Local Election results

10.39.21am GMT Sat 6th May 2006

I still haven't had a chance to look at the all results but it seems quite a mixed bag of results, Labour didn't do as bad as I expected, the Conservatives did well but I thought they would do better and the Liberal Democrats didn't do well or badly - though it does appear where the work was put in we held, increased out majority or won new seats (that is not to say any losses were where we didn't work - there could be many reasons).

We appear to have achieved a higher vote share than in the General Election a year ago - coming ahead of the Labour Party. BBC's projection is that Labour have 26%, Lib Dems 27%, Conservatives 40%). Liberal Democrats have gained Richmond upon Thames from the Conservatives and South Lakeland and St Albans from No Overall Control. Sadly we lost Islington and Milton Keynes but are still the largest party, we also won half the seats in Rochdale and became the largest party on other councils such as Oxford, Camden and Woking. The Liberal Democrat Mayor of Watford (Dorothy Thornhill) was re-elected with 51% of the vote. There were also some impressive gains (of Councillors) particularly in London - 17 in Richmond, 13 in Camden, 11 in Haringey, 10 in Lewisham and at least 12 in Brent.

In the West Midlands we held virtually all of the seats we were concerned about - in Worcester, Stoke, Shrewsbury (from a by-election) and Perry Barr (turning a 30 something majority into a 1,500 majority!), made a gain in Solihull (though not enough for the Conservatives to lose control) and Birmingham. Of course there was some bad news - we lost a couple of Councillors and the BNP won some seats. Labour lost a couple Councils Councills in the West Midlands and the Conservatives gained a few but overall there was no huge change in the West Midlands.