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Colours denote the winning party, as shown in the main table of results. |
The 2001 United Kingdom local elections took place on Thursday 7 June 2001. Elections took place for all of the English shire counties, some English unitary authorities and all of the Northern Ireland districts. The elections were delayed from the usual date of the first Thursday in May due to the 2001 foot and mouth crisis and were held on the same day as the 2001 general election.
While the results were overshadowed by the re-election of the Labour government, they did provide some comfort to the Conservative Party. The Conservatives consolidated their position as the largest party on the English county councils.
YouTube Encyclopedic
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Why the UK Election Results are the Worst in History.
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Election Basics: Crash Course Government and Politics #36
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Britain in the 20th Century: A new consensus? 1990-2001 - Professor Vernon Bogdanor
Transcription
Hello Internet The UK had an election we need to talk about because after the debates finished, the people voted and the ballots tallied the results were this: But parliament ended up looking like this: Which isn't, exactly, representative. And by not exactly, I mean at all. Red earned 30% of the vote and 36% of the seats, which is sort of close, but the rest is madness: Orange earned 8% of the vote but got one eighth of that while Yellow's 5% just about doubled, and purple earned 13% and got squat. Meanwhile blue's 37% of the people booted to 51% of the seats in parliament. The blue boost is even bigger when you consider that 51% of the seats gives basically 100% the control. How'd this happen? In the UK -- national elections aren't really national, they're a bunch of local elections. The UK is divided into constituencies, each of which elects one member of parliament (M.P.) to represent them. This local / national divide is where the trouble begins. Imagine a parliament with just three constituencies, and it's easy to see how it wouldn't always align with citizens. Some people think this sort of result is fine -- “it's all *about* winning local elections,” they’ll say. “Each M.P. represents their constituency.” And while the imbalance in this example is dumb, but it's the same problem in the real election and this same argument is given, but there are two more problems with it in reality land. 1) Few citizens have any idea who their MP is, they just know what party they voted for -- what party they want to represent their views on the national level. And pretending like it's a local election is a bit disingenuous. -- in practice it's an election for now the nation will run -- not really for who is going to represent a tiny part of it. and even if it were 2) The individual constituencies are worse at representing their citizens than parliament. Indulge this spreadsheet-loving nerd for a moment, will you? The difference between what a party earned at the polls and what they got in parliament is the amount of misrepresentation error. If we calculate all the errors for all the parties and add them up we can say the Parliament as a whole has 47% percentage points of misrepresentation error. That sounds bad looks like a utopian rainbow of diversity compared to any local election because the local elections have *one* winner. Out of the 650 constituencies 647 have a higher representation error than parliament. These are the only three that don't and they're really unusual for having so many of a single kind of voter in one place. Most places look the The Wrekin which is dead in the middle a mere one-hundred and one points off. Note that the winning candidate didn't reach a majority here. Which means more than half of constituencies elected their MP with a minority of voters. The worst is Belfast South at the bottom of the list. Hilariously unrepresentative. Less than a quarter of the voters get to speak for the entire place in parliament. This is the the lowest percentage an M.P. has ever been elected by. So when people argue that the UK election is a bunch of local elections 1) people don't act like it, and 2) It's even more of an argument that the elections are broken because they're worse on this level. These local elections are unrepresentative because of the terrible 'First Past the Post' voting system -- which I have complained mightily about and won't repeat everything here -- go watch the video -- but TL;DR it only 'works' when citizens are limited to two choices. Voting for any party except the biggest makes it more likely the biggest will win by a minority -- which is exactly what happened. That citizens keep voting for smaller parties despite knowing the result is against their strategic interests demonstrates the citizenry wants diverse representation -- but that successes is the very thing that's made this the most unrepresentative parliament in the history of the UK. People happy with the results argue the system is working fine -- of course they do. Their team won. Government isn't a sport where a singular 'winner' must be determined. It's a system to make rules that everyone follows and so, we need a system where everyone can agree the process is fair even if the results don't go in their favor. If you support a system that disenfranchises people you don't like and turbo-franchises people you do -- then it doesn't look like you sport representative democracy, it looks like you support a kind of dictatorship light. Where a small group of people (including you) makes the rules for everyone. But as it is now, on election day the more people express what they want the worse the system looks which makes them disengaged at best or angry at worst and GEE I CAN'T IMAGINE WHY. This is fixable, there are many, many better ways the UK could vote -- here are two that even keep local representatives. And fixing voting really matters, because this is a kind of government illegitimacy score -- and it's been going up and may continue to do so unless this fundamentally broken voting system is changed.
