Reviewing the 2nd May 2024 election results

Andrew Teale
Britain Elects
Published in
20 min readMay 5, 2024

All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order

It’s the weekend after the local elections, which means that it’s time to write my traditional debrief piece trying to summarise the results and seeing how my previews from before the election fared. Pretty well, all told.

The 2024 local elections had a lot of different moving parts. Between the regional mayors, the police and crime commissioners, and the 107 local councils up for election, everybody in England and Wales had something to vote for.

In the dying days of the 2019 Parliament, these results were not good for the governing Conservative Party at all. The Conservatives lost ten of the sixteen councils up for election that previously had Tory overall majorities, with Labour gaining control of eight councils and the Liberal Democrats two. The Tories also lost nearly half of the council seats they were defending, with Labour again the largest beneficiary. There is now only one Conservative regional mayor: Ben Houchen in the Tees Valley, with Labour successes including a spectacular county-wide win in York and North Yorkshire — the true-blue county which includes the Prime Minister’s constituency. And the Conservatives lost ten of the police and crime commissionerships they were defending to Labour.

The BBC’s projected national share of the vote gave 34% to Labour, 25% to the Conservatives and 17% to the Lib Dems. Compared with last year all three parties have lost ground to independents and minor parties, but the Labour lead remains stable at 9 percentage points. Since May 2021, when most seats up for election this year were last contested, this is a five-point gain for Labour, an eleven-point loss for the Conservatives and no change for the Lib Dems.

Pretty much all the patterns we saw in 2023 remain in place. The unwind of the Conservatives’ Brexit-related vote peak continues, the Conservative vote continues to be too low to be sure of winning a lot of seats even in England’s first-past-the-post system, and anti-Conservative tactical voting remains rife. We also have a new pattern this year in response to the Gaza crisis in the Middle East: major defections from Labour by Muslim voters, who in recent years had often voted for the Labour party overwhelmingly.

We’ll now look at what those general trends mean for particular areas. I haven’t had time to prepare maps of my own yet, but the Britain Elects State of the Nation interactive map is taking shape (link) and I would recommend you refer to that.

North East

With little to cheer about generally this year, it’s not surprising that Rishi Sunak turned up on Friday to celebrate the re-election of the Conservatives’ only regional mayor. Lord Houchen of High Leven secured a third term with a majority of 54–41 over Labour, sharply reduced from the 72–28 score of three years ago.

Houchen will now be the only Conservative member of the Tees Valley Combined Authority, made up of himself and the five Labour council leaders of the constituent boroughs. That’s five now following the Labour gain of Hartlepool, where the party lived up to this column’s par score of seven gains: Hartlepool now has 24 Labour councillors against 6 Conservatives and 6 independents. Labour also gained the Cleveland police and crime commissionership, which covers most of the Tees Valley mayoral area, from the Conservatives by 53–47.

The North East mayoral election proved to be an easy win for Labour candidate Kim McGuinness, who polled 41% of the vote against 28% for Jamie Driscoll, the outgoing Labour North of Tyne mayor standing as an independent candidate, and 12% for the Conservatives. Labour easily held the Northumbria and Durham PCC positions, the former of which was previously held by McGuinness.

In the council elections Labour are now in trouble in South Tyneside, where a long-running bin strike has clearly not gone down well with the voters: Labour lost ten seats here and now have a majority of only two seats. The new South Tyneside council has 28 Labour councillors, 15 independents and 11 Greens. The Conservatives lost their last seat in South Tyneside but the party is back on Newcastle upon Tyne city council after many years away, winning Gosforth ward on a low share of the vote.

North West

The result which stood out in the North West was the Labour gain of the Blackpool South parliamentary by-election. Chris Webb becomes the newest member of the Commons with a 59–18 lead over the Conservatives, who only just held off Reform UK for second place. The 26.3% swing from the Conservatives to Labour is the third-largest swing in that direction in parliamentary by-election history, behind only Dudley West 1994 and Wellingborough three months ago.

