I'm going to concentrate on the Council for the minute, as there are up and coming elections to the borough.

Presently, the borough has the following proportion of seats

Labour Party - 27
Conservative Party - 9
Liberal Democrats - 3

This total of 12 opposition Councillors is something of a high water mark in recent years for the normally rock solid Labour majority, and can be perhaps attributed to Labour's trials and tribulations in the dying days of the Gordon Brown national Labour administration, where the possibility that voters may have chosen national issues rather than local ones to guide their votes.

The elections for borough Councillors are held every 3 years out of 4, for a 4 year term - the 'spare year' being used for County Council elections.

This means effectively that there is a town-wide 'referendum' on the performance of the ruling party, something I personally am broadly in favour of (many district Councils elect all of their Councillors in one go for 4 years).

This years elections will be for 13 Councillors in the 13 wards that make up the town.

I am prognosticating that the make up of the Council for next year will be

Labour Party - 29
Conservative Party - 7
Liberal Democrats - 3
 
i.e a loss of 2 Conservative councillors. I predict the Old Town will be a close run thing, but I think the Tories will squeak it. There are a number of local issues there that may mitigate against Labour recapturing this seat, this time around.

The 13 wards concerned, the incumbent Councillor and the projected Councillor are shown below

Bandley Hill - LAB - LAB HOLD
Bedwell - LAB - LAB HOLD
Chells - LAB - LAB HOLD
Longmeadow - CON - LAB GAIN
Manor - LIB DEM - LIB DEM HOLD
Martins Wood - CON - LAB GAIN
Old Town - CON - CON HOLD
Pin Green - LAB - LAB HOLD
Roebuck - LAB - LAB HOLD
St Nicholas - LAB - LAB HOLD
Shephall - LAB - LAB HOLD
Symonds Green - LAB - LAB HOLD
Woodfield - CON - CON HOLD


I will not, as my predecessor did, alter these projections - if I get them wrong, I get them wrong.

Any comments are of course welcome - so long as they are not discriminatory or abusive, any amount of political debate is welcome.