Anyone having interesting local elections?

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. One council with results against the grain, due to local events: Leicester

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Leicester_City_Council_election

In March, Labour's national operation de-selected 19 sitting Labour councillors. Some of this stems from the Hindu-Muslim unrest there recently, and associated support of BJP/Modi in India (see eg https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/14/huge-swing-tories-local-byelection-leicester-area-unrest-north-evington ). But some of it (I am told by a Labour activist in the city, who "went on strike" in his words, not doing any election work for the party in the first time in decades) looked like score-settling (meaning, I think, against Corbynites). Some of those de-selected switched to Independent, at least 2 to Conservative ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-65070967 ), and stood in the elections.

The result was the non-Tory vote was often split, and they've gone from
2019 result: 53 Labour, 1 Lib Dem
2023 pre-election, post-de-selection: 36 Labour, 5 Con, 1 Lib Dem, 1 Green, 11 Independent
to
2023 post-election: 31 Labour, 17 Con, 3 Lib Dem, 3 Green

So they hung on to their majority, but at some cost.

(A commentary from the left of the party: https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2023-03-26/behind-labours-purge-leicester-councillors , which, although in "Workers' Liberty", thinks the de-selections for reasons other than BJP support weren't so much anti-Corbyn, as "the Labour Mayor has personal beefs with them" )