Lib Dem Vote Meltdown in Haringey – Losing Here!

The detailed ward by ward data has now been released by London Elects for the GLA elections on 3^rd May. I reported on this blog here previously that the Green party finished in third place in Enfield and Haringey (London Member list) pushing the Lib Dems in to fourth place. This more detailed data shows the full scale of the collapse of the Lib Dem vote in Haringey, and it is truly staggering.

The share of the vote for the main parties in Haringey was as follows:

Conservative 16.0%

Green 13.4%

Labour 53.0%

Lib Dem 10.4%

On these results the Lib Dems would lose all of their 22 seats on Haringey council, and Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, would also lose her seat. Labour beat the Lib Dems comfortably in every ward in Haringey. Indeed, of the 19 wards in Haringey, the Green party beat the Lib Dems in all but one ward (come on Muswell Hill ward, you don’t want to get a reputation for this sort of thing!).

Let’s take just one ward as an example of the catastrophe that has just hit the Lib Dems in Haringey (and across London generally). This is the result of the London Member ballot from the Haringey ward of Stroud Green:

Conservative 10.4%

Greens 22.2%

Labour 47.5%

Lib Dem 13.9%

This ward currently has three Lib Dem councillors, including the leader of the Lib Dem group, Richard Wilson, who are all clearly in peril at the next council elections in 2014.    

Of course, people do vote differently in different elections, and there are two years to go until the London council elections, and probably three to the general election, but the Lib Dems must be very worried by these results.

It was entirely predictable that this sort of thing would happen from the day the Lib Dems nationally decided to enter a coalition government with the Tories. Much of Lib Dem support in London came from disaffected Labour voters in recent years, and they are horrified that by voting Lib Dem, it has led to a Tory government, following a right wing, pander to rich and stuff everyone else, agenda.

The Lib Dems could well return to their numbers of elected representatives that they had in the 1970’s, when you had to be some sort of celebrity like Cyril Smith or Clement Freud, to get elected as a Liberal MP. They can only hope that something turns up to change their fortunes, but as it stands, they are on death row in Haringey and much of the rest of the country.