10 election takes from the dramatic Shropshire Council vote

With plenty left to process here's just a few of the things that stood out on the day of the count - and going forward.

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Good vibrations

Election counts are always uniquely interesting places. There’s a genuinely tangible excitement and tension in the air, and provided you don’t have a vested interest you get to watch events unfold without the emotional highs and lows contorting the candidates and their supporters.

You’ll see hopes rise and fall as the result gradually takes shape from the endless piles of paper, you’ll see dreams crushed, ambitions achieved, anger, disbelief, the odd bad loser, and an occasional heart-warming cessation of partisan hostilities.

I’ve attended a few election counts and bar the obvious certainty of the 'actual result', the ‘vibe’ is always the best indicator of what is coming.

On Friday at the Shropshire count the early vibes told you all you needed to know.

I’ve never seen anything like the Reform takeover. They were everywhere - with a proper swagger too. Cock-a-hoop before a single vote had been verified, and frankly they weren’t wrong. From a standing start they finished with 16 seats, pulped the Conservatives, and now sit as the second largest party in the chamber. Incredible.

Of course the largest party are the Lib Dems, and while swagger might be too much, they moved with the assurance and confidence of a group that knows its campaign has been pulled of with military precision - and it definitely isn’t going to have to cancel the reservation for the celebrations later that night. 

For the Tories the mood was immediately downbeat, a genuine ‘let’s just keep the score down lads’ type of showing. Anxious, arms folded, and frankly just ‘let’s get this over with’. If anything the actual result was worse that expected. A proper collapse familiar only to fans of the 1990s England cricket team.

While the blues had the blues the red vibe didn’t even seem down, more indifferent. No expectations of winning, a kind of resigned shrug, almost let’s just sit here and no one will notice.

Motivation

Despite the attempts of some to downplay it, the Reform result is a huge story. It’s a seismic change for Shropshire Council politics and elsewhere in the country.

One thing that has been unmistakable is the sheer motivation of their supporters.

They genuinely wanted to get out there, put a cross in the Reform box, and make sure their point was made.

The Reform voice has been getting louder for some time - as seen with last year’s parliamentary breakthrough.

But many have wondered whether the increasingly prevalent backing for the party on social media was just a case of loud and prolific voices, and whether the ‘Facebook Farages’ had cut through into everyday life.

I have to say the feeling currently is that those complaints seen on social media - the frustration at the perceived failure of mainstream politics, the sense of living in decline, the constant criticism and vitriol directed at senior Labour government figures, the feeling that 'the old way doesn’t work', definitely seem to have moved from the mobile screen to real world conversations - with real world impacts, as seen on Friday.

Two heads are better than one?

We all knew the council would have a new leader when the election finished but maybe we’ll have two? Is that possible… I don’t even know.

After positively romping to a commanding majority the Lib Dems are going to have a host of decisions over how they actually manage the council. But before that they need to work out who is going to take charge.

Going into the election the group has been operating with the slightly unusual co-leader model popularised by the Green Party.

Councillor Roger Evans, who was formerly leader with sole charge (prior to the David Vasmer interregnum), has been joined by his fellow long-standing Lib Dem Heather Kidd in the run-up to the election.

No one can deny it is a method that’s paid dividends with a huge election success, but convention - and general expectations will be that one person takes the top job.

You’d expect it to be one of the two, but stranger things have happened. What’s for certain is they definitely have options - unlike some other parties…

Relief road row back

Ahead of the election the leaders of all opposition groups - The Lib Dems, Labour, and the Green Party, wrote to the government pledging to scrap the controversial North West Relief Road if they took control.

Well, the Lib Dems now have control, so they’ll scrap the road right?

The answer is we don’t know.

The tone has audibly softened since that letter, likely in no small part due to the costly cul-de-sac outlined by the outgoing Conservative administration ahead of the election.

The question boils down to who gets left on the hook for the £39m of government money the council has already spent on the project.

In the election run-up the Tories happily watched they rivals plant their flags before revealing the pin on that hand grenade had already been pulled.

According to the former Conservative cabinet the terms of the government grant mean the council has to give the money back if it chooses to voluntarily cancel the road.

With a shortfall of anywhere up to £130m in the budget to pay for the road, the new council looks to have a rather difficult decision - pay £39m for absolutely nothing, or potentially borrow north of £100m for a road it has campaigned against.

Other options may materialise but on the face of it anyone can see it is a difficult decision - and Councillor Roger Evans was candid after his party’s victory, saying that the new administration will need to speak with council officers and the government to understand the options available.

It might be a while before we know whether that will be the first big pledge to fall by the wayside.

Follow the leader

When former Conservative Council leader Lezley Picton announced - with some surprise - that she would be standing down at the election it was unavoidable the party would need a new leader.

It also meant that it was heading into a campaign without its figurehead.

Councillor Picton’s announcement came with a number of other senior Tories also deciding that they’d had enough.

While understandable after a gruelling four years, the decisions added a sense of uncertainty to the Tory bid to retain control over the council - particularly in the face of the much-discussed ‘rise of Reform’, and a Lib Dem party that had been chunking away at its authority for the past two years - buoyed by the North Shropshire success of MP Helen Morgan.