Blackpool is not an area with a large Muslim population, and it’s in other North West boroughs that we need to look to see the effect of the Labour collapse among that community. The sense that two simultaneous elections were going on is illustrated by the results for Bolton, where Labour gained the suburban Bradshaw ward from the Conservatives for the first time since 1996, gained Hulton ward from an ex-Conservative councillor who had been thrown out of the party for racist social media, gained the volatile Westhoughton South from the Liberal Democrats, and came within one vote of holding their seat in the traditional Conservative ward of Astley Bridge. (The Astley Bridge Conservatives’ quiz team also won last week, rather more easily.) However Labour lost two strongly-Muslim wards in inner Bolton, with Rumworth ward going to an independent (who had previously won a 2022 by-election there as a Conservative candidate) and Halliwell being won by the Green Party who now have their first-ever seat on Bolton council; in both those wards the defending Labour councillors were not Muslim. There was also a resurgence for Farnworth and Kearsley First who gained two seats from Labour: this means that Labour went backwards on Bolton council overall and now hold 26 seats, against 15 Conservatives, 7 Farnworth and Kearsley First, 6 Horwich and Blackrod First, 6 Lib Dems and 1 Green. It’s not clear whether the previous Labour minority administration can continue.

Coalition-building will also need to be done in Oldham, where Labour lost five seats this year and control of the council. The new council stands at 27 Labour, 16 independents, 9 Lib Dems and 8 Conservatives. The independents are a mixture of Gaza loyalists in Oldham town and localists in the satellite towns.

The East Lancashire towns had already seen a loss of Labour control over Gaza thanks to defections of leading Labour councillors in the past year. In Pendle the entire Labour group walked out of the party to become independent just before nominations for this year’s local elections closed; Labour remain without a single councillor in this key marginal area, with the new Pendle council having 13 Conservatives, 12 independents and 8 Lib Dems. The ward map of Blackburn with Darwen neatly outlines Blackburn’s Muslim wards which went en bloc to independent candidates, including viral sensation Tiger Patel who was re-elected under his new political colours; the Labour majority in Blackburn with Darwen has been sharply reduced to 29 out of 51. Somehow Labour did manage to make a net gain in Burrnley, which remains an unholy mess of a hung council with 15 Labour councillors, 10 independents, 8 Conservatives, 7 Lib Dems and 5 Greens. Hyndburn, however, bucked the trend as Labour won 10 of the 12 wards up for election and gained overall control: the new Hyndburn council is 22 Labour, 11 Conservatives, 1 Green (who won the strongly-Muslim Central ward in Accrington) and 1 independent.

And it’s not just independent Gaza-related candidates who got in on the act. Also sticking his oar in was the new Rochdale MP George Galloway, whose Workers Party won four seats in this election. Three of them came in Greater Manchester, with Gallowayites winning two wards in Rochdale and unseating the deputy leader of Manchester council in Longsight ward. Reports from the Greater Manchester mayoral count suggest that Andy Burnham, who was easily re-elected for a third term, topped the poll in all but one ward in the county: bizarrely, the one that got away was Werneth ward in Oldham which appears to have been carried by independent candidate Nick Buckley. Buckley is neither a Muslim nor a Gallowayite (he was the Reform UK candidate in the 2021 mayoral election), but he clearly tapped into that anti-incumbent mood.

Labour performances elsewhere in the North West were pretty good. The party performed well enough to keep Stockport council hung, with the Lib Dems falling one seat short of a majority: the new council has 31 Lib Dems, 22 Labour, 7 independents and 3 Greens. The financial troubles of Warrington council don’t appear to have had much effect on the Labour vote here, with Labour increasing their majority to 42 out of 58; the Conservatives lost all but one of the Warrington council seats they were defending.

The Labour party now has a full slate of all the mayors and/or PCCs in the North West, with the party gaining the police and crime commissioners in Cheshire, Lancashire and impressively Cumbria.

Yorkshire and the Humber

We now come to the winner of the annual Result Which Made My Jaw Drop award. Step forward David Skaith, a York businessman and chair of the York High Street Forum, who got into politics after his father was a victim of the Covid-19 pandemic. Skaith joined the Labour Party and he is now the inaugural Mayor of York and North Yorkshire, winning with 35% of the vote against just 27% for the Conservatives and 16% for the Liberal Democrats. His victory rally with the party leader Sir Keir Starmer was provocatively held in Northallerton, in the Prime Minister’s constituency. Make no mistake: York and North Yorkshire is an area the Conservatives had no business losing, and attempts to argue otherwise put the “con” into retcon. For such a loss to happen in Rishi Sunak’s backyard is even more embarrassing for the Conservatives.

