This quarter 184,996 votes were cast over 98 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. Please note several seats were newly created or unfilled vacancies, so councillor gains/losses won't tally. For comparison you can view Quarter one's results here.
Party | Number of Candidates | Total Vote | % | +/- Q1 22 | +/- Q2 2021 | Average | +/- Seats |
Conservative | 92 | 54,607 | 29.5% | -6.6 | -10.3 | 594 | -21 |
Labour | 80 | 69,360 | 37.5% | +17.0 | +4.5 | 867 | +11 |
LibDem | 64 | 33,386 | 18.0% | -9.3 | +6.8 | 522 | +15 |
Green | 42 | 14,194 | 7.7% | +1.5 | +0.1 | 338 | +4 |
SNP* | 1 | 96 | 0.1% | -1.4 | -0.5 | 96 | 0 |
PC** | 2 | 611 | 0.3% | +0.3 | -0.3 | 306 | 0 |
Ind*** | 42 | 12,172 | 6.6% | -0.8 | +1.7 | 290 | -1 |
Other**** | 11 | 750 | 0.4% | -0.7 | -1.8 | 68 | -1 |
* There was one by-election in Scotland
** There were two by-elections in Wales
*** There were eight Independent clashes
**** Others this month consisted of Harlow Alliance (76), Liberal Party (84), Reform UK (36, 107, 35), SDP (125), TUSC (69, 46), UKIP (24, 25), and the Yorkshire Party (93)
Oh dear, the worst quarter for the Conservatives in the nine years I've been covering council by-elections. The party has really suffered while Labour and the Liberal Democrats can toast very strong performances - for Labour, probably the best in the same time interval. Either Tory local authorities have suddenly got really bad, or significant numbers of their voters are turning against the party. Perhaps a bit of tactical voting is in the mix too. It would seem the concern I had last month about the depression of the Labour vote is a thing of the past. With another month of Johnsonian scandal under the belt, another parliamentary suspension, and who knows what else might come out in July it's reasonable to expect the trend of Labour success to continue - along with Tory woe.
Image Credit
2 comments:
«Oh dear, the worst quarter for the Conservatives in the nine years I've been covering council by-elections.»
There are elections that matters more to people's material interests, and those that matter less (local, regional, in the past european elections, and most national politics by-elections). In the latter the vote is less constrained by "realpolitik" and so they are largely student-politics alike popularity polls.
«Either Tory local authorities have suddenly got really bad, or significant numbers of their voters are turning against the party.»
Or rather most Conservative media are attacking not the party, but the prime minister, because it is a factional fight inside (and outside) the party. Only incidentally LibDems and New Labour are benefiting as many Conservative voters abstain or switch to a protest vote.
The same happened in the 2004 local elections, in which the New Labour vote collapsed to very low levels due to Tony Blair's electoral toxicity, and his misdeeds were much more consequential than Johnson's (or Starmer's) beers or small examples of favouritism, but New Labour still got a majority of seats in the 2005 national elections as many voters did not dare to vote against a government that had delivered massive upward redistribution from "losers".
Conservative voters knew well what kind of prime minister they were electing in 2019, and they could hardly care less as long as he delivered big property based upward redistribution, and a very hard brexit, and he has been delivering. If Johnson is not replaced by a "whig" thatcherite before the next national election the Conservative media will not continue to attacking him, and most Conservative voters will not risk unseating a government that has delivered such booming wealth and incomes to them entirely at the expense of the lower classes.
The real trouble for Johnson will be if enduring inflation forces the BoE to raise the base interests rates from -8% in real terms to a higher level, thus crashing the property (and bond) markets.
But as long as property prices balloon by 14%, "inflation" is 9%, and mortgages are 4% (that is deeply negative in real terms with respect to both property prices and "inflation") all those Conservative voters will not want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
The most interesting recent news is that L. Summers, a "progressive" usually closely aligned with globalist thatcherite ("centrist") interests, has been calling for a brutal and long recession, and if that happens there will be a repeat of the 1990s crash. That is Starmer's best hope to be a second Tony Blair.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/larry-summers-says-us-needs-194455450.html
«“We need five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation -- in other words, we need two years of 7.5% unemployment or five years of 6% unemployment or one year of 10% unemployment,” said Summers said in a speech in London Monday. [...] The median forecast showed unemployment rising to 4.1% by 2024, from 3.6% in May. “The gap between 7.5% unemployment for two years and 4.1% unemployment for one year is immense,” said Summers, a Harvard University professor and paid contributor to Bloomberg Television. “Is our central bank prepared to do what is necessary to stabilize inflation if something like what I’ve estimated is necessary?”»
That is far more important the usual Conservative media hypocritical posturing about beers and groping.
«The most interesting recent news [...] That is far more important the usual Conservative media hypocritical posturing about beers and groping.»
I ought to apologize for miswriting exactly the opposite of what must be true: that news and debates about beers at meetings, gropings in clubs, wallpaper expenses are far more interesting and important and the real core of politics, rather than the boring and insignificant side details about the debate on how much unemployment is needed to shrink wages; the latter is something that is best left to experts, as it is not a political matter, but a mere technicality. :-)
Post a Comment