Last night's elections showed Lib Dem progress in Leicestershire

There was a Leicester City Council by-election yesterday in the Eyres Monsell ward. The result was as follows:

Labour: 53.2% (+10.6)
Lib Dem: 30.6% (+23.1)
Con: 16.3% (-1.9)

The slightly odd figures are caused by the disappearance of Ukip, who polled a quarter of the vote last time the vote was fought.

As Mark Pack reminds us, the was a ward the Lib Dems used to hold. That was in the days (2003-7) when we ran the city. So encouraging progress.

We also won a town council by-election in Earl Shilton, electing the town's first ever Lib Dem councillor with 68 per cent.

Mark Pack rightly counsels us against making too much of town council elections, and there is some debate about this in the comments on Lib Dem Voice too.

But from a purely Leicestershire point of view, last night was a good one for the Lib Dems.

Meanwhile, my love of trivial knowledge leads me to reveal that Earl Shilton has produced two obscure England seam bowlers - Les Taylor and Jimmy Ormond - and that Eyres Monsell was named after Patrick Leigh Fermor's father-in-law.