The post-election landscape

The RCM’s Stuart Bonar takes stock of the main parties’ gains and losses after the UK went to the polls in May.

Midwives magazine: Issue 4 :: 2011

The country enjoyed a festival of democracy in May: council elections in Northern Ireland and much of England, elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Ireland Assembly, as well as a parliamentary by-election and a referendum on the voting system. It had two clear winners, two clear losers, and someone stuck somewhere in between.

The two clear winners were the Conservatives and the Scottish Nationalists. Every so-called expert was predicting that the Tories would be slaughtered at the polls. It was only a matter of how many hundreds of councillors they would lose in the local elections in England.

In the end, the Conservatives increased the number of councillors they have and the number of councils they control. Indeed, more Conservative councillors were elected on 5 May than all others combined, and the same went for Conservative-controlled councils too – more than all other parties put together. Their haul of seats in the Scottish Parliament was down, but in the Welsh Assembly it was up.

The other big winner was the Scottish National Party (SNP). They won majority control of the Scottish Parliament, the first time any party has done that since the parliament started sitting again in 1999. In fact, they saw their number of seats increase by 50%.

The two clear losers were the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru, in Wales. The Lib Dems had a truly awful night, losing almost half the councils they controlled and roughly the same proportion of their councillors.

In Scotland, the party lost 12 of its 17 MSPs; they no longer hold a single constituency on the Scottish mainland. Wales was slightly kinder to the Lib Dems, but their number of seats still shrank by one.

Plaid Cymru lost four seats in the Welsh Assembly, the biggest loss of any party, and has now lost power, having previously been in coalition with Labour.

It was a mixed night for Labour. They made handsome council gains in England, picking up 857 council seats and almost doubling the number of councils they control, but they lost ground in Scotland, a key party heartland. Labour joined the other two main UK parties in losing seats to the SNP. The political battle in Scotland between Labour and the SNP is often bitter, and seeing the SNP win majority control of the parliament will sting.

In Northern Ireland, changes in the number of seats were small, with no one gaining or losing more than two seats. Northern Ireland’s political system also means that power is shared as widely as possible.

In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon continues in dual office as health minister and deputy first minister.

Meanwhile, new health ministers in Wales (Lesley Griffiths) and Northern Ireland (Edwin Poots) are getting to grips with their roles. We’re writing to the newly elected members to find out which new MSPs, AMs and MLAs are willing to work with us on improving maternity care in the future.