Hal Jordan wrote: Fri May 02, 2025 5:13 pm
SaintK wrote: Fri May 02, 2025 4:55 pm
Hertfordshire to no overall control. Has been Conservative since Noah was a lad!!!
Took them long enough to declare it, Hertfordshire always seems to have a bunch of narcoleptics counting the votes.
Lib Dem in my ward.
Tories held on in my God’s own South Western corner of the county, much like the general election on a heavily split vote. No easy answer for either major party as tacking to either end alienates a chunk of voters.
On Scotland and Wales - there’s a decent chance Reform ‘win’ in Wales next year (largest party, can’t form a majority), and Reform’s numbers in Scotland are well well above what UKIP/Brexit party managed. Turns out a lot of Scottish voters don’t love immigration when actually presented with it, who knew.
Same principle seems to be happening in Liverpool and parts of other major cities, for whatever reason Farage is able to go well above his previous ceiling in places that were previously a firewall against him.
It’s why I incorrectly felt they’d fall short in Runcorn - in previous iterations Farage hasn’t been able to push beyond a decent second place without a local defector, no longer the case. An awful lot can happen before another election but we’re in uncharted waters and he’s on the cusp of a major breakthrough that smashes the old order and potentially makes the country ungovernable.
A fair number of northern wards where Reform are in an increasingly straight fight with some form of Muslim independent candidate (see the independent candidate demanding the public segregation of men and women who pipped Reform with Labour and the Tories nowhere), pretty horrifying stuff all round