http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2007/councils/html/31ue.stm

OK, I don't live there anymore, but this is still quite a thing of beauty. Hinckley and Bosworth has been Tory forever. The MP for Bosworth is one of the few who survived the cash-for-questions scandal and kept his seat in 1997. That's how Tory my hometown was. They'd rather elect sleaze-monkey. In 2005, the vote swung several thousand in the Lib Dem direction, so maybe in 2009 it can go further. And then I will dance around my parents house singing "Do you know the way the San Jose?".

By my count so far, two councils have changed from Liberal Democrat to Tory, and two have gone the other way. Most of the other gains for both parties have come from places where there was no overall control before. This seems like a positive result. Even better, in the past year the Tory share of the popular vote only increased by 1%, and the Lib Dem share only dropped by 1%. I would say that this suggests the Tories aren't doing so well in stealing Lib Dem voters by talking about traditional liberal issues than they would hope.

I'm also glad Labour didn't do as badly as predicted. I'm no Blair supporter, but I'm a little tired of people complaining that things are no better, or even worse, than in 1997. They are not. In so many ways they are not. It is not perfect, but it is annoying that the things this government has actually gotten right are forgotten just because everyone is getting bored.