Party
|
Number of Candidates
|
Total Vote
|
%
|
+/-
Oct |
Average/
contest |
+/-
Oct |
+/-
Seats |
Conservative
|
25
|
17,663
|
38.3%
|
+13.5%
|
707
|
+311
|
+5
|
Labour
|
25
|
12,250
|
26.6%
|
-0.9%
|
490
|
+37
|
-3
|
LibDem
|
23
|
8,043
|
17.4%
|
-0.8%
|
350
|
+18
|
0
|
UKIP
|
15
|
2,129
|
4.6%
|
-1.6%
|
142
|
-16
|
0
|
Green
|
11
|
1,118
|
2.4%
|
-2.4%
|
102
|
-33
|
-1
|
SNP*
|
3
|
2,875
|
6.2%
|
+0.5%
|
958
|
-486
|
-1
|
PC**
|
2
|
1,324
|
2.9%
|
+1.9%
|
662
|
+497
|
+1
|
TUSC
|
0
|
0
| |||||
Ind***
|
3
|
524
|
1.1%
|
-6.6%
|
175
|
-57
|
-1
|
Other****
|
2
|
178
|
0.4%
|
-3.7%
|
89
|
-174
|
0
|
* There were three by-elections in Scotland
** There were two by-elections in Wales
*** There were no Independent clashes
**** Others this month consisted of the English Democrats (14) and Newcastle First (164)
Overall, 46,104 votes were cast over 26 local authority (tier one and tier two) contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. The Conservatives won 15 contests, Labour eight, LibDems two, and PC one. Labour held two seats with a 500+ safe margin, while the Tories held onto four by a similar margin. In all, six seats changed hands. For comparison with October's results, see here.
What a rum month for Labour. Okay, you can put the large margin between it and the Tories down to the character of seats fought. But two of the three lost were to the Tories. Meanwhile, they picked theirs up from the Greens, Indies, and SNP(!). Politics is in a very weird place, but to have an incumbent government scoop a net gain of five is unprecedented. Well, for at least as long as I've covered by-elections. Whatever, this is a poor performance from Labour. Is it the Corbyn factor? It's too early to tell, however it does appear the reds have been caught a few times by the coming back of the LibDems. So politics realigned to accommodate UKIP and push the LibDems into fourth in England and Wales, Brexit and the collapse of the purples (how else can you describe their continued poor performance?) has put rocket boosters under the yellow team's recovery, and that means sluicing support off Labour too, helping cost them a seat here and there. Can it be contained? Yes, but we need to be clear what our Brexit position is. That we're all sixes and sevens suggests no one has learned the lessons of the last general election.
3 comments:
I Don't understand why Corbyn and Momentum do not organise a large scale Socialist Campaign For Europe or something like it.
The Liberals uncritical support for the EU, which is also now likely to be a focus for Blair, and his blighted attempt to recreate an artificial political centre is a non starter. It might pull in those middle class sections within the 48%, for whom workers rights do not matter, but for Labour it would be death.
Firstly, it would not pull back all those Labour voters in the forgotten parts of the country like Stoke, that voted "Leave" by a large proportion, but secondly, it offers no progressive way forward for all those Labour voters and potential Labour voters within the 48% who voted Remain, DESPITE their opposition to the bureaucratic and conservative nature of the EU's ruling bodies.
It makes sense to me to focus on the 48%, but Labour should do it, by organising frequent large scale demonstrations and events based around the need to create a different type of Europe, which is what Corbyn and McDonnell say their position is anyway.
In 1980, Michael Foot led the Labour Party into a massive 51% in the opinion polls, way ahead of the Tories, by organising large scale demonstrations in major cities against the Tories austerity policies and rising unemployment. So, far we have seen nothing similar from Corbyn, despite the new massive membership of the party, and the organisational possibilities it provides.
Instead it seem to be falling into the same old errors of electioneering. Corbyn keeps telling us about his contacts with socialists and social democrats like Syriza, Podemos etc, across Europe, now its time to utilise that, and to build a progressive socialist movement across Europe, with a focus on direct co-operation by workers and workers organisations across Europe, whether those workers be inside or outside the EU, and a focus should be immediately on insisting that whether the Tories take Britain out of the EU, Labour and its supporters will continue to demand that workers have the same rights in Britain as in the rest of the EU, and that we will seek to expand and entrench those rights, and not all national division to create a race to the bottom.
The problem, Boffy, is twofold: 1. I don't have the exact statistics, but Labour membership is almost certainly piled up disproportionately in the cities. The huge expansion of membership hasn't had any effect in non-Labour areas, so thousands of members in Brighton, Liverpool, London and Bristol will almost certainly be preaching to their own, even if they're mobilised; and 2. Even more pressingly, the leadership are far too impressed with themselves being the leadership to, y'know, actually do anything much of the time. For all the controversy back in September 2015, it's remarkable how invisible Corbyn (in particular) has often been.
the "leave" votes were heavily concentrated in (university) cities too: 48% overall but only 25% of seats had "remain" majorities, which were often huge, like 75% in Corbyn's seat.
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