Lib Dems accused of running homophobic campaign in Kingston

By Matthew Barrett
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Many Conservative activists are well aware of the hypocritical and dirty campaigns run by Lib Dems in local elections. A particularly controversial campaign was run for a by-election they won by 23 votes yesterday in Kingston-upon-Thames. 

In Kingston, whose MP is the Lib Dem Energy and Culture Secretary Ed Davey, Lib Dem leaflets boasted “It’s always a straight fight here in Grove Ward”. The "unknown Conservative" described in the leaflet was Adrian Amer, who is gay.

Clegg can't find people to stand as Lib Dem candidates as activists shun toughest wards in big cities

By Tim Montgomerie
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The Independent on Sunday reports that the Liberal Democrats have struggled to recruit council candidates for next month's elections:

"With the close of nominations last week, figures show that the Lib Dems are putting forward 1,552 candidates in England, compared to 2,120 for Labour and 2,151 for the Tories. In Wales the Lib Dems are fielding 281, compared to Labour's 662 and the Tories' 424 – although the party is traditionally less strong here. In Scotland, they are fielding 245 compared to 494 Labour candidates and 360 Tories."

The IoS blames widespread disillusionment within the party for the Lib Dems' thinning ranks:

"Party insiders blamed widespread disenchantment with the Lib Dem leadership and ministers, who have agreed coalition policies on reform of the NHS and higher tuition fees. While Mr Clegg has fought to temper a backlash over state monitoring of individuals' use of the internet by insisting he has won a consultation on the proposals, deep concern over civil liberties is spreading through the party grassroots. A letter signed by 157 activists to the party's president, Tim Farron, warned that Mr Clegg was putting at risk the core identity of the Lib Dems by supporting the "snooping" plans."

Earlier in the week Harry Phibbs noted that - unlike the Conservatives - the LibDems are not running a full slate of candidates in either Liverpool or Newcastle - two cities which they controlled until recently. It appears that there is indeed something yellow about the Liberal Democrats when it comes to tough fights.

Key facts about the 2011 local elections

By Matthew Barrett
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Yesterday Rob Hayward drew our attention to a House of Commons Library briefing paper, regarding the results of the local and mayoral elections in May. Summarised below are some key facts about the local elections contained in that briefing.

Conservative council seat facts:

• The Conservatives won or retained 5,108 seats, representing 58% of the total contested and a net gain of 85 seats
• The Conservatives have 9,400 councillors, 46% of the total councillors in Britain
• They control 51% of the total number of councils, including 96% of county councils and 69% of shire district councils
• They control two councils in Wales, but none of the 32 unitary authorities in Scotland
• In England, 51% of councillors are Conservative
• The Conservatives control 59% of seats in shire districts
• By contrast, in metropolitan boroughs, where one-third of seats were up for election, they won 22% of the seats
• They have no councillors on several metropolitan borough councils, including Gateshead, Knowsley, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sheffield

Rob Hayward: The Liberal Democrats lost 40% of the council seats they were defending but did much better in places where they had an incumbent MP

Rob Hayward is an elections analyst and former MP for Kingswood Bristol. Rob was heavily involved in preparing the Coalition's legislation to reduce the number of MPs and has also proposed a marked reduction in councils and councillors in London.

The shock waves of the recent elections will continue to be felt for a number of months as a disappointed Labour Party, an emboldened Tory Party and a seriously depressed Liberal Democrat Party try to build (or rebuild) following the results. The scale of the successes and failures are set out in an excellent paper which has been prepared by the Commons library with assistance from others and can be accessed through this link*.

The impact of the results is that they were so unexpected.

• Labour gained, but primarily in their heartlands of England while the heart of Labour in Scotland has been ripped out. Their arteries in the Midlands and the South look distinctly more sclerotic than they should a year in to Opposition. The day after the election Ed Milliband went to Gravesham to celebrate a Labour gain. Even here, though. if you total the top candidate in each ward Labour 'lost' the Parliamentary constituency which happens to be contiguous with the Borough.
• Tories made an astonishing and totally unpredicted gain of seats.
• Liberal Democrats are shattered by taking a battering from both Labour and the Tories. They had expected this pincer movement but it is the scale of the battering that astonished them.

Although I don't have the precise figures available Lab gained roughly two seats from the Tories for every three they took off Lib Dems. This ratio of Lab gains is all the more astonishing when you consider that the Tories were defending twice as many seats as the Lib Dems.

The LDs lost 40% of all the seats they were defending on May 5th and are now down to roughly 3,000 councillors across the UK. In other words there are three times as many Conservative councilors.
 
Wipe out of Liberal Democrats in much of the south

One of the most marked elements of the night was the shattering of the Liberal Democrats in their remaining enclaves in the south. Places like East Riding, Haywards Heath and Horsham saw dramatic reductions in the number of LD councillors returned.

Lib Dem council leaders attack Pickles over spending cuts

Cllr Richard Kemp, leader of the Lib Dem Group on the Local Government Association has evidently been busy. There is a letter (£) in The Times this morning from 88 Lib Dem council group leaders attacking the Government. The letter says councils are "being let down by the Communities and Local Government Secretary."  It adds that "cuts will have an undoubted impact on all frontline council services, including care services to the vulnerable."

The personal attack continues by saying:

"Unfortunately, Eric Pickles has felt it better to shake a stick at councillors than work with us."

17 of those signing are Council leaders. It should be noted there are over 40 Lib Dem council leaders so they not constitute a majority. Cllr Kemp's powers of seduction did not work for the two Lib Dem boroughs in London, for instance. Or the leaders of Sheffield, or Oldham, or Stockport or the directly elected Mayor of Bedford.

