[Closed] Local elections

Independent candidates are often the best. They don't have the same party loyalties or, importantly, ambitions. Too many party candidates are only in it for a future career on the Westminster/Holyrood gravy trains.

Check just how independent they really are though. We've certainly had Tories masquerading as independent in order to attract more voters

Local elections decide how your local council is run. Generally speaking, choosing the Councillors that are responsive to the issues faced by locals will ensure that the council officers are more likely to be held to account / services will actually get run properly.

In our local areas the local councillors literally don't respond to any communications from local residents - they pop up at election time to make uncounted pledges that are outside of their remit / they know that can't deliver on, and then disappear for another 4-5 years.

As a result our council has completely failed to deliver for 10+ years now - mostly because the councillors aren't holding the officers / CEO to account using the powers available to them.

It goes without saying that locals will almost certainly re-elect the useless local councillors and then spend another 4-5 years complaining we never hear from them.

Local elections decide how your local council is run. Generally speaking, choosing the Councillors that are responsive to the issues faced by locals will ensure that the council officers are more likely to be held to account / services will actually get run properly.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's arguably more likely that the councillors will need holding to account.

As you have identified OP, the problem with voting for a great local councillor who happens to be a Tory, is that they will vote en bloc with their party on issues affecting the wider community.

Same goes for Labour or whoever, of course.

Do we need photo ID yet to vote?

So, do you vote as if a proxy general election / opinion poll on Boris, or simply based on local issues?

By the look of the election materials that have dropped through our doors this week, it looks like both the main parties are taking it as a proxy general election. There is virtually no mention of local issues.

To summarise:

Tory: We got Brexit Done. Isn't Boris great? Culture war.

Labour: Cost of living crisis. Partygate/Boris is a ****!

As far as local representatives, I'm an active Labour party member and went to the constituency meeting where potential candidates pitched us their agenda and we all voted for which would represent the party at the local elections. So I know exactly who I'm voting for and they're a good bunch!

Quite lucky that our local Labour councillor is pretty good, responds to inquiries of Facebook in an instant, no matter how inane the issue.

I'd check out the other candidates in your area

Labour: Cost of living crisis.

I got quite cross listening to R4 this morning and Rachel Reeves bleating on about how their campaign promise for local elections was to implement a windfall tax etc.
So the campaign is we'll promise to give you all free money, which we know we can't possibly do, even if we do win.
May as well have painted £600 on the side of a bus.
It's no wonder politics in this country (and plenty of others) has broken down to populism.

Tory: We got Brexit Done. Isn’t Boris great? Culture war

I've neither seen nor heard anything from them though I assume that's because here they haven't a snowball's chance in hell of losing the seats they hold nor winning ones they don't.
Oh and obviously they only send the most junior of ministers to speak to the media in case someone asks a difficult question like what's your favourite colour.

I’ve not actually heard from any of the candidates for this election yet. Guess it will ramp up shortly. If the other candidates seem poor I might just abstain and email the current Tory candidate and explain I would have voted for him but couldn’t bring myself to indicate support for Boris with my vote

I work in local government and tend to look on council elections with a sense of trepidation and interest in equal measure. There are councillors who are genuinely interested in improving things for their ward. And there are some who are so institutionalised that I doubt they’d last five minutes in another job.

We’ve also got the pleasure of a city region Mayor election here in South Yorkshire this May so we’ll get a new person at the helm which will doubt mean a sudden ramp up in work and new policies to implement. Should be interesting.

It’s no wonder politics in this country (and plenty of others) has broken down to populism

One of the driving forces behind the rise in populism and factionalism, here and around the globe, is the decline of local press and reporting. The lack of scrutiny and reporting of local level political factors that impact directly on people's day to day lives means theres a disconnect between the vote people have and the effect is has for them locally and its leading people to polarise -  to fall more readily into factions on one side or other of divide based on issues that either don't actually impact locally on them or that they can't influence. The factors that actually effect the life they lead, the service available to them and their neighbours and so on are much more nuanced and with more shades of grey but we're numb to that.

