The first question about next Thursday’s local elections is: why May 22, rather than the usual first Thursday in May, which this year was May 1?

The postponement is not, as I’ve heard suggested, to avoid a clash with May Day, the globally celebrated International Workers’ Day.

It is, of course, to save money and optimistically increase turnout by synchronising our local elections with those to the European Parliament, which themselves are brought forward from June – mainly to avoid the holidays celebrating the movable Christian festival of Whitsun or Pentecost, which, as its Greek name translates, is 50 days after Easter.

And that’s enough of the Euros, which, with the all-out London borough elections, are already hogging the limited media space allowed for these things.

So to the second question: if none of us in the West Midlands are electing our whole councils, who actually gets a local vote on May 22, and who’s it for?

To which the answer is: all of us in the seven metropolitan boroughs, who will elect a third of our councillors; all in Nuneaton & Bedworth, who will elect half of theirs; and most of those in the eight Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire districts that elect their councils by thirds, rather than in one go.

SANDWELL

Elections barely impinge on Labour’s overwhelming control of Sandwell Council, and even seats seem to change hands more through defections than elections.

Conservative deputy leader, Elaine Costigan, resigned over the Coalition’s cuts to the school building programme, and Lib Dem Mayor, Joyce Underhill, over the proposed means-testing of benefits for cancer patients. Both won elections for Labour through their substantial personal votes, and now Underhill’s husband hopes to repeat the trick, defending for Labour the Newton seat he won in 2010 as a Lib Dem.

Whether the council’s new Green member will be as successful in defending the Tividale seat she won in 2010 for Labour is a longer-odds bet, as is the chance of there being more than one non-Labour councillor on May 23.

WALSALL

Walsall, Conservative controlled until 2011, has since had a Conservative-Lib Dem administration, although Labour, with 28 of the 60 seats, is easily the largest party.

It must feel an overall majority is within reach, for all it has to do is win the same Conservative-held seats it took in 2012 – Bloxwich West, Brownhills, Rushall-Shelfield – but without this time losing Blakenall and Darlaston South to Independents. UKIP’s full slate of 20 candidates could help, and there are also two tasty Lib Dem seats available in Short Heath and Willenhall North.

WOLVERHAMPTON

In 2008 the Conservatives were neck-and-neck with Labour; today they have 13 members to Labour’s 43.

If Labour were to win again the wards it took in 2012, the gap would become a chasm. And there are UKIP candidates in every ward, compared to just six last time.

For drama look to Spring Vale, where the Lib Dems have survived gallantly in successive elections, only for the ‘colleague’ whose seat is up this time, Malcolm Gwinnett, to be so thrilled by Nigel Farage’s television debate against Nick Clegg that he immediately joined UKIP.

DUDLEY

Dudley too was Conservative-run until Labour decisively recaptured it in 2012 with 13 net gains from the Tories.

Labour won’t expect a repeat performance, especially with both UKIP and the Greens contesting every ward. But it could reasonably hope to win again those wards like Upper Gornal, Belle Vale, and Halesowen North, where it had majorities of around 10 per cent last time.

For an entirely councillor-less party, UKIP is sure acting noisy. Its 22 candidates averaged a threatening 16 per cent vote share in 2012, Nigel Farage recently packed out the Concert Hall, and the Tories are warned to be very afraid: UKIP’s looking to become the official opposition.

BIRMINGHAM

Birmingham will stay Labour. With 76 councillors, it would have to lose at least 15 of the 21 seats it’s defending, and with its national poll ratings, though slipping, still better than on General Election day in 2010, when these seats were last contested, that’s not about to happen.

More likely, Labour will gain a few seats, notably in former Liberal Democrat wards where it won back seats in 2011 and 2012 and where a Lib Dem is again defending: Acocks Green, Hall Green, Moseley & Kings’s Heath, Selly Oak, and South Yardley. Conservative-held seats most vulnerable to Labour are probably Edgbaston, Erdington and Harborne. But even the first two require a swing to Labour since then of around four per cent, whereas the polls are indicating the reverse.

The Conservatives, then, could well hold on to Northfield and Bournville, two of Labour’s narrowest wins in 2012 – plus Weoley, saved by the Tory incumbent by just two votes out of 4,900.

Labour has its own losable seats – like Springfield, held by the Lib Dems last time, and Aston, which could also go Lib Dem with an anti-Labour swing of four per cent. And an only slightly larger swing could give the Conservatives Kings Norton, Longbridge, and even Kingstanding – if they can reprise Gary Sambrook’s shock win in February’s by-election.

