In the second half of Anne McElvoy's Radio 4 mini-documentary about the Tories and the North of England last night, Hazel Blears popped up to make the oft-repeated lazy attack on the Conservatives which says that the party is failing to make progress in the North of England because there are no Tory councillors in Liverpool, Manchester or Newcastle.
For a start, she's wrong as there is in fact a Tory councillor in Manchester (albeit through a defection) and furthermore there are a considerable number of Conservative councillors elsewhere in the Merseyside, Greater Manchester and North Eastern conurbations.
To give but a few examples there are:
- 25 Conservative councillors in Wirral
- 23 in Bolton
- 22 in Sunderland
- 18 in Sefton
- 13 in Salford (that's your patch, Hazel!)
- 10 in Tameside
And that's not to mention the fact that the Conservatives are running councils such as North Tyneside, Trafford and Bury.
But how's about this for a factoid to wipe the smile off Hazel's face: there are now no fewer than 94 councils where the Labour Party has not a single councillor. That's almost a quarter of the councils across the country and includes several councils covering entire counties.
For your reference, here's a list:
Aberdeenshire
Adur
Argyll and Bute
Aylesbury Vale
Babergh
Boston
Broadland
Buckinghamshire
Central Bedfordshire
Chelmsford
Cheltenham
Chichester
Chiltern
Christchurch
Cornwall
Cotswold
Craven
Dorset
East Cambridgeshire
East Devon
East Dorset
East Hampshire
East Hertfordshire
East Northamptonshire
Eastbourne
Eden
Elmbridge
Fareham
Fenland
Forest Heath
Fylde
Guildford
Hambleton
Harborough
Harrogate
Hart
Horsham
Huntingdonshire
Lewes
Maldon
Malvern Hills
Mendip
Mid Devon
Mid Suffolk
Mole Valley
New Forest
North Devon
North Dorset
North Kesteven
North Norfolk
Oadby and Wigston
Orkney
Poole
Purbeck
Ribble Valley
Richmond-upon-Thames
Richmondshire
Rochford
Rother
Runnymede
Rutland
Ryedale
Scottish Borders
Shepway
Shetland
South Buckinghamshire
South Hams
South Holland
South Norfolk
South Somerset
Spelthorne
Stratford-on-Avon
Sutton
Tandridge
Teignbridge
Test Valley
Tewkesbury
Tonbridge and Malling
Torbay
Torridge
Tunbridge Wells
Uttlesford
Vale of White Horse
Waverley
Wealden
West Berkshire
West Devon
West Dorset
West Lindsey
Windsor and Maidenhead
Woking
Wokingham
Worthing
Wychavon
P.S. There are another 48 - including no fewer than 8 county councils - where Labour representation is down to just one of two councillors.
P.P.S Thanks ot Tim Fell who has sent me the following map showing the 94 Labour-free zones on a map:
