As is traditional here, I stayed up on local election night (Thursday 2nd May 2019) with a mug of tea and matchsticks propping up the eyelids to see how results were in notoriously knife-edge Walsall.
It turns out it was a pretty bad night for Labour locally who lost two seats to the tories, leaving the council fully in the control of Mike Bird’s Conservative group for the first time (for any group) since 2011: Tories have 32 seats, Labour 26 and Lib Dems 2.
All this on a turnout that despite many protestations that folk wouldn’t vote – seems to be broadly similar to 2018: Woeful, but normal.
In Brownhills Independent Ian Neville beat Labour candidate Dave Morgan to take second place, with incumbent Ken Ferguson holding his seat. Can’t help feeling UKIP would do better here if they fielded someone other than Derek for a change.
In the immediate locality there was little change with tories holding Aldridge, Walsall Wood and Pelsall seats. There was a small drift towards UKIP in several seats but not as large as I expected if I’m honest.
An interesting election for sure.
Congratulations to the winners, commiserations to the losers.
You can find full results over at Walsall Council’s Election site here
Brownhills
| Bennett Derek | UKIP – Make Brexit Happen | 440 |
| Ferguson Ken | Conservative | 1054 **H |
| Morgan David Huw | Labour | 624 |
| Neville Ian Charles | Independent | 759 |
Aldridge North and Walsall Wood
| Clarke Gary | Conservative | 1327 **H |
| Williams-Rabone Tony | UKIP – Make Brexit Happen | 547 |
| Wolfs Amy Louise | Labour | 658 |
Pelsall
| Eardley Graham | UKIP – Make Brexit Happen | 649 |
| Longhi Marco | Conservative | 1449 **H |
| Maltman Jon | Labour | 489 |
Aldridge Central and South
| Bramwell Paul Jonathan | Liberal Democrats | 349 |
| Chan Guan Khai | Green | 132 |
| Dickens Barbara Lynn | UKIP – Make Brexit Happen | 774 |
| Kaur Pard | Conservative | 1678 **H |
| Rahman Mish | Labour | 594 |