As time goes on the news is getting better for the Greens, including the election of the lovely Graham Elliott in Waveney. The news has improved to such an extent that a press release from the Greens has landed on my desk claiming "Greens set for best ever local election results". What ever the final result it's clear the Greens are well and truly past the 100 cllrs mark.
Green gains include one in Norwich where I helped campaign, making them only one short of being the second party in the council. Frustratingly Norwich Greens lost another seat by just ONE VOTE. Arrrrgh! However, the big Norwich news is that the Greens got more votes than any other party - watch out Charles Clarke... we're coming for you! Congratulations and commiserations.
Greens gain SIX councillors in Brighton adding to the chances of gaining our first MP at the next general election! (Brighton and Hove council results site) This means they have twelve councillors and are also one shy of being second party. Young Greens are also doing well. On Lancaster City Council Morgwyn Trolinger was elected to make twelve Green Party councillors, up from seven.
The Green Party website is back up and running and has a list of gains here.
You can find a full list of Respect's election results here but it looks like they've made modest gains.
I'm slightly confused by Bristol, where last year Jerry Hicks came second in Locklease ward, Respect stood in an entrely different ward with a different candidate, although still polling a respectable 19%. Respect's strategy of standing only in places they know they will do well and keeping a tight focused campaign has meant that the lowest results so far (4%) are far better than that usually polled by the far left.
Michael Lavalette, who I spoke about earlier, has retained his seat with an extremely impressive 52% of the vote, although he remains the only Respect councillor on Preston council. As expected Respect also won Sparkbrook ward in Birmingham (but lost their Aston seat) and Ray Holmes polled an astonishing 53% in Bolsover... anyone know anything about him?
However, in Wales Respect looks to have done very, very badly indeed. Polling less than the SLP in more than one regional list and, as far as I can see, never polling more than 1% - but the national Respect site doesn't seem to be carrying these results for some reason, and the Respect Wales site is defunct, so you'll need to use the BBC for reference.
In Cambridge Respect's one candidate, Tom Woodcock, managed to pull into 3rd place (with 17%) which is unexpected but the product of two years of hard, focused work in the ward.
Other Cambridge news is that the parties have same number of seats at the end of the night as at the beginning of it. Oh, the excitement! In Abbey (Green target ward) the Green Party still came a strong second and improving sligtly.HART, Caroline... Labour 701 votes. 35.5% (- 1.9%) WRIGHT, Margaret... Green Party 593 votes. 30% (+ 4%) BOWER, Andrew... Conservative Party 398 votes. 20.1% (- 0.2%) SEXTON, Ed... Liberal Democrat 284 votes. 14.4% (- 1.9%)
Also well done to Stephen Lawrence coming 3rd place in Castle (beating Labour), Hamish for beating UKIP in Cherry Hinton, Gregory Patton for coming 2nd in Market ward (21.6%), Aneaka Kellay for coming third in Newnham (the poshest bit), Jesse Griffiths for beating the Tories in Romsey, and last but by no means least Ceri for reasserting her dominance over Labour (and coming third) in Trumpington.
The CEN is taking the line that all the parties did well locally - not a single loser in sight - imagine! Even the turnout was up. One bit of shock news (wel,l news to me) ex-Mayor Cllr John Hipkin (one time leading light in Mayor's for Peace) was deselected for his seat and decided not to run again. The rumour mill is hard at work about what lies behind Hipkin's fall from grace.
Nationally, the BNP were being touted by the BBC as on the verge of some great successes - but it appears that simply did not happen. They had hoped to go from 46 councillors to over 100 but whilst they gained a couple in Leistershire they also lost their seat in Broxbourne, lost a seat in Bradford, lost seats in Burnley, gained two in Stoke but lost the councillor they won last year in a neighbouring ward and, although it's too early for the final tally, it doesn't look like they've made any real advances, except perhaps in Wales (where Plaid have also did well). Conclusion: the BNP are treading water and are a long way from the break through advances they and the BBC seemed to think they'd get.
