The Tories lost more council seats than Labour in last week’s elections
George Osborne (right) and his friend Dodgy Dave Cameron have spent a lot of time squirming recently. The election results should leave them squirming some more.
Let’s just be clear about the real losers of the 2016 UK elections: The Conservative Party.
Despite the huge attention paid to the performance of Jeremy Corbyn’s party, the Conservatives actually suffered a net loss of more than twice as many council seats as Labour, the final local election results have revealed.
With all but one of 124 contested councils having finally declared their results, it can be revealed that the Tories are down 47 seats compared to 18 for Labour.
This conflicts with pre-election analysis that had predicted Labour might lose as many as 150 council seats.
Nationally, with results from 123 out of 124 contested councils now in, the Conservatives have 828 seats, down 47 from before Thursday’s local government elections.
Labour, by contrast have 1,289 seats and are down only 18.
Labour also won the Bristol and London mayoral elections while maintaining its councillor count in some southern English areas including Harlow, Crawley and Southampton.
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Yet another example of the biased reporting on the recent elections by the majority of the right wing biased media incuding of course the BBC.
As you well know, this was the worst performance by any opposition party at this stage in the electoral cycle since 1985. I know you’d prefer the BBC not to point this out, but they have a duty as a public-service broadcaster to deal in facts.
I don’t “well know” anything of the sort. If you want a worse performance by an opposition party at this stage in the electoral cycle since 1985 – and, by the way, 1985 is not representative of this stage in the electoral cycle – try 1988, 1992, 1998.
You are right that the BBC has “a duty as a public service broadcaster to deal in facts”. What a shame it is letting us all down.
But even that piece is wrong. I accept I’m being a pedant but they didn’t maintain their level of Councillors in Crawley, they increased by two. If they had maintained they would still have a majority of 1 which they now don’t.
Hang on. They used to have a majority of one, increased their number of councillors by two, and now don’t have a majority?
On the face of it, that doesn’t make an awful lot of sense.
Can you bring the full details back here, please?
My nephew – who is an elections’ afficionado – has emailed me the following analysis:-
I have crunched some numbers perhaps you could spread them around; they make different reading to what the BBC is reading.
What annoys me is firstly they call these elections midterm when they are not and Laura whatsherface said Labour at this stage of the electoral cycle should be winning hundreds of seats.
Well the figures from previous local elections do not support that assertion.
The first local elections for incumbent governments are usually pretty good and the opposition makes no or little progress. Also the 2012 locals WERE midterm and so Labour did pretty well. Labour are bucking this trend but not the way the media is reporting it. See below.
1980 – after winning the 1979 election the Tories gained 40% of the vote only 2% behind Labour.
1984 – after winning the 1983 election the Tories won the local elections
1988 – after winning the 1987 election the Tories won the local elections.
1992 – after winning the GE the Tories won the local elections with 46% of the vote.
1998 – after winning the 1997 election Labour won the local elections.
2002 – After winning the 2001 GE Labour polled a mere 1% behind the Tories in share of national vote.
2006 – After winning the 2005 GE the government does indeed take a pasting which has been put down to the anger over the Iraq War.
2011 – After winning the largest share of the vote in the 2010 GE and set up the Tory led coalition support for the Tories drops only 1.1% from the GE.
2016 – After winning the 2015 GE the Tories votes drops 6.9% from GE support but this is not widely reported.
As you can see in this stage of the electoral cycle, the incumbent government has tended to do well in the following local elections and so the idea that the opposition should be making progress or grabbing hundreds of seats does not bear scrutiny and is completely wrong.
In fact this is the worse Tory performance in the local elections since 1996 when John Major only got 29% which was an improvement from 1995 when they only got 25% of the vote. But again this is not being reported.
Eleven of those seat losses were not even contested by the Conservatives due to being removed under boundary changes.
Are you sure those were counted? I’m not.
In any case, it would mean the Tories lost only three-and-a-half times as many seats as Labour, rather than four-and-a-half times as many.
Is that such a big difference?
Taking the 11 from the 47 lost gives 36 seats lost compared to Labour’s 18. The details are in the article that you linked to in this thread.
Labour’s 11. Labour gained seven seats in Bristol.
Not really, but I’m sure hayfords will beg to differ!
Good! Again the BBC being less than useless, no wonder respect for them is down the toilet and beyond the U bend!