Thursday’s extra bonus for Lib Dems: the local elections

Put a backbench MP and a ruling group councillor together and they’ll often tease each other about who really has the more power – with the councillor often coming off the better. “I’ll see your ministerial questions and raise you a £500m budget” and so on.

So we certainly shouldn’t forget the other elections on Thursday:

• All the seats in the 32 London boroughs
• One third of the seats in the 36 Mets
• One third of the seats in 20 unitary authorities
• Half the seats in 7 district councils
• One third of the seats in 70 district councils
• Four Mayors

A happy side-effect of the strong general election campaign performance by the Liberal Democrats is that this may well carry over into local election results too.

As The Times put it:

Cleggmania set to boost Lib Dem vote in local elections
Cleggmania is expected to have a huge impact on the local council elections being held on the same day as the general election, with the Liberal Democrats taking control of several London councils and winning dozens of seats across England.

When the election campaign began, the Lib Dems were expected to lose at least 50 seats in the council elections. Now the party is reaping the benefits of Nick Clegg’s performances in the television debates, which could propel them into power in key town halls.

Tony Travers, from the London School of Economics, now predicts that the Lib Dems will win up to 100 seats, with the Tories losing roughly 150 and Labour gaining about 50.

Not so convinced by the initial 50 seat loss prediction, but even so the basic point stands. Most of the seats up for election were last contested in May 2006 and in the month prior to those elections that average poll ratings were Conservative 34%, Labour 33%, Liberal Democrat 20%.

In particular this should be good news for London, where all councils are elected all-up every four years with the election year often having had the annoying habit of coming just before or just after a period of particular popularity for the party. This time however London campaigners could hardly have asked for better national conditions against which to fight their local campaigns.