17 Comments

• David Wilkinson 14th May '13 - 8:28am

  The Forest of Dean, a really weird place and now they voting UKIP

• Tim Prater 14th May '13 - 10:15am

  Confused with the figures for Folkestone & Hythe, which comprises the 6 Shepway divisions plus one ward (Saxon Shore) which is split between Ashford Rural South & Ashford East divisions, both of which also cover a number of other wards.

  Given you can’t compute the Saxon Shore vote on that basis (without some very hard sums and box counts I don’t think exist) you can only go on the total results of the Shepway divisions, which make up the huge majority of the Folkestone & Hythe constituency.

  On my maths (and results from http://www.kent.gov.uk/your_council/how_the_council_works/elections/role_of_a_county_councillor/election_results_map.aspx) that would have left UKIP just 103 votes behind the Conservatives:

  UKIP 8,265
  Con 8,368
  Lab 3,259
  Lib Dem 2,543
  Green 2,216

  I’m interested in how you get to a Conservative vote of 10,100. It looks like the figures may have added in the ENTIRE Ashford Rural South vote (even then, the figures don’t quite compute) which given Saxon Shore is a small part of that division seems strange.

• Caracatus 14th May '13 - 10:26am

  Folkstone and Hyde – wasn’t that a Lib Dem target seat ? Now the party can’t come third in the local elections or was that 5th behind the Greens ?

• Stephen W 14th May '13 - 11:34am

  To note, yes, the Aylesbury result is entirely down to HS2. They won 4 wards in Buckinghamshire, and unsurprisingly they were 4 wards exactly on the route of HS2.

• John Doran 14th May '13 - 11:35am

  They won 3 in Surrey. Godstone, Shalford and Staines South/Ashford West (by 4 votes). Shalford was the amusing one. The Tories “forgot” to put up a candidate.

  The Greens took their first seat in Redhill East.

  Lib Dems lost 4.

• Snagglepus 14th May '13 - 4:23pm

  “They won 4 wards in Buckinghamshire, and unsurprisingly they were 4 wards exactly on the route of HS2.”

  Time to bring the Vogons into Aylesbury?! 😉

• A Social Liberal 14th May '13 - 8:22pm

  Is there anywhere centrally I can get the ward by ward figures for the county council elections?

• BrianD 15th May '13 - 8:41am

  @Social Liberal
  The count is by electoral division for county seats. A link to Individual division numbers are (or should be ) available from the County Council website

• Peter Chivall 15th May '13 - 12:33pm

  The Aylesbury result is interesting in 2 ways – if UKIP benefitted from the anti-HS2 vote it shows that nobody reads manifestos – UKIP want THREE High Speed lines to the North? Otherwise credit to the LDs in that area for a strong combined vote compared to some of our disappointments elsewhere.
  BTW who won the County seats in Eastleigh?

• Clive Sneddon 15th May '13 - 1:09pm

  Thanks Stephen for drawing this information together. Taken as a whole, your figures suggest to me that UKIP did well in areas historically strongly Tory where no other party had established itself as a credible challenger for first place. Certainly Lib Dem support is weak in most of these seats, with possible exceptions in HS2-land and West Sussex, and only in Kent and the Forest of Dean does Labour get to 5000 or more. Europe may yet have a role to play, though, in that UKIP did particularly well (which is also clear from the Guardian’s mapping of UKIP seats) in those counties east of the Greenwich meridian which geographically qualify for Central European Time. Scope here for a concerted campaign to persuade voters of the benefits of maintaining close trading and social links with the neighbours, extending to migration, which, as for the UK as a whole, is almost certainly two-way?

• Benjamin Mathis 15th May '13 - 3:53pm

  I hate to poo-poo a fun-sounding suggestion, Clive, but time zones are (theoretically at least) 15 degree segments CENTRED on the Greenwich Meridian. Theoretical GMT therefore would cover the area from 7.5W to 7.5E. Far from Eastern parts of England “belonging” in CET, actually, the Eastern boundary of theoretical GMT runs almost perfectly along the German border.

  France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and all but the Westernmost parts of Spain and Portugal (which are actually in GMT-1) ought to take their time from London!

  Tim Prater – I included a percentage – off the top of my head I can’t remember exactly what figure – of the vote in Ashford Rural E and S. As you say, I have no access to box counts so the figures for split divisions are necessarily approximate.

  In general, I think what we may be seeing is UKIP filling a niche in relation to the Tories as the BNP did for a while in relation to Labour. Note, I am NOT entering into a comparison between the two parties’ policies or candidates, just where they sit in the political “ecosystem.”

  For a few years in the early/mid 2000s, the BNP thrived in areas where Labour traditionally predominated, maybe became complacent and where people – especially in lower income and social groups – felt ignored. Crucially, they did well in areas where there was little or no active opposition activity except the BNP. Oldham, Burnley and Barking were not just perpetually Labour, but there was little Lib Dem, Tory or Green activity.

  Now we are seeing UKIP perform a similar role in hegemonic Tory councils. UKIP did little or nothing in areas where there was an active opposition from Labour or from us, but in counties and parts of counties where the Conservatives usually walk it with no significant challenge, they won multiple seats.