If political parties are campaigning locally on issues of corporate taxation or immigration or Boris or Brexit its because voters can place themselves in relation to those issues. We only really see reporting, debate and analysis at a country-wide level. Campaigning locally on bins, potholes, and parks is fruitless because people locally dont really know what the issues across their locality are, or what the policies are relating to them are. They don't know whether those policies are being delivered efficiently, or on budget, whether people delivering those services are treated well, paid properly, properly resourced, and they don't really know who's behind those decisions or how its being debated -is their own councillor is for or against them?  Giving them due scrutiny? Are they even present? Who knows.

We (Bristol) have a referendum on whether to maintain the elected City Mayor or return to the traditional party with the most councillors running the show. There's been 2 elected mayors with quite different personalities and lots of ideas and ambition but arguably relatively little real impact on the ground. Or go back to the model where no party had overall control with relatively little impact on the ground.

Jake Berry sent me some promotional blurb printed on heavy watermarked paper in a fancy premium gold coloured envelope - nice use of tax payers money. He had to send it cos unlike labour who have been out knocking on doors that **** lives in Angelsey rather than the constituency he 'supports'
10 years he's been in - if he gets vote'd in again I'm moving.

I'm involved if Labour politics on the ground. We focus on local issues but tie them into the national picture. Our candidate is also a very active (and genuine) campaigner on road safety, public transport and community services all things that link easily through from local to national level.

We've been knocking doors for few weeks already and there are a lot of disaffected Tories who said they may not vote , even if they will not go as far as voting Labour. This is something I've not heard on the doorstep before, Johnson has genuinely managed to alienate some of his core Tory voters - retired, fairly well off, suburban.

Be interesting to see if this actually happens when the time comes

I know a few Conservative councillors who are quite effective in their wards, but will happily slash the budgets of services that their residents rely on. Having a council being run by councillors of your political leanings will probably make more of a difference to your life rather than having an effective local councillor. Obviously, could well have both with a bit of luck.

Incidentally, it is very rare to have an effective local councillor and an effective Cabinet member or leader, the local councillor who doesn’t respond to residents requests might be really good at a strategic level, working with officers or government ministers and officials to make your county a better place. Or might be useless at everything…..

By the way, I’m standing from my local council after 20 years, if anyone here is standing for election, good luck!

I've always voted Labour but the local council is Greens and since I can't stand the current drift in the LP, The Greens it will be. National elections, I think I'm going to have to take a view/hold my nose/vote for a party thaty expels socialists.

In Dulwich Village, one of the big issues locally were the road closures and the low traffic neighbourhood (LTN).

The local Conservatives and Lib Dems campaigned to get rid of them - but Labour have held onto the ward convincingly.

Good news for cyclists in the capital, I've cycled through there on my commute into Central London.

Local elections are just that, around here it's Lib Dem controlled, unfortunately the MP is Tory, and their vote share is growing over the last 3 elections, whereas at local level, Lib Dems have avoided that fate.

The reasons are pretty simple though, as you say, reputation is a big thing, locally it's easier to vote for Joe Bloggs who runs the local business, or is in the rotary club/golf club/etc or whatever, and is in the papers every week dealing with local issues, they'll get votes for their ward because they live there, have family/friends there and so on.

My old area has a couple of folk i know going for local councils, the tories have grabbed them up as their candidates because they are well liked and known, all the stuff i get sent by them doesn't mention tory, they are trading on their name and reputation more than the party!

Well we turfed out the Tory in my ward. By only 40 votes so a bit close for comfort.

We turned an 800 Tory majority into a 900 Labour majority!

As a life long Labour voter, voting for the LibDems to prevent the Tories getting the local seat left me feeling dirty but the end result was worth it.

We just need to get rid of Craig Shittaker next.

Wow , up to nearly 400 seats lost by Tories and labour up 252

I really hope the Tories keep Johnson he's the oppositions best friend

We turned an 800 Tory majority into a 900 Labour majority!

Well done @olddog glad your efforts paid off.

