Alan's Green Thoughts

Given how much of a rest we have needed since the long local elections weekend finished, you probably missed the fact that there was a by-election in Airdrie & Shotts. The results of that by-election were as follows: Stephen Arrundale, Liberal Democrats, 220 (1.0%, -2.6%) Ben Callaghan, Conservative, 2,812 (12.9%, -4.7%) Martin Green, Reform UK, 45 (0.2%) Donald Mackay, UKIP, 39 (0.2%) Neil Manson, SDP, 151 (0.7%) Anum Qaisar-Javed, SNP, 10, 129 (46.4%, +1.4%) Jonathan Stanley, Scottish Unionist Party, 59 (0.3%) Kenneth Stevenson, Labour, 8,372 (38.4%, +6.5%) SNP hold. This will go down in history as the first by-election involving the SNP defending one of their seats, and it only happened due to SNP rules prohibiting MSPs serving simultaneously as MPs, even though this type of double-jobbing is still legal under United Kingdom law. Given its timing coverage was unsurprisingly low, but it does show that tactical voting for a unionist party to oust the SNP can only stretch so far, a...

  Like the 2019 general election, this set of local elections affirms a political realignment in British politics, where the ex-industrial and ex-mining north and Midlands are becoming more safely Conservative, with the south east conversely moving towards the Greens, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The statistics speak for themselves: Net Conservative gains in the north (North East, North West, and Yorkshire & The Humber): 107 Net Conservative gains in the Midlands (East and West Midlands): 114. Net Conservative gains in the south (East of England, South East, and South West): 14 (although most county councils in the south actually saw net losses for the Conservatives, most notably East Sussex, Hertfordshire, Surrey and West Sussex, as well as 10 notional losses in Buckinghamshire). The majority of these were from Labour but they made notable gains from the Liberal Democrats in some councils; the Lib Dems lost all representation in Walsall and their 4 net losses in Maidstone...

The Mayoral contests outside London produced more interesting results than expected, even where the overall outcome was not in doubt at any time. The most spectacular result was Ben Houchen, Conservative Metro Mayor for Teesside, achieving 72.8% against his sole opponent, Labour candidate Jessie Joe Jacobs (who polled 27.2% and failed to top the poll in a single Teesside authority); even in Middlesbrough, one of the poorest towns in Britain, he polled 68.6%, a testament to his high personal popularity as Teesside mayor, as did the dramatic turnout increase from 21,2% to 34%; demographic changes to the Conservatives' benefit have not yet touched Middlesbrough to the extent they have touched Hartlepool and Redcar. Promises to create freeport status for Hartlepool undoubtedly enthused aspirational working-class voters across Teesside to turn out for Mr Houchen. Similar changes happening in the four Black Country boroughs-Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, and Wolverhampton-proved very helpful...

With a record 20 candidates, the race for Mayor of London was bound to produce some interesting results. It did but not for the reasons one expected: Shaun Bailey, who before was widely regarded as having run one of the worst Conservative campaigns in London and was seen as out of touch with ordinary Londoners, managed to trail incumbent London Mayor Sadiq Khan by only 108,670 votes (amounting to 4.7%) in the first round, although as expected Mr Khan easily won in the second round. In the same way that the north and the Midlands are trending towards the Conservatives, London is trending towards Labour although this is slowing down. Mr Bailey managed to retain most of the Conservative votes Zac Goldsmith did primarily because the Conservatives are connecting rather well with Hindu and Sikh communities in London, which accounts for Mr Bailey being able to carry both Brent & Harrow and Ealing & Hillingdon in the first round of the Mayor of London contest, and follows on from the a...

The main event of Super Thursday for England was the elections of county councils and district councils, metropolitan boroughs, and unitary authorities up for election this year (accounting for the delayed 2020 elections) which included the majority of authorities. I was the Green Party candidate in Letchworth South West, in the district of North Hertfordshire, and also for Letchworth South in Hertfordshire, both of which were held by the Conservatives. The story of Labour's Red Wall in the north and Midlands continuing to crumble was countered by the losses the Conservatives made in traditionally more prosperous, and therefore traditionally more safely Conservative, counties such as Hertfordshire. In fact North Hertfordshire remained under no overall control, with Letchworth Grange being the only ward the Conservatives gained from Labour in North Hertfordshire; once again straws needed to be drawn with Chesfield being the ward the Liberal Democrats won on the drawing of straws thi...

