Wirral Council’s Labour group suffered yet more losses last night, leaving it as the largest party but only by a slender margin.
The party lost two seats to the Green Party and one to the Conservatives, meaning it lost one overall after a gain from a councillor who defected from Labour after being elected in Rock Ferry in 2018 and recently standing down, and another gain in a vacant seat in Leasowe and Moreton East. This may seem like another disastrous night for the party, but there is another way of looking at it.
While the result leaves Labour on just 26 of Wirral’s 66 seats, just two above the Tories, with the Greens on nine and the Lib Dems on six, there were some other encouraging numbers for the party. Labour scored 42% of the vote, comfortably beating the Conservatives on 26%, followed by the Greens on 19% and the Lib Dems on 12%.
READ MORE: Local elections 2022: Labour clinging on in Wirral after another bruising night
That figure is an increase on both last year and 2019, so although it may not have translated into seats Labour did win more votes than it has done in the last two council elections. However, the party’s vote share was lower than the 45% it scored in 2018, when these seats were last fought.
Labour councillors wanting to talk up the party’s performance last night pointed to the fact that while it lost one seat overall, Labour made strides forward in seats such as Pensby and Thingwall, Greasby, Frankby and Irby and Hoylake and Meols compared to 2021 and 2019.
In the former two examples, the party came just 32 votes short of an important hold and 64 votes short of a shock gain over the Conservatives. All of this leaves the council on even more of a knife-edge than it was before.
Labour will have to negotiate even more with other parties to get its plans through and both the Conservatives and the Greens will claim a renewed mandate to argue more strongly for their policies. Next year, all 66 of Wirral’s seats will be contested as the council moves to so-called ‘all out elections’.
Cllr Liz Grey, Labour councillor for Bidston and St James, said she was not worried about Labour losing the leadership of the council. Cllr Grey said council leader Janette Williamson was a good leader and she was very confident her Labour colleague would stay on as council leader in a minority administration.
For the Conservatives, Cllr Jeff Green, who was elected in West Kirby and Thurstaston, said he thought it was a good night for his party. He added the Tories held on to all of its seats and gained one. In his view, the story of the night was the Tory gain in Pensby and Thingwall and Labour’s losses to the Greens.
Asked if he was concerned by the falls in Conservative majorities in previously safe seats, Cllr Green said he was not and that holding on was a sign of good campaigning.
