Soooooooooooooooo – not bad at all! That’s my verdict on how we did in the local elections in England and Wales based on the results in so far. We gained seats off Tories and Labour and won seats right across the country. Gaining St Albans against Tories and Hull against Labour was a good message of how we are the only national party. However – losing Pendle wasn’t great. Shame to have missed taking Oldham, Warrington and Cheltenham by just one seat in each of them – but that’s the name of the game. Seeing Labour’s disastrous result – pushed into third place by us – was pretty cheering.
Overall – I would say pretty good for Lib Dems, disastrous for Labour and encouraging for the Tories. I don’t think any of this exactly fortells what will happen in a General Election which could be two years away still – but lord knows Gordon has a lot of ground to make up and so needs a lot of time to do so. Those fielding the coverage on TV for Labour keep saying they are learning and listening. It’s going to take more than that!
Overall, it is three party politics – the percentages blast out that fact! I just wish the coverage all year round honoured that the way the voters do.
Lynne Featherstone 
You could equally say you lost seats right across the country and that you lost seats to Labour and the Tories. Team Ming did better than Team Clegg.People in Liverpool will be glad that the Lib Dem Party lost majority control after the Audit Commission said it was the worst run Council in the country. Even worse than Haringey!
The Liberal Democrats made an overall gain in seats and an overall gain in the number of councils which we run – so overall, yes – these were good results and were better than last year as we went up in both seats and councils.
Indeed not just good but very good for LDs: 2nd in the popular vote, beating the Labour juggernaut, and in the end just retaining Liverpool. But (and I sensed it when watching on TV and listening on radio and TV to Brian Paddick) there is a lack of oomph to the LDs in local govt. While running Bristol for 2 years that weakness showed in poor managerial ability (both in the nuts and bolts and in PR), although in Somerset after some 5 years they did learn. That and London point the way for other major conurbations: elected Mayors teamed with a strong local assembly has got to be the way forward. So go for it in Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Greater Manchester, Greater Bristol, Newcastle and Sunderland,…