British local elections 2016

[Jubal]

Right, here's the story so far:

• Basically no change in English council seats
• SNP lose their majority in Scotland, Labour come third
• Labour hold on to nearly a majority in Wales which was more or less what they have before, gains for UKIP there

Still several councils, London assembly, and Mayor of London race to declare.

It's looking OK for my lot, we look like we may finally gain English council seats for the first time since 2008. We got slaughtered in Wales, but hung on fairly evenly in Scotland (we basically redistributed our vote in Scotland, so we won more constituencies but also lost more deposits). The media are making a big thing of Labour's losses but tbh they didn't have that much potential for gains, they already held the vast majority of seats up for grabs yesterday except in really Tory areas. The Tories have clearly done well in Scotland, though they're still a long way from challenging the SNP. UKIP had a good night in Wales and got 6 assembly seats, they gained about 20 councillors in England but given the last few years they've been gaining triple figures every year and that they've had a huge amount of media coverage from the EURef, +20 should be pretty disappointing for them IMO.

[Clockwork]

I think we got different outlooks of it. From my perspective, the take from voters was that they have no confidence in Corbyn because he's a socialist alpaca and is so out of touch with reality, let alone voters that it's astonishing he's still alive. Also that UKIP are doing pretty well (especially in Wales) and conservatives are making grounds in Scotland. And finally, given the recent thrashing the conservatives have got in the news; they've done kind of pretty well.


Disappointed about the portugalface Khan getting mayor. One thing that is not at all surprising: Barnet, a Jewish area of London, was unable to vote. They'd really have loved an anti-semite as mayor.

[Jubal]

You're misrepresenting Khan I think. Labour has its antisemites, god knows, but Khan's been vocally critical of Corbyn and his failure to handle this and I can't find any evidence or reason to suggest he holds such views. To quote him on it:

I am an advocate of the Labour leadership, including the NEC, actually receiving some training on this stuff as clearly they don’t understand what racism is, and there is no hierarchy when it comes to racism. There are too many examples in our party of people having these views, and action does not appear to have been taken quickly enough

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/30/sadiq-khan-antisemitism-row-damages-labour-poll-hopes

Even if you look at Goldsmith's literature the attacks are literally all cases of "Khan was at the same event as this guy", "Some guy who was in the same office thought this" and "When Khan was a defence lawyer he acted on behalf of this guy" none of which in any way actually mean that Khan holds the same views as those people. And whilst I'm sure you'll be sceptical of me saying that, it's definitely not just me, or just people on the left, who think so. Former Tory chairman said it was an "appalling dog whistle" campaign and the leader of the Tory group on the London Assembly has been heavily sceptical as well.
(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/sadiq-khan-wins-london-mayor-election-result-2016-zac-goldsmith-a7017106.html)

You're welcome to dislike Khan for other reasons, but frankly the evidence that he's an anti-Semite (unless you have some stuff I don't know about/isn't included in the recent media stories) is from what I can see about as well put together as the available evidence that I'm a Tory.


Anyhow more widely: first thing to bear in mind is that low seat swing like this is really unusual. It's normal for parties to gain or lose triple figures of seats. As such I think "no confidence" is too strong. Labour held all but one council across England, it's not a vote of no confidence and it's not a collapse but it's a definite vote of "meh" for Corbyn. He's certainly not inspired any gains (except maybe in hoovering up a few Green seats in places like Norwich). The media also basically let Corbyn's enemies pre-set the standard he was being held to and then knife him for not getting there; from an independent analysis losing seats and a council is disappointing, and Scotland was total murder, but the "we should be gaining hundreds of council seats" thing that some of Labour's right were trying to spin was really not that realistic given that their 2012 results in these seats were already very strong. I think you're right that he's not done that well, I just think that it felt like the press were hawking in on the "Corbyn referendum" narrative rather than actually paying much attention to what was going on in individual areas.

I also agree that the Tories haven't done at all badly, this is a very solid result, though the few southern English councils we had were pretty rotten for them - they made OK advances in northern areas against Labour, but they have some cause for concern in the south where they lost out to Lib Dems and UKIP quite heavily. I was mostly annoyed at the coverage there where they put out early stories saying "Tory council gains" and then had the pundits repeating that long after it became clear that they were actually going to take overall losses. Which is just bad/slow reporting tbh.

UKIP did a bit better than expected in Wales, I do think that they needed to make bigger gains in England. Since their surge (2013) this is the last set of council seats that haven't been elected (these were last up in 2012). As such they were starting from a very low base, and in 2013, 2014 and 2015 they gained at least +100 seats each year. That growth seems to have slowed down a lot this time, +20 or +30 is obviously a lot lower. They're doing well on a few individual councils (Dudley and Thurrock were both good news for them), and I suspect they'll sort of solidify in some local areas now, but they didn't get many gains in a lot of the "old Labour" northern territory where they wanted them. Next year will be UKIP's really big test though - without an EU referendum coming up, and with a lot of seats to defend, it'll be their first really big test for holding ground. This year's not a disaster for them by any means, but with a weak Labour party and a load of free coverage this seems like a real missed opportunity from their POV to get big gains in the north of England.

Also finally on UKIP in Wales, it looks like Neil Hamilton may be going to challenge Nathan Gill for the Welsh leadership, which might rip their Welsh party apart rather. Whatever one's views on UKIP as a whole, Hamilton is a horrendous candidate, lost his Tory MP's seat under a cloud  of corruption allegations in 1997 and now he seems to be trying to get up to the highest office he can grab in UKIP.

[Clockwork]

Right, he had nothing to do with fixing it so Barnet couldn't vote. Yeah I know you can't prove it but it's him or people around him.


Hamilton is an dick, he's got as much right to challenge leadership though I don't think he's enough to rip their welsh party apart. I don't think many people vote UKIP on grounds of their individual candidates, who on the whole are generally weak or have seen a trend and are power grabbing but instead vote for their overall policy. Although I suspect that's the case for most parties tbf.

[Jubal]

Wtf? Barnet council, which runs the actual election process there, is a Conservative controlled council. City hall has been Conservative controlled for eight years. Unless you think the Barnet Tories were in a secret anti-Semitic cabal with Khan, that allegation makes absolutely no sense whatsoever; there are no Labour types or Khan allies in a position of power in Barnet. Again, unless you know a lot I don't, it seems like a pretty complex conspiracy theory to put together versus a rather more likely verdict of incompetence.

I agree about UKIP and candidates - it is true of most parties, probably UKIP are the least candidate-driven and Lib Dems the most I'd say, we're far too reliant on good candidates in some areas (hence getting our asses handed to us in Wales as all the seats we lost were on the party list, and winning more constituencies in Scotland but then getting hammered in the list vote everywhere).