(Perceived) lack of momentum
A mixed night for the Lib Dems.
Their vote share appears to be down about 1%, and there are some particularly important places for them where they have lost control - , for example - and (the Mark Oaten factor in operation).
A lot of what matters here is momentum - or at least, the perception of it.
The problem for the Liberal Democrats is not that they've had a terrible night. They have had some successes - gaining (albeit by the pull of a pencil - ), and possibly . They may be able to claim they've pushed Labour into third place but there isn't much momentum for them to talk about.
I'm 
Comments
Nick,
I see that the Conservatives have once again have won lots of council seats, but how do these compare with other recent local elections. Is the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ able to fill in their election map to show the hole country in terms of councils to show who is winning overall. I think many people would find this interesting.
The Lib Dems are out at sea, it really seems that way, their party members are caught up in silly affairs, which invites ridicule from the whole of the british press and the house of commons. The public sees all of this going on and they look like amateurs even though there are a lot of bright mp's in their party.
Then, what do they do, they put in a leader who is about 70, a man, a man with no charisma, a man that doesn't raise his voice. At least Tony Blair gets stuck in, he shows some passion even though he's quite a terrible man in my opinion. Same with Cameron, whilst Campbell is in commons whispering away.
So the Lib Dems are going bacwards through time and the local election shows this. They need a new fresh leader who fits the role of a PM...
Where do the lib dems go from here. How do they build up momentum again? You have the labour party trying to resell old policies in new packages, the conservatives generating new policies and the lib dems.....
Perhaps we'll see some momentum in Tony's cabinet re-shuffle tomorrow, or maybe not.
P Smith - There's a map on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ website.
A little early to make comments. I am intersted in the turnout primarily. The numbers as they are currently being presented makes for some satisfaction for Cameron but what do they really tell us. It may be a little premature to write off Ming the Merciless or Blair for that matter.
Nick,
I thought the Lib Dems were a bit cheeky to be honest. Considering that at the start of the night Labour were playing up the possible meltdown to make the ultimate results look good (less bad) and the Tories were busily managing expectations, the Lib Dems were definitely the party most eagerly boosting their chances and it clearly didn't happen. Judging by some of the early evening boosting and the ashen faces on Sarah Teather and Simon Jenkins as the results started coming in, I suspect they found themselves caught a bit short. They may nominally have beaten Labour into third place but as far as I can tell by almost every other metric of success they actually came out worse than the last election, albeit not by an order of magnitude. As far as I can tell their share of the vote fell, as you've noted, they've lost control of a council for every one they've won and they've actually come out of the election with fewer councillors than they went in with.
It's all very well them sitting there banging on about how the Tories are a shambles and don't look like an alternative government and making digs about northern cities, but the bottom line is that this is a party that has spent much of the past few years mooching around boasting of how they were going to be the official opposition after the next general election and quite frankly that looks pretty risible tonight (of course it always did but I feel that tonight in particular it would have been entirely justifiable to laugh in their faces, as Sky News's resident tame psephologist pretty much did in the face of David Laws' protestations).
Additionally, although I'm closer to the Lib Dems than Labour on civil liberties, I did think it was funny that the Lib Dems lost Islington (where relatively high crime rates compared to neighbouring areas have been an issue), having watched Sarah Teather lecturing Tessa Jowell on how the voters of Camden were set to showcase a general rejection of Labour's ASBOs and authoritarian ways earlier on in the night.
The Lib Dems really went wrong with the whole Kennedy thing. They followed up a reasonably good general election with scandal and silliness. I voted LD in the general election and was really coming round to their relevence in modern politics but after all the chaos and the election of a boring, out of touch, old man, i've gone green, but many who considered them last year will have gone Tory.
Oops, not Simon Jenkins, Simon Hughes.
I'm falling back on the fact that I haven't had any sleep. It's that or I'm losing it, which clearly can't be the case.
Of course, if you haven't published my first comment post, this won't make any sense.
Nick.
I live in hornsey and wood green, and i haven't noticed a loss of momentum from the lib-dems.
My local labour councillors were utterly afraid this morning - and i still don't know if they survived.
