Running in the May Elections

Running in the May Elections

Just thought my readers might like to know that I shall be standing in the Newark and Sherwood District Council elections on Thursday 2^nd May for my home ward (Trent Ward). My nomination has been confirmed as valid. I was a little surprised to discover there will be competition from both the Labour Party and UKIP in my very rural area of Nottinghamshire.

Early canvassing suggests a very weak and wobbly conservative vote, so it is perhaps not surprising the sitting Conservative has chosen to call himself “Local Conservative” in an apparent attempt to distance himself from the shenanigans of national political activity!

I shall also be standing for a seat on Southwell Town Council and you may be interested to discover that Lib Dems are putting up nine candidates for the 15 seat Town Council and the Tories have only managed to find seven candidates, so even if all seven Tories were to get in, they cannot control the council alone. There are also two Labour candidates and two independent candidates standing (both of whom are sitting councillors).

There are therefore only twenty candidates for the fifteen seats, altogether, so even on a simple non-political, numerical basis each candidate has a 75% chance of being elected. So it will be interesting to see how the numbers play out.

I am, naturally, emphasising my Green credentials, so I am hoping they will have a positive effect on my candidacy results. Four weeks to go – so, as much canvassing and leafletting as we can manage. I just hope it warms up a bit – it was very cold out today with a sharp northerly wind and I got rained off in the early evening, so I was quite pleased to get into the warmth back home!

ELECTION UPDATE

Just to let you know that we did reasaonably well in Trent Ward in the local election coming in with 30% of the vote and the highest turnout in the District Council area at 46%. The vote was won by the incumbent Tory, but he was complimentary about the work we put in and hearsay suggests he was concerned he might have lost out but the Conservative vote stayed up quite well over the whole District and they kept their overall total of councillors, picking up a couple from the Labour Party, which made up for the two they lost to Lib Dems actually in Southwell.

Also, Liberal Democrats took control of Southwell Town Council, but sadly I missed my personal success, failing to get on the STC by just 6 votes – somewhat frustrating!

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