The whole thing has made me nothing but sad. We have had the same narcissistic leader of the local council for 20+ years and have pretty much 100% tory council (- 1 lib dem who was a tory) There are so many examples of poor behaviour across key members of the council, most notably the leader, which social media to a degree helps share. Guess what, romps home with a massive majority, loses only one of his minions in the process, and the voting turnout was 30%. WTF is the point, I am now one of the "why bother" types after 5yrs of trying to highlight the damage being done locally

Cheers @csb. Our neighbouring ward also took two seats off the Tories with big swings.

When we were watching the count it became apparent we had won but we wouldn't believe it until we saw the numbers.

Combination of good candidates, strong campaigning and a helping hand from the national position

Things did go well locally ElShalimo…

Councillor I leaflet dropped for did ridiculously well (he is very good though):

https://www.calderdale.gov.uk/council/democracy/electionresults/results.jsp?election=597&area=7

Calderdale gained one Labour councillor, and one Green one. Small shifts, but welcome:

http://www.calderdale.gov.uk/council/democracy/electionresults/summary.jsp?election=597

Glad the LibDems held their seat in Greetland and Stainland.

Yep, that's us in G&S ...up in the clouds 😉

I think you made the right call with your vote there.

Very little change here. We had a Green gain from Tory and a Tory gain from UKIP. My own ward (just) held onto Labour which, party politics aside, was a good result because he seems to be the only candidate actually doing anything.

What was interesting was the delta. Tory wins over Labour were often literally a dozen votes, Labour wins over Tory a landslide.

I’m sure we’re in store for “great result for Johnson” headlines tomorrow.

https://twitter.com/joshfwd/status/1522544573494579200?s=21

https://twitter.com/bnhwalker/status/1522671915080601600?s=21

https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1522658211207200768?s=21

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1522692523331887104?s=21

Well I helped Mrs g with some leafletting for the Plaid/Green "Common Ground" alliance in a nearby ward in Cardiff. Last time it was two wards and returned two Conservative councillors, this time the merged ward returned two Common Ground and one Conservative.

A decisive intervention I think. (Thougn Labour kept overall control of the council as expected, and Common Ground lost seats in other wards. And the Conservatives lost nine seats.)

Unbelievably Croydon still hasn't declared the council election results. Although perhaps not so unbelievable you consider the incompetence of the bankrupt right-wing Labour run council.

The directly elected mayoral results were finally declared less than 4 hours ago and Croydon now has a Tory mayor.

The Tory candidate got 2k more first choice votes than the Labour candidate and a recently expelled Labour Party member who stood as an independent received almost 7k votes, coming fourth and beating the Green candidate.

Lessons about competence and party unity won't be learnt, I'm sure.

a recently expelled Labour Party member who stood as an independent received almost 7k votes

Expelled for setting up a new party to stand against the Labour candidate (helping the Conservatives to get the win). He used to be a Conservative MP.

.

https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1522701245571641344

Bristol (well, about 60% of those who voted, which was only 30% turnout) decided to scrap a mayor system. I know no-one who really cared either way. Mistrust of all systems and parties seems endemic here.

I know no-one who really cared either way. Mistrust of all systems and parties seems endemic here.

Not true at all. I wanted to vote in an additional mayor, a "mayor-of-mayors" or "one-mayor-to-rule-them-all" if you like. The only cure for pointless self-serving bureaucracy is more self-serving bureaucrats.

It does beg the question how low a turn-out must be to invalidate the democratic process.

ernielynch
Free Member

The directly elected mayoral results were finally declared less than 4 hours ago and Croydon now has a Tory mayor.

The Tory candidate got 2k more first choice votes than the Labour candidate and a recently expelled Labour Party member who stood as an independent received almost 7k votes, coming fourth and beating the Green candidate.

Eh, that "independent" is a former tory who ran to split the Labour vote- likely that Labour would have won otherwise. Pure dirty tricks.

