Usually, council elections run on a four year cycle, with three councillors representing each ward. For three years out of the four, one councillor will run for re-election, with councillors’ terms lasting four years and staggered at one-year intervals. In the fourth year there is no election.

Labour’s dominance over the council chamber was reduced a little more this time, with three new opposition councillors elected. 2021 and 2022 saw the appointment of two new Green councillors and one Lib Dem, plus one defection to the Greens from Labour.

Now there are an additional two Lib Dem councillors, including the return of Cllr Richard Kilpatrick in Didsbury West after being voted out in 2021, and one more Green councillor in Woodhouse Park, making that ward entirely Green. This changes the make-up of the full council to 88 Labour, 4 Green and 4 Lib Dem. It’s still a huge majority for the Labour Party, but there are signs that Manchester’s not entirely content with the status quo.

Manchester City Council before and after 2023 local elections

Considering the overall numbers of voters for each party, we can see the flaws in the First Past The Post system. If the vote share was distributed evenly across all 33 seats in this election, there would have been 22 Labour, 5 Green, 4 Lib Dem and 2 Conservative councillors elected. But the actual result is 30 Labour, 1 Green and 2 Lib Dem.

The current voting regime favours Labour and disadvantages other parties – but the Greens and Conservatives are particularly worse off. The Lib Dems acquired two councillors with 12% of the total Manchester vote, but the Greens only got one councillor on a higher vote share of 14%. The Conservatives earned 7% of the overall vote, yet gained not a single councillor. Their highest polling in any single ward was 17% in Baguley, still massively overshadowed by the 68% Labour vote, but not insubstantial.

The reason is that Conservative and Green voters are more evenly spread across all wards (albeit with a higher proportion of Greens than Tories). Lib Dem voters are currently concentrated in a few wards where they’re able to constitute a high enough majority to narrowly beat second-placed Labour. Labour, however, has very large majorities in at least half of the wards, shown in the characteristic ‘Pacman’-shaped slice of the pie chart (see below).

Much has been made of the performance of the Green and Labour parties in this election, and what it means for parliamentary seats in a general election. Labour’s vote remains high in Manchester, so no change there. Manchester Central, Blackley & Broughton, Gorton, Withington, and Wythenshawe & Sale East (the parliamentary seats that overlap with Manchester City Council’s domain) are all predicted to remain under Labour control in the next GE.

The Green Party did very well all over England, increasing their total number of ward representatives to 547 councillors on 167 councils. There are hopes that the party could gain an additional MP, with Bristol West and Waveney Valley in their sights, but it’s unlikely that they will harm Labour’s chances in any of the Manchester constituencies.

But no matter the performance of any political party, the largest voter bloc was those who didn’t vote at all. With turnout figures in the 20-40% range, your vote really could count — as long as you use it.

Results by ward

All wards except Ardwick were electing one councillor, with the other two ward councillors having time still to run on their term in office. Ardwick had two seats contested, due to the retirement of Cllr Bernard Priest in March this year, before the end of his elected term.