More than a little progress

 It turns out that I was over-cautious in my reference to "some progress" in my post of last Friday. The local party relays the score so far from federal HQ here. There is still one result to come, from Longbeck ward in Redcar & Cleveland where they had to give up recounting on Friday and will resume today. In what appears to have been a straight fight between Conservatives and Independents, no Liberal Democrat is involved in the ward so there will be no effect on our final tally.

What makes that tally more impressive is that it was achieved in wards last contested in 2019, when the party did well in local authority elections. There were even some pessimists in the party who worried that we might struggle to hold on to all those gains. By contrast, both Labour and Conservatives had fallen back in 2019, council gains being outweighed by losses in both cases. Labour did come out ahead on Friday, their 22 council gains more than making up for their loss of 18 in 2019. The performance in terms of projected national vote share was however not good enough to justify Sir Keir's assertion that Labour was guaranteed an overall majority in a general election whenever it is held. The country is not totally convinced that new New Labour is the answer, as illustrated in Liverpool where the party, while retaining overall control of the city council, lost some wards to Liberal Democrats and Liverpool Community Independents.

None of the success in English council elections takes away from the need to refurbish the image of the Liberal Democrat party as a non-socialist alternative to Toryism, and one that prizes civil liberties. Peter Black draws attention to the current administration's increasing repression of public demonstrations, but one should not forget that New Labour introduced a law to prevent photography in public places at the discretion of the police and was intent on introducing compulsory identification cards.

[09-05-2023 13:00]

Redcar & Cleveland Longbeck ward result now in:

Stephen Crane (Independent) - 246 votes
Victor Jefferies (Independent) - 342 votes
Luke Myer (Labour and Co-operative Party) - 707 votes
Vera Rider (Independent) - 413 votes
Andrea Turner (Conservatives) - 409 votes
Stephen Turner (Conservatives) - 293 votes
Turnout - 40.68% 

 Elected - Luke Myer (Labour and Co-operative Party) & Vera Rider (Independent)

It looks as if this was a 3-member ward in 2019, two seats being taken by Conservatives, the other by an Independent. One of those Conservatives was the now-Independent Vera Rider. So this is at best one more seat lost by the Conservatives, making (e&oe) 1,062 lost councillors.