I'm writing this as European results start to come but it's the first chance I've had to pull together a few thoughts on the local election results in Wiltshire.
The Conservatives are the winners with 62 of the 98 seats on the new unitary council, followed by the Lib Dems with 24, seven independents, three Devizes Guardians, and Labour with two (both from the Salisbury area where their best polling was).
The big question for me afterwards is: why are the Lib Dems so difficult to like?
In my ward of Box and Colerne
there was only 40 votes between the Tory winner and the second placed
Lib Dems with each gaining 33% of the vote while my Green vote was third at 16.5% with
317 votes. The Lib Dems previous representative was very poor and their chosen candidate, a very personable woman, was only found at the last minute and was inexperienced and ill-prepared. I have a very good CV of local activism on the parish council and other organisations.
But apparently that was enough for the Lib Dems who asked me first to stand for them and then to stand aside saying I would only win 4% of the vote and let the Tories in. It didn't matter about the quality of my candidacy or that of the Lib Dem person. The fact that I'm not a Lib Dem supporter didn't and said it would be a fraud on myself and the voters to wear their rosette seemed only to confuse them.
Winning was all
And from then on it was the usual local election playbook from the Lib Dems; lots of negative campaigning, misleading and outright wrong leaflets. Which was fine because I found my vote getting more solid the more negative they got and the more I stayed positive.
The culmination was getting to the count to be immediately buttonholed by some bloke in a suit who sneered that he hoped I was pleased having handed the seat to the Tories. No idea who he was so I asked him. He just repeated the statement and which point I let rip calling him an arrogant fucker who expected people to vote for a poodle just because it wore a yellow rosette.
The man then introduced hmiself as Gavin Grant, chair of the Lib Dems in North Wiltshire. I guess my spirited retort didn't look so good as there were just two of us Greens among a sea of Lib Dems and I was ripping him a new one. He moved me over to one side; we continued our 'discussion' and then we parted.
And that capped the nasty taste left in my mouth by dealing with the Lib Dems in this election. The BNP were more pleasant to me.
It seems only the Lib Dems and Tories are allowed to play and anybody else having the temerity to stand just spoils it. But I think it's not enough to be anti-Tory. I'm concerned about bus service, and shops and social housing and pot holes in my ward - I need someone who can deal with my parochial concerns. It's not enough to simply not wear a blue rosette. The Lib Dems seemed motivated only by getting the Tories out. I've set out some broader detail below on the election results in Wiltshire but my impression is that the Lib Dems are an Astroturf outfit locally. Fake green and fake grassroots.
Anyway: here's some info Mr Grant; the PR guru from this lovely outfit with an impeccable liberal CV, which doesn't include the fact that he's a prick. I like the line in this piece from the New Statesman that for Nick Clegg advisors like Grant "winning votes is a marketing exercise". The good news it that dealing with this lot made a very persuasive case for me to stand in the general election.
Overview
The Conservative vote came out in force. Lib Dems fared poorly losing out on several occasions where the Conservative vote stayed solid but rivals split the vote (as in my ward). In one they lost by eight votes where the Greens polled 150+, in another a former mayor standing as an independent polled 353 while the Lib Dems were 150 behind the Tory winner. However they did win in Calne Central where it was tied and decided pulling a ballot papaer out of the ballot box. Interestingly in that ward it was a straight two-way fight.
The BNP had a poor showing overall. Their one person with an elected post (a Corsham town councillor) came last.
The Labour Party appears confined to a few areas and often polled around 60-90 votes in other wards.
The Greens only fielded eight candidates and had some good returns (14-17%) and some average ones (4%).
Elsewhere, The Daily (Maybe) has a good round up of Green performances in local council election.
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