You would be forgiven for thinking that Media darlings ‘UKIP’ had romped home in the recent Local Government elections but, in fact, Labour clearly tops the poll whichever way you look at it.
Final figures from council elections in England confirm Labour as the biggest winner. Labour gained 338 seats, winning 2,101 seats altogether. That’s more than the combined total for the Tories (1,359), Lib Dems (427), UKIP (163) and the Greens (36).
Labour 82-UKIP 0 (Close, or what!!)
UKIP won headlines and proved it has nuisance value. But the numbers show that its impact was small in real terms. Labour now controls 82 of the councils where elections were held on Thursday. UKIP controls none.
UKIP’s share of the vote in fact dropped from 23% to 17%.
Many of Labour’s gains came in target seats in the south that we need to win in the next general election. Labour won control of the London boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham, Croydon, Redbridge and Merton. We also now control Cambridge council. And Labour topped the poll in targets like Peterborough and Lincoln. In Hastings, the Labour group is our biggest ever.
In Bristol Labour gained 4 seats, and UKIP gained 1. The headline grabber? Obviously UKIP.
Ed Miliband’s Labour are on course to win the 2015 General Election. Nigel Farage’s UKIP started with no MP’s, got massive media coverage, and still have no MP’s, despite the golden opportunity for NF himself to stand in the Newark By-Election, which he ran a mile from. But whose face is it we see glaring out of today’s newspapers??
Well, no surprise there then….