Rob Ford was part of the BBC team analysing the local election results as they poured in over the past 48 hours. Here he tells how a dramatic set of results for the government unfolded
The nervous wait for the first result was longer than usual, as counting centres wrestled with multiple ballots for councils, mayors and police and crime commissioners. It was well past midnight on Friday morning when the first ward flashed up, coming as always from Sunderland, which prides itself on its rapid vote counting. A big Tory to
With most councils only starting their counts on Friday, the true scale of the defeat was slow to emerge, though a grim pattern for the government had set in early. The Tories were losing nearly half of all the seats they were defending – the worst rate of defeat since 1996, on the eve of Blair’s first landslide. The Conservatives lost more support in seats they were defending, and the main challenger party did better, both patterns suggesting a strongly anti-Tory mood at work.
The large Green advance may in particular be a sign of trouble for Labour if they take control at Westminster – the Greens had their strongest ever local election performance on vote share, and advanced most in Labour strongholds, including Bristol, where they narrowly missed out on taking control of the council. They have now built a platform to challenge Labour from the left in future local contests.
Nor was the discontent limited to Muslim communities: Labour support also softened in remain strongholds and student districts: hints, perhaps, of trouble to come on the party’s progressive left flank.
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