Media spin makes it seem Tories and Labour were hit equally hard in local elections. NOT TRUE
Not my image: Somebody else made this – indicating that concerns over the BBC’s claim to impartiality are well-founded.
Look at the state of this. The Conservatives have lost almost ten times as many seats as Labour, but the mainstream media have lumped them together to make it seem they have been equally hit:
The Conservatives and Labour have faced a backlash at the ballot box over the Brexit deadlock, with smaller parties and independents winning seats.
In England so far, the Tories have lost almost 800 seats and 28 councils overall, while the Liberal Democrats have gained more than 450 seats.
Labour has lost more than 80 seats.
At the time of writing, the Tories have lost 848 seats, and Labour is 90 behind its previous total.
Labour’s performance has not been wonderful, especially in the context of previous elections in these council areas. In 2015 the party under previous leader Ed Miliband lost 203 council seats.
But the Conservative collapse has been catastrophic, when judged by the same yardstick. In 2015, that party gained 541 seats.
This year’s result has wiped out those gains and seems likely to take away from the party almost as many seats again – possibly even more.
The MSM are also discussing each party’s share of the vote, saying Labour and the Tories are tied on 28 per cent. That’s just one per cent lower than in 2015 for Labour…
But it represents a massive seven per cent plunge for the Conservatives.
Oh, and the Liberal Democrats who are crowing about their 503 gains?
It simply means they’ve gained back the ground they lost in 2015, when 411 seats went to other parties in a reaction against the hated ConDem coalition of 2010-2015, with a few extra that may be attributed to the main parties’ lack of progress on Brexit.
Source: Local elections: Tories and Labour hit by Brexit backlash in polls – BBC News
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The worrying number is “Other – +655 seats” Many of these are “Independents” who are either Tories in disguise or further right than that.
I totally agree, Mike. Real distortions going on. Even taking this bias into account, the MSM still fails to analyse very complex voting patterns in their urge to find a simple story. Their simple story, playing into Tory pro-Brexit accounts, is that Labour suffered in “Leave” areas for not smoothing the passage of Brexit.
Yet, in Kent, a definitely “Leave” area, Labour has taken Gravesham Council, nearly took Thanet Council( forcing Thanet UKIP into oblivion and the Tories into all kinds of coalition arithmetic headaches),gained Council seats in Folkestone and elsewhere, and even gained an historic three seats on the Town Council in quaint little Sandwich.
There is so much more going on than just “Brexit frustration”.
So pleased to see Tory candidate trounced up and down the country. Particularly satisfying to see Rees-Mogg’s Tory council ousted. The Labour leadership, however, must come off the fence and declare the 2016 referendum just an internal Tory Party quarrel and a total fraud – the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the nation.
Comparison with 2015, before the 2017 ‘surge’, isn’t really honest, though, is it? The simple fact is that a month or so back, both major parties were polling around 38-40% in national opinion polls, yet the local election performance for both came in around 28%. Labour was simply lucky that there were no elections in London and the big cities and that the Tories had the 2015 high water mark to defend.
Comparison with 2015 is the only honest one available as that was the last time these particular seats were up for election.
It isn’t about the 2017 “surge”; it’s about the last election in these places.