Are we past Peak Corbyn or was LE2018 just a bump in the road? You can tell a lot about how well a party has done by where a leader goes to celebrate their election victories. Theresa May (no doubt unwittingly) re-emphasised her caution-first nature by travelling all the way to Wandsworth: a council the Tories have held since 1978. She could have gone to Nuneaton, where the Tories stripped Labour of a sizable majority (unlike Wandsworth, where it was…
BBC News One of the things that generally happens on local election nights is that the media narrative is determined by what happens in the first few hours of results. So the big coverage was of Lab’s failure to take its key targets in London and of course the antisemitism element of the result from Barnet. But now that we’ve got just about all the results in we seen clearly that the big winners were the Lib Dems who have…
How losing seats can be presented as a victory I have just got off the phone from someone who was working for the Conservative campaign yesterday in a key ward in Wandsworth which was eventually held by the party by margin of 36 votes. One of his observations was that Labour had dozens of activists on the ground with apparently very little to do. He said that they seemed to be without direction and they would go mob handed from…
Have we seen the high water of Corbynism? Over the past few weeks there have been several posts here suggesting that the best bet of the local elections was on the key LAB target in London – Barnet. TSE started it all on March 25th when the Tories were 5/1 with Ladbrokes and he suggested that that we should bet that LAB wouldn’t do it. Then we heard from Sean Fear and myself who argued that this borough, where a…
The BBC count at 0249 pic.twitter.com/akC9ahqCsp — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) May 4, 2018 But there’s still a long way to go I’m off to bed! Mike Smithson Follow @MSmithsonPB Tweet
Nuneaton & Bedworth, results of seats up: Con: 11 (+9)Lab: 6 (-8)Grn: 0 (-1) Chgs. w/ 2014 — Britain Elects (@BritainElects) May 3, 2018 Senior tories expecting Labour to take Trafford – would be a big win for them, taking prosperous NW Tory area – currently only Tory council in NW — Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) May 3, 2018 FWIW: I'm refusing to buy Labour's current line that Wandsworth is totally out of reach. What's clear, though, is that they were…
How will the big picture compare with the polls? Although large parts of the UK do not have elections today this, unless something exceptional happens, will be the last big electoral test before Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29th next year. Because of the nature of the seats that are being fought it is expected that Labour will do very well. A total of 42% of them are in London which is very good territory for…
Just been to vote. Was informed that two people had already turned up without ID this morning so had been unable to vote. Very worrying and backs up all the evidence that the voter ID pilot in Bromley is plain wrong. — Ellie Reeves (@elliereeves) May 3, 2018 This is also happening in Swindon Borough where some who have none of the approved ID have also not received their ballot cards. — Sarah Bowles (@sarahbowlesuk) May 3, 2018 In none…