Nationwide May elections to give voters first chance for say on coronavirus and Brexit

As well as voting on regional matters, millions of voters will this year get their first chance to have a say on how politicians have handled coronavirus (Covid-19) and Brexit.
Devolved and local
A bumper set of elections are to be held across Great Britain on 6 May, including a number of contests postponed from 2020 because of the pandemic.
Voters in Scotland and Wales will be choosing new parliaments. In London there will be elections for the mayor and assembly, which were originally due to take place last year. And across the rest of England voters will be choosing a mixture of councillors, local mayors, regional mayors, and police commissioners.


The scale of it means that every voter in Great Britain will be able to take part in at least one type of poll, making it the biggest event of its kind outside a general election. It will also be the first big electoral test for Keir Starmer since he became Labour leader in April 2020, and for Boris Johnson since his general election victory in December 2019.
While neighbourhood issues will play a part in deciding many local seats, coronavirus and Brexit are likely to dominate some of the bigger campaigns, particularly for the parliaments in Scotland and Wales and the regional mayors in England.
Read on...
Election year
This year’s unusually large crop of elections comes after a period in which coronavirus put the nation’s ballot boxes in deep storage. Aside from a handful of council by-elections in Scotland in October and November, no polls have been held anywhere in the UK since March 2020 – a gap unprecedented in modern history.
It’s very easy to register to vote under the new system, and it only takes 5 minutes – you can do this online at https://t.co/4zXMvnhg63 pic.twitter.com/SOfcgR6vW5
— Electoral Commission (@ElectoralCommUK) December 2, 2020
Barring further delays due to coronavirus, all these elections should be held on 6 May:
– In Scotland, the SNP will be hoping to remain in power in parliament for a fourth consecutive term, while the Tories will look to improve their position as the main opposition party. A strong performance by the SNP would boost leader Nicola Sturgeon’s campaign for a second independence referendum. A total of 129 members of the parliament will be elected.
– In Wales, voters will be choosing all 60 members of the Welsh parliament, as well as commissioners for the nation’s four police forces. Labour will hope to retain parliamentary power, while Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives will once again battle to be the second largest party. For the first time, 16 and 17 year-olds in Wales will be able to vote in the parliamentary elections.
– In London, Labour’s Sadiq Khan is running for a second term as mayor. His main challengers are Shaun Bailey (Conservative), Luisa Porritt (Liberal Democrats), and Sian Berry (Green). All 25 seats in the London Assembly are also up for grabs.
– Police and crime commissioners will be elected in all areas of England apart from London and Greater Manchester, where these powers are held by the directly elected mayor. It will be the third time such elections have taken place. A total of 36 commissioners will be chosen across England, a majority of whom are currently Conservatives.
– Regional mayors, also known as combined authority mayors, will be elected for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, Greater Manchester, the Liverpool City Region, Tees Valley, West Midlands, West of England and – for the first time – West Yorkshire. High-profile names seeking re-election include Andy Burnham (Labour) in Greater Manchester and Andy Street (Conservative) in the West Midlands.
– Five local mayors are also due to be elected on 6 May, for the local authorities of Bristol, Doncaster, Liverpool, North Tyneside, and Salford.
– A large number of local elections will take place across England. All 24 county councils will be holding elections, along with an expected 28 unitary authorities, 62 district councils, and 35 of the 36 metropolitan boroughs (the one is exception is Birmingham, where elections will take place in 2022).
– Finally, there are more than 200 council seats that have fallen vacant since the pandemic began, for which by-elections have yet to be held. Most of these are expected to take place on 6 May, further adding to the enormous number of polls due.
We know everyone is suffering under the Tories - but the Canary is a vital weapon in our fight back, and we need your support
The Canary Workers’ Co-op knows life is hard. The Tories are waging a class war against us we’re all having to fight. But like trade unions and community organising, truly independent working-class media is a vital weapon in our armoury.
The Canary doesn’t have the budget of the corporate media. In fact, our income is over 1,000 times less than the Guardian’s. What we do have is a radical agenda that disrupts power and amplifies marginalised communities. But we can only do this with our readers’ support.
So please, help us continue to spread messages of resistance and hope. Even the smallest donation would mean the world to us.
-
Show Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to leave a comment.Join the conversationPlease read our comment moderation policy here.
One can only hope that in ‘the new normal’ we get the opportunity to vote! Considering all of the challenges to those ‘existing freedoms’, we thought we had, that happened last year alongside, or because of, the public hysteria stoked by most if not all media outlets. ‘Science’ ‘fake news’ ‘cases’ ‘conspiracy theories’ all appear to have been used as memes to fan the flames of uninformed and confused hysteria. Fortunately, by the aforementioned elections the data will have been certified rather than being ‘provisional’.
Today was to be ‘week 52’ for the ONS for the year 2020, which began 28/12/19. However they were unable to even provide ‘provisional’ figures regarding total deaths in the UK for week ending 25th December. “Figures for the number of deaths registered in the UK in the week ending 25 December 2020 are not currently available…”. They were, however able to continue publicising their ESTIMATED figure: “Based on a statistical model that allows for the time taken for deaths to be registered, we estimate that the number of deaths actually occurring (rather than registered) in Week 52 in England and Wales was between 12,683 and 16,574.” So, when the provisional data does become available I expect there to have been just under 16,500 PROVISIONAL deaths in week 52! Every week the ONS says: “All figures for 2020 are provisional.” (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending25december2020)
Finally, regardless of any developments between now and May, I do wonder what alternatives exist that would prove to be any different from the shambles we are experiencing now? Incompetence, graft and withering cowardliness in the face of awkward truths seem all that is or will be on offer in May and the foreseeable future. Oh for some imaginative intelligence…