Going local

Although widely ignored by the national media, 6^th May also saw electors in 164 local authority areas in England go to the polls. Pundits normally use municipal elections as an indicator of what might happen if the results were translated into parliamentary figures – but why bother when you have the real thing, eh?

However, political researchers will not have missed a significant difference in trends where it appears that Labour are turning out to be the big winners, picking up 350 new council seats and taking control of 14 local authorities including Coventry, Doncaster, Islington, St Helens, Harrow, Oxford, Waltham Forest and Brent.

Tories and Lib Dems lost control of four councils each. It was a particular blow for Lib Dems to see their flagship council in Liverpool return to Labour and have Sheffield -which contains Nick Clegg’s constituency - fall to no overall control.

Of course, it could be argued that Labour’s last disastrous council performance left them with only one way to go in election results but analysts will be making comparisons and asking why the usual mirror effect between local and general elections did not manifest itself on this occasion.

Some of them, at the risk of causing individuals at the Electoral Commission to slump over their desks, might even start pondering aloud on the benefits of linking parliamentary and municipal bodies into the same statutory fixed term.