In Blenaeu Gwent Trish Law has retained her seat, which is very positive, but Ron Davies and John Marek both of whom left Labour leftwards were unable to win seats, despite respectable votes. Welsh Greens do not seem to have made a breakthrough of any kind unfortunately. incidently, are my eyes decieving me or were the English Democrats standing in WALES?
Solidarity MSP Tommy Sheridan has lost his seat in glasgow. Can't quite work out what's happening with the SSP but it isn't looking good (their election page is probably the place that will let you know first) but it's likely they have lost all their seats. Wikipedia has a good Scottish election page.
In Glasgow Govan ward high profile SNP candidate Nicola Sturgeon won increasing her vote by more than 10% against Labour's increase of just over 1%. Last time round the SSP won more than 11% in this seat but as no socialist stood this time those votes look to have transfered on the whole to the SNP. Over Scotland as a whole it's clear that, historically, the SNP are the big winners - although who'll be forming the next administration is still to be seen.
The Greens in Scotland seem to be suffering frm the SNP squeeze and have lost one, perhaps more, of their MSPs. More on the BBC's Scottish elections page. UPDATE: It now looks likely that the Greens will have gone from seven to just one MSP.
The Cornish independence party Mebyon Kernow seem to have won their first ever seat - more on this when I discover it. AN (in comments box) says they've had councillors before, oh well, but I'm sure they're still pleased.
Rumour has it the Socialist Party has lost a seat... more on this as and when.
UPDATE: Yes the SP have lost a seat in Coventry, their stronghold. Lindsay Currie got 1156 votes to Labour candidate Jim Boyle's 1240. I'd be interested to hear other left results...
Other election thoughts:
The end of Ming? Labour is buggered. Or perhaps it isn't. Norman Tebbitt says bring back Hitler. Scots ballot balls up.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Election results UK (updated)
Labels: Democracy
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18 comments:
Mebyon Kernow have definietley held district coouncil sets in the past.
BTW the Britsol mystery is simple, there was no elelction this year in Lockleaze where Jer stood list year
Thanks for this Jim.
Good hold for us in Liverpool. Vote up from 25% last year to 38% in St Michaels, with turnout going up over 10% as well.
This might be the first time we've had a sitting councillor defect to us from the Lib Dems and us subsequently hold the seat.
Really pleased to see the BNP get absolutely stuffed in Liverpool. They stood in 9 seats but went backwards in their target seat of Norris Green.
Actually in cambridge there was one gain for lib dems from labour (Kings Hedges) but also one gain from labour to lib dems (Petersfield)
Ta anon - have amended the text slightly...
Other left results:
The IWCA came last with 144 votes in Thurrock (West Thurrock & South Stifford was the ward). No Oxford election, so no surprise there's no real news there.
According to the AWL site, in Leeds, the Alliance for Green Socialism got around 2.5% of the votes on average. Apart from Chapel Allerton where they got 9.3% of the vote, beating the Green Party. (Will it sound overly sectarian if I suggest 'local conditions' might have had a lot to do with that?)
Bad news from Saint Albans where the National Front got a councillor.
On a much brighter note, the BNP activists are despondent, although the leadership has started to spin now. They've spent all day on Stormfront wavering between despair and calling the entire British electorate morons. (Which isn't the greatest of electoral strategies. I've screenshotted the posts just in case they come in useful). This may well lead to a leadership challenge against Griffin, which hopefully will tear the party apart.
BNP dropped by 10,000 votes in Birmingham, so good news there. Though of course, one should never be complacent about them.
Yes BNP have had a bad night ... I'm more and more thinking the best electoral strategy to oppose the BNP is to ignor them and build a viable alternative to the neoliberals.
The NF... ffs as the kids might say.