The one Yorkshire council to change hands was Kirklees, where Labour lost five seats: four of those went to Gaza-related independent candidates in Batley and Dewsbury. Kirklees council now has 31 Labour councillors, 15 Conservatives, 10 Lib Dems, 9 independents and 4 Greens. The Gallowayite Workers Party gained Park ward in Halifax from Labour, but Labour still increased their majority on Calderdale council nonetheless. Sheffield remains a messy hung council, with the home of snooker now having 35 reds, 27 yellows, 14 Greens and 8 cueballs; Labour potted the blue by gaining the single Conservative seat. The Conservatives lost every seat they were defending in Wakefield and are now down to one councillor in Barnsley; they also lost a number of seats in Rotherham, but are still in a clear second place against a little-changed Labour majority.

The only bright spot for the Conservatives in the region was that they managed to hold the marginal Humberside police and crime commmissioner. But this was tempered by the loss of North East Lincolnshire: the par score here was for six Conservative losses, but in fact the Tories lost eight seats and the council now stands at 19 Conservatives, 15 Labour, 5 independents and 3 Lib Dems. Coalition-building will need to be done here.

East Midlands

With only one council up for election in the East Midlands region — the safe-Labour city of Lincoln — interest here was in the new East Midlands mayoral position and the police and crime commissionerships. These turned out to be good for Labour. Claire Ward had no trouble being elected as the first East Midlands mayor; Labour also gained the police and crime commissioners in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and impressively Northamptonshire while also coming very close to gaining Leicestershire. In the region’s council by-elections, the Conservatives held two marginal wards in Derbyshire but lost the Burbage division of Leicestershire county council to the Lib Dems.

West Midlands

The West Midlands metropolitan county turned in some drama in late counting, as Labour candidate and Bengal tiger Richard Parker defeated moderate Conservative Andy Street for the West Midlands mayoralty by the narrow margin of 37.8% to 37.5%; third place with 12% went to Gaza-related independent Akhmed Yakoob, who had strong support in Birmingham. Outside the metropolitan county the Conservatives held all three police and crime commissionerships, but they were run very close by Labour in both Staffordshire and Warwickshire.

Parker will have been helped in his win by an improved Labour performance in Dudley, where the Conservatives lost their majority. A full-council election on new boundaries returned a tie with the Conservatives and Labour on 34 seats each; the balance of power is held by the Lib Dems, who now have three councillors and group status, with an independent making up the numbers. As suggested by this column Labour got nowhere on Walsall council, where the Conservative majority is unchanged at 37 out of 60. Labour are however back on Solihull council after some years away, gaining Kingshurst and Fordbridge ward from the Green Party; Solihull remains safely under Conservative control. Coventry saw the only postponed poll of this election after the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidate for Radford ward died shortly before polling day; a new date will be set for this election, probably in June, and Andrew’s Previews will be there to cover that.

Both of the Staffordshire councils up for election this year were gained by Labour. The party now has 21 out of 36 seats in Cannock Chase and gained 9 seats in Tamworth — where the Tories had swept all ten wards three years ago — to take overall control. Tamworth council now stands at 18 Labour, 8 Conservatives and 4 independent. A Labour gain directly from the Conservatives was the totemic Nuneaton and Bedworth council, where an all-up election returned 20 Labour councillors, 16 Conservatives and 2 Greens. The Conservatives lost three seats in Rugby to fall further away from a majority: with 17 Conservatives against 15 Labour and 10 Lib Dems, the current Conservative minority administration may no longer be viable.

The Conservatives did manage to avoid wipeout in Worcester, just, but they will be without group status there for the next four years as the new council has 17 Labour councillors, 12 Greens, 5 Lib Dems and just one Conservative. Another all-up election in Redditch saw Labour gain overall control with the Conservatives losing eleven seats; in two years Redditch Labour have gone from potential wipeout to 21 out of 27 seats, against 5 Conservatives and a Green.

Wales

It was as you were in the Welsh police and crime commissioner elections, with Plaid Cymru holding Dyfed-Powys and Labour holding North Wales, South Wales and Gwent. With the exception of Gwent which swung to the Conservatives against the national trend, all of these holds were with increased majorities.