UKIP fields 30 candidates, 12 more than in 2012, with its best prospect possibly Shard End, where the candidate who achieved the party’s only second place is standing again.

The Greens, though, have barely half the full slate of candidates they managed last time. Their best hope may be Sutton Four Oaks, where the only candidate who cleared the 10 per cent vote hurdle is also standing again.

SOLIHULL

It’s down the M6 Toll Road in Conservative Solihull where the Greens are really sprouting – gaining councillors without even fighting elections. Defection has become a Lib Dem mania, four having left and joined the Greens in protest at National coalition ‘compromises’.

Their now seven councillors make them the second largest Green group (after Brighton & Hove) on any upper-tier or unitary council – and they’re on the march. They hold two seats in both Chelmsley Wood and Smith’s Wood and should pick up the third in each case – but from Labour, leaving the Conservatives’ majority intact.

These gains alone would put the Greens close to displacing the Lib Dems as the main opposition party, but, with representation now in Elmdon and Shirley West, they could conceivably take these wards from them as well.

COVENTRY

With the 2012 defeats of Dave Nellist, pictured right, in St Michael’s and the Lib Dems in Upper Stoke, Coventry council now has no Alternative, Socialist or otherwise, to the two big parties.

The 11 Conservatives are already the party’s lowest total this century, and a one-party state could inch even closer, should Labour repeat its 2011 and 2012 wins in Bablake, Westwood, and Woodlands.

Still, there are umpteen challengers, with the Greens and TUSAC (Trade Unionists and Socialists Against the Cuts) standing in all wards, UKIP and BNP in most, Lib Dems in some – and that’s without any of the rumoured GCBTR (Get Cov Back To the Ricoh) candidates having materialised.

STAFFORDSHIRE

It’s a measure of how quickly political fortunes change that just four years ago NEWCASTLE-UNDER-LYME boasted the highest concentration of UKIP councillors in the country, with 23 at all levels from county to parish.

Today, on the Labour-controlled borough council anyway, there’s not one – though a full complement of 20 candidates.

If there’s currently a UKIP capital of the West Midlands, it’s probably CANNOCK CHASE, with three councillors, which is remarkable for a party that hasn’t fielded a single candidate there since 2008. The three Ukippers are Tory defectors, a by-product of whose actions has been to strengthen further Labour’s already comfortable majority.

Of the three Staffordshire authorities, Conservative TAMWORTH looks likeliest to change hands. On the small 30-member council, Labour wins in the same wards it took from the Conservatives in 2012 would give the party its first majority since 2004.

STRATFORD

The Local Government Boundary Commission recently approved the council’s proposal to cut its membership from 53 to 36 – from which Stratfordians will doubtless draw their own conclusions.

These, then, will be the final elections to the present-sized council, and, with the Lib Dems as the main opposition, the Conservatives should retain the control they have held since 2003.

NUNEATON & BEDWORTH

Labour easily regained its customary control in 2012, but had to share headlines with the Greens, who gained their first Warwickshire seat in Weddington – and repeated the feat last year by winning the county division.

They’ll be going for what US sport calls a three-peat, while Labour should strengthen its majority.

RUGBY

The borough reduced its council membership in 2012 from 48 to 42, which involved a complete boundary review. But politically little changed, the Conservatives retaining their comfortable overall majority.

They could lose their three arithmetically most vulnerable wards and still have a majority. More, though, and tempers start fraying.

WYRE FOREST

There are seven political groupings on this 42-member council.

The Conservatives were the clear losers in 2012, lost their council majority, but were allowed to continue as a single-party minority administration. It’s hard to believe they could pull that off twice.

REDDITCH

Redditch is more often Labour than Conservative. Labour narrowly regained majority control in 2012, but will hope to strengthen its hold by winning again some of the wards it took from the Conservatives in 2011 or 2012.

WORCESTER

Almost the ultimate balanced council: 16 Conservatives, 15 Labour, 2 Lib Dems, 1 Green, 1 Labour/Co-op.

At the council’s Annual Meeting last May, the Conservatives, who thought they’d be running a minority administration with Lib Dem support, suddenly found themselves outflanked – the Lib Dems having switched sides and joined a Labour/Lib Dem/Green coalition.

A single seat won or lost could change everything, and if this doesn’t incentivise voters, it’s hard to know what will.