How did the Lib Dems really do in Thursday's elections?

The optimistic take

The very ease with which one can put together a positive version of Thursday's election results shows how welcomingly different they were from previous years. So here's a dose of optimism for you:

• The Lib Dem vote share in council elections was up 4 points on 2015. (This is the BBC's Projected National Share which adjusts for the different rounds of seats up each year.)
• Moreover, the Lib Dems moved back up into third, ahead of Ukip.
• The Lib Dems make net seat gains in council elections for first time since 2008. At +44 gains at time of writing, the Lib Dem result is not only better than the Tories (down 46) and Labour (down 23) but also better than Ukip (up 26) and the Greens (no net change).
• The Liberal Democrats also gained control of an extra council - Watford.

There's also plenty of good news in the details. One is the renewed ability of the Liberal Democrats to target successfully first past the post constituencies at a level higher than councils. Not only the two dramatic constituency gains in Scotland and big swings to the party in its two previously held Scottish Parliament constituencies, but also amongst the wreckage in Wales the was a huge swing to Kirsty Williams in her constituency.

And then there's more. The party's past history has typically seen a defeat at Westminster level leading to the collapse of the party's organisation and electoral prospects in that seat. This time, however, another three former MPs who lost seats in 2015 returned to the council by winning a seat (John Leech, Mark Hunter and David Ward*, as did Lisa Smart who was the candidate to succeed Andrew Stunell in the then Lib Dem held seat of Hazel Grove in 2015). That's a promising sign that the party can rebound in such areas, especially when added to the strong council results in areas of 2015 Parliamentary disappointment such as Cheltenham, Eastleigh, Watford and Winchester.

So is all good and rosy? Well, read on...


* A fourth ex-MP also won. Mike Thornton was re-elected as a parish councillor in Eastleigh too.

The pessimistic take

But there's rather more to it than that Panglossian round-up. For all the very real sense of happiness - and relief - amongst Liberal Democrats that there was solid good news, there was also plenty of grim news.

A word first for those who are hit by defeats but rarely get a mention: the staff who lose their jobs because their bosses didn't get re-elected. Some brilliant and talented people are now job hunting and deserve thanks for all they have done.

In Wales the bad news story is painfully straightforward: four seats lost and only one held with Kirsty Williams re-elected but standing down as Welsh leader. Moreover, the party slipped to fifth behind Ukip, with even a fall in the vote since 2011, pulling in fewer votes than when the party was in coalition.

Nor was that an aberration in Wales. In Scotland the party may have gained the headlines with two constituency gains, but its overall constituency vote share was further down on the 2011 result in coalition (albeit by just 0.1%) and the Greens have overtaken the Lib Dems in seat numbers.

Same too in the council elections in England. The vote share may have been up on 2015, but over the four year cycle the Lib Dem vote was down again. In 2012 the Lib Dems got 16% when in coalition. Four years on, out of coalition, the Lib Dem vote share was 15% - down, just as it was down in Scotland and Wales. Leaving coalition has not seen the Lib Dem vote share go up. Nor was London an exception, for there too the past lost ground, losing one of its two GLA members and being overtaken in seats by Ukip.

Across the country, then, the Lib Dems moved even further away from being the third party of British politics and lost votes compared to the previous comparable round of elections. Being out of coalition didn't increase the party's popularity.

Nor were the two Parliamentary by-elections much better. Ogmore saw the Lib Dem vote down fractionally (0.02%) on the general election, in fifth once again, whilst Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough saw the Lib Dem vote up, but only by 1.6% - although that was enough to take the party back into third place from fourth in 2015.

One final pessimistic statistic to chew: at the rate of progress shown in 2016, it would take until 2044 for the Liberal Democrat council base to return to where it was before that run of seven years of seat loses (and that's allowing for the fact that more seats are up in some years and so the headline seat gains would be higher in those).

Optimist or pessimist; which is right?