South West

In Gloucestershire the Liberal Democrats came very close to electing their first-ever Police and Crime Commissioner, with Martin Surl finishing one percentage point short of unseating Conservative Chris Nelson. Their consolation prize is to become the largest party on Gloucester city council, which is now hung; the Conservatives, who previously controlled the city, lost 15 of the 26 seats they were defending. Gloucester now stands at 17 Lib Dems, 11 Conservatives, 7 Labour and 4 independents. The Conservatives now have no councillors in Lib Dem-run Cheltenham. Coalition-building in Stroud could be fun with the new council having 22 Green councillors, 20 Labour, 7 Conservatives and 2 Lib Dems; both the Greens and Labour made gains on their 2021 result here, when Labour were the largest party.

The Green Party finished just two seats short of taking overall control of the city of Bristol, ending up with 34 seats against 21 Labour, 8 Lib Dems and 7 Conservatives. With the mayoral era in Bristol now over, control has passed back to the council. Bristol’s relatively high turnout helped Labour to gain the Avon and Somerset police and crime commissionership from the Conservatives. Labour also came close to gaining the Wiltshire police and crime commissioner position which remains in Conservative hands; this was helped by relatively high turnout in Swindon which now has a massive Labour majority, 41 seats against 15 Conservatives and 1 Lib Dem.

Possibly the biggest bright spot for the Lib Dems in these elections was gaining Dorset council from the Conservatives with a swing of 13 seats. Dorset council now has 42 Lib Dem councillors against 30 Conservatives, 4 Greens, 4 independents and 2 Labour; transitional arrangements mean that the Dorset councillors elected this year have a five-year term and will not need to seek re-election until May 2029. Labour went backwards in Exeter as suggested but still have a comfortable majority, while the voters of Plymouth have still not forgiven the Conservatives for last year’s Devon Chainsaw Massacre of the trees on Armada Way; the Tories lost 13 of the 14 seats they were defending in Plymouth, and the Labour majority on the council has increased to 42 out of 57. In Devon’s council by-elections, the Lib Dems gained a Green Party seat on Torridge council in Bideford North.

Eastern

We now cross to East Anglia and enter by way of Peterborough, where the Conservatives crashed and burned this year and held just three of the many seats they were defending. Labour are now the largest party, but the main beneficiaries of the Conservative collapse were independent and localist candidates: the new council has 19 Labour councillors, 17 independents and localists, 11 Conservatives, 9 Lib Dems and 4 Greens. Elsewhere in Cambridgeshire the Conservatives lost the Great Paxton by-election in Huntingdonshire to the Lib Dems, and nearly lost the PCC position to Labour.

The Conservatives did somehow manage to lose the position of Norfolk police and crime commissioner, which will be held for the next four years by Labour’s Sarah Taylor; she defeated the incumbent Conservative Giles Orpen-Smellie by 1.3 percentage points. The days when Norfolk had a strongly unionised agricultural labourers’ vote are of course long gone, but it will have helped that the city of Norwich was the only part of the county holding local elections. Norwich is a very left-wing city, but Labour lost control this year after the Green Party made two gains; the council now stands at 19 Labour, 15 Greens, 3 Lib Dems and 2 independents. Both of the county’s local by-elections changed hands: the Conservatives gained Hermitage ward in Breckland from the Lib Dems, but lost Bunwell ward in South Norfolk to the Green Party.

Nothing really to report from Suffolk other than a greatly increased Labour majority in Ipswich. Tim Passmore, one of two survivors from the inaugural 2012 PCC elections, was re-elected for a fourth term as the county’s police and crime commissioner.

In Essex, the Conservatives narrowly held control of Harlow by 17–16 over Labour; mind, one of the Conservative winners was suspended during the campaign for Islamophobic social media, so this one might be messier than it looks. The Lib Dems fell short in their target council of Brentwood, which remains hung: 19 Conservatives, 17 Lib Dems and 3 Labour.

On the Thames Estuary shore, Labour convincingly gained an overall majority in bankrupt Thurrock where the Conservatives held just one of the 13 seats they were defending. There were another 12 Conservative losses in Basildon, which is now hung with Labour as the largest party: 18 Labour, 13 Conservatives, 11 independents. In Castle Point the Conservatives only had eight seats to lose but lose them they did: all 39 seats in Castle Point are now held by independent councillors, 24 on the mainland affiliated with the People’s Independent Party and 15 offshore elected on the ticket of the Canvey Island Independent Party.

