With all 159 councils having declared in the Local Council Elections, it's time to review the results and analyse them.
It's not really surprising what the headlines are. Conservatives gaining 12 councils and 256 councillors, Labour losing 9 councils and 331 councillors. The media is refering to the losses for Labour as huge. Maybe in pure terms of numbers, losing over 300 councillors sounds like a lot, but in analytical terms, it's not nearly such a massive loss.
Remember, this is not 1 election to a governing body, but 159 elections to 159 different governing bodies, in these cases, local councils. When you do the maths, you realise that one average, Labour has only lost the equivalent of just under 2.1 councillors per council. Certainly not anywhere near as impressive sounding is it?
The Conservatives are trying to claim a major success. Yet, there are enough negatves out there for me to suggest that their 'major success' is somwhat tempered. Look through all 159 results and you see some really striking ones.
In Burnley, the council had been pretty much split between LibDems and Labour with Conservatives and BNP way back. However, the gainers from Labour's misfortune this time was not the Conservatives, but the Liberal Democrats who took control of the council with 23 seats to Labour's 12. Neither the Cobservatives (6) nor the BNP (4) gained out of Labour's misfortunes. For David Cameron, the failure make any kind of move in Burnley must be seen as somewhat of a failure.
In Colchester, which had been a Conservative council, albeit only briefly for less than a year, the Conservatives lost seats and lost control of the council. The Conservatives lost 5 seats there, with Labour actually picking up 4 seats, and the LibDems the remaining seat.
Coventry also went against the grain, with just 1 seat out of the 18 seats up for election changing hands, but it went from Conservative to Labour and with it, the Conservatives lost control of the council.
In St Albans, the Liberal Democrats took control of the council, despite the Conservatives having the better performance and gaining 3 seats, compared to the LibDems gaining only 1. But that 1 seat was sufficient to give the LibDems control and rather took the shine off what looked a good performance.
In Oxford, the Conservatives only had two seats on the council before the election. By the end of the night, they had none at all, wiped out. In Sheffield too, the 1 Conservative councillor there lost his seat, and the party is not represented on the council at all.
Add to this councils like Adur, Barrow in Furness, Brentwood, Burnley, Castle Point, Cheltenham, Daventry, Fareham, Kingston-upon-Hull, Manchester, Mole Valley, Rochdale, Runnymede, South Tyneside, St Helens, Stoke-On-Trent, Stroud, Swansea, Swindon, Thurrock, Wallsall, Watford, Waveney, Winchester, Woking and Worcester where the Conservatives failed to gain any seats at all, and it does somewhat take more than an edge of the Conservatives "major success".
There are also councils like Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Gateshead, Gwynedd, Knowsley, Liverpool, Merthyr Tydfil, Neath Port Talbot, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Oxford and Sheffield where the Conservatives haven't even got a single seat on the council, and councils such as Bridgend, Broxbourne, Colchester, Coventry, Derby, Eastleigh, Gosport, Huntingdonshire, Ipswich, Leeds, Oxford, Purbeck, Reigate & Banstead, Sefton, Sheffield, Slough, South Lakeland, Southend-on-Sea and Stratford-On-Avon where the Conservatives suffered losses rather than gains.
Now how major does their success look? It looks rather patchy to me.
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