Local UK Elections, or How 84 = 1,300 in the Pages of the Gray Lady

The UK held local elections last Thursday. What's bizarre about the mainstream coverage is that a loss of 84 council seats by Labour is being reported, in a defiance of basic arithmetic, as equivalent to the Conservative Party's loss of 1,300 council seats.

Take Stephen Castle's "A Brexit Backlash in Local Elections: Main Parties Lose Seats":

LONDON — For months, there has been little doubt that the British electorate is disgusted, disillusioned and furious with the political dysfunction and the chaos of Brexit. But there hadn’t been an outlet for the public to vent that anger — until now.

Across much of England, election results for around 8,400 local seats, tabulated on Friday, delivered a vicious backlash against the country’s two main political parties, the governing Conservatives and the Labour opposition. The Conservatives lost more than 1,300 seats, while Labour lost around 80.

“What the voters have been saying is, ‘A plague on both your houses,’” Britain’s leading polling expert, John Curtice, a professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, told the BBC.

How can a loss of 84 seats be weighted somehow equally with the loss of 1,300? The mainstream media is so wedded to a rancid neoliberal consensus that it will purvey outright poppycock.

The Liberal Democrats were the big winners, adding 704 seats, in what has to be a sign of increased support for remaining in the EU.