Featured Photo: By Nilfanion from Wikimedia. License.
Yesterday the UK public exercised their Democratic duties by electing thousands of councilors in wards across hundreds of councils in England – 248 councils to be exact, 259 if you also count the council elections in Northern Ireland, but this post is specifically focusing on the results in England.
Widely I was expecting the results to be interesting, although the elections are for local goings ons, many times it is shown that people still vote based on how they feel about actions of the wider national government and nowhere has this been more obvious than yesterday’s results, where the dissatisfaction for both of the main parties – Conservatives and Labour – was resounding.
Conservatives did historically bad and it was generally expected, with senior figures of the party expecting to lose possibly as many as 1,000 council seats and they were not far off, losing over 1,300 seats, giving them a horrible night and leading them to lose more than 40 councils. After such huge losses you would have expected that Labour, the Conservative parties historic and main rival, would have benefited greatly from this, would have capitalized off of the Conservative slaughter at the polls, but no.
Labour themselves, although not doing anywhere near as bad as the Conservatives, also suffered at the polls, ending in a net loss of just over 80 council seats and a net loss of 6 councils. It was not them by any means that benefited from the Conservative losses and for a main opposition party that has been in its position of opposition for 9 years now, it is not at all what they should have got, for them making less than 500 net council seat gains would have been a bad night, this, this was an embarrassment for Labour and goes to show that the electorate is becoming tired with the parties identity and perhaps, with Corbyn himself, such as his inaction over a proper BREXIT stance.
While the two main parties reel from the blows they took, the smaller opponents wallow in gains, the real winners of the night were the 3rd parties and independents, who gained hundreds of council seats, the biggest winners being the Liberal Democrats, who gained nearly 700 council seats and made a net gain of 10 councils. The Green Party also had a very good night, possibly there best ever performance in a local election, gaining just under 200 council seats. And then Independents themselves, including the Resident’s Association, which is a loosely based group of local independents, gained just under 700 council seats and even took control of a few Councils as well. While the night was good for other 3rd Parties, the UKIP party, as was widely expected, lost a majority of their seats, although in a few wards there was evidence of a UKIP resurgence, nationally the trend of the UKIP fall seen in previous elections continued with them losing over 150 council seats, this number was also exacerbated by the fact that they didn’t contest most seats in the elections as well.
We could go on for a while discussing the exact reasons why this happened. The main parties say it is down to people protest voting over inaction of BREXIT, the Liberal Democrats and Greens say it is due to people who do not want BREXIT, while others say it is people who are simply just fed up with the two main parties. The fact of the matter is, something big did happen and the national influence is beyond obvious but at the same time we also have to keep in mind that many people also vote purely due to local issues, for example, losses suffered by Labour in Sunderland councils were due to dissatisfaction with the Labour councils and also likely influenced by a local Labour councilor who was exposed as an active pedophile. It could also be likely for the Greens as well that the Extinction Rebellion protests by environmentalists in London also played a part by bringing awareness to the threat of climate change.
We must also keep in mind that local government parties are very different to their national counterparts, some voters prefer to vote for one party nationally and a complete national rival locally just due to the fact that they believe they run local government better, rather than national government and vice versa. Local elections are very complex and so putting it down to any one specific thing is often the wrong way to go about it, yes, this local election was clearly influenced widely by the current national mood, but local factors still play a large part as well.
We must also keep in mind that these local elections didn’t have the influence of the newly created BREXIT and ChangeUK parties, with them could the outcome have been different? Perhaps. Some may simply have voted one way as there were no other alternative or some may also not have voted at all or just spoiled their ballot in protest, there were in fact reports of higher than usual ballot spoiling.
The next big electoral challenge is just around the corner and these are the EU Parliament elections later this month. Although there is a chance the UK could still leave the EU before these happen, it is very unlikely. Recent polls are already indicating that the results are going to be interesting, with Nigel Farage’s newly created BREXIT Party actually polling the highest out of other parties, with Labour close behind them. The new ChangeUK party will also be contesting the EU Parliament elections, some worry that the vote split between ChangeUK and the Liberal Democrats could squander the Remain presence and allow the BREXIT Party to get even more MEPs than they would otherwise had gotten. It will be exciting to see how things change after these elections take place and the analysis of them.
And now for a small little focus on the result of Northern Ireland’s local election results, taking a lot longer to come through due to the electoral process being different, such as proportional representation and multiple rounds of voting for each election. But in the end a very similar picture emerged, the two main parties, the Democratic Unionists (currently in coalition with the Conservatives in government) and Sinn Fein, didn’t benefit from these elections, with the DUP making losses and Sinn Fein not making any net gains or losses. The biggest winners were again the smaller parties and independents, specifically the Alliance Party being the biggest winners. Yet again this is showing that more people are becoming dissatisfied with what normally are the two dominant parties.
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