and Iulia Rosu, Yuya Shino, Shuo Cao
Labour claimed a landslide in the local elections in Sheffield early today taking control of the city council, as the Liberal Democrats paid a heavy price for their support for the coalition government.
Labour won in last night's election. Photo by Mike Taylor.
Across the city the Lib Dem vote collapsed with electors abandoning the party they had supported strongly only 12 months ago.
Labour gained nine seats and now has 49 seats in the 84-seat council chamber.
Analysts blamed the Lib Dem decision to join the coalition government as junior partners with the Conservatives and the personal unpopularity of Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, the MP for Sheffield Hallam.
Former Labour Home Secretary and Sheffield Brightside MP David Blunkett hailed the end of what he called “Cleggmania” as he relished his party’s resurgence in what was once dubbed the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire.
And Sheffield Central MP Paul Blomfield described Labour’s victory as a landslide.
Labour pointed to Clegg’s U-turn on tuition fees and support for the government’s austerity measures as the reason for his dramatic reversal of fortunes.
To add to Lib Dem woes, opinion polls suggest their cherished hope for reform of the voting system looked set to be heavily defeated in a national referendum. Results will be announced tonight.
Nationally, Labour inflicted a heavy defeat over the Lib Dems across northern England taking seats in Manchester, Liverpool and Hull.
But in Scotland the SNP secured an unprecedented victory by taking a majority of seats in the Scottish Parliament election.
Alex Salmond’s party passed the half-way point by taking its 65th seat in a historic win at Kirkcaldy, the first time gains on this scale have been achieved since the Parliament was established in 1999..
Locally Labour gained nine council seats from the Lib Dems in Gleadless Valley, Nether Edge, Crookes and Stockbridge and Upper Don, Broomhill and West Ecclesfield, East Ecclesfield, Hillsborough and Walkley giving it overall control of the City Council from a minority Lib Dem administration.
The Lib Dems held onto to six seats, and the Greens to one.
The composition of the council is now Labour 49, Lib Dems 32, Greens 2, Independent 1.
Local turnout was just under 42%.
View Sheffield Election Ward in a larger map
Slideshow by Angelina Wenjuan HE
See also:
Clegg: “We have taken a real knock last night”
About time too, Look at the way the voter’s map reads, money areas are everything else but labour. It’s always been the same and will be forever.
Everybody buy your own house Maggie said and we did. Simple, don’t rock the boat and you keep your house.
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