Well, by now if you have seen the election results you will know that Labour bucked nation trends and gained seats in Nottingham, largely at our expense.
A good friend and colleague lost his seat in Aboretum by about 40 votes. Recounts for that seat took up a lot of the night. We failed to regain an independent seat in Bridge. We didn’t win either of our target wards, although we just missed Berridge, the last ward to declare, by 20 votes.
Our total numbers have gone down from 8 to 6. The Tories stayed the same on 7, although that figure hides one loss and one gain. And just as our loss came at the expense of a hardworking colleague, the Tory gain also scalped a Labour councillor who did far more than her share of committees. I was speaking to her at the count last night without realising she had lost. She must have known at that point, but didn’t mention it.
And just to hammer home the fact that we weren’t having a good night, my glasses broke. There’s nothing to make you feel daft like having to sellotape them back together so that you can drive home.
Then a scant few hours’ sleep, then up to Chesterfield for another count, which went rather better.
We didn’t see the losses coming. Not least because so many people we spoke to in many parts of the city told us they were not happy with Labour – an anger that had many reasons attached, many of them national. And there were also a great deal of people angry about a recent redesign of the city’s main public square.
Niles's Blog 
Makes you wonder exactly how labour are getting away with it …
I can’t comment on other places, but here in Nottingham, they had a very effective campaign. Not a nice one, but a very expensive one, that effectively got out their own voters (and maybe even depressed the turnout of others slightly).
Reading your blog and comments, I’m not sure of your logic. When Liberals win, they claim it’s rejection of the old two party politics, when they lose it’s that the opposition had a better campaign and got their voters out. Of course that is true. It’s also true we got more votes than your candidates did when they won the seats orignally, whilst your actiual number of votes went down. And turnout was up across the board. Maybe it was more about the Liberals having nothing to say about local issues and spending their time on targetting muslim voters about Iraq or describing local candidates as Tony Blair’s candidates, or their inability to take responsibility for their role as local councillors that people rejected.
(Toby is the Labour candidate for Arboretum who was defeated. He and I are unlikely to see eye to eye on how the campaign in the Arboretum was fought!)
It’s also true we got more votes than your candidates did when they won the seats orignally, whilst your actiual number of votes went down.
Hmmm. I’ve just been to look the numbers up, and it’s true you got more votes than we did four years ago, but it’s not by many. Winning totals were 614 and 586 in 2003 and 691 and 649 this time around, so you got about 70 more voters out for you this time – which is entirely in line with you being better at finding your voters this time. Or maybe the 70 2003 voters for the Church of the Militant Elvis Party switched.
I haven’t seen all the leaflets from the Arboretum campaign, but in those I did see, there was plenty about local issues, much of it from casework raised as a result of routine, month-in, month out FOCUS leaflets which generate a huge amount of work for our hardworking councillors.
I don’t think it’s particularly strange to link the leader of the Labour party with Labour party candidates. Those bits of the campaign which were targetted at Muslim voters – of whom there are many in that part of town – were led by our Lib Dem Muslim colleagues. And that last bit simply isn’t true in the least. Our councillors there are excellent local councillors – which is why you failed to beat both of them.
Bit of a PS, – Toby – your Flickr photos are really good. I particularly like your black and white shots of city buildings.
Having now seen some turn-out figures (they still don’t seem to be available on the City Council website page of results of each ward, which also irritatingly auto-refreshes to the next ward as well) – I can see Toby is right about turnout, which did increase across the city.
Your right, we won’t see eye to eye on this, but thanks for your nice comments.
You need to replace Ming Campbell. He inspires nothingness, and against Cameron there doesn’t even appear to be a choice to make.
Surely people can see through Cameron? He’s just not terribly sincere. At least Ming has a bit more history to him.
I have to say the only party leader who got any mentions at all on the doorstep was Tony Blair, and he didn’t seem to be getting much support.
There are certainly people in the Lib Dems who support your view – and people who don’t.
Myself, I’m not a big fan of Ming – he didn’t get my first preference in the leadership election last year – but I don’t think we should be dumping him so soon.
I dunno, but from outside the Lib Dems (where I sit) it was as obvious to me that you should have chosen Chris Hulme as it was obvious that the Tories should have chosen Clarke, Portillo and now Cameron. Labour learnt this in the 90s, you have to give regard to what the public wants. This is also why there is a shiver of apprehension about the coronation of Brown – my bones tell me it might be ok, but it should have been Milliband.