All change

This blog has been very quiet of late for the very understandable reason that I have been defending my council seat in the local elections. Hard fought local election campaigns are not the ideal environment to encourage regular blogging. But the elections are over and after a week or so recovering I can now venture out into the world again.

How did I get on?

Well after what was the biggest, and most professional, election campaign the Liberal Democrats have ever run in Luton, and a busy polling day with lots of outside help, we headed off to the count in good spirits. What then followed was a rather painful nail-biting experience as it became clear that the election result was going to be a really close one. There were several wards which looked like they could go either way. Some with a huge number of split ballot papers. By what must have been around 4 in the morning there where still four wards to be declared, including mine, and the returning officer decided to call a halt.

So a number of us had to troop into the Town Hall on Friday morning to know our fate. My ward had gone to a recount and was the second to last to be declared. The result was that I and my colleague Clive both got back in, but our third candidate in this 3 member ward was narrowly beaten, giving Labour a gain.

Across the Town our hopes of making gains were disappointed and from the total of 20 seats won at the previous election we fell back by 3 to 17. The Tories, after what was a rather pathetic campaign, made barely any progress at all gaining 1 seat from Labour. So unfortunately the end result was an end to four years of minority Liberal Democrat administration and a new overall majority for Labour.

This is not the place for an analysis of the how’s and why’s of this result. However, I will stress that the Liberal Democrats in Luton remain a strong force and are in good heart, and that this was a very marginal victory for Labour. But it was a victory for them nonetheless and that means many changes not least for me personally.

To start with I am no longer an executive member and will have to get used to opposition. I will need to significantly refocus my energies into new areas. Getting a proper job might be an idea! I might also try to discover a half-forgotten concept that some people have told me about called ‘a social life’. One good thing is that I will have more time for this blog and hopefully for doing some other writing too.

As it is a time of change I think I might have a play around with this blog’s template.

This content was originally posted on my old Process Guy blog.