Well done Calderdale LibDems!

As those who follow my tweets (I'm @RTaylor_MEP on Twitter) already know, I've been busy the last few weeks with the local elections in Calderdale, the part of Yorkshire in which I was born and grew up.

The LibDems in Calderdale went into the local elections with 13 seats running the council in partnership with Labour (Calderdale has been a NOC - no overall control - council for some years).

It was a tough election campaign for Calderdale LibDems; we knew we could take no vote for granted. I leafleted, telephone canvassed, canvassed on the doorstep and did even more leafleting (sometimes in torrential rain - yuck!) and then phoned voters all day on polling day. Many colleagues of mine did much much more.

In the end, Calderdale LibDems had election results to be proud of. We were defending four held seats and we retained two of them (congratulations to Janet Battye and Pat Allen) and lost two (commiserations to Christine Bampton-Smith and Mohamed Ilyas). In particular, LibDem council leader Janet Battye fought off a strong Labour challenge to retain her seat with an increased majority of 145 (up from 53).

We also gained Greetland and Stainland back from the Tories (more accurately from a councillor who had defected to the Tories after being elected as a LibDem). Having said that, Greetland and Stainland is probably the closest thing the LibDems have to a safe council seat in Calderdale.

We also came close to gaining another seat as James Baker battled valliently to try and gain Warley from the Tories, but was beaten into 2nd place by 113 votes by the Labour party

So the overall picture was a loss of one seat (down to 12 from 13), which was thanks to the amazing hard work put in by candidates and activists. The phrase "where we work, we win" seems to be appropriate. Well done to all!

Links:

Calderdale election results

Calderdale Liberal Democrats