Five Lib Dem councillors have resigned from party in last 24 hours

Tim Montgomerie

The BBC's Peter Henley reported yesterday that three Lib Dem councillors in Chris Huhne's backyard have become independents:

"Energy Secretary Chris Huhne is facing a revolt among Liberal Democrats in his constituency. Three councillors on the Lib Dem controlled Eastleigh Borough Council have decided to leave the party to become Independents, saying they're disillusioned with the local and national party. Councillor Andy Moore had been dropped from the list of Lib Dem candidates standing for re-election in May. Two other candidates, Glynn Davies-Dear and David Broughton, have decided to join him in leaving the party.""

News reaches ConHome overnight that two Lib Dem councillors have resigned from Winchester Council, threatening the party's wafer thin majority.

There are always local factors that add layers of complexity to these kinds of resignations but it will be worrying for Nick Clegg if he starts seeing many more of these defections.

Camden Tories steal Lib Dem placards

By Jonathan Isaby

All is not quite as the headline might suggest, but above is a picture of Giovanni Spinella, the victorious Conservative candidate in the recent by-election in the Frognal and Fitzjohns ward in the London Borough of Camden, along with some of his campaign team.

As blogger Richard Osley points out, Giovanni is holding a diamond-shaped placard carrying the slogan "Winning Here", an uncanny replica of the placards so loved by the Liberal Democrats.

With a swing from the Lib Dems to the Tories in the ward of more than 6% since the local elections and Giovanni returned with a majority of more than 700 over the Lib Dems, the Lib Dems were certainly not winning here...

Angela Harvey: A positive experience of Tories and Lib Dems working together to save the London taxpayer millions of pounds

Angela Harvey has been a Westminster councillor since 2002 and recounts here a positive experience of working with the Lib Dems.

As a new Westminster councillor in 2002 I didn’t expect to lead the Conservative Group on London’s local government pay negotiating body, the Greater London Provincial Council (GLPC) but perhaps my experience setting global reward strategy for a major corporate plus national level pay negotiations experience helped convince my colleagues to give me a try.   Labour had the majority of the 32 London boroughs; we Tories had nine; the Lib Dems five.  But we held more boroughs than before and we were going to see how to use our votes.  Over the next four years working informally with the Lib Dems we achieved many of our objectives, and learnt the following lessons about coalitions:

• If not in a majority find ways to achieve your objectives  – we saved Londoners over £200 million so far, and with improved employee relations
• Stick to the work you can do, focusing on where you share principles and values
• Listen to and respect your group members, support group discipline, and keep party stuff away from the joint arena
• Use your officers well and check the facts behind the political statements
• Expect to build trust slowly, and understand how far it goes

A major pay claim about low pay was running prior to the 2002 elections and with targeted strikes in many boroughs it was the focus of the first meeting of the employers’ side and the subsequent joint meeting with the trade unions.  Unison was the biggest trade union, with T&G and GMB in support.  The unions wanted a high paying London Weighting reintroduced, the weighting having been absorbed into the London pay spine in 1997.

At the meeting I was surprised to see a former business acquaintance, Lorraine Zuleta.  She’d been elected that May as a Lib Dem in Southwark where they’d formed a minority administration with informal Tory support.  She got the Resources portfolio with its failing revenue & benefits service.  An actuary by training, Lorraine had been a senior partner at Towers Perrin where she’d run the international reward practice.  As we spoke for the first time in years, we couldn’t know that Tory/Lib Dem cross-party working would bring hundreds of millions of pounds of savings to London’s residents.

With a majority of four, Labour could afford to ignore the opposition parties; previously the Lib Dems had usually voted with them.  However, this time around Conservatives and Lib Dems identified shared objectives and values - to ensure good services for residents delivered by employees with reasonable pay and conditions at a reasonable cost.  Discussions between our groups started with corridor meetings between Lorraine and me, and it was only later that Lorraine spoke with the Tory group and I with the Lib Dems.  Not everyone was comfortable sharing, and the groups never met as one. 

June 4 elections: Oxfordshire Lib Dem hypocrisy over Gurkhas.

Cllr Keith Mitchell, the Conservative leader of Oxfordshire County Council, has been writing an election blog. Very lively and hard hitting it is too. Here is a sample entry from yesterday.

Sunday 24 May 06:00 pm  I see the Liberals in Oxford West & Abingdon claim to be supporting the Gurkhas.  I have got used to their sheer hypocrisy over the years but this takes the biscuit.  Cllr Janet Godden is a leading member of the Oxfordshire Liberals. She wears a white poppy in November of each year and has never disguised her support for pacifism and her dislike of the military.  I cannot remember a Liberal politician who has supported our armed services and here they are, jumping on a band wagon just because they think it might gain them some votes on June 4th.  I wonder how many of them signed the No 10 Web Site petition for the Gurkhas?  I know I did and a lot of my County Group did.  I wonder if Neil Fawcett's name (a Liberal activist and spin doctor) was there?

While I reflect on the Liberals, I can't wait for the Daily Telegraph to publicise Evan Harris's expenses.  I have been interested to see he is the highest spending of our Oxfordshire MPs.  It is difficult to imagine him indulging in duck houses, moat clearance, expensive furniture of any of the excesses we read about daily. The only excesses I see him  guilty of are a leaning to the political left. So, on what did he spend all that taxpayers' dosh?  Come on Daily Telegraph - don't keep us in suspense!

Protests greet Nick Clegg's visit to Lib Dem-run Northampton

The Independent reports that Nick Clegg has been holding Town Hall meetings in Councils his party controls. In Northampton there was anger that Council leaders had refused to attend a public meeting to discuss proposed "improvements" to the Market Square. Clegg calmed the situation by announcing the Council leader would speak to them after the meeting.

Should it real require a visit from a Party leader to facilitate such a dialogue?