After a stormy week in politics, anyone looking for dramatic results in this week’s council by-elections will be sadly disappointed.
In the four principal council by-elections held this week there were no changes in political allegiance at all. Even in Salford, where Hazel Blears is the local Member of Parliament, Labour held on relatively comfortably despite a large drop in their vote. In this ward the three main parties saw varying declines in their vote share (although ours held up the best), but this vote split between the BNP, Greens and UKIP.
Whether the Salford result shows any significant political trend is less clear given that every other by-election this week was only contested by the three main parties.
The only significant result for Liberal Democrats was an impressive 31.9% of the vote in Rutland in a ward we have not contested in recent years. The local team is pretty encouraged by this result as it was achieved through only delivering one leaflet.