If he's a Tory that ran as an independent then he will have taken votes from the Tories. But think whatever you want, I know enough about the politics of Croydon and all the main players to know what a mess it is. You would struggle to find a resident of Croydon that has a good thing to say about the Labour group. Although ironically Labour's mayoral candidate was blameless for the mess she offered to sort out.

ernielynch
Free Member

But think whatever you want

Nah, rather than thinking whatever I want, I'm going to go on the facts. Andrew Pelling was the leader of the oxford conservative society. He became a Tory MP in 2005. He then became an "independent" after losing the whip following accusations of assaulting his wife. He then lost the seat to the tories, and subsequently joined the Labour party and became a councillor. He was then kicked out of the Labour party earlier this year, and subsequently decided to run as mayor. There's no question at all that he split the Labour vote, it seems to be the only reason he was running since he also ran as a councillor

There’s no question at all that he split the Labour vote

If that's the explanation you need to believe.

Ignore the fact that the LibDems also stood in the mayoral election, despite not having won one single council seat in Croydon for 20 years so obviously had no chance at all of winning, and they took 10k votes.

Would all those votes have gone to Labour? Of course not. Nor all the 6k votes that the Green candidate received.

It's Labour's fault that they lost the mayoral election in Croydon and no one else's. Not the LibDems, not the Greens, not the independents.

Croydon still hasn't declared the results for the council elections. There is a very real, although unlikely, possibility that that Labour has lost control, despite the fact that London has very significantly swung to Labour.

If Labour has lost control of Croydon, despite having previously a 12 seat majority and huge swings to Labour in the rest of London, it won't be the fault of independents but the fault of the blairite clique which controls the local party with an iron grip and has caused scandal after scandal with their mismanagement.

Edit : Google "Croydon council scandal" if you want to know what has been happening in Croydon.

And btw I spent years helping turn a once safe Tory council into a safe Labour council, so you can imagine the betrayal that I feel.

@ernielynch - wasn't the delay declaring in Croydon because of Trinity school having exams, therefore the count had to be delayed due to access to conduct the count?

They are having the count at Trinity School - are you sure? They have just gone £40million over budget on the £30million refurb of Fairfield Halls and yet they are using a private school for the count? Surely that can't be right.

I have no idea for the reason in the delay in declaring, perhaps there are multiple recounts? Although for obvious reasons incompetence is always a possibility.

They've used trinity school for ages. I've been a poll clerk so I know. The exams meant that the count was always going to be late. The recount added to that delay.

All for political bashing but be fair to the civil servants and public that actually do the work.

They’ve used trinity school for ages.

Yup a quick check says the decision to use Trinity School was made 8 years ago:

Council pays public money to private school for election count
https://insidecroydon.com/2014/05/01/council-pays-public-money-to-private-school-for-election-count/amp/

I can understand the attraction for the Tories in using a HMC school, which a fair percentage of them will have gone to, for the count, but despite everything it still surprises me that Croydon's blairite clique behaves no different.

And no of course I'm not blaming incompetence of poll clerks for delays in declaring. If it is indeed due to incompetence it will be political incompetence. Such as the decision to hold the count in a school at the same time as they are sitting exams. How has the rest of the UK managed - is just Croydon having exams?

https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1523368373815443458?t=wwjOqYiuoyFBiv9-tNSuuQ&s=19

In other news from that there London...lutfur rahman rises from the political dead to become elected mayor of Tower Hamlets.
Can't wait for Private Eye to get stuck into that as they pointed out for years that he was a wrong 'un as were his enablers.
Another unflushable turd.

Well that's quite an achievement for Labour to lose control of Croydon, considering the huge swell of support for Labour across the capital and their previous comfortable majority in the town hall, I really didn't think they would manage to do that.

I suspect that despite the obvious fact that many voters will have been fed up with the blairite council staggering from one crises and scandal to the next crises and scandal, that Labour probably severely struggled to find activists to go out and do election work.

This should be a lesson for everyone to learn from - the right-wing Labour group in Croydon has in a very large part been moulded by left-hating Progress MP Steve Reed and the current Labour General Secretary/Starmer adviser David Evans.

But of course the lessons won't be learnt and the Greens will probably be blamed for splitting the Labour vote whilst the Labour leadership will carry on doing what they are best at - expelling party members. Although obviously not the ones who bankrupted the scandal ridden council.