Scottish Parliament: The Scottish Parliament election, Senedd (fka Welsh Assembly) election and London Assembly delivered some rather unexpected results, even with the overall results broadly the same as predicted. The fallout between First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and former First Minister Alex Salmond in Scotland, the latter of whom formed his own Alba Party, made headlines in Scotland for weeks especially as it came just months after Mr Salmond was acquitted of 14 sex offences. A majority of MSPs then affirmed that Ms Sturgeon had "misled" the enquiry surrounding the allegations against Mr Salmond, which consequently resulted in the Alba Party's formation and the defection of two SNP MPs, Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey, along with ex-MPs Corri Wilson and Tasmina Akhmed-Sheikh, and others. The SNP, who were perceived as having controlled the coronavirus crisis relatively well in Scotland, in fact managed a gain of one seat although they did not gain the overall majori...

In case you do not already know, the result of the Hartlepool parliamentary by-election was as follows: David Bettney, SDP, 108 (0.4%) Nick the Flying Brick, OMRLP, 104 (0.3%) Hilton Dawson, North East Party, 163 (0.5%) Gemma Evans, Women's Equality Party, 140 (0.4%) Rachel Featherstone, Green Party, 358 (1.2%) Adam Gaines, Independent, 126 (0.4%) Andrew Hagon, Liberal Democrats, 349 (1.2%, -2.9%) Steve Jack, Freedom Alliance, 72 (0.2%) Chris Killick, 248 (0.8%) Sam Lee, Independent, 2,904 (9.7%) Claire Martin, Heritage Party, 468 (1.6%) Jill Mortimer, Conservative, 15,529 (51.3%, +23.0%) John Prescott, Reform UK, 368 (1.2%) W. Ralph Ward-Jackson, Independent, 157 (0.5%) Thelma Walker, Independent*, 250 (0.8%) Paul Williams, Labour, 8,589 (28.7%, -9.0%) Conservative GAIN from Labour. *Thelma Walker was standing for the Northern Independence Party, which was not registered at the time nominations closed for the by-election. 16% swing Labour to Conservative. Amidst the fact that more...

The snap election in the Spanish capital of Madrid, called after a failed attempt by the centrist Ciudidanos (Cs) party and the social democratic Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) to oust the Popular Party (PP) government, resulted in a decisive victory for PP under Isabel Diaz Ayuso. It was not merely the failed attempt to seize control of the Assembly that helped Mrs Ayuso achieve such a victory, though, which gave PP 65 seats, just four seats short of an outright majority and more than double its 2019 total. The particularly tough COVID-19 related restrictions on Madrid, which included wearing face masks in all public spaces (not just in buildings as required in the UK) and strict curfews, had also exhausted the patience of many of Madrid's residents, especially with COVID-19 on the wane in Europe.  The Cs, meanwhile, paid the price for what Madrid residents saw as a power grab. They polled just 3.6%, below the election threshold of 4%, and lost all 26 of their seats i...

  We are now only three days away from "Super Thursday" when district council elections, county council elections, the Mayor of London and London Assembly elections, the Scottish Parliament election, and the Senedd (fka Welsh Assembly) election will all take place (not to mention the Police & Crime Commissioner elections and the Hartlepool by-election), although due to coronavirus restrictions the final results will not be known across Britain until Monday morning. Having earlier made predictions for district and county councils (those likely to change hands), here are my predictions for the 60 Senedd seats (the 40 constituencies plus the 20 list seats; note that the 40 constituencies are identical to the Westminster constituencies in Wales): Aberavon: One of the safest Labour seats in Wales, and the United Kingdom. The former mayor of Neath Port Talbot, Scott Jones, is standing as an Independent (having once been a Labour councillor) but this factor will not be enough to...

  The Albanian parliamentary election of 2021, which took place last week, threw up an interesting surprise in that the incumbent Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, and his Socialist Party of Albania (PS) were re-elected with the same number of seats as before, 74, giving him once again a majority of 8 in the new Albanian parliament, although PS did not quite achieve a majority of votes cast (48.68%, still a high figure by the standards of countries using proportional representation in their elections). However, PS' support was shored up by the near-collapse of the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) which was nearly wiped out. It was reduced to 4 seats and 6.81% of the vote, and half of its remaining seats are in the Albanian capital, Tirana. This happened despite the fact it was in opposition to PS at the time and the fact that its founder, Ilir Meta, is the current President of Albania. Some of its support went to the Social Democratic Party of Albania, which has European...