Paul Johnston

The new Council is now shaking down. I am getting to grips with the expenses returns, which is a relief, and the new line-up is taking shape.

Annual Council had an unusual feature in that there was a contest for Mayor. This had not happened since 2000, when the Lib Dems with Labour support decided to put in their own candidate in place of the one favoured by the Conservative minority Administration. This year we put forward the name of my ward colleague, Janet Bowen-Hitchings, who was a very successful Deputy Mayor to Dennis Doe 3 years ago. I seconded Dennis's nomination. The Lib Dems proposed Mary Reid - fellow blogger - and she was elected. The Labour group of two had its first split when one voted for Janet and the other voted for Mary!

Mary had a narrow shave in the election. However I am very confident she will make a good Mayor and she has the good will of the whole Council in her endeavour.. She may well need it as things could get a little stormy - and I don't just mean the weather..........

The new Deputy Mayor is Sheila Griffin, Labour from Norbiton - who also had a very close result, her party losing one seat to the Lib Dems. Sheila got over 12,000 votes as Labour's candidate for MP for Kingston & Surbiton in 1997. No-one has managed better than half that since.

Which brings me to the curious feature of this new Council - the number of split wards. Before the election we had two, Coombe Vale and St. James. Now we have Canbury, Old Malden and Alexandra with 2 Cons and 1 Lib Dem and Norbiton with 2 Labour and 1 Lib Dem - and we came within 18 votes of taking the third seat in Chessington North & Hook, which would have had 2 Lib Dems and 1 Conservative. By-elections could be much more interesting than usual - if there are any.........

There are a lot of Liberal Democrat councillors on wafer thin majorities - far more than  there have been in my 8 years to date.

For full details of the election results see election2006.xls. The Conservatives made 6 net gains from the Liberal Democrats and they in turn gained 1 seat from Labour. The Liberal Democrats now have an overall majority of 2 seats, whereas previously they had 12.

The biggest swing of the night was in Chessington North and Hook, where the Conservatives achieved a 23% swing against the Liberal Democrats, reducing the majority of leading blogger Mary Reid from over 1100 to a mere 18. Across the Borough the Lib Dem administration is supported by a few thousand fewer people than voted for the Conservative opposition - what price proportional representation now?

One ward stands out like a sore thumb as uncharacteristic of the the rest of Kingston. That is Berrylands, where the Lib Dems contrived a dramatic increase in their vote to unseat our Leader and prominent blogger, Kevin Davis.  This blogger was re-elected with a majority increased from 66 last time to 552 this - so there's no necessary connection in Kingston between blogging and actually or nearly losing one's seat.

Edward Davey MP seems to have involved himself far more than usual in the campaign, though I don't remember seeing him at the count of votes. There were 2 or more recounts in Berrylands, Canbury, Norbiton, Old Malden and Alexandra wards. So, as Agent for all 48 Conservative candidates, I had my work cut out keeping track of it all. I walked home from the count not long after 4.30 a.m. as the sun was coming up.

Friday and Saturday are rather hazy memories.