links for 2010-05-11 - The Walthamstow Liberal Democrat implosion election special

My dad was one of three sitting Liberal Democrat candidates deselected in Walthamstow on the eve of the local elections.

Predictably, this split the Liberal Democrat vote in the ward, and after holding Chapel End as 3 safe Liberal Democrat seats for twenty years, Labour won in this area.

In fact, with a backdrop of a rising national vote share and the collapse of Labour, the Waltham Forest Liberal Democrats managed to go from having 21 councillors to just 5.

All of the Liberal Democrats local finances and campaign effort seemed directed at the failed attempt to get Farid Ahmed elected as MP. His literature used misleading figures - this graph for example implied that voting levels between Labour and Liberal Democrats were 37% and 30% respectively, when in fact at the 2005 election Neil Gerrard had polled 50% for Labour, and Farid had achieved just 27%...

...he passed off then-still-Cllr Bob Wheatley as an ordinary 'local person' in another leaflet...

...issued leaflets that still directed mail to the home address of the aforementioned deselected ex-Cllr Belam

...and also issued an extremely divisive leaflet aimed solely at the Waltham Forest Muslim community.

The result of all this expensive campaigning? Stella Creasy increased the Labour share of the vote and her majority, and the Liberal Democrat party locally has been wiped out. Nice work.

Here is local political blog Archipelago of Truth's take on the election results.