English local elections, May 2014

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And in Tower Hamlets the count goes on. Bromley South has yet to declare.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

And in Tower Hamlets the count goes on. Bromley South has yet to declare.

I'm fairly sure they weren't starting again until 6.30pm due to "staffing issues".

[Filuwaúrdjan]

News from the Midlands...

The Leader of Birmingham City Council (and Labour group leader for donkeys years) Sir Albert Bore is facing yet another leadership challenge. Once again the challenger is Quinton ward councillor John Clancy.

The leader of the Labour group in Walsall, Tim Oliver, has died of cancer. Prior to his death Labour held exactly half the seats on Walsall MBC.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And in Tower Hamlets the count goes on. Bromley South has yet to declare.

I'm fairly sure they weren't starting again until 6.30pm due to "staffing issues".

lol

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bromley South declares! Two seats for Labour, ten vote margin for the second seat. This brings the totals to Labour 20, THF 18, Con 4. Three seats are outstanding due to the postponed poll in Blackwall & Cubitt Town.

[You kip if you want to...]

Mike Smithson is the first 'journalist' to waste his time in making a fool of himself, going through ALL of Thursday's results to come to the conclusion that the Projected Share reported by the BBC is wrong.

And then Labour's Press Team re-tweets such silliness.

Obviously, anybody who'd even consider registering on a site such as this knows that there were no elections in Tory/UKIP/LibDem strongholds down south or in Scotland and Wales and that's why we need a PNS.



Rookie mistake.

[EPG]

He didn't claim that the projection was wrong. It's a chart of actual votes in the elections that happened. Isn't there merit in having the figures?

[You kip if you want to...]

He didn't claim that the projection was wrong. It's a chart of actual votes in the elections that happened. Isn't there merit in having the figures?

He claims it's a "tad different from how it was reported on Thursday". Basically, he thinks the PNS is wrong.

There's not really much merit in having the numbers when trying to come to a conclusion about what it'd mean if Thursday had been a general election.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But how much merit is there trying to work out the latter?

[You kip if you want to...]

But how much merit is there trying to work out the latter?

We get a poor-man's opinion poll and some nice fancy graphics of the House of Commons.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Tower Hamlets

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Hackney

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

What software do you use to make these maps?

[doktorb]

He didn't claim that the projection was wrong. It's a chart of actual votes in the elections that happened. Isn't there merit in having the figures?

Some wards are single member elected 'in thirds', others multi member 'all out', some are unopposed, others still with dozens of candidates. It's a chart of actual votes, but it's not accurate for all that

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What software do you use to make these maps?

lol

MS Paint and a steady hand.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

LOL

[Filuwaúrdjan]

City of Westminster

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

What software do you use to make these maps?

lol

MS Paint and a steady hand.

lol, take it as a compliment to your MS Paint skills

[joevsimp]

City of Westminster

four Labour gains, I think  Shirley Porter was still around when they last won the one by the river (Churchill)

[Peter]

My bi-ennial Oxford report:



Darker shade indicates a gain. Lib Dems have essentially retreated to the more middle/upper class enclaves of the city. Greens have retaken the student wards in the city centre. Reviewing the data directly shows that UKIP picked up votes in the traditional working class wards from Labour.

See below for maps of party share dating back to 2006.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Newprogressive/Oxfordmaps

[Smid]

I wandered into this thread after reading this article. I don't know much, other than that I thought Tower Hamlets was a solidly Labour sort of place. Would someone, most llikely Al, care to educate me?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's a complicated story and there are different versions of the truth, think its fair to say. So trying to be as even handed as possible:

Basically the Labour group on the council elected in 2006 had certain serious factional difficulties, and there was something of an ethnic dimension to them, with most (though not all) councillors from a Bangladeshi background forming the one faction. The lead figure in this group was Lutfur Rahman, who is allegedly linked with the Islamic Forum of Europe which is allegedly linked to the Bangladeshi political party Jamaat-e-Islami. Bangladeshi councillors opposed to Rahman tended to be associated with another Bangladeshi political party (the Awami League). These tensions increased with the defection of Bangladeshi councillors elected for Respect. Rahman became council leader in 2008 after a factional coup. His tenure was controversial; Rahman clashed with the council's Chief Executive (i.e. senior civil servant) and eventually fired him, and claims were made by various people of improper use of council funds.

Rahman was ousted as Leader after the 2010 elections and replaced by Helal Abbas (a longterm rival, though they represented the same ward). But the voters of Tower Hamlets had voted to have a directly elected executive Mayor in a referendum. Rahman and Abbas both ran for the Labour nomination for this position, as did the local GLA member John Biggs (himself a former Tower Hamlets councillor). Rahman won the vote, but was removed as candidate by the NEC following accusations of IFE links - the IFE was accused by being an entryist organisation and entryism is severely frowned on in Labour due to the experience with Militant - and claims of electoral fraud. Abbas was picked as the Labour candidate by the NEC, even though he had finished third. Rahman stood as an independent and won the election by miles; hardly any non-Bangladeshi voters turned out.

Following Rahman's election, the Labour group split with Rahman's faction eventually forming itself into 'Tower Hamlets First'. Rahman's tenure as Mayor has been every bit as controversial as his time as council leader, and there have been repeated accusations of financial irregularities, dubious use of council funds (most notoriously on a Mercedes E-class for Rahman's personal use), and questionable grants to 'community groups' in the borough. Rahman has also been accused of links to (Bangladeshi) criminals, while 'Tower Hamlets First' has been accused of electoral intimidation. But the borough isn't a basket case in the usual sense (i.e. basic services are delivered pretty effectively) and bad publicity has not damaged Rahman's image with the people that actually vote for him.

[Smid]

Thanks for that, Al. I haven't really got anything to contribute in response, but didn't want to not respond, either. It all seems rather fascinating - I think I can picture the comparable Melbourne municipality.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Does anyone here remember Alan Amos? The right-wing Conservative MP for Hexham who quit the Commons at the 1992 election after an 'incident' on Hampstead Heath, and who later defected to Labour in the mid 1990s after claiming to have Seen The Light? And who was then a Labour councillor in Tower Hamlets until he lost his seat in 2006? And who re-emerged as a councillor in Worcester a few years later?

Well this lacks dignity.

[Zanas]

This is like Sarkozy and Besson combined, although at an admittedly lower level.