In my constituency of Sefton Central, Labour gained four seats out of the seven up for election on Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council and took control of the town council in Maghull. We also gained a seat on Sefton Council in the neighbouring Bootle constituency in the only ward which did not already have Labour Councillors. The gains in Sefton Central included two wards where Labour had only once previously had councillors and that was 15 years ago. Two of the gains came from the Tories and two from the Lib Dems. Clearly very good results and we were less than 100 votes away from two further gains in wards we’ve never won. Sefton has annual elections and next year looks good as Labour is now the biggest party in Sefton with 28 of the 66 seats.

Compare the results in Sefton with those in Medway where I was a councillor until I was elected to parliament. In Medway the elections were for the whole council so there will not be another chance to boost our number of councillors before the next general election. Labour lost its three MPs last year and has been in opposition on the council since 2000. This year we gained two seats from the Lib Dems, gained a seat from the Tories and lost a seat to the Tories (compared to 2007, although by-elections and defections meant that we regained three seats as well). That means Labour is on 15 while the Tories are on 35, with three Lib Dems and two independents. The seat we lost to the Tories was my old council seat. I did two days campaigning in Medway and could immediately tell what the difference was between Medway and Sefton. In both places, the Lib Dem vote fell sharply, as elsewhere. But in Medway, the Tory vote held up and in most wards it increased, sometimes sharply up from 2007, which was the last time the seats were contested. In Sefton, the Labour vote was up sharply from 2007 and in fact it increased from last year. The Tory vote was down from 2007 and slightly down from last year.

The results in Medway and across the south show that there is still a long way to go for us to recover. The renewal process, the policy development and the direction of the party clearly have a long way to go. But the message from the voters in Medway was that they accept the Tory argument and reject ours. In Sefton Central that was also the case, which is why the Tory vote was only slightly down on last year. It’s just that there are not as many Tory voters in places like Sefton as there are in Medway.

But there is one factor that we can influence now and that’s organisation. There was no lack of effort or work in Medway from the candidates. But they didn’t have the support of the wider party and they only had a handful of volunteers. In Sefton we were able to run a very full election campaign with far greater resources behind us. That meant more leaflets and much more knocking on doors, talking to voters.

The reason for the difference is the strength of the party in the two areas. In Sefton we have Labour MPs and a strong party organisation. In Medway, the MPs have gone so the organisation is run by a few volunteers. The regional party in the southeast has few people and targeted Gravesham, where Labour won. Again this shows the difference that organisation makes. The worry is that unless the party can find the resources to support the volunteers in places like Medway as well as in Gravesham, we will continue to struggle against the Tories, with all their money and their people. And unless we put resources into Medway and dozens of seats like it, we won’t make enough progress at the next general election.

So, what’s the answer? We should be raising money and putting that money into organisers where we want to win back MPs now and helping constituencies build their campaigning. Otherwise, we will continue to see a big difference between the Seftons of this world and the Medways. 

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