Tory breakthrough predicted in North East

Party to take control in North Tyneside

The first independent predictions of what will happen in the local elections outside London are in, suggesting Tories could win “make gains deep in traditional Labour heartlands“.

Professor Colin Rallings is suggesting the Tories could make some symbolic victories, including North Tyneside Council - their first metropolitan council in the north-east - and Vale of Glamorgan Council, their first in Wales.

Professor Rallings, of the Local Government Chronicle (LGC) Elections Centre at the University of Plymouth, has also predicted that Labour “holds no realistic chance of gaining a single council on May 1″, according to the LGC

The current situation across the river from South Shields is that no party has overall control but they have a directly elected Labour Mayor. Current composition Con 28; Lab 23; LD 9. Conservatives are just 3 seats short of winning overall control. They need to win the Benton, Collingwood, and Killingworth wards on a 2% swing from Labour since 2004.  Conservatives won them all last year.

The only and only comment to Alex Hilton’s post at Labour Home suggests that the Labour Party are more worried nationally about losing seats to the racist BNP.

“Analysis like this infuriates me as it assumes that we are only fighting Conservatives and Liberal Democrats; in Stoke-on-Trent we have something like seven of the top 20 most vulnerable Wards to the BNP in the West Midlands (and I believe they’ve missed an obvious one out).  Frankly I would willingly surrender those Wards to the Conservatives and LibDems rather than see them fall into the hands of the BNP.”

He also suggests that it is silly to read anything into local government election results;

“because they are fought on 20-30% lower turnouts, and are skewed by the presence of Independents who don’t stand at General Elections (normally).”

Which may well be the case, especially here in South Tyneside, but it does beg the question

“are they a different type of Geordie in Benton or Killingworth?”