A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Council by-election results

Thursday's council by-election results:

St George West Ward, Bristol UA. LD gain from Lab. LD 923 (34%, +9.1), Lab 816 (30.1%, -8.1), Con 509 (18.8%, -18), Ind 257 (9.5%, +9.5), Green 116 (4.3%, +4.3), Eng Dem 93 (3.4%, +3.4). Swing of 8.6% from Lab to LD since 2007. LD gain from third place.

Knutsford Division, Cheshire CC. Con 1647 (58.7%, +1.2), LD 818 (29.1%, +5.1), Lab 342 (12.2%, -6.3). Swing of 2% from Con to LD since May this year.

Knutsford Ward, Cheshire East UA. Almost identical to the above as on same boundaries for new shadow authority.

Holybourne & Froyle Ward, E Hants DC. Con hold. Con 424 (54.6%, -13.7), LD 352 (45.4%, +21.6). Swing of 17.7% from Con to LD since 2007.

Alexandra Ward, LB Haringey. LD hold. LD 1460 (49.9%, -6), Lab 772 (26.4%, +5.9), Con 443 (15.2%, +6.4), Green 221 (7.6%, -7.2), BNP 27 (0.1%, +0.1). Swing of 6% from LD to Lab since 2006. Impressive Labour performance in safest LD seat in a borough where Labour is recovering strongly. This is in marginal Hornsey & Wood Green LD parliamentary constituency.

Mount Joy Ward, Isle of Wight CC. Con 286 (45.5%, -2.7), LD 155 (24.6%, -5.8), Ind 150 (23.8%, +23.8), Lab 38 (6%, -12.6). Swing of 1.5% from LD to Con since 2006.

Herne Bay Division, Kent CC. Con hold. Con 2474 (47.7%, +7.6), LD 1524 (29.4%, -3.3), Lab 537 (10.4%, -13.1), BNP 399 (7.7%, +7.7), UKIP 252 (4.9%, +1.3). Swing of 5.4% from LD to Con since 2005.

Rotherhithe Ward, LB Southwark. LD hold. LD 1149 (56.8%, +9.2), Lab 618 (30.6%, +5.3), Con 255 (12.6%, -4.3). Swing of 2% from Lab to LD since 2006. LDs and Lab both picking up some of the Green vote from 2006.

Middle Rasen Ward, West Lindsey DC. Con gain from LD who failed to run a candidate.
Con 400 (76.2%, +36.5), UKIP 125 (23.8%, +13.4). Swing of 11.6% from UKIP to Con since 2007.

8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks Luke. A very poor set of elections for the Tories. I am sure their poll lead is very shallow.

10:11 am, October 10, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Luke, why don't you give us some insight into why the Labour Party has let the City of London has dragged us to the edge of a major economic recession?

3:58 pm, October 10, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is not a very poor set of results for the conservatives. In terms of councils the conservatives are still doing extremely well.

What you should be more interested in is how labour are doing which in terms of overall performance are doing very badly.

You have to realise that both Labour and the conservatives are offering very little in terms of choice. People are obviously very pissed off with Labour and rightly so. But there are still a lot of people that while won't vote Labour may not vote for the conservatives either....they may not vote at all.

The UK is virtually bankrupt and there is a 1 in 20 chance that the UK may not be able to meet its gilt obligations. This is the the result of 10 years of Labour encouraging wreckless lending and risk taking. No matter what Browns calls this....this is a problem that could have been avoided through regulation and since he was the man who created the FSA then surely he is mostly to blame.

Obviously Labour supporters are more than happy to dip in their pockets for the next 30 years and pay for this mess. I'm not at all and I won't be paying my tax bill this year.....in fact I won't be filing a tax return....the fine for which is a lot less than my tax bill.

5:56 pm, October 10, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gordon the liar.....Gordon Brown was warned about the ICELAND banks.....TWICE AND DID NOTHING.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7663596.stm

Now 1.2 billion pounds is lost and yet again the tax payer picks up the scraps. Incompetence.

9:40 pm, October 10, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Seems like the Labour resurgence is getting rich rattled.

6:12 pm, October 12, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Whats getting me rattled is the billions we pouring down the drain. There is no evidence anywhere that this rescue deal will work. Making matters worse it now looks like we may have to nationalise the banks anyway.

To me the most obvious solution would be to nationalise the lot. If things really are that bad then lets let the bank shares plummet and buy the lot for next to nothing. This way we secure the savings and pensions of the most prudent and careful institutions.

Unfortunately it would mean that those with shares will lose but thats the nature of investments. We can't continue to bail out the capitalist system, either it works or it doesn't. If it doesn't then lets think of something else and start trading on the actual value of goods rather than thin air.

To be pretty honest I've not be at all impressed with the conservative approach to this mess as it appears they are more lost than Brown.

I personally think capitalism has fallen over and no matter what we do now the fundemental approach to how we run the economy must change.

Labour really do have a golden opportunity here as they could actually use this to rebuild Britain as one of the leading economies of the world. Invest now in infrastructure and it will pay dividends for the coming generation.

8:15 pm, October 12, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very good comments there Rich.

Have Labour got the bottle to do the right thing though?

8:55 pm, October 12, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well they nationalized them but in the wrong way. We've bought a stake but there is nothing in place that will radically change the way in which we run our markets.

A Labour back bencher, John McDonnald, has heavily criticised his own government for failing to put in place regulation that will prevent a repeat. Basically nothing has changed apart from we have just paid £550 billion for a share in the banking system.

I think the government has done the right thing but hasn't gone far enough or been ruthless enough.

Done correctly this could have provided as much wealth as North Sea Oil. But I'm very sceptical about the manner of this deal and the amount we have paid for a share in the banking system. Are these banks worth £550 billion and what if large portions of their assets really are toxic.......?

8:27 pm, October 13, 2008

 

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