Our flag stays red (and green) posted by Meaders

Finally slept a little and am probably in a better state to assemble words into coherent sentences. A dramatic night in Tower Hamlets, though you knew that already, with a few features sticking out.

It's very pleasing to have won two Respect councillors in Whitechapel - the ward has been solidly Labour as far back as anyone can remember. It was a long, hard election battle, marred by some notable unpleasantness from the Labour Party: deposed council leader, Michael Keith, brazenly lying about one of our candidates on Bengali TV, for example; plus a certain amount of vicious (if predictable) rumour-mongering from (equally predictable) quarters.

It was less pleasing, however, to lose an excellent young Bengali woman, Farhana, to a Labour Party candidate embodying the unpleasant settlement between New Labour and Bengali "village" politics. This little arrangement has served Tower Hamlets' Blairite administration very well; its broker, the aforementioned Prof. Keith, was rather symbolically deposed at about 5am, when Respect swept the board in Shadwell: a ward, note well, that has been in Labour hands since 1919. Times they are a-changing here, if not quite quickly enough. Without Michael Keith and David Edgar, former lead member for housing, the Labour Party locally has been deprived of its leadership; they should be in for a very rough ride. (I notice, by the way, that the two Labour councillors most closely identified with New Labour, and council house transfer, are the ones that get deposed.)

The most significant aspect of the vote, across all parties and in all wards, disappears in the final, public tallies. There was an exceptional level of split voting taking place, with any number of peculiar combinations emerging: Labour, Liberal, Respect; Tory, Green, Labour; Respect, Labour, Tory... there did not appear to be any logic behind the votes, but these random ballots ended up being decisive for several wards.

Take Whitechapel (again). There were 660 block (three vote) Respect ballots, and 594 block Labour. There were then something around 1,800 mixed ballots, or about half the total cast. The mixing effect was what allowed the Labour candidate with the strongest personal vote to squeeze out the third Respect candidate. In Bethnal Green South, the process worked the other way: a significant gap in Labour's favour on block votes was turned into a very narrow, 20-vote lead by the time of the final tally.

The extent of mixed voting was beyond that which you might anticipate from the usual parish pump/local personality politics you get in local council elections - and it's notable that independents in Tower Hamlets generally did rather badly. I think it can be more attributed to both the collapse of party identification across the old major parties, and the inability (thus far) of the new major party, Respect, to establish a solid identification. This varies: Whitechapel, Shadwell and Bethnal Green South all had higher than average block Respect votes; weaker wards had fewer. Everywhere, however, the Respect block was not enough by itself to deliver councillors, and so we have ended up with some slightly peculiar split wards. It is a rather abstract idea, but building upon our existing party identification is our biggest single challenge here. There are no reasons to think this cannot be done, and a significant body of councillors should make it all the easier.