After all the anticipation and build-up, yesterday’s Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election was a bit of a damp squib.
Labour retained the seat with a decent and improved majority, as would be expected of the only major opposition party. The Lib Dems held our own, Elwyn Watkins nudging up the share of the vote he received in May 2010, but not surprisingly proving unable to break the 30-year run of governing parties not gaining at by-elections. And the Conservative vote collapsed after a half-hearted campaign, provoking a few squeals from activists and a shrug of indifference from their party leader.
Looking at the Lib Dem performance, the most striking feature is the party’s consistency in its share of the vote in this constituency:
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31.9% (2011 by-election)
31.6% (2010)
33.2% (2005)
32.6% (2001)
35.4% (1997)
Look at the figures in this way, and one conclusion is simply: nowt much has changed. However, what does seem clear is that there was a big shift in voters between parties since the last poll eight months ago, even allowing for the depressed turnout of a by-election (48%) compared with the general election (61%).
How vote-switching is affecting the Lib Dems
The general intuitive assumption is this: many Lib Dem voters have switched their support to Labour, or decided not to vote at all, but these were offset in Oldham (though not by enough) by previous Conservative voters switching to the Lib Dems.
In the main, the polling evidence backs this up — though, as Mike Smithson at PoliticalBetting.com has pointed out, it’s not quite that simple. For example, Populus found in their by-election poll that the Tories had lost 12% of their support direct to Labour since May, compared with 35% to the Lib Dems.
However, for the most part it does seem that what might be expected as a result of the Lib Dem / Conservative Coalition agreement — that centre-right voters are now more willing to lend their vote to the Lib Dems, and centre-left voters less likely — stands.
And this poses an interesting question for the Lib Dems’ targeting strategy at the next general election (the more so if the Alternative Vote referendum is approved) because the party has, generally, proved better at squeezing the Labour vote than it has at squeezing the Tory vote.
Eastleigh, Westmoreland and Newbury are three examples of seats where the Labour share of the vote has been whittled away to single figures in response to the strong Lib Dem challenge. Yet there were a number of Lib Dem / Labour marginals at the last general election where the unwillingness of Tory voters to switch to the Lib Dems left Labour holding on — for example, Islington South, Oxford East and Ashfield.
Can previous Tory voters now be persuaded to switch to the Lib Dems?
The question for our taregting strategy posed by the Oldham result, therefore, is clear enough: will it be possible to squeeze the Tory vote in those seats by enough to compensate for the loss of former Lib Dem voters drawn to Labour?
I realise there will be those who read that question, and whose instant knee-jerk response will be: so that means the Lib Dems ‘lurching to the right’ does it? Actually, I don’t think it does.
With few exceptions, I don’t think it’s the Lib Dems’ policy platform that has previously deterred voters who eventually choose the Tories from voting for us. I think Tory-inclined voters have been much more put off the Lib Dems by two key factors. First, they didn’t trust our competence to govern, they perceived us to be decent-minded amateurs, but not folk you’d want running the country. And secondly, they believed we’d inevitably side with Labour in the event of a hung parliament. Both of those perceptions will have been put to rest by the time of the next election.
There has been plenty of focus on the electoral threat to the Lib Dems as a result of the Coalition, and I’m not for one moment underestimating that. But there are opportunities, too. Oldham has shown how the electoral plates are shifting. The questions is: can we get them to shift in our direction?
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86 Comments
I already know of Tory voters in my constituency in Ayr who want to vote LibDem but they are tactically voting Tory to get rid of the Labour candidate. It might be more tactical under AV for those Tory voters to vote LibDem so that the LibDem goes into second place as the LibDems are probably still more likely to pick up the SNP 2nd pref vote than the Tories although that may change come May ’11 (rumours of a SNP/Tory coalition have circulated). It might be possible for the LibDems (if we get a group campaigning there) to pick-up the anti-Labour vote. This may well depend on the new boundaries of course which may make it easier or harder.
This article is utter delusion. If ‘squeezing’ the Tory vote couldn’t get us close to winning Oldham East & Saddleworth (the tighest Lib-Lab marginal, and where we had an exceptionally popular candidate locally), how on earth do you think it’s going to work in Islington or Oxford, where we start off even further behind than in OES? Pulling in the Tory tactical voters will do absolutely nothing for us in those seats, whereas losing Labour tactical voters in the tight Tory-Lib marginals will mean our base in the south-west will be annihilated.
Some activists are drawing completely the wrong conclusions from OES. Some people might want to turn a blind eye to the blatant soft-peddling of the Tory campaign, but some of us know it – when I was campaigning there, some residents told me Tory activists had actually TOLD them to vote Lib Dem! We were only saved from complete humiliation by Tories artificially inflating our percentage. Clegg is leading our Party to electoral oblivion, and all our MPs and many of our activists seem happy to let him.
Very sensible article – the only thing I can find to slightly disagree with is the ‘decent-minded amateurs’ sentence. I don’t doubt that many voters do think that, but centre-left based on my doorstep experience, centre-left switchers and just as likely to think that. I think the reason you put second – namely the assumption that we’d only ever side with Labour in a hung parliament – is by far the main thing that previously deterred centre-right switchers from backing us.
