Labour’s Winton councillor David Lancaster expects the local elections to return a status quo across Salford.
The Deputy City Mayor was confident that Labour would retain all of the seats it currently holds.
And with just two other seats up for grabs he forecast no change by the time the results are announced early on Friday morning.
“I feel quite optimistic, they’re not forecasting at the moment that we’ll lose any seats and that we’ll retain what we’ve got,” he said.
“There’re no other seats we can really win – there’s only two that we can win. I think it will stay as it is.”
The Labour party has been engulfed in an ‘anti-semitism’ row following recent comments by former London Mayor Ken Livingstone and Naz Shah, the Bradford West MP, who is suspended from the party.
But Lancaster believed that there was ‘very little’ evidence that it had any impact on the election results.
“It may have had some effect in the wards where there are a lot of Jewish communities but the impact is only small from all accounts of what we have seen so far,” he said.
He was adamant that results beyond Salford would have no effect on the leadership of the party.
“Some people will use any excuse to try and raise [a leadership issue] but in reality if it isn’t the local elections it will be something else to try and create a story,” Lancaster said.
“Tonight Labour will hold quite a lot and with some of the results coming through it might look as if they’ll take Stockport too so that’s good news.”
Image courtesy of Descrier via Flickr, with thanks.