Summary of results
The results of the English local elections saw the Conservative party make significant progress, gaining control of a further five councils. The Labour party lost control of Cumbria and Warwickshire county councils, while the Liberal Democrats suffered losses of both of their councils and councillors.
The results in a number of these councils were mostly in line with the general election results.
The Conservatives gain of Cheshire county council coincided with their gain of the Tatton constituency, while their gain of Norfolk county council coincided with a gain in North West Norfolk and a big swing to them in South West Norfolk (although there was a Lib Dem gain in North Norfolk but only on a small swing). The Lib Dem loss of Somerset coincided with them narrowly losing Taunton to the Conservatives, and falling back in key target seats such as Wells and Bridgwater, which fall under the county council's area.
Some bucked trends, however. Labour lost Cumbria despite holding up relatively well in their four parliamentary seats in the county, though the Conservative majority was eroded by the Lib Dems in Westmorland and Lonsdale, which the Lib Dems eventually won in 2005 and have held ever since. Warwickshire was lost by Labour, which was admittedly on a knife-edge, though this was despite swings in their favour in key Conservative targets such as Rugby & Kenilworth and Warwick & Leamington.
The Conservatives gained Dorset. Despite the fact in 1997 when they won every constituency in Dorset (some by small margins admittedly), the council remained in no overall control. Whereas this time when they gained control of it, they lost two parliamentary seats: Dorset South to Labour and Mid-Dorset & Poole North to the Lib Dems by small margins. Despite those gains and some swings to the Lib Dems in other seats in Dorset, there was a big swing to the Conservatives in Christchurch.
The Lib Dem loss of Devon county council coincided with the Lib Dems actually gaining Teignbridge from the Conservatives and significantly increasing their majority in Torbay, a key Conservative target. There were smaller swings away in the Conservatives' favour in their marginal seats such as Tiverton & Honiton and Totnes, and they achieved a small swing in one of their targets, Devon West & Torridge.
Party | Councils | Councillors | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gain | Loss | Change | Total | Gain | Loss | Change | Total | ||
Conservative | +5 | 18 | +120 | 1,093 | |||||
Labour | -2 | 14 | +7 | 843 | |||||
Liberal Democrats | -2 | 0 | -80 | 449 | |||||
Independent | 0 | 0 | -25 | 67 | |||||
Other | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 28 | |||
No overall control | -1 | 13 | — | — | — | — |
England
Non-metropolitan county councils
In all 34 English county councils the whole council was up for election.
‡ New ward boundaries
Unitary authorities
In two English unitary authorities the whole council was up for election while a further nine unitary authorities had one third of the council up for election.
Whole council
Council | Previous control | Result | Details | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Isle of Wight ‡ | No overall control | No overall control hold | Details | ||
Southend-on-Sea ‡ | Conservative | Conservative hold | Details |
‡ New ward boundaries
Third of council
Council | Previous control | Result | Details | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Blackburn with Darwen | Labour | Labour hold | Details | ||
Bristol | Labour | Labour hold | Details | ||
Halton | Labour | Labour hold | Details | ||
Peterborough | No overall control | No overall control hold | Details | ||
Reading | Labour | Labour hold | Details | ||
Slough | Labour | Labour hold | Details | ||
Thurrock | Labour | Labour hold | Details | ||
Warrington | Labour | Labour hold | Details | ||
Wokingham | No overall control | No overall control hold | Details |
Sui generis
Council | Previous control | Result | Details | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Isles of Scilly | Details |
Northern Ireland
In all 26 Northern Ireland districts the whole council was up for election. They were elected by Single transferable vote. They saw the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin make gains at the expense of the other parties.
References
External links
- Vote 2001 BBC News
- The local elections of 7 June 2001. House of Commons Library Research Paper 01/71.
- Northern Ireland local election results