Stumbled across this story about the local elections in Wealden, the district where I grew up.

Now, all parties, including my own, have trouble finding candidates in some areas, but, even knowing how sparse Wealden is for Labour (they have no seats on the district and only five at county level), their number of candidates really surprised me.

Conservatives: 51
Liberal Democrats: 36
Independents: 15
Greens: 12
Labour 2:
UKIP: 1

Two candidates? For over 50 seats? Crikey: this is the party running the country.

I’ve been away helping with the local elections in Lewisham, currently in an internet cafe in Rushey Green. Full update in a day or two, but I can’t resist logging in to say we won!

The Lewisham Council LibDem group is now 17, up from 4 in 2002 and 7 last week (three of whom were gained in by-elections). Lee Green ward, where I was helping on polling day, now has three LibDem councillors; Blackheath also has three, including our mayoral candidate Chris Maines, unseating the Labour Deputy Mayor. Chris came a good second in the mayoral election, pushing the Tories into third. Councillor Dan has been joined by two more LibDems in Whitefoot, and Forest Hill was a clean sweep too. Thanks to the Greens taking two wards and the Tories picking up one seat, Labour no longer have a majority on the council – although they do retain the executive mayor, who can continuity to rule Lewisham like a king.

The full results are on the Lewisham Council website.

A report in theguardian reveals that a two-day follow-up to yesterday’s local government strike is no-longer-secretly planned for May 3rd and May 4th. The latter is the day of local elections in England, which are administered by local government.

If the unions think emphasising the issue on local election day is a good way to put pressure on Labour, then they’re probably right, but it would be a sensible move for them to guarantee that the elections won’t be disrupted. Labour has every interest in delaying what is likely to be an embarrassing plebicite – undermining local democracy would only play into their hands. The unions should come clean about whether there is a strike planned for May 4th and reassure voters that the elections will be able to go ahead as normal.