I’m delighted to say that after a long and hard campaign, Iain Bowen was re-elected for Acocks Green Ward and John Hemming was re-elected for the enlarged Yardley Constituency; a good double success for the Liberal Democrats. The results in full are:

Acocks Green

• Iain Bowen (Lib Dem) 4,374
• Labour 3,400
• Conservative 1,416
• BNP 686
• Green 280
• UKIP 233
• SDP 23

Birmingham Yardley

• John Hemming (Lib Dem) 16,162
• Labour 13,160
• Conservative 7,836
• BNP 2,153
• UKIP 1,190
• NF 349

Nationally the number of seats the parties ended up on (with the changes from the 2005 general election) was Conservative 306 (+97), Labour 258 (-91), Lib Dem 57 (-5) and Others 28 (-2). The shares of the votes (with the changes from 2005) were Conservative 36.1% (+3.7%), Labour 29.1% (-6.1%), Lib Dem 23% (+1%) and Others 11.9% (+1.5%). There is one seat still to vote – Thirsk & Malton, where a candidate died during the campaign, so the election has been delayed for a few weeks.

In Birmingham, Labour did better than they did nationally by keeping the swing against them below the national average in the key marginals of Edgbaston and Hall Green, both of which I had thought they would lose. They also gained 5 seats on the Council – four from the Conservatives and one from the Lib Dems. This was more predictable, as Labour generally benefit from the higher turnout caused by the General Election being on the same day as they local elections. It doesnt change the underlying situation on the Council significantly with the new party numbers being Conservative 45, Labour 41, Lib Dem 31 and Respect 3. The bright spot locally for the Lib Dems was Lorely Burt’s stunning victory over the Tories in Solihull, where she won by a wafer thin 175 votes, a fantastic achievement against the national trend, in a seat which, due to boundary changes, had a narrow notional Tory majority in 2005.

With the General Election result giving no overall majority for any party, all eyes are on how the parties will work together to form our next Government. All through the campaign Nick Clegg said that if there were a hung parliament, the Lib Dems would talk first to the party with the biggest mandate. That is clearly the Conservatives and so he is talking to them at the moment. If the talks break down he will then talk to Labour. It will certainly be an interesting few days!