Last night there were 2 council by elections and they were both Labour defences, one in Sunderland and one in Cornwall. The results are in:
In Falmouth Smithwick (Cornwall) Labour took votes of every other party to increase their vote share by nearly 20% to taking over 60% of the vote.
Meanwhile, in Pallion (Sunderland) we saw a huge swing to the Lib Dems. There have been a few commentators suggesting various reasons from Brexit to a poorly run council. The most ‘interesting’ however is the idea that the Lib Dem candidate was a bit sneaky by using red and white leaflets instead of the usual orange – in Sunderland, who’d have thought it?