The Conservatives lost four seats in Southend, which remains hung with Labour now as the largest party: there are now 20 Labour councillors, 18 Conservatives, 7 independents, 4 Lib Dems and 2 Greens, so the Conservative minority administration may no longer have the votes to continue. Rochford council remains a hot mess, with the Liberal Democrats now the largest party after five Conservative losses: the council now stands at 11 Lib Dems, 10 Conservatives, 9 independents, 8 Residents and a Green councillor. Last but not least the Colchester Lib Dems, who run England’s oldest and newest city as a minority, lost a seat to Labour: Colchester now has 15 Lib Dem councillors against 19 Conservatives, 14 Labour and 3 Greens.

Over in Hertfordshire I should have mentioned Welwyn Hatfield in the Preview and failed to do; this remains a hung council, but big Conservative losses mean that the party has fallen from first place to third. The council is now 20 Labour, 16 Lib Dem and 12 Conservative. There was a similar story further up the A1 corridor in North Hertfordshire, where Labour finished just one seat short of a majority: there are now 25 Labour councillors, 19 Lib Dems and 7 Conservatives. It will be interesting to see whether the Labour-Lib Dem coalition continues here. Labour have also returned to Lib Dem-run St Albans council, gaining two seats.

Finally in this region, Labour gained the Bedfordshire police and crime commissioner with John Tizard defeating the Conservatives’ Festus Akinbusoye on a 6% swing.

London

Crossing into the Great Wen, Sadiq Khan became the first Mayor of London to win a third term. He again polled over a million votes and got a swing in his favour from 2021, with the eventual winning margin over the Conservatives’ Susan Hall being 44–33.

Khan and Hall will continue to spar against each other on the London Assembly, which is elected by proportional representation. The all-important list vote split 38% to Labour, 26% to the Conservatives, 12% to the Greens, 9% to the Lib Dems and 6% to Reform UK, giving a seat distribution of 11 Labour, 8 Conservatives, 3 Greens, 2 Lib Dem and 1 Reform — the Conservatives lost a seat to Reform, who had been below the 5% threshold in 2021. For the first time a London Assembly constituency seat went to a party other than the Conservatives or Labour, with the Liberal Democrats gaining South West from the Conservatives; the Tories also lost West Central to Labour.

Two of the fifteen council by-elections in London resulted in a change of party, in both cases a Conservative gain from Labour. The Tories gained West Putney ward in Wandsworth and the three-way marginal of St Helier West in Sutton, where the defending Labour campaign appears to have been missing in action and the Conservatives won just six votes ahead of the Lib Dems.

South East

Moving into the last and largest region of the country, we start by noting that Labour have gained overall control of the New City of Milton Keynes. The Conservatives have been shedding councillors by the bucketload here in recent years and that trend continued with seven more Tory losses; four of those went to Labour, giving them 30 out of 57 seats.

Over in Oxfordshire, all three of the councils up for election remain hung. The Conservatives held just two of the eleven seats they were defending in Cherwell district where the Lib Dems are now the largest party. The new Cherwell council has 17 Lib Dems, 13 Labour, 11 Conservatives, 4 Greens and 3 independents; the Conservative minority administration looks like it has been clearly defeated. The Lib Dems consolidated their largest-party status in West Oxfordshire as the Conservatives lost five seats; the former political home of Lord Cameron now stands at 21 Lib Dems, 13 Conservatives, 11 Labour and 4 Greens. Oxford remains hung as a result of gains for Gaza and/or anti-Low Traffic Neighbourhood independent candidates; the new Oxford council has 20 Labour councillors, 11 independents, 9 Lib Dems and 8 Greens. In Berkshire, the Lib Dems fell short in their target council of Wokingham thanks to a good performance by Labour in Reading’s suburbs: the new Wokingham council has 27 Lib Dems, 19 Conservatives and 8 Labour.

All of the above are part of the Thames Valley police area, where the Conservatives’ Matthew Barber was re-elected as PCC with a margin of just 0.5% over Labour’s Tim Starkey. His winning score of 32.1% was the second-lowest for any police and crime commissioner (beating only the Conservatives’ 31.0% in Wiltshire) and does call into question the abandonment of the Supplementary Vote for these elections. It’s hard to argue that Barber has a mandate from the electorate when he would have likely lost a head-to-head against Labour after transfers.

