Where the Local Election Results Take Us ...

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.

www.tppr.co.uk

www.pendrywhite.com

If you want to follow TPPR events and commentary, try http://twitter.com/TimPendry

On Election Day 2009

Regardless of interest in UKIP and the BNP, the expectation today is that Labour will lose its significant presence in the South West, will see its dominance in Wales eroded and that both major parties may be placed under pressure from UKIP in London and the North West.

The 2004 British intake into the European Parliament operated marginally in favour of euro-scepticism (more so, if the Celtic component is removed). This margin is now likely to increase significantly. A dip in Europeanism and a moderate rise in nationalism both seem likely.

Analyses of the BNP vote in advance of June 4th seemed to suggest that it had been holding at 5% and to be attracting the votes of middle aged working class males of low educational attainment who were either unemployed or under employment pressure.

BNP voters were also to be found mostly in the decayed council estates of the Northern and Midlands cities where they face competition for resources from West Asian migrants and communities. This is generally Labour not Tory country and the national effect has probably been much exaggerated.

In fact, the bigger threat to the mainstream parties comes from UKIP, which is right-wing and nationalist but not racist. In the event, aesthetic and libertarian considerations are likely to shift the bulk of the dissident Right away from the BNP towards UKIP as the best means of punishing the establishment.

There is however a strong non-racist anti-immigration vote which is not to be assumed to be right-wing (except in liberal fantasies) by any means. It is currently falling disproportionately towards the BNP and UKIP but it is also a ‘main issue’ amongst perhaps a fifth of Tory voters.

There is a leftist dissident challenge to the right [No2EU] which has a socialist model of resistance to wage undercutting and service degradation but it is facing, in effect, a national news blackout in favour of the liberal mainstream. Its arguments are more complex and need time to communicate.

The truth is that nationalist concerns and the politics of ‘ressentiment’ have dominated the political agenda in the last year because that is how the mainstream establishment have wanted to play it. Legitimate concerns about liberal economics have pushed reasonable dissent sharply to the right.

What is interesting is that immigration may have grown in salience in the first decade of the century but, in the mainstream parties, so have issues of defence, foreign affairs and terrorism (the EU, of course, as an issue, disproportionately so for UKIP supporters).

Domestic service concerns (health, education and welfare) have been pushed into second place for a while, although they will surely return in force with tax rises and spending cuts. This may be a delayed legacy of Blair’s refusal to enter into dialogue with the electorate over the Iraq war.

This mood amongst the public is very hard to interpret. Poll findings may mean that the public has now no major difference in its thinking from the mainstream consensus on domestic policy (other than on immigration effects and the general issue of management competence in implementing policy).

However, the implication is equally that the public is highly polarized about, perhaps opposed to, the mainstream’s assumptions about Britain’s role in the world.

Serious questions are being raised even now about expensive interventions overseas, the effects of the war on terror on civil liberties, the close relationship with the US and participation in Europe - but there may be something deeper going on even than this critique of the current government.

Perhaps we are seeing a re-evaluation of national identity as a bulwark against the uncertainties of globalization. Although this is conventionally interpreted as ‘right wing’, it is not necessarily so and it may be that the liberal elite has still not yet come to terms with this turning inward under pressure.

www.tppr.co.uk

www.pendrywhite.com