Where the Local Election Results Take Us ...
Sunday 7 June 2009 at 11:05 As we wait for the results of the European Elections today, the chaos at the top of the Labour Party has caused media attention to drift from detailed analysis of the vote in the local elections.
This Election was cataclysmic for New Labour, with the loss of 327 seats. It was not great for the Liberal Democrats either who lost 50. With the Tories gaining 285 and many of the ‘others’ (92 gains) being of the right, this was the shift to the centre-right that we expected.
Actual power, that is the administrative dominance of county councils, has certainly shifted to the Conservatives, with seven gains from all parties. Yet a calculation of equivalent vote at the national elections was much less impressive for the Tories than this implies.
Labour certainly now appears to have been in a possibly terminal and steady decline from the 2005 election victory, coming third to the Liberal Democrats who, in turn, despite their losses, have seen a slight recovery in actual vote. Yet the Tory vote has also sharply declined. So where is this all going?
The British system has its own peculiarities. What we are seeing is a potential time-bomb for all the main parties. It appears that some voters have shifted to a variety of neo-nationalist, green and (very marginally) neo-socialist parties but that the vast bulk have simply decided not to vote.
Is this inertia or resentment? Some of these voters may well return at a national election, but this is no longer certain as the expenses scandal and resentments over immigration and the economy create anger and cynicism below the surface.
The British political system allows silent resentment to be ignored as unimportant, so that a party that is despised by the majority might yet form a Government with a mandate of sorts. But this still gives it a problem of legitimacy.
This has been Brown’s problem since he failed to call an election after taking power from Blair. It could become a Conservative problem under a flaccid Cameron leadership that seems to be adopting John Smith’s ‘one more heave’ strategy for power as an alternative to any decisive reform of its own failings.
Current projections (not a reliable guide given what actually happened in 1997) give the Tories an overall parliamentary majority of 34 if an election were held now. This would place Cameron under permanent pressure from whatever awkward squad appeared on his backbenches.
Labour’s main opposition role would, under these projections, not be much threatened by the slightly higher number of Liberal Democrats and ‘others’ in Parliament. Its very survival in adversity would enable Brown to be removed with honour and provide a base for revival under an untainted leader.
In this analysis, Labour, unlikely to win an election now, could still recover afterwards on Conservative failures. Unfortunately, the scenario does not take account of wider disenchantment in English society nor of the future effects of tax rises and spending cuts.
Tax rises and cuts will reflect back on New Labour’s past stewardship of the economy but there is a real danger for a Conservative Government that it could face a war on two fronts - an aggressive and revived official opposition without any real legitimacy in the country’s eyes for itself …
The Blair coalition has not merely been shattered (as the Sunday Times suggests). Its middle class elements are loose and angry and have not yet accepted that the Conservatives are any better. Blair’s success has, in any case, been exaggerated.
The Blair coalition had long since been whittled away by foreign policy issues and perceived Government incompetence well before the economic crisis added fuel to the fire. A new coalition is now necessary on the centre-left and only Alan Johnson currently appears in a position to do this.
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