West voters to have their say on ‘Super Thursday’
WESTCOUNTRY voters will this year get their first chance to have a say on how politicians have handled Covid-19 and Brexit.
A bumper set of elections are due to be held across Great Britain on ‘Super Thursday’ - May 6 - including a number of contests postponed from 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Voters in Scotland and Wales will be choosing new parliaments, in elections that were originally scheduled for last May.
In London there will be elections for the mayor and assembly, which were also due to happen last year.
And across the rest of England voters will be choosing a mixture of councillors, local mayors, regional mayors and police commissioners.
The scale of ‘Super Thursday’ means that every voter in Great Britain will be able to take part in at least one type of poll, making it the biggest event of its kind outside a general election.
It will also be the first big electoral test for Keir Starmer since he became Labour leader in April 2020, and for Prime Minister Boris Johnson since his general election victory in December 2019.
While neighbourhood issues will play a part in deciding many local seats, Covid-19 and Brexit are likely to dominate some of the bigger campaigns, particularly for the parliaments in Scotland and Wales and the regional mayors in England.
This year’s unusually large crop of elections comes after a period where Covid-19 put the nation’s ballot boxes in deep storage.
Barring further delays due to Covid-19, all these elections should be held on May 6:
In Scotland, the SNP will be hoping to remain in power in parliament for a fourth consecutive term, while the Tories will look to improve their position as the main opposition party.
In Wales, voters will be choosing all 60 members of the Welsh parliament, as well as commissioners for the nation’s four police forces. For the first time, 16 and 17 year-olds in Wales will be able to vote in the parliamentary elections.
In London, Labour’s Sadiq Khan is running for a second term as mayor. His main challengers are Shaun Bailey (Conservative), Luisa Porritt (Liberal Democrats) and Sian Berry (Green).
Police and crime commissioners will be elected in all areas of England apart from London and Greater Manchester, where these powers are held by the directly elected mayor.
Regional mayors, also known as combined authority mayors, will be elected for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, Greater Manchester, the Liverpool City Region, Tees Valley, West Midlands, West of England and - for the first time - West Yorkshire. High-profile names seeking re-election include Andy Burnham (Labour) in Greater Manchester and Andy Street (Conservative) in the West Midlands.
Five local mayors are also due to be elected on May 6, for the local authorities of Bristol, Doncaster, Liverpool, North Tyneside and Salford.
A large number of local elections will take place across England. All 24 county councils will be holding elections, along with an expected 28 unitary authorities, 62 district councils and 35 of the 36 metropolitan boroughs (the one is exception is Birmingham, where elections will take place in 2022).