• Chris_sh 15th May '13 - 8:37pm

  @Benjamin Mathis

  “Now we are seeing UKIP perform a similar role in hegemonic Tory councils. UKIP did little or nothing in areas where there was an active opposition from Labour or from us, but in counties and parts of counties where the Conservatives usually walk it with no significant challenge, they won multiple seats.”

  Surely that’s only partially true though? In Devon UKIP won a seat from the Lib Dems with 33% of the vote, previously the LDP won the seat with 50% (2009). Devon as a whole has a lot of seats where Lib Dems were hitting 20%+ in seats in 2009 (in fact I think there were only about 9 seats where their vote share was less than 20%), plus of course there were other parties competing in many of the seats (e.g. Greens, Labour, Ind). UKIP contested 33 seats in 2009, in 2013 they competed in 32 of these seats (as well as a lot of new seats obviously), they increased there vote share in all but 2 of those and actually increased their actual vote in 20 and won 4 seats. One of those I’ve mentioned already, but the remaining 3 also had multiple parties competing (both in 2009 and 2013), in fact these were all seats where Lib Dems took over 20%+ of the vote.

  If anything, in Devon UKIP seem to have done well because of the collapse in the LD vote (rather than just taking votes from the CP), if the vote hadn’t collapsed then there is a good chance that many seats would have gone to the LDP.

• Sesenco 15th May '13 - 11:45pm

  Benjamin Mathis wrote:-

  “Now we are seeing UKIP perform a similar role in hegemonic Tory councils.”

  Really? In Worthing, Adur and Shepway, where the Lib Dems once had outright control? In Swale and Rochford, where the Lib Dems were once the largest party? In Thanet, which was briefly controlled by Labour in the early Blair years?

  These are areas where the LibDems have very conspicuously failed. Adur evaporated. Worthing sank, but not without trace. In Shepway, Lib Dems fought each other instead of their opponents. In Swale and Rochford, the party likewise vanished. In Thanet, the Lib Dem presence has always been invisible, despite the obvious potential supplied by decades of Tory neglect.

  Immigration is only part of it. True, in Kent there is a widespread antipathy towards people from across the Channel. It used to be the French, who took to the ferries and annoyed the locals. It’s now East Europeans, who’ve flocked into the county to accept the starvation wages offered by the fruit and hop agri-businesses. But if it’s just down to dislike of foreigners, why did the National Front and the BNP never get anywhere in Kent? There has to be something more than that, something to do with the very justified feeling that these areas have been left behind. Walk through Guildford or Newbury and you get the feeling that these towns are booming. Folkestone and Margate don’t have quite the same “buzz”.

  In the 1980s, the Liberal/SDP Alliance was the biggest party in Gillingham, Maidstone, Shepway, Swale and Tonbridge & Malling, with Canterbury and Tunbridge Wells following along a few years later. With the notable exception of Maidstone, and possibly also Canterbury, all that has vanished. Why has Kent been such a disaster area for the party? These are questions we need answered if we’re to survive as a party.

  I’m not going to pontificate about Devon, because I know very little about Devon. Only to say that the coastal sprawl from Seaton along to Dartmouth failed to shift to UKIP in the way that the Kent and Sussex coasts did. But it was still a disaster for the Liberal Democrats, with or without UKIP.

  So what’s the answer? (1) Get out of this wretched, wretched coalition, and (2) start offering real solutions to these forgottenlands that have been so effortlessly seduced by the outside right.

• Richard Underhill 16th May '13 - 2:52pm

  All the Home Counties except Buckinghamshire benefited when the Conservatives under John Major were divided over Europe. Could that happenn again?

  In Tunbridge Wells there was vigorous campaigning and achievement for the Pembury bypass.

  In 1997, 2001 and 2005 there were general elections on the same day as the county elections, which increased the turnout substantially. In 2009 there were euro-elections. The Medway towns have become unitary and taken out of Kent County council which reduced the perceptions of likelihood of breaking Tory control.

• David White 17th May '13 - 1:38pm

  I doubt that either we LDs or the OldCons need have nervous breakdowns about the Frightful Farage and his contemptible chums.

  Unless my less than profound research is wrong, UKIP lost council seats which they already had in both Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire. Does this not suggest that the Farageists are useless when the electorate is so misguided as to give UKIP any power?

• R Uduwerage-Perera 20th May '13 - 9:22am

  “I doubt that either we LDs or the OldCons need have nervous breakdowns about the Frightful Farage and his contemptible chums.”

  As a student of history, specifically the period known as the Holocaust, a Criminologist and someone than works within the equalities arena as an advocate for victims of discrimination I am horrified by the growth of Ukip and the apparent lacklustre of our Party to expose the Far Right and its odious agenda.

  If we do not demonstrate to the public, and specifically the minority ethnic communities that we will not tolerate intolerance and the hate filled and racist diatribe of Ukip and similar groups, then what exactly do we have to offer these communities, and why should they vote for us?

  Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera
  English Party Diversity Champion
  Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats – Vice Chair

  (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz – “I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.”)

• Simon Banks 5th Jun '13 - 8:14pm

  Benjamin: this is not entirely true. In Brightlingsea, a Tory-held division in Essex which had been Lib Dem in the past and was a target seat for us this time, we had strength at more local levels, had run strong campaigns on local issues and had a well-established candidate who was a district councillor. He beat the Tory but narrowly lost to UKIP who therefore took the seat.