UKIP wiped out, limited gains for main parties
LONDON: From a vote share of 17% in 2014, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) on Friday suffered a collapse in local elections in England that saw Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats performing just well enough to be able to claim good results for each.
There were no major shifts in the elections to 150 councils, fought mainly on local issues. However, if the voting is extrapolated to a national vote, the Conservative Party appeared to lose about 12 seats from its tally of 318 in the 2017 general election.
The Labour Party did not perform well enough to be able to claim a surge against the Tories, but managed to win a majority in the Plymouth council and more than 40 councillors across England, according to results declared by noon UK time.
UKIP’S collapse was evident from its tally of only two councillors, losing nearly 100. The party had similarly lost most of its vote share in the 2017 election - a dramatic change in its fortunes from the 2015 election, when it was a major player due to its Eurosceptic platform.
UKIP leaders explained the collapse by suggesting its supporters were not too unhappy with the Conservative government leading the talks on Brexit. The Conservative Party appeared to gain the most from UKIP’S collapse.
As expected, Labour performed better in London and major cities, but it significantly failed to win in the London borough of Barnet, attributed to problems with its handling of the anti-semitism row.
Prime Minister Theresa May, who visited the London borough of Wandsworth, where the Conservatives managed to retain the council despite losing eight seats, said: “Labour thought they could take control, this was one of their top targets and they threw everything at it, but they failed.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called his party’s win in Plymouth a “fantastic result” and “a sign that Labour is back in this part of Britain”, but admitted to disappointment in areas where the party lost ground.
“Obviously I’m disappointed at any places where we lost a bit of ground... but if you look at the overall picture, Labour gained a lot of seats across the whole country, we gained a lot of votes in places we’d never had those votes before,” he said.
We have consolidated and built on the advances we made at last year’s general election, when we won the largest increase in Labour’s share of the vote since 1945.