For the first time in the 57 years that I have been a political activist the Lib Dems have taken more seats and more councils than the Conservative Party. #ukpolitics#libdems
The Liberal Democrats have won more council seats overall than the Conservatives in the local elections, elections expert John Curtice said.
Curtice told the BBC:
The Liberal Democrats now have 520 councillors, and the Conservatives have 508.
This is a simple headline way of underlining the way in which the results of those local elections have indeed been extremely disappointing for the Conservatives.” #libdems#ukpolitics
I would say one of the big patterns of the night is the swing to independents… double the numbers that were standing for re-election, compared to more like 20% boosts to each of Labour and the Lib Dems.
I’d be interested to know how many of the new independent councillors formerly sat as Labour (and defected over, eg. party position on the Middle East) or as Tory councillors (and essentially defected from a sinking ship)
Today marks the end of my 41st year as a member of Liverpool City Council. I was first elected on 1st May 1975 and served for 9 years. I had 8 years off and have been back on continuously from 1992. I'm now preparing for my biggest challenge. Being Lord Mayor from 15th May.#ukpolitics#libdems
I saw someone saying if the UK had PR 20% of our MPs would be from far right parties. That’s probably correct, but I’d prefer that to the current situation where it’s over 50%
Way back in the dawn of time (2022), we had a local election in the London Borough of #Lewisham. I took to Twitter (which was the fashion at the time), to pillory the candidates. My tweets caused a bit of a ruckus. Ultimately, they got me name checked by the #DailyHate and a bunch of far-right websites.
Anyways, guess what time it is! That's right it's Lewisham mayoral election time! And that means I've read the manifestos so you don't have to.
First of all, what is it with LibDems and bad clipping paths? Why does his hair look like that? Did someone take a photo of him and crop it with safety scissors and physically paste it into this leaflet? What’s going on here? This is 2024 – there’s no excuse for such shoddy Photoshop work.
Chris is very angry that he has to do this. He didn’t ask to be standing for mayor. But, doggone it, Labour went and took a seat off the Tories and now he has to get out there and campaign for an election he has no hope of winning.
Come on, Chris. Cheer up! Labour took another seat off the Tories. That’s a good thing.
Funnily enough, he wants to build more social/affordable homes, promote sustainability, reduce crime, and improve education. Some very worthy goals.
But recurring theme I mentioned earlier? #YouAndWhoseMoney? These are nice policies. But the only way a local mayor can implement them is with cash from the central government.
I was proud to stand alongside the people of Ukraine as we protested with passion but dignity against the illegal occupation and crimes against humanity committed by Russia. #libdems#UkraineWar
The political parties in the UK in preparation for the coming general election are as follows:
#Conservatives: Evil, but also incompetent; #DUP: Like Conservatives, but also bonkers; #LibDems: Like Conservatives, but also hopeless; #Labour: Like Conservatives, but also useless; #SinnFein: apparently competent and sensible but only in Ireland; #SNP: Like Labour, but Scottish; #Greens: Sensible and possibly competent, but we won't vote for them because we all think no one else will.
@rpin42@RussCheshire They usually do know the total. Last year we all did one and it was mentioned during the meeting that it was increasing at rate of 700 per hour. It got over 900,000 signatures.
@Wen@NickT6630@RussCheshire chin up! If you want to do something that does have an effect, join your local opposition party and fight tooth and nail to get them out! #LibDems
Ed Davey’s approval rating takes a big hit from the #PostOffice scandal
He is being used by #Labour (Blair and Mandelson's ignoring of warnings over #Horizon) and the #Conservatives (more ministers ‘in charge’ of the PO and ignored it) and he both ignored Bates in his first 2 days in office but also the first minister to meet him. But the LibDumbs did go into coalition and did a great deal of damage to the country. Lie down with dogs and you’ll get fleas.
I see that, following Ed Davey, former LibDem cabinet minister Vince Cable is pleading ignorance of the Post Office Horizon scandal. He claims the issue did not receive sufficient media coverage for it to register on the political agenda.
That is complete bollocks. Private Eye for one was banging the drum continuously for the sub-postmasters, and did a huge amount of investigative journalism throughout. We are talking here of an illustrious organ read by pretty much everyone in the English political establishment. Call it the Oh-fuck-am-I-in-it-this-week? effect.