Local Elections 2023

[Jon the Hat]

5 hours ago, Fightforever said:

My mate got these through the door and he lives in Rushey Mead.

I don't really follow local politics but what the hell is this on about.

I read something about this via Twitter.  Something like 16 councilors in total deselected.  Very strange behavior, and seems to have resulted in significant losses.  

[Jon the Hat]

Looks to be a good result for Labour generally, which should be expected given the national polling.  Labour still have work to do though, and a lot will ride on their policy announcements between now and the general election.  It is very clearly time for change, and hopefully Starmer can get a mandate to deliver that.

[foxile5]

****ing hell, a pinned notice got civility.

 

COVID and local elections are the two things that rile up the foxes talk faithful it seems.

[Innovindil]

2 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

Looks to be a good result for Labour generally, which should be expected given the national polling.  Labour still have work to do though, and a lot will ride on their policy announcements between now and the general election.  It is very clearly time for change, and hopefully Starmer can get a mandate to deliver that.

I personally think they'll be (secretly) disappointed with the results. Tories losing 1000 councillors is good, but labour only picking up half of them while the other half (plus some independents) went to lib dems/greens will worry them. 

 

Still a while before the next election, they could have done with the recent SNP disasters to be closer to it I think. 

[Captain...]

36 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

I personally think they'll be (secretly) disappointed with the results. Tories losing 1000 councillors is good, but labour only picking up half of them while the other half (plus some independents) went to lib dems/greens will worry them. 

 

Still a while before the next election, they could have done with the recent SNP disasters to be closer to it I think. 

The Tory heartlands will always struggle to vote Labour so the defection to Lib Dems and Green is not surprising. There are still a number of very significant gains for Labour.

 

 

[Leicester_Loyal]

Over 1000 seats lost for the Tories at the local elections, bit of a kicking. 
 

Nice to have a politics thread back, please keep it civil 

[StanSP]

 

 

[Finnegan]

It's a worse result for the Tories than it is a good result for Labour. 

 

Massive gains for the Greens and Lib Dems show a lot of people still don't actually want to vote Labour either. 

 

Will definitely be an interesting GE. Tories on course to take a hammering but don't think it'll be a clear cut Labour landslide without a significant improvement in public perception. 

[HighPeakFox]

I personally hope that the parties that aren't traditionally to the right grow up and try to work together. 

 

If they don't hang together, they'll all hang separately. 

[OntarioFox]

4 hours ago, Footballwipe said:

This is the thing generally. What we're about to see is the "great education." A lot of brand new, enthusiastic councillors who have got in on a ticket of planning or one issue topic will now sit down with council officers and have it explained to them why they can't do what they think they can do.

 

Want to stop a planning application in your area that ticks and complies with everything? Sure you can call it in to planning committee, but if you somehow manage to get committee to refuse it they WILL appeal and they WILL win, and the council will be left with a bill into the thousands. I know of a cllr who got elected years ago on a planning issue alone, basically got told the above and sat for four years doing sod all else for 3.5 years whilst the development took place.

 

There will be other topics as well where once it's been explained to them that the council can't or won't do something (especially if they're not the minority), they'll be a bit stumped.

 

Problem is, and unless I'm missing something (please correct me if I'm wrong) but any angry bus people voting solely on that alone are voting on a County Council issue. Essentially misguiding their anger to a level of government who can do nothing about it (whilst also showing a lack of knowledge for local government, tbh). Two years until people can vote for issues like that and make a difference.

 

There's reference in this thread to the Greens in Kirby Muxloe. They won both of the seats and people in that area are excited and very enthusiastic about less planning, getting street lights installed etc. Notwithstanding street lights being a county issue (again) you've also got the same issue as above. Ambition v reality.

 

Generally really intrigued to see what's going to happen after yesterday. Blaby scraped a Tory majority but NOC in Charnwood, Melton, NW and Harb will have council officers tearing their hair out. Nothing better for a local government senior manager than a council with a healthy majority. All the work they do for the ruling cllrs will get passed and not wasted.

