Alan's Green Thoughts

The Spanish regional elections of 2023, especially those in the "Empty Spain" regions far west of the federal capital of Madrid and prosperous yet famously rebellious Catalonia, resulted in a sharp shift towards conservatism and conservative populism. Both Partido Popular (PP, Spain's equivalent of the Conservatives) and Vox (the Spanish equivalent of Reform UK/UKIP) made sweeping gains in all regions, notably taking overall control in Madrid (normally an impossible feat under Spain's PR system), more than doubling their seat total in Valencia to top the poll there, and wresting control of Asturias, La Rioja, and Cantabria from the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE, Spain's equivalent of Labour) and the Cantabrian Regionalist Party respectively. Under the tenure of Pedro Sanchez, the current PSOE-Podemos coalition is floundering and has not done much to ensure Spain's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic since the last restrictions ended in 2021, and P

The Northern Irish local elections of 2023 continued and sharpened trends seen in the 2019 Northern Irish local elections, 2019 general election (allowing for pacts that took place), and the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election in many respects. Sinn Fein (SF) topped the poll for the first time in Northern Ireland's local elections, winning a total of 144 seats, an increase of 39 from 2019. Under Mary Lou McDonald's/Michelle O'Neill's leadership, Sinn Fein has flourished on both sides of the border, and nationalist votes have been coalescing primarily around them; furthermore, the nationalist-inclined population of Northern Ireland is increasing faster than that of the unionist-inclined population. Notable highlights for SF include taking overall control of Fermanagh & Omagh council and topping the poll in Derry & Strabane and Armagh City, Bainbridge & Craigavon for the very first time; normally due to STV with DEAs usually containing 5 or 6 seats apiece

The English local elections of 2023 (Northern Ireland's elections will finish next week and a separate blog post will be devoted to these) not only resulted in more than 1000 Conservative losses just as Rallings & Thrasher and Sir John Curtice predicted, they also resulted in sweeping Green and Liberal Democrat gains across the nation-sending a hard message to the Conservatives about the need to protect our environment and Labour for barely acting like an opposition at all. The Conservatives in total made a net loss of 1,061 seats, with the vast majority being in the shire districts where they once dominated-even councils such as Bracknell Forest and Surrey Heath, which they held in 1995 and 2019, fell, to Labour and the Liberal Democrats respectively in those two cases. Who they lost to varied widely by the nature of the authority-their losses to Labour came mainly in (ex) industrial "Red Wall" areas where they had made against-the-trend gains in 2019 or fared better

First of all, my sincere apologies for the hiatus. I have just been taking a break from blogging for a while. If the 2019 elections were dreadful for the Conservatives-they were their worst since 1995, in fact-the 2023 elections will be abysmal. Even in traditional heartlands Conservative candidatures-let alone the number of seats that will elect Conservative councillors, even accounting for boundary changes that have usually reduced the numbers of seats on said council-have decreased, a key example being Suffolk. Whilst Labour has regained considerable trust amongst the public under Sir Keir Starmer's leadership since the "Partygate" scandal that led to Boris Johnson's downfall, Labour's complacency on many councils means that they will be by no means home and dry come election day, and already there are signs that Labour's strong poll lead over the Conservatives may not last until the next general election, which is likely to be in autumn 2024. Although the