Labour lost 11 seats to the Lib Dems tonight, no halt to their gains at the General Election when they overturned a 10,000 majority for the Labour MP.
Al
At last we see why Jowell, Ckarke, Prescott et al were kept in their posts. Especially Clarke, whose scandals and incompetencies made him lurch from one outrageous admission to amother. This was to 'hang them out to dry' - to leave them open to blame for the expected election performance, and to divert attention from the Prime Minister's almost bottomless unpopulariy, his expensive freebies, Cherie's hair, (each symptomatic of the underlying malaise of greed and lack of integtrity shown from the start ftom New Labour}, leading to PFIs and crippling debts and contributions from wealthy businessmen and the the appalling and potentially explosive loans to the party for possible peerages.
Smart spin politics, Mr. Blair, sorry, To-knee - Alistair at his most morally vacuuous effective best.
At last we see why Jowell, Ckarke, Prescott et al were kept in their posts. Especially Clarke, whose scandals and incompetencies made him lurch from one outrageous admission to amother. This was to 'hang them out to dry' - to leave them open to blame for the expected election performance, and to divert attention from the Prime Minister's almost bottomless unpopulariy, his expensive freebies, Cherie's hair, (each symptomatic of the underlying malaise of greed and lack of integtrity shown from the start ftom New Labour}, leading to PFIs and crippling debts and contributions from wealthy businessmen and the the appalling and potentially explosive loans to the party for possible peerages.
Smart spin politics, Mr. Blair, sorry, To-knee - Alistair at his most morally vacuuous effective best.
The results, as usual, seem to indicate the feelings of the nation towards government.
A series of protest votes and low turn out makes the results a slight mockery. The idea of making people vote via fines etc is a great idea, it may stop elections being decided on the pull of a straw, but definately not one that would benefit the current government.
As far as the Lib Dem's are concerned I personally feel they alienated a large proportion of their "young vote" by the election of their new older leader.
As an Islington voter, I'm pretty sure that the swing against the Lib Dems was a reaction to their conduct of the local council (rather than anything to do with the national party).
Personally I'm surprised that the majority of this swing was to Labour (given the general feeling about the Blair 'Presidency', and (Old)Labour's past actions in this borough).
Though we do now have a single Green essentially holding the key vote. OTOH this could lead to a largely paralysed Council (and maybe default 'rule by bureaucrat').
Terry (not the same Terry as the other poster in this thread, nor the well known 'Terry Jones' :)
Nick
A key factor in the Lib Dems loss of Islington to NOC has been their appalling record of cosying up to Arsenal over the new Emirates stadium and their failure to represent the interests of local people. They had their chance in power and they blew it.
Let's not get carried away here. The reason that the Lib Dems have failed to gain a siginificant number of councils is because of gains made in previous years. On a national level, we polled above Labour, and our share of the vote has gone up since the General Election. And then there's the extraordinary result in the Dunfermline & West Fife by-election. I hardly think it is fair to say that events over the past few months have harmed the Liberal Democrat cause.
With Labour in trouble and whispers starting already that David Cameron is not achieving a Conservative take-off, this could have been a big night for the LibDems. At the start of the night we heard that they were targetting a net gain of councillers (politician-speak for "we expect to make substantial advances"). In the end, despite some good results, the unexpected LibDem meltdown in their inner London strongholds left them with a net gain of just +2 nationally. In truth though, they were never really ahead of the game and it showed.
In the end there was just enough good news to spin that they had satisfied their objectives, but it must have felt bitterly disappointing. The evidence is there for all to see that at the next General Election, as in 1983, they could be squeezed severely between a revived Conservative party and a Labour party entrenched in its strongholds. The nightmare scenario is of a Conservative party winning back many of its lost seats and the Labour party hanging on and not losing many to the LibDems.
Of course, the vote share would not be repeated in a General Election, but despite the 9% rise in the LibDem vote compared to the last General Election they would barely profit in seats. And a 40% vote for the Conservatives with the LibDems at their 2005 level, or lower, would lead to substantial losses.
I think the deck chairs on the threatened ship will not float
in the turbulent wake of the P.T. boat.