NEW LOW POINT FOR TORIES ON SEFTON COUNCIL

 Vast areas of Britain did not embrace the Conservatives. Just in our council area, the Tories lost two seats - one each to LibDem and Labour and failed to win their two target parliamentary seats of Southport and Sefton Central.  With so much of the print media controlled by Conservatives, their failure to gain solid nationwide support is not something they are likely to point out, especially the Daily Mail.

                                                  NEW SEFTON COUNCIL

Here's the number of councillors now on Sefton, with the previous figures in brackets:  LibDem 28 (28), Labour 23 (21), Conservative 15 (17).  This is the Conservative's lowest tally since Sefton was created some 25 years ago.. In the early days they ran the council with a clear majority.  It just shows how the public mood has changed.

Sefton remains a balanced council with power shared between all three parties.  With just a couple of blips, the council has been a good example of how politicians can work together successfully without having any formal pacts.  Issues are decided on their merit and no single political group is able to buldoze through its own pet ideas.

With so much attention on the "hung" parliament, there is very little media mention of the fact that there are many councils throughout the country where there is no "majority control" and where things work perfectly well with politicians being forced to work together and decisions are taken after proper discussion and not forced through based on political dogma.

The real picture after the General Election is that Britain is politically fragmented.  Scotland swung to Labour, as did the major conurbations of the North of England.  It was middle England, especially the South East, that really contributed to the Conservative's 36 per cent share of the vote.

The Tories only have one MP in Scotland and just 8 in Wales.  In London, which has a Tory Mayor in the shape of Boris Johnson, the Conservatives failed to perform anything like as well as they expected.  Perhaps voters have longer memories of the Thatcher years than was anticipated.

There was erratic voting all over the place with so much tactical voting that it surely must be time for a new proportional system so that people are able to vote for a party they really wish to support rather than casting their vote to keep out the party that they seriously do not want to win.

A disappointing result for the Liberal Democrats as Nick Clegg sensibly acknowledged.  But worth mentioning that the party missed out on 10 seats by majorities of 1,000 or less.

                 LIB-DEM COUNCILLORS NOW IN NEARLY ALL SOUTHPORT WARDS

Locally it's a different picture. The LibDems now have councillors in 6 of the 7 Southport wards, after Haydn Preece won Ainsdale ward. He defeated Cllr Mark Bigley,  who was the previous unsuccessful Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Southport

Ainsdale is the seat of Cllr Brenda Porter who failed in her bid for the House of Commons with John Pugh increasing his LibDem majority from 3,838 to 6,024 and attracting 21,707 votes and gaining 49.61 percent of the total vote.

Haydn Preece, former chief executive of Southport FC, who overturned a 1,900 majority to win Ainsdale, told the media after the count that "It was a giant killing, the equivalent of a League Two side taking on a European side and winning."

Further down the line in the Crosby area there was another parliamentary and local council shock for the Conservatives.  Bookies favourite local Sefton councillor Debi Jones, a former radio personality, who was expected to win the parliamentary seat of Sefton Central, lost to Labour by nearly 4000 votes.

Double disappointment for her as the Sefton council Manor ward which she had confidently vacated failed to elect her potential successor, falling to Labour with a majority of nearly 800.

                                 THE CASE FOR A CHANGE IN THE VOTING SYSTEM

Here's some figures from The Guardian:

Labour scored 42% of the vote in Scotland and 36.2% in Wales, both first places.  In England the Tories were ahead on 39%; in the south-east the party took 49%.

At this General Election it took about 119,000 votes to elect each Liberal Democrat MP; about 34,000 to elect each Conservative and 33,000 to elect each Labour MP.