Now you all know me, I love a good election and I love making predictions about elections and then afterwards compare it and see how accurate I was when I stared into my crystal ball (actually, it is more a case of looking at previous results, election polling and gut instinct and I do it with @Morgan or aka Mystic Morgan).
The elections on 4 May had quite a few very clear winners and that coloured the map red, yellow, blue and of course a splash of green in Suffolk… but vast parts of the country was grey… or No Overall Control (NOC). This then leads to coalition talks – something we hear a lot more of under Proportional Representation systems such as Italy where they are notorious for falling in and out of love with one another and for crazy coalitions…
So, this week, I got my crayons out and I started colouring the grey bits on the map… In many cases, these NOCs will have a senior coalition partner – or to put it another way, the Leader of the Council and the majority of the Cabinet and the majority on the Planning Committee will come from that Party… so they are pretty important and to understand where they are coming from politically is vital as they are essentially running the Council.
If you go back an election cycle or two, the whole country was blue. The Tories really used to be the Party of Local Government, even in the dark days of the mid 1990’s when the Tories were wiped out in Parliament, they remained a dominant force in Local Government.
But all that has changed now and as you will see from the picture (featuring me as Michael Fish… though my predictions are more accurate than his…I saw the storm coming!) the map is now looking VERY different. There is a lot of yellow…and red…and green…much more green than anyone expected.
So, some selected highlights and you can visit our website for a more in-depth view here: https://theccp.net/2023-local-elections/
East Herts is now a Green run council with the LibDems… Charnwood now have a Labour run council with the Greens… Wealden is now run by the LibDems with the Greens…Canterbury is run by Labour with the LibDems… Forest of Dean is run by the Greens… Mid Sussex is run by the LibDems… West Lindsey is run by the LibDems with Indys… Derby is Labour…West Oxfordshire LibDem… Warwick is Green with Labour…. (I think you get the idea…)
A very wise old peer once described an opposition party as a dog chasing a car and when the car stops and they “catch” the car, they don’t know what to do with it. So, what do you now do with all these different coloured dogs who caught the car? What can we expect? How do you deal with them? Many of them got elected on wild and outlandish promises of solid gold pavements and a puppy for every child. Well, fear not! Talk to your uncle Henry and I’ll make it all clear!
I’m looking forward to your call.
Henry
