Send In The Clowns

Send In The Clowns

Tonight will be a night of celebration for UKIP after a brilliant set of local election results, if the 2013 election is remembered it will be for one thing, the election UKIP made its mark on the domestic political scene.  Although they did not win the most seats, they had a healthy net gain of 139 new councillors and have started to lay roots in local politics, which will be essential if they intend to establish themselves as the fourth main party of British politics. 

The three main parties did not do so well the Lib Dems lost 124 seats and were wiped out in the South Shields by election.  Meanwhile Labour showed once and for all they are not the one nation party they claim to be, experts said Labour should be gaining 500 to 600 seats, that estimate has been revised to 350 seats but on all accounts they failed to hit the number of seats they should have won.  Labour had a gain of 291 councillors and gained control of 2 councils, publicly Labour said they would have been happy to win 200 but they know that, that sort of total would not be good enough for this stage of the election cycle.  As for the Conservatives, David Cameron will not be celebrating at the fact his party lost 335 councillors but many experts were expecting much worse with numbers like 600 being mentioned.   The Conservatives also lost control of 10 councils Labour only took control of two of these councils while the rest had no overall majority, one gold nugget amongst the Conservative results was that they held onto Staffordshire one of Labours big targets.  The Conservatives took control of Staffordshire for the first time since 1981 in 2009 and were expected to lose control of the council this time round, failing to regain Staffordshire is a glaring defeat for the Labour party.

There is one piece of bad news for UKIP though Sky news showed on Friday night that if the support in the local elections were the same across the country in 2015 UKIP would fail to win a seat due to the first past the post system.  Labour would have a slim majority of 12 on 331, the Conservatives would have 245 seat, the Lib Dems 48 seats and other parties on 26 seats.  However, Labour will not celebrate at this statistic, they know they are not doing nearly well enough at this stage of the electoral cycle and if the UKIP vote is eroded by 2015 (which it probably will be) then they are likely to remain in opposition for another term.