Cable declares Lib Dems big winners in UK local elections

The Liberal Democrats, Green party and Independent groups made significant advances across the country in Thursday’s local elections amid a voter backlash against the two main parties. 

Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, proclaimed his pro-Remain party as the “big winner” after it made more than 500 gains — its best result in years. By Friday evening the Lib Dems had won control of 11 councils, including Bath and North East Somerset, North Devon, North Norfolk and Winchester. 

Meanwhile, recriminations flew in the Conservative and Labour parties as they suffered a voter backlash over the Brexit impasse in Westminster.

The Greens gained at least 140 new councillors and claimed they had achieved the “biggest election night” in the party’s history, in part thanks to their clear anti-Brexit message.

The UK Independence party, which has already seen many councillors quit since the same areas held local elections four years ago, saw a further loss of over 30 seats. 

Two new parties, the Brexit party and the pro-EU Change UK, did not field candidates in this week’s elections — meaning they may not be an accurate bellwether of European elections later this month. 

Meanwhile, more than 200 Independent candidates were elected than held office immediately before the elections. 

The gains by the Lib Dems appear to reverse the party’s long decline since it entered a coalition with the Conservatives in 2010.

In Bath and North East Somerset, the Lib Dems gained 20 seats while the Tories lost 25. Tim Warren, the former Conservative group leader, said: “We were being told on the streets that people wouldn’t trust the Conservatives any more and wouldn’t vote for them because of Brexit.”

In prime minister Theresa May’s backyard of Windsor and Maidenhead, the Tories saw their majority on the council cut from 38 to five amid gains for Lib Dems and Independent candidates.

“Voters have sent a clear message that they no longer have confidence in the Conservatives,” said Sir Vince, whose party is campaigning for a second EU referendum. “But they are also refusing to reward Labour while the party prevaricates on the big issue of the day: Brexit.”

The result will provide the Lib Dems with a boost ahead of the European Parliament elections when Change UK makes its debut and will try to occupy the same centrist and pro-EU political space. 

Owen Smith, a former Labour frontbencher, said there was a measure of protest in the voting along with dissatisfaction with the Tory and Labour leaders. 

“It’s hard not to conclude that on Brexit, pro-Remain clarity has been rewarded while incompetence and equivocation have been punished,” he said. “We’ve succeeded in doing the seemingly impossible and raising the Lib Dems from the dead.”

John Curtice, the prominent psephologist, cautioned that the swing towards the Lib Dems could just mean the party returning to its pre-coalition status as “the protest party” rather than a sign of the public’s appetite for a second vote. “Was there any evidence of them doing better in Remain areas than Leave areas? The evidence seems lacking,” he said. 

Brandon Lewis, Conservative chairman, said the elections were always going to be “tough” given the party was defending seats that it won in 2015 at the time of David Cameron's general election victory.

But he insisted the loss of over 1,000 seats was not as bad as might have been expected for a governing party dealing with Brexit in a midterm set of local elections.

Some Labour MPs blamed the party’s loss of around 70 seats on its confusing Brexit position while others suggested hostility, especially in working class areas, against leader Jeremy Corbyn. 

In Middlesbrough, which previously had a Labour mayor, independent candidate Andy Preston, a local businessman, won the mayoral contest by a landslide.

Nick Forbes, Newcastle council leader, said he had never known politics to be quite so volatile and voters so ready to switch votes in local elections on the basis of national issues.

Labour had tried to “appease” both Leavers and Remainers with its Brexit position and had ended up pleasing neither side, he said.