Conservatives are standing thousands more council candidates than Labour and the Lib Dems at next month's elections

By Jonathan Isaby

This afternoon, I have already indicated the lengths to which Labour has gone to try and increase the number of candidates it is standing at the council elections taking place on May 5th.

Now that nominations have closed, I can share with you the figures collated by CCHQ as to how well each of the parties has done at putting up candidates for those local council elections across England.

And they show that Labour have failed even to reach the candidate levels they managed as recently as 1999, despite party deputy leader Harriet Harman's reported goal that she intended the party standing more candidates than for thirty years.

Below is the table of the number of seats being contested, compared with the equivalent set of contests over the last twelve years and they show Labour still failing to contesting nearly three in ten seats:

Given that there are approximately 9,300 seats up for grabs, this means that Labour have nearly 2,000 fewer candidates standing than the Conservatives, whilst for the the Lib Dems the figure is over 3,000 fewer.

CCHQ also suggests that a whopping 249 Conservatives have been elected unopposed - whereas only 7 Labour and 5 Lib Dem candidates respectively fund themselves in that situation.