If only 21 councils did not exist….

A possibly interesting statistic: there were 21 councils in which the Liberal Democrats lost 7 or more seats on Thursday. The total loss across these seats was 255. In other words, across the rest of England the party made net gains (just).

By comparison, the top 21 councils for gains saw the party make total gains of 134 seats. So the overall result does seem to have been particularly skewed by a small number of particularly bad results.

Also – belated congratulations to Ashfield Liberal Democrats. As the result came in very late, their gain of eight seats (and Labour losing control of the council) has got pretty much no attention so far.