Western Daily Press (Saturday)
‘People want Change – bring on the election’
VOTERS in the West delivered the Prime Minister a series of blows in Thursday’s local elections. Rishi Sunak’s strategists will be particularly concerned with devastating losses in key parliamentary electoral battlegrounds such as Cheltenham and Swindon.
The Conservative Party was wipedout in Cheltenham – with it not getting a single councillor elected to Cheltenham Borough Council.
And the picture was nearly as bleak in Swindon, home to two more marginal parliamentary seats.
Not all West councils were up for grabs during these local elections, but the Conservatives faced bad news on a number of fronts.
In Cheltenham the Liberal Democrats won 34 seats, polling 52 per cent of the vote.
Getting 25 per cent of the votes didn’t gain the Tories a single councillor, which will alarm the sitting MP, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk.
At the 2019 general election Mr Chalk beat Lib Dem rival Max Wilkinson by fewer than 1,000 votes.
While the Lib Dems were jubilant in Cheltenham, it is Labour who are the big threat to the Conservatives in Swindon.
Labour winning the two parliamentary seats in Swindon will be a key factor in determining if Sir Keir Starmer can take the keys to 10 Downing Street.
And a strong showing in local elections in the Wiltshire town on Thursday is a positive sign for Sir Keir.
A third of the seats for Swindon Borough Council were up for grabs and his party won 14, with the Conservatives taking six.
That was a gain of nine seats for Labour and a loss of eight for the Tories, with an independent also losing a seat.
It means the council remains in Labour control with 41 councillors, while the Conservatives have 15 and the Lib Dems one.
Labour’s Heidi Alexander, who will seek to unseat Sir Robert Buckland in
South Swindon at the general election, hailed the results.
She said: “People want change. They want fresh ideas and fresh energy. Bring on the general election!”
One bright spot for Mr Sunak was that the Gloucestershire Police and Crime Commissioner narrowly held onto his job.
Conservative Chris Nelson polled 47,838 votes to just hold off the challenge of his predecessor Martin Surl, who, standing as a Liberal Democrat, got 46,352 votes.
Mr Nelson’s Tory counterpart in Avon and Somerset could not hang onto his role though.
Decisive gains in Bristol carried Labour’s Clare Moody to victory in the
It is a historic victory – we’ve been able to create that success and persuade people to vote for us SIR KEIR STARMER
race to be elected as Avon and Somerset Police and Crime Commissioner.
Despite topping the poll in four of the five divisions of the force area, incumbent Conservative Mark Shelford came second by fewer than 5,000 votes.
Ms Moody polled a total of 95,982 votes against Mr Shelford’s 91,006.
Katy Grant (Green) received 64,623 votes and Benet Allen (Liberal Democrat) received 45,864.
Mr Shelford picked up the most votes in Somerset, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Bath & North East Somerset.
But Ms Moody beat him by nearly 30,000 votes in Bristol, picking up 47,220 votes in the city compared to 19,788 to Mr Shelford.
Turnout in Bristol – where there were also elections to the city council taking place – was much higher than elsewhere in the region.
Overall turnout was only 23.1 per cent, but in Bristol it was 35 per cent. Somerset saw the lowest turnout, at 17.8 per cent, with barely one in six voters making it to the polls.
Ms Moody said: “Thank you to the voters of Avon and Somerset. Obviously, I am grateful for all those people who voted for me but my job now is to represent all the people of Avon and Somerset and I am honoured to be in that position.”
She said: “The priorities that I have are those that I campaigned on, which is about neighbourhood policing, it is around reducing violent crime, and that is particularly knife crime and violence against women and children. And it is also building that crime prevention that saves people from having to suffer from crime in the first place.”
The counting of votes for the police and crime commissioner elections in Dorset and Wiltshire are being held today.
As the Western Daily Press went to print last night counts were still ongoing in Bristol, Dorset and some borough councils in Gloucestershire.
Elsewhere in the country Mr Sunak was left to look to the Tees
Valley for consolation as his party suffered a drubbing in the local elections.
Lord Ben Houchen’s re-election on Teesside was one of the few bright spots for the Conservatives as the party lost around 50% of its councillors across England just months away from a general election.
Meanwhile, Labour hailed a “truly historic” result in Rishi Sunak’s own backyard of York and North Yorkshire, where David Skaith defeated Tory Keane Duncan by almost 15,000 votes.
The region, which was electing a mayor for the first time, covers Mr Sunak’s Richmond constituency and Labour has historically struggled to compete there in parliamentary elections.
Speaking at Northallerton Town Football Club, Sir Keir Starmer said the result was a “historic victory” for Labour in “the heart of Tory territory”. He said: “We’ve had a positive campaign here and I am very, very proud to stand here as leader of the Labour Party to celebrate this historic victory.
“And it is a historic victory – these are places where we would not have usually had a Labour Party success but we’ve been able to create that success and persuade people to vote for us.”
Further results are expected over the weekend, including key mayoral contests in London and the West Midlands.
Labour’s Sadiq Khan is attempting to secure re-election in London, while Conservative Andy Street is defending his position in the West Midlands.
Most councils were expected to finish declaring their results by the end of yesterday, with election expert Sir John Curtice suggesting the final outcome could be the Conservatives’ worst performance for 40 years.
But while he acknowledged that results were “disappointing”, the Prime Minister was keen to stress his party’s victory in Tees Valley as a sign that Labour was not on course to win the general election.
Appearing alongside Lord Houchen at a victory rally, Mr Sunak said: “I’ve got a message for the Labour Party too because they know that they have to win here in order to win a general election – they know that. They assumed that Tees Valley would stroll back to them – but it didn’t.”