Incidently the prize of boo goes to newsnight last night who announced the SSP had won a seat after all... in fact they were refering to the independent Margo MacDonald, although she is a bit left wing I believe.
Other big news from Brum is that the Socialist Labour Party got 1052 votes in Handsworth Wood. That was down to their candidate being John Tyrell- a defector from Labour who's well known and popular in the area.
On the BNP- yes and no. I think that progressives certainly should be careful about the ABF (anyone but fascists) strategy- allowing them to present themselves as the only alternative to the establishment could backfire nastily. Equally, I'm not sure the reeling off of their criminal convictions is still effective. On the other hand, one noticable effect from both this and past elections is that they have a lot of trouble holding on to previously won seats. My guess is that's because they're such terrible local councillers, even aside from them being fascist scum. That I think is worth working with, particuarly in areas where they're a threat. A list of how few council meetings they've turned up to etc.
The BNP didn't win as many seats as they might have liked, but seem to have increased their vote in many constituencies.
If nothing else, fielding 750 candidates has increased their profile across the country.
Around Nottingham they won a seat in Brinsley with an impressive 43% (in a four horse race). This despite anti-fascist activity in the ward.
In Kirky they polled around 30% in all three wards, suggesting a sizable base of support.
According to the Beeb in some places they received almost twice as many votes as Labour rivals.
Hopefully they'll be disappointed by their limited successes and maybe even bankrupt again (as they virtually were after the last Euro elections), but I think Griff & Co are in this for the long haul.
SWP/Respect only put up only 48 candidates for the whole of the country - that's fewer than the Green Party had in Brighton and Hove.
They have also lost one councillor in Tower Hamlets who has defected back to Labour.
In Coventry, in addition to the Socialists losing one of their St Michael's councillors, we saw this odd swing towards Labour (Socialists -1, Lib Dems -1, Tories -2, Labour +4).
For the Coventry Greens, we received 8.5% in Wainbody ward (powered by 33% of the vote at the polling station at the University of Warwick), and I managed 13.4% in Earlsdon (with 20% plus at two polling stations). We ran in six other wards, with 4-7% as our results.
The BNP received in Coventry received 10% or better in eight wards (they contested 16 of the 18 wards in the city).
I also found interesting the Green gains in Glasgow and Edinburgh (the result of the Lib/Lab coalition agreement for PR in local Scottish elections) and Leicester (two Greens finishing 1-2 in Castle ward).
Any idea how many Green councillors were up for re-election? With 24 new councillors and a net gain of 18 there must have been 6 losses - but 6 out of how many? (For comparison, RESPECT went from 19 councillors to 18, but those figures disguise a high turnover between old and new councillors. 15 of the 19 weren't up for re-election - of the other four, one stood down and two lost. So a net loss of 1 out of 19 was actually a loss of 3 out of 4, offset by a gain of 2.)
Um, phil, I think 6 of the wins were existing councillors - so they don't count in the net gains pile... I might be wrong but I don't think any exisiting green councillors lost their seats.
That's plausible, but the figures in last Saturday's Guardian definitely mentioned some Green losses (by my reckoning it added up to 7 rather than 6, but I may have got that wrong). I'm still curious about how many sitting councillors were up for re-election - I'd guess 20-30, in which case losing 6 wouldn't be at all bad.
I don't have the full list to hand, but we did lose some councillors. At least two were defectors who had not been elected as Greens before - the other one that springs to mind was Cllr David Ford in Bradford, who really really deserved to hold his seat - but it was not to be.
Apologies that I don't know the exact number.
Matt
Thanks for that Matt
According to the BBC the party was defending 45 seats - in which case only losing 6 is very good indeed. (RESPECT and the BNP both lost all but one of the seats they were defending.)
Thanks for the point about defectors. It's a tough one - you almost don't want them to be re-elected. (You want them to bring their vote to the party, but not on the basis of following them as individuals.) It certainly can't surprise anyone if a defector gets defeated the first time he/she has to face the voters.
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