The highlight of the election in Hampshire has to be the Labour gain of a council which they have never had a majority on before. The Conservatives lost eight of the 11 seats they were defending in Rushmoor, the council covering Aldershot and Farnborough, with seven of them going to Labour: the new Rushmoor council has 21 Labour councillors, 15 Conservatives and 3 Lib Dems. The Lib Dem/Community Campaign coalition was easily re-elected in neighbouring Hart. Basingstoke and Deane remains hung, and following large Conservative losses it now looks very balanced: the Conservatives are still the largest party but only have 16 councillors against 13 independents, 11 Lib Dems, 11 Labour, 2 Greens and the first-ever principal councillor for the Women’s Equality Party.

Possibly the worst call I made in the Preview was that Havant would remain safely Conservative. In fact, on new boundaries the party melted down and lost more than half of their seats: the new Havant council is hung with 13 Conservatives, 10 Labour, 7 Lib Dems, 4 Greens and the only two councillors elected this May for Reform UK, both of whom represent wards on the large Leigh Park council estate. This borders Portsmouth, where the city’s minority Lib Dem increased its position to 19 out of 42 councillors against 11 independents, 8 Labour and 4 Conservatives; the Tories held just one of the five seats they were defending, with independents as the main beneficiaries. Elsewhere in Hampshire the Conservatives lost the Meon Valley county council by-election to the Green Party, finishing in third place on a close three-way split.

There has been no bounceback for the Conservatives in Surrey local government. In Reigate and Banstead, which until a defection a few months ago had been the last Tory-majority district in the county, the Conservatives lost five of the nine seats they were defending and the Green Party won the most wards. Better results in previous years mean that the Conservatives are still the largest party with 18 seats, against 13 Greens, 6 Residents, 4 Lib Dems, 2 independents and 2 Labour. Tandridge remains under independent/Resident control with the Tories continuing to fall. In Mole Valley the Conservatives drew a blank, and the party is now completely wiped out of bankrupt Woking council which stands at 24 Lib Dems, 5 independents and 1 Labour. The par score was for the Lib Dems to gain Elmbridge, but they fell short of that; Elmbridge now has 23 Lib Dems, 16 Residents and others and 9 Conservatives. But perhaps the craziest result of all came in Runnymede district where Labour — yes, Labour — won the most seats this year, 4 out of 14. Seven Conservative losses mean that Runnymede council is now 13 Conservative, 8 Labour, 6 Lib Dems, 6 Residents, 5 independents and 3 Greens.

In Sussex, the standout result is that the last Conservative-controlled district in Sussex, Adur, has now fallen to Labour. The Conservatives held just one of the nine seats they were defending, and Adur council now has 17 Labour councillors against 8 Conservatives, 2 Greens and 2 independents. Labour also increased their majorities in Worthing and in Crawley, where the Tories’ situation has not been improved by the party losing five seats. It wasn’t all plain sailing for Sussex Labour however; following a major split in Hastings Labour the Green Party have made major gains that borough, and they are now the largest party on that council with 12 seats against 8 Labour, 7 independents and 5 Conservatives.

Finally we come to Kent, where Maidstone council remains hung and now looks very balanced following heavy Conservative losses: 13 Conservatives, 12 Lib Dems, 10 Greens, 8 independents and 6 Labour. This council is moving off the thirds cycle, so the next local elections here will be in 2028. There was also a full council election this year in Tunbridge Wells, which has gone from a hung council to a Liberal Democrat majority: 22 Lib Dems, 7 Conservatives, 5 Labour and 5 independents or localists. Tunbridge Wells is one of two councils which the Liberal Democrats gained this year — are they content with that, or disgusted with their failure to do better?

There was a lot to get through this year, and on a personal note trying to keep of track of everything while writing the megapreview and dealing with a lot of other stressful stuff which has been going on in my life has been a lot of hard work. We are in a new month now and things should now start to quieten down on the personal front — but in psephological terms, we should not forget that the next general election is just around the corner. And the work of Andrew’s Previews never truly stops, for we have a by-election to bring you this Thursday from Ayrshire. Stay tuned.

If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them — going back to 2016 — in the Andrew’s Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).

Andrew Teale is the Britain Elects Previewer and is webmaster of the Local Elections Archive Project.

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