 

Politics will be in play for four years in these areas now which could genuinely hamstring some councils trying to progress important policies, initiatives. Though you could also argue some stuff other things, issues for example like car parking charges, open spaces, which wouldn't have been progressed under a Tory administration, will happen.

 

I don't want to sound like I'm denigrating councillors, most of these new ones will work bloody hard after bedding in to do what they can to help residents. If nothing else, their work could better help the public understand how councils operate by explaining why things can't/won't go the way they want, and how things aren't as simple or binary as Facebook comments seem to think council operations are.

 

Lastly, it is objectively funny that Soulsby won again. Leicester Mercury's website and Facebook page will remain a hilarious place of angry old people for four more years.

Nah, you're very much right. I worked at LCC a few years back, and nothing is going to change until the turkeys voting for Christmas put the proverbial rocket up the incumbents.

 

No political will to do anything and the lowest budget per capita of anywhere in the country. At this point they're squeezing blood from a stone. Those in charge politically use it as an excuse to slash key services while doing nothing to lobby central government for support. It's a cushy job in a 'safe' area for those without the backbone to face the greater scrutiny of Parliament.

 

Some of them are cartoonishly out-of-touch too. Naming no names, and it was a few years ago, but I remember being in a meeting with one who had just flown back from a skiing trip in the Alps to discuss which rural bus services to cut. Treated the whole thing as one big inconvenience. They're still in their seat and I'll be watching their ward with interest and with my fingers crossed the next time it's up.

 

What I hope these results do is get a few of the out-of-touch dinosaurs at county hall sweating nervously, because this wind change should hopefully translate at all levels of politics. If what I sincerely hope is a protest vote in the city itself helps give the Tories a false sense of security in the county too, even better.

[Lako42]

14 hours ago, TJQuik said:

It would help if any of the alternatives were any different from the ***** in charge of the country

They are

[Daggers]

3 hours ago, StanSP said:

 

 

We can safely say the Conservative Party has successfully signed them all up.

[st albans fox]

4 hours ago, Finnegan said:

It's a worse result for the Tories than it is a good result for Labour. 

 

Massive gains for the Greens and Lib Dems show a lot of people still don't actually want to vote Labour either. 

 

Will definitely be an interesting GE. Tories on course to take a hammering but don't think it'll be a clear cut Labour landslide without a significant improvement in public perception. 

It’s going to be a fascinating 18 months politically - following on from the previous few years 

 

I don’t think it’s a done deal for a labour govt 

[yorkie1999]

On 05/05/2023 at 12:07, CosbehFox said:

Seems a slight reduction in Hinckley and Bosworth but to give you idea Hinckley Clarendon last time out was 28%, this time its 25.63% - Hinckley De Montfort similar reduction. 

 

They are not greatly turned out local elections. 

That’s because everyone’s weeding the sides of the roads whilst the council are busy working from home

[bovril]

It's a pretty good result for labour, considering London and Wales didn't vote. To say they'll be disappointed sounds a bit like Tory cope. 

[Alf Bentley]

Something that pisses me off with media coverage of politics is how interviewers repeatedly ask Labour what they'll do if they don't win a majority in the general election and who they'd ally with.

This is led by the Tory "coalition of chaos" agenda from 2015, which the Tories are already resurrecting as a tactic to make voters fearful of any non-Tory govt.

 

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with asking the question, though 18 months before the likely election date is so ridiculously early as to render it pointless.

But in my experience they almost never ask the Tories who they'd ally with if in a minority after the election.

 

Yet....

- 2017-19: The Tories relied on minor party (DUP) support to govern, causing no little chaos with Brexit. Whereas the last time Labour did so was in the late 70s.

- 2010-15: The Tories formed a "coalition of chaos" with the Lib Dems, whereas the last time Labour was in a coalition was under Churchill during WW2.

