyone’s responsibility to make sure we are.
@ Chris Bertram “It’s really simple”………….. Yes it is…., and I’m surprised at the naivety of Lib Dems like you who believe the sort of stuff you seem to be saying….. which is an excuse for doing nowt.
Yes, it’s simple. People do notice …..when Lib Dems get a derisory vote…… when Lib Dem opponents have a good laugh and joke about it. They notice when a so called Lib Dem ‘candidate’ doesn’t bother to canvass or make an effort – even though its perfectly possible for a one person band to win a seat by themselves if they make an effort. I’ve done it three times and never lost my seat..
There’s a difference between playing at politics and serving people… that’s the heart of the matter…. It involves hard work, determination, a respect for the rights of the electorate to be properly represented….. and a bit of self respect.
Without any of that you might as well go trainspotting, collect stamps or watch flies buzzing in your window…..
@David Raw – how little you know about me and the ward I work in. Suffice to say that during the May elections I clocked up many thousands of steps on the pedometer and scraped knuckles on lots of uncooperative letter boxes. I will not take lectures from you or anyone else on getting active in the service of the party!
Well said Chris!
Sophie Cook in East Herts clearly has a good team around her. Just as well given that she has to face 49 Tories on the 50 member Council. All power to her supporters in the months ahead.
@David Raw
It is better – in order
1. To stand than not to stand – even if we do nothing / very, very little.
2. To stand and fight an “appropriate” campaign
3. To stand and really go for it.
I would always urge local parties to go for 3. But there may be good reasons for not doing much – we might be conserving money to fight other seats in the future. We might in a big ward decide that it is far, far better to put out ten leaflets in a few polling districts than one across the whole ward.
There is always a vast amount that can be done/achieved in a paperless/no money campaign – canvassing doesn’t cost anything, nor does talking to the local media and it is an opportunity to get members, helpers, supporters, donors.
@ Chris Bertram More than willing, indeed glad, to accept that you have grafted and worked in your own ward…. but you miss the point……. in a local council by-election there should be no excuse for paper candidates when the regional party could/should pile in to help.
@ David,
I suspect that you ask rather more of Regional Parties than is realistic. In my experience as an officer of two Regions (for my apparent sins), most Regional officers have commitments at Local Party and are often councillors too.
They should be asking questions though where Local Parties are consistently failing to field candidates.
@ Mark If that’s the case, Mark, then what are they for ?
This Gammon is one of the Lib Dem Cllrs that hold the majority of seats in North Cornwall and last nights win was a hold of a Lib Dem seat in a winnable Lib constituency and we will unseat the Tory and take our constituency back!
It seems that Lib Dems fair better in local elections where presumably Brexit is not a factor than they do in national elections and polling where the party makes Brexit its defining issue.
David Raw, in his usual down to earth Yorkshire way, is expressing sentiments with which I entirely agree. In their zeal to ‘give the voters a chance to vote Lib Dem’ our more enthusiastic, even more idealist, brethren often make the party look rather silly. I am reminded of a District Council by election near where I live not that long ago, where the Lib Dem candidate ended up with 9 votes, so not even all the ten electors who nominated him could bother actually to give him their support at the ballot box! It reminds me, for some unknown reason, of the story of the Emperor’s new clothes.
Moderator’s note: A personally rude remark above has been removed. Please play the ball not the player.
No one has commented that the only by-election on Thursday where Labour did well was the one we failed to contest.
Suggest this is not coincidence. Theories on postcard to……
Re paper candidates (I to a degree agree with David Raw), a few years ago mid-coalition, we had a by-election in Northwich in a large unitary Ward, totally derelict and one member, she stood. Delivered the ward twice, got about 8%. Probably stopping UKIP taking the Labour seat.
The point is we deliberately got involved, and didn’t embarrass ourselves. In any council by-election it should be easy enough to deliver one half decent leaflet to most of the ward. You won’t get 9 votes. (Didn’t the Tories get 2 votes last week in South Wales)!
To adapt Saki: “She was a good Cook as Cooks go; and as Cooks go, Sophie Cook was never there in the first place”!
It was Sophie BELL, very recent Chair of the ever more politically active Cambridge University Lib Dems, who took Watton-at-Stone ward off the Tories with a 51.7% swing, not Sophie ‘Cook’.
So it’s Sophie BELL who’s going to face the grim ranks of 49 Tories on the 50-seat East Herts council. Since one of the 49 failed to note her party affiliation in the 2015 election, and three more subsequently lost the Tory whip, that’s a mere 45 Tories to face, plus four Condependents.
And – given help and support – it’s the same Sophie BELL, who will hopefully defend her seat successfully in eight months time, and be a standard bearer for Lib Dem gains in some of the other 49 wards.
Well done, and best wishes, Sophie!
I see that in the last full council elections in East Herts, the Tories won 100% of the seats and just 49.8% of the votes. They call that democracy.
Thank you Spencer for making that CLEAR.