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[notquitethere]

Yes, they lost over a thousand seats, and for the first time in decades they're no longer the biggest party at the local level.

[Starver]

Is it true that the Conservative party just lost a bunch of seats in local elections?

They lost 1063 seats (net, of the 8000ish up for contention). Labour got 537 more (gains minus losses, some losses being to the aforementioned), LDs were +407, Green +241, the rest comparative small-change gains/losses, by number (starting with 89 unaffiliated Independents who lost out to party-affiliations, by the raw values at least...).

By percentage change, the losers were UKIP (lost 25, ended up at zero) at -100% outcome, compared with Tory -30%. Skipping a few, Labour was +25%, LibDem +33.3% then some other minor sets (+50% or +100%, but still single-digit) to Green at slightly above +100% improvement.

Council-wise, Con reduced by 48 (to just 33 in the 230 total), Lab was +22 (now 71). Lib Dem +12 (to 29), Green got +1 (to 1, which is interesting) and even Independent got +1 (to 2)... (However that works, with majority no-party individuals!. It's an entirely different thing from the No Overall Control situation, which moved +12 to 92. And you can work out 'who' overtook who, obviously.)

So the figures look bad for Conservatives, reasonably good for Labour and a variety of messages for the others. Green/LibDem both having reason to interpret things cheerfully, at least as a foot (back) in the door.

UKIP might be a spent force, having 'achieved' their original single-policy core aim. Though Reform UK is the 'post'-Brexit equivalent sub-party, which seemed to include candidates who were originally Tory but thought the party wasn't Euroskeptic enough (or maybe the local party thought they were too much so?), however much more that fringe group has going on in in. They went from 4 to 6 seats (one of the +50%ers), I'd have to check where, and who lost out in the process.


I was going to do a full comparison of how many Foos became Bars (cutting through the Net figures, to give fully-flavoured Gross statistics, amongst other things), but I've not gotten round to that yet! I'm sure actual salaried psephologists have already processed even the tiniest details to death, though, and definitely such halfway-crude measures as I've yet to get the data together for.

[EuchreJack]

So, can any of the Non-Conservatives get along well enough to form a majority?

[hector13]

There’s usually deals between parties that happen so things actually get done, whether that’s formal coalitions or concessions made on a case-by-case basis.

There was a weird one I think in Scotland somewhere in which one of Labour or the Tories were forming a coalition with the other, which went over very poorly.

Majorities aren’t really necessary, they just need to wheel and deal a bit more than if they did have one.

[EuchreJack]

Ah, that must be nice.  In America "Negotiate" is a dirty word.

[Starver]

Representation at the County(/Borough/whatever) level doesn't go beyond the subregional level of significance.  If there are 100 seats in Camberwick Green Metropolitan Borough Council and 51+ of them are members of the Pippin Fort Military Junta Party, then the council (within bounds set by the relevent national government requirements) does its business in line with PFMJP policies (or as near as it can, with the possibility of representational dissent on rather specific issues, such as exactly how to foil the minority Tripp's Mill Independence Rebellion Party's attempts to redefine local planning laws in their own electoral wards).

That doesn't necessarily directly factor in national government/parliament. Neither Chippy Minton MP (of the Trumpton Central And Camberwick Green constituency, Socialist Workers Party) nor Lord Belborough Of Chigley (sitting as a a cross-bench peer in the second-house) even technically need to take direct account of anything beyond their own granted responsibilities (and, Chippy may have only to worry about Mrs Cobbit, Green Party candidate/most likely contender at the next General Election), in the grand scheme of things...

[Starver]

RM suggests a reason why they lost voters... The very thing others thought (or still think) would boost them/suppress the votes of others.

The level of contradictions in this situation is amusing...

[notquitethere]

Haha and Mogg going and admitting the voter suppression rationale and the government having to deny it.

[hector13]

Braverman is also chatting about making the UK economy high wage, high skill while simultaneously trying to suggest that we should be training people to be fruit pickers so we don’t have as many immigrants.

[Il Palazzo]

She means high wage, high skill jobs for the real people in Londinium. Fruit picking is something for proles in the province to do. And why would you import more proles when you can grow them organically?

[Loud Whispers]

RM suggests a reason why they lost voters... The very thing others thought (or still think) would boost them/suppress the votes of others.

The level of contradictions in this situation is amusing...

Hot damn it's a rare day when the Guardian agrees with JRM. I don't know how the Tories keep cannibalising themselves again and again

She means high wage, high skill jobs for the real people in Londinium. Fruit picking is something for proles in the province to do. And why would you import more proles when you can grow them organically?

Honestly we need to mechanise our farming already. All this talk about making a science and tech economy but we put no money into science and tech. We've had AstraZeneca complaining that the defunding of public health services has made UK private health research unattractive because the government toils under the misapprehension that public health spending is a sinful waste of taxes and not one of the best selling points of the UK economy, and UK semi-conductors are getting annihilated whilst Germany, Japan, Taiwan and America are all dropping billions of euros, yen, yuan and dollars subsidising their semiconductor industries to keep pace with China. But UK gov is all talk talk talk -_-

It's also depressing but a lot of the jobs in Londongrad are split between high skill but low pay (reminder that the government considers doctors, civil servants and nurses unskilled lmao) or low skill but high pay (finance, equity, fintech and insurance are actively cannibalising the rest of the UK economy). Either drastic wage growth is needed across the country, or house prices need to be reigned in. You get those outliers in law or finance who make >£150k but the majority of Londoners make £20-35k with that range rising amongst over 50s to £30-40k, yet to afford to live in the city you need to make >£33k and to own a house you need to make >£120k. The city right now is like a giant honeypot trap where people from across the UK or even across the world get lured in by >£28k salaries only to find >80% of their salary is devoured by rents and travel fees. Lots of the international workers I work with were fine even with this when the sterling was strong, but after the Liz Truss cabbagnomics there's no point in them even staying in the UK because they can't get any value out of sending remittances so may as well go back and work in their mother countries

I almost feel there's an element of futility that just boils down to how the government always favoured deregulating credit and restricting council housing development in order to artificially inflate the housing market. Wages being flat for the last 30 years is miserable enough but what would be the point of tripling everyone's salaries if it doesn't address property developers just gouging everyone's value again and again ;<

[Funk]

She means high wage, high skill jobs for the real people in Londinium. Fruit picking is something for proles in the province to do. And why would you import more proles when you can grow them organically?

It's only soft fruit, an area that has grown considerably in the last 20 years, fuelled by the flexible low cost labour of temporary economic migrants.
No one is makeing it a carer and staying, they spend a summer here working hard and take the money home where its worth something.
Its odd that only soft fruit faces a crash, other fields like building labours are not in this "shortage" maybe it's there better conditions like not being charged rent to stay in a remote and run down caravan while working 12 hours a day.

We've had years of employers being able to get an artificially good pick of the uk and europen labour market, just by the high pound making grunt work in the UK attractive financially to professionals in the EU8+.

[Lidku]

So umm... Liz Truss just visited Taiwan..

lol

[Loud Whispers]

Liz Truss got more clout as a former PM than an actual politician xD

[scriver]

Yeah I was about to ask about that, because... well, be careful or she'll be back in your politics with the image of a experience-hardened global politics veteran

Maybe she's angling for a UN/global politics career now?