- Labour may or may not be able to win a majority (too soon to tell), but it currently looks very unlikely that the Tories will win a majority

- Apart from the DUP (who won't have many MPs), the Tories have few realistic options for a post-election alliance, whereas a Lab-LD alliance of some sort would now be quite workable, given current party policies/leaderships

 

Personally, I'd be quite happy with a Labour-led coalition/minority govt supported by the LDs. I might even prefer it to an overall majority, especially if it yielded electoral reform.

But this "coalition of chaos" stuff is a Tory-led agenda.  If any such questions are asked, the media need to ask them of the Tories, too, otherwise it constitutes party political bias.

[FoxesDeb]

4 hours ago, st albans fox said:

It’s going to be a fascinating 18 months politically - following on from the previous few years 

 

I don’t think it’s a done deal for a labour govt 

I agree, and don't people historically vote differently between local and general elections? I think many staunch Tory voters will find it almost impossible to switch directly to Labour especially in a GE, so although the Tory vote will obviously be much lower I'm not convinced it will be proportionately higher to Labour. 

[kenny]

28 minutes ago, FoxesDeb said:

I agree, and don't people historically vote differently between local and general elections? I think many staunch Tory voters will find it almost impossible to switch directly to Labour especially in a GE, so although the Tory vote will obviously be much lower I'm not convinced it will be proportionately higher to Labour. 

I reckon staunch Tories will vote lib dem, independent or green locally, but that doesn't mean they will follow in a GE.

 

Only a true swing voter is likely to vote labour or conservative regardless of the election surely?

[FoxesDeb]

Just now, kenny said:

I reckon staunch Tories will vote lib dem, independent or green locally, but that doesn't mean they will follow in a GE.

 

Only a true swing voter is likely to vote labour or conservative regardless of the election surely?

I have previously voted Lib Dem in local elections but never anything other than Tory in a GE. I won't be doing that again, but equally I won't be voting Labour, and I bet there are millions of other traditionally Tory voters like me. 

[Unabomber]

2 minutes ago, FoxesDeb said:

I have previously voted Lib Dem in local elections but never anything other than Tory in a GE. I won't be doing that again, but equally I won't be voting Labour, and I bet there are millions of other traditionally Tory voters like me. 

Why not labour?

[Izzy]

4 minutes ago, FoxesDeb said:

I have previously voted Lib Dem in local elections but never anything other than Tory in a GE. I won't be doing that again, but equally I won't be voting Labour, and I bet there are millions of other traditionally Tory voters like me. 

Do you still get to vote in a GE Deb, even though you now live in Spain? 

[FoxesDeb]

Just now, Izzy said:

Do you still get to vote in a GE Deb, even though you now live in Spain? 

Apparently so, I didn't realise initially that we would but I guess it's because Brits still have financial interests there, for me its mainly my final salary pension that I want looking after until I'm old enough 

[Izzy]

1 minute ago, FoxesDeb said:

Apparently so, I didn't realise initially that we would but I guess it's because Brits still have financial interests there, for me its mainly my final salary pension that I want looking after until I'm old enough 

I see 

 

Which constituency would you vote in? Is it the last place you were registered while living in the UK (i.e. Wigston?)

[FoxesDeb]

Just now, Izzy said:

I see 

 

Which constituency would you vote in? Is it the last place you were registered while living in the UK (i.e. Wigston?)

Yes as far as I understand, not sure how the photo ID thing will work if they implement it for the GE though...

[deep blue]

11 hours ago, HighPeakFox said:

I personally hope that the parties that aren't traditionally to the right grow up and try to work together. 

 

If they don't hang together, they'll all hang separately. 

The sentiment is right on the ball, but the practicality of it is different to manage.  When the SDP were going strong and they had an arrangement with the Liberal Party they still didn't manage the breakthrough in spite of getting a substantial proportion of the national vote. The figures were:

   Conservative               46% -> 362 seats

   Labour                      26.8% -> 209 seats

   SDP/Lib Alliance   26.4%  -> 13 seats

 

The only change that has a hope of fixing our broken, unrepresentative political system is proportional representation - but how can that be achieved?