More UK Election Results Are In.

At around 16:00 on 4/5/12 176 of 181 councils have declared results. They show that the Labour Party has done slightly better then expected gaining 769 seats and control of 31 councils. The Conservative Party has also done slightly better then expected only losing 396 seats and control of 12 councils. The Liberal Democrats (LibDems) have done slightly worse then expected having lost 303 seats and control of 1 council. The LibDems did especially badly in Scotland losing heavily to the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP). Overall though the picture is of Labour gaining councils that had no-overall control and the Conservative Party losing councils to no-overall control rather then Labour wrestling control of councils from the Conservative Party.

The results of the Mayoral referendum are all in now. Of the ten cities taking part only Bristol decided to adopt the Mayoral system by a margin of 53% to 47% with a turnout of 24% which was around average. What appears to have happened here is that rather rejecting the Mayoral system voters have simply abstained or voted "no" because they didn't know what they were being asked to decide. Not knowing that much about the Mayoral system myself this rejection might be a good thing or it might be a bad thing. However judging by what's going on in the London Mayoral/Assembly race it seems like it might be a good thing.

While the London results are not yet out and I suspect they'll be delayed until around mid-night to annoy the Chinese* what appears to have happened is that people have voted for the Conservative's Boris Johnson for Mayor because they like his personality but voted for the Labour Party for the Assembly because they like their politics. This could create a situation where the Mayor is in opposition to his Assembly and struggles to get his policies passed creating a gridlock like we saw with US President Obama trying to get his budget past a Republican controlled Congress. It's a good job then that the London's Mayor's powers are pretty much limited to deciding what colour our buses are painted.



*China has announced that blind, self-taught human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng will be allowed to leave the country putting pressure on the USA to give him permission to enter that country. In the meantime the UK Government has applied to the Leveson Inquiry to be granted core participant status which will allow them access to the Inquiry's inner workings and internal documents. So it seems that when the British news media should have been focused on the elections they were focused on the Leveson Inquiry and now they should be focused on the Leveson Inquiry they're focused on elections.