U.K Local By-Elections Thread

[Ben.]

Thread modification is currently going on. Should be finished soon.

Edit by Al -- your's friendly neighbourhood despot

[Ben.]

Amusingly George Galloway has just claimed that "Respect" will win seats in every local authority in the country...

LOL!

Though i think they stand to make big gains in tower hamlets, maybe a few in Newham and perhaps the odd gain in other bits of London (Hackney? Camden?)

[Ben.]

Maybe the Right of the Tory party (voters that is ) voted BNP in Derbyshire. The Norman Tebbit wing of the party are clearly pissed off with Cameron (a la the Tony Benn wing of the Labour party wass with Blair ten years ago).

As a rule the BNP mostly draws its votes from Labour voters, a mix of the disaffected and frustrated white working class voters (who Labour have struggled to get to the polls with the decline of traditional industries) along with a fair slice of aspirant lower middle class and blue-collar Tories. 

It’s hard to imagine hard right Tories voting for the BNP. Generally the BNP are pretty much old fashionedly socialist on most economic issues, which won’t sit well with your average Tory, no matter how disaffected – though I don’t doubt that what’s left of the old blue collar Tory vote could be won over by a BNP campaign.

[Ben.]

Any thoughts on the local elections in May?

For my own two cents worth - while I think modest improvements for Labour in some cities (Newcastle and Liverpool have some seats up this time around do they not?) are likely it still seems likely that in London and other areas the party is heading for a sizeable hammering (as happened in ’68), what will be most interesting is what effect Cameron will have and weather the Tories make good on the recent chatter that they will be able to make gains in cities outside of London such as Manchester where they are rumoured to feel quite buoyant at the prospect of winning over sufficient white collar voters in order to get back onto the council though the LibDems will no doubt be desperate to avoid this.

Thoughts?  Also does anyone have a list of all the Councils up for election and their current status?       

[Ben.]

Slightly off topic, but… would anybody care to make a prediction on how the local elections will play out in May?