Political

Wow, what a set of the Liberal Democrat local election results

All the signs from around the country on polling day were of a tremendous turnout of volunteers for the Liberal Democrats around the country, including in Watford where I did a sting of campaigning.

I’ll be covering the Liberal Democrat local election results in detail at the weekend in the next edition of Liberal Democrat Newswire. 

Sign up now to ensure you get the full low down on what the results really mean for the Liberal Democrats, the battles over Brexit and the future of relations with Change UK.

In the meantime, key highlights from the results as they came in…

The record of Lib Dem leaders

One thing to look out for in the results is where they end up placing Vince Cable in the local government record of party leaders. It will only take modest Lib Dems gains for Cable to end his time as party leader as the second most successful, after Paddy Ashdown, in seeing growth in the party’s local government base:

  1. Paddy Ashdown: +1,390
  2. Charles Kennedy: +257
  3. Vince Cable (excluding May 2019): +78
  4. Tim Farron: +14
  5. Ming Campbell: -244
  6. Nick Clegg: -2,068

UPDATE: Vince Cable will be up to second plage in that table, and by quite some margin.

The results

An intriguing early result:

A very important point for Liberal Democrats to remember:

As for the future of Change UK:

Regarding the Greens, worth noting:

And an interesting pointer for the Conservatives; their problems are much more than just the presence of Brexit rivals on the right:

The results are looking better and better for the Lib Dems:

And it is not good for Labour at all:

Many of those who have been key to running winning campaigns this time were brought into politics by and learnt their trade thanks to Paddy Ashdown.

And finally…

Warning sign about a dog spotted on letterbox during 2019 local election campaign

3 responses to “Wow, what a set of the Liberal Democrat local election results”

  1. Sky News 5 am headlines: “The pattern of the night shows the voters turning on both Labour and the Conservatives. The Lib Dems have had a revival.”

    Laura Kuenssberg, BBC Political Editor on the Lib Dems winning the Cotswolds: “We can’t overstate it. That is quite something. That should be absolutely solid Tory territory.”

    Reply

  2. I just want to give a shout out to our often overlooked team in Oadby & Wigston (Leics) who after 28 years in control – longer than any council apart from Sutton – came within a few hundred votes of a clean sweep winning all but two seats. It takes a huge amount of commitment and hard work to maintain the support of the community on a district wide basis for so long and the many Lib Dems who have served on the council deserve a huge amount of credit for delivering on the party’s values now for a generation.

    Reply

  3. Interesting in my patch 3 months ago 6 of our 30 councillors weren’t selected or even thinking about standing. We have worked as a Press group for 3 years and this has paid dividends. The independents and Greens also made gains. We will now press on with improving our transport links with special attention to environmental issues and recycling etc

    Reply

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