Taking Stock...

With very little to report on by way of by-elections, this week’s one and only electoral contest was for a seat on Workington Town Council and sported no Liberal Democrat candidate, the ALDC by-elections team has decided to spend the week number-crunching our election results and are presenting some edited highlights here.  With a net loss of between 129 and 136 council seats (the discrepancy between our – latter – figures and the BBC’s appears to be the result of different approaches to classifying seats that have seen defections), it was a bad night for Liberal Democrats in local government.  Our actual losses around the country numbered 228, with the net loss figures softened by the approximately 100 gains that are the silver lining on this particular cloud.

The now-defunct Labour Government’s decision to stage the general election on the same day as the locals appears largely responsible for the over 400 net gains made by Labour around the country, a peculiar party-political privilege that may have been used for the last time - its repeal features in Nick Clegg’s forthcoming parliamentary reform bill.  Labour proved our main opponents in Unitary and Metropolitan council areas, in each of which over 80% of our losses were to Labour.  Our overall outcome in the Unitaries was one of our better results, with just nine net losses in councillor numbers, but of those we lost, Labour proved the principal beneficiaries.  This trend was replicated in our London results, where two-thirds of all our losses were to Labour, and further compounded by the London elections being all-out.  In total, 44% of all Lib Dem losses, 102 seats, were sustained in the capital.  The trend was bucked in the English District Councils, where our greatest opposition has proved to be the Tories.  Of the 44 recorded losses in the Districts, 27 were to the Conservatives, 61% of the total.  As the coalition approaches its first anniversary next May, the shape of the campaigns in the Districts will be interesting to watch.  The summary tables of our ward losses are reprinted below.

With a deferred election for the three seats of the London Borough of Camden’s Haverstock ward and a by-election in Ryde South on the Isle of Wight, there will hopefully be richer pickings for us next week.  In the meantime, remember to keep up to date with all the latest guidance, artwork, and advice, available at www.aldc.org.