GUEST POST 256 local councillors have changed party allegiance since 1 January

Local councillors are leaving the party under whose name they stood - and often joining a different one - in remarkable numbers, finds Augustus Carp in his latest survey for this blog

With the local government elections taking place on Thursday, here’s a quick appetiser – a snapshot analysis of recent defections amongst local government councillors. 

It’s long been my contention that defections, suspensions, resignations and flouncings out might be telling us something significant about the morale in local party groups, which surely must have an impact on their campaigning abilities. 

However, it’s been a complicated few months in the Byzantine world of local government defections of late – so much so that it’s probably best to consider the numbers for the year to date, rather than just provide an update since my last review for Liberal England (posted 2 March).

In total there have been 256 identifiable incidents of councillors changing their political allegiances since the New Year, resulting in the following net changes:

• Conservatives  -60
• Labour -90
• Lib Dems -15
• Greens +2
• Nationalists 0
• Reform UK +61
• Independents +102

I expect that most people at Christmas would have forecast an increase in the number of defections to Reform, but who would have guessed that it would be the Labour Party that would have suffered the greatest number of losses? Not losses to Reform, to be sure, but fractures within party discipline, and the actions (and inactivity) of the Labour Government at Westminster have led to pressures that could not be contained inside several Labour council groups.

Additionally, in the special category of 'Being Suspended from the Group', ex-Labour councillors lead the field by some distance. The main problem areas for Labour appear to be Nottinghamshire (particularly Beeston), Stockport, Tameside, Dudley and Wakefield, all areas where they have lost at least three councillors. In Beeston, depending on how you count them, it’s somewhere in the region of 19 to 21.

The Conservative groups to have lost three or more councillors appear to be Durham, Kent, Mid Suffolk, North Northamptonshire, Oldham and Tamworth.

For the Liberal Democrats, the only group to see more than three defections was Buckinghamshire, with some sort of personality dispute leading to the loss of five councillors, all in the Aylesbury area.

There have been 37 instances of straight swaps between political parties. That’s rather high, because usually defections are to some manifestation of Independent, although that move in itself is often a precursor to a subsequent attachment to a new political party.

The 37 'straight swaps' consist of 26 councillors moving from Conservative to Reform, 3 from Labour to Conservative, 2 from Labour to Reform, 2 from Labour to Green, 1 from Labour to Lib Dem, 1 from Lib Dem to Conservative, 1 from Lib Dem to Labour, 1 from Lib Dem to Green and 1 from Green to Conservative.

Another factor to consider, which might be hiding in plain sight, is the number of resignations from the Council before the end of a standard four year term – are the by-elections we see always for reasons of ill health or work commitments, or is it really because the group leader has a bit of a Napoleon complex? Sadly, for this category, there’s no way of burrowing into the truth behind the press releases - but there might be a story there as well.

Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.