As it turns out, the outcome of Friday’s count was disappointing for even the most pessimistic of county conservatives.

Their numbers where whittled down from 37 to just seven. If it was a boxing match the referee would have stopped it.

After being in charge of the council since it became unitary authority 16-odd years ago it was a sobering day.

The question for the party is how they rebuild - and who leads that rebuild.

As if to illustrate the scale of the defeat, every single cabinet member standing for re-election lost their seat on Friday.

The consequences are that all of those who would have been candidates for the top job are no longer in possession of a shropshire.gov.uk e-mail address.

Whoever it is will doubtless have a difficult task as they look to rebuild after a crushing defeat.

Independents nay 

For all the chatter about the public being fed up with party politics there was little in the way of success for the independents this election.

By the time Shropshire’s 74 new councillors were announced on Friday evening only one of those was an independent.

There were some close-run contests, but ultimately the independent ticket was not a winning proposition in this election.

The situation speaks to the claim from many at the count that the public have been voting on national issues and sentiment, rather than local politics.

While that may explain the result it doesn’t make as much sense when set against a Lib Dem tide which was almost exclusively secured by talking about Shropshire-specific issues.

Whatever the reason, the people of Shropshire have by-and-large lined up behind political parties with just 1,653 voters out of 101,132 choosing to back an independent.

Labouring

While the focus has understandably been on the Conservative collapse, Friday was not a particularly good day for the Labour Party either.

Amid what could generously be described as an underwhelming first year in charge of the country, some of that malaise seems to have come through in Shropshire’s local election.

The party saw its number of councillors chopped down from nine to just four - level with the Green Party.

While no one expected it to overhaul the Lib Dems there should still be concern from Labour quarters at the level of support on show.

Out of the 101,132 votes cast in Shropshire, only 8.8 per cent - 8,975, were cast for the red rose.

In a host of wards candidates laboured in double figures for the number of votes they received - prompting audible mocking laughter from some of the opposition at the count.

Again, it is important to stress that Shropshire Council has never been a Labour stronghold, but regardless the vote offers a window, and a warning about public sentiment.

Frankly Labour were barely a factor in this election, something that should worry party members locally and nationally.

Careful what you wish for

The Lib Dem success was genuinely the story of the election.

They surpassed expectations, taking control of the council with a commanding majority, and they did it by talking about Shropshire.

It comes after the success of Helen Morgan as North Shropshire MP in a resurgence of county Lib Dems, finally throwing off the shackles of Clegg's coalition.

Mrs Morgan has been an irrepressibly positive figure for the party since playing her part as arguably the first to knock a brick out of the Boris Johnson wall, triggering a series of events that somehow landed us with Liz Truss as a prime minister.

What most in Shropshire are now waiting to see is how the Lib Dems handle running the council, and what changes.

The problem is they have been dealt an extremely difficult hand.

Shropshire Council’s financial difficulties are well known, leaving little room for manoeuvre, with no prospect of help coming from central government.

The reality of how bad the situation is will only become clear when the senior members of the party sit down with the council's officers over the coming days.

The party will also have to deal with a number of Conservative projects they have vocally criticised over time - the North West Relief Road and the purchase of Shrewsbury’s shopping centres specifically.

On both the council is already deeply involved with significant finances committed.

The new administration will also have to grapple with the fall out from planning inspectors effectively scrapping the council’s local plan, and the Labour Government basically doubling housing targets for the authority.

Above all the situation has the potential to radically reshape where, and how much housing is built in Shropshire Council communities in coming years.

While the Lib Dems will be delighted to have finally taken charge, there is no doubt they’ve walked into a minefield and will need to tread carefully as they try to stamp their image onto the authority.

All new opposition 

The question marks over what to expect from the fresh opposition are not just large, they are set out in flashing neon.

Reform's leap to the second largest party on the council was unexpected and there is no track-record to examine as we look to how that will shape up.

The party has never even had a councillor in Shropshire before, let alone been the official opposition.

It is impossible to know what to expect, but the candidates who were successful at the election all spoke of the desire to see change - and hold the administration to account.

While they don't have the power to make decisions, unlike their neighbours in Staffordshire, they've taken a major leap forward as a party.

How they perform could play a major part in how willing the public are to move from protest vote to permanent supporters.

What's in the box

Amid the breath-taking chaos of the machine-gun procession of results on Friday was just one more moment to leave you wondering what on earth was happening.

Throughout the day there were a number of close contests - some winning by just one vote.

But in Bridgnorth & South Alveley the choice between Reform's Karen Webb-James and the Lib Dems' Colin Taylor was settled in a way that most will never have expected or even considered.

The first count in the ward had it at 509 to 508, but a spoiled paper was then found which left the count a dead heat at 508 to 508.

Another recount took place, with the same result.

So, resorting to the rule book a rarely used method was used to declare the winner.

One ballot for each of the candidates was placed in a box with an election official tasked with plucking out one vote to determine the winner.

If anyone doubted that the sun had been shining on the Lib Dems then the ballot that emerged left no doubt.

Colin Taylor was declared the winner in scarcely believable circumstances.

Asked about his thoughts at seeing his name come out of the box he spoke for all of us - "wow".