I do have one other small complaint, which is that the analysis focuses exclusively on replacing centre-left tactical voters with centre-right ones. I agree 100% that it’s an important topic to chew on, but I’d argue there’s another equally important substitution we need to start making. As a party of government, we’ve inevitably lost protest voters. But we could and should be looking to replace them with all those who were deterred by the ‘wasted vote’ argument.
I’m sure we’ve all met plenty of people who reply ‘I’d vote for you but there’s no point’. We have an answer to that now and those voters could be fertile ground for us, but most of them won’t just come over to us automatically – we have to make an effort to reach out to them.
It is indeed going to be relatively easy for good, effective Lib Dem local council candidates to win seats off Conservative candidates this May – and possibly squeeze Tory voters to hold off a Labour challenge. I wonder what comfort that will be for those who look at the Camborne result on Thursday and make reckonings about the likely result in a larger number of Labour-Lib Dem contests this Spring.
The Oldham campaign failed to get Elwyn Watkins elected, as he deserved to be, for a number of reasons, the prime one being the way that Phil Woolas dragged out the appeal/judicial review process which allowed Labour to pull the election agenda away from the disgraceful local Labour Party and onto an increasing number of national themes which dropped into their path in the last two months.
It is always tempting to look at percentages. But, as the candidate who scored the highest Lib Dem percentage vote in this constituency on the lowest resources in the past four elections, I would suggest that voter numbers are far more pertinent for our attention. Labour managed to get out the kind of number of votes they should have got out in May – they had a better vote-getting and canvass so they should have done. But the combined Lib Dem and Tory vote fell by TEN THOUSAND votes which, given that we fully-expected to win-over a substantial number of people who voted Labour in the General Election, on the grounds of disgust at Woolas’ disgraceful behaviour, was pretty bad.
Our literature during the past five months was of variable quality but included some of the best laid-out campaign paper I have seen. The message contained within it, however, did not, overall, do justice to our able and hard-working candidate. In particular, the early ‘GUILTY” Newspaper ,released on the original verdict, failed to make clear that this was not just another lying politician. This was a candidate and agent willing to do things by ‘making the whites angry’ that could well have re-created the anxiety which prompted the escalation of racial tension in Oldham in 2001. Spending several hours on polling day in Glodwick confirmed to me what I had seen previously. Our Party is not adequately-engaged-with and is not treated seriously by the vast majority of the Kashmiri Community in Oldham. The only decision which thousands of Kashmiri-origin voters made was whether to bother to vote at all and whether to support the Asian Tory candidate, who many knew personally, rather than Labour.
Being part of the Coalition government may well have a positive effect on the re-election prospects of our sitting MPs in four years’ time. But without a clearer, identifiable, message being projected effectively and consistently of what difference Lib Dems are making, I am not convinced that the sacrifices made by local government candidates in the intervening period will be worth that gain.
“I’m sure we’ve all met plenty of people who reply ‘I’d vote for you but there’s no point’. We have an answer to that now”
No, we don’t. Even more people are going to say it now, because they’re going to say “what’s the point in voting for you if you’re going to ditch all your policies when you get into government anyway?” I don’t think the leadership have realised just how toxic tuition fees has been for us – even people who are indifferent to the policy itself are outraged by the fact we now come across as a load of unprincipled liars.
And it’s no good people saying “the poll ratings were worse after the SDP merger”. Then, most people just didn’t care about us, so there was fertile ground for us once election campaigns come around and our policies got more attention. Now, people HATE us.
And secondly, [Tory voters] believed we’d inevitably side with Labour in the event of a hung parliament
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This is certainly true in my area (deep Tory country).The LD are the only credible threat to the Tories round here, and the perception they would only ever work with Labour must have counted against them (it is ‘anyone but Labour’ here, as silly as ‘anyone but Tory’ areas really). That they have shown willing to work with who they must, against their own inclinations because it was the only mathematically feasible option, may count in the LD favour in this area by those who like some of their policies but hate Labour and fear aiding them.
The party can still incline more toward Labour – as many LD MPs have admitted – albeit not in some very important areas where they are closer to the current Tories, and still be sensible and work with the political reality that is in place to get at least some LD ideas through with the Tories. It doesn’t seem a lot of people agree with that, however. Personally I don’t think OES can be used to talk the LD prospects up or down – the attempts to spin the event are as comical as they are inevitable – because of the unique circumstances, but do think suwith any side of the political spectrum.
Even more people are going to say it now, because they’re going to say “what’s the point in voting for you if you’re going to ditch all your policies when you get into government anyway?”
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They might, in fact plenty do, but it isn’t true. Some big ones have been ditched, and people have to decide whether that means they can never support the LD again which is fair enough, but one glance at Tory comments will show a lot of them think the LD are getting practically everything out of the Coalition and true Tory policies are a minority. Obviously both that and the above statement cannot be true. More does need to be done to show the LD are getting some things through if they are to regain some support. They also need to get across that in a coalition with Conservatives or Labour, the only way for them to have influence, the LD would be junior and have to accept large amounts of policies they dislike if they want to get some things they do. The policies which made them not want to vote Labour/Tory/etc are still mostly intact.
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‘even people who are indifferent to [tutiion fees] itself are outraged by the fact we now come across as a load of unprincipled liars.’
Yes, thank goodness none of the other parties have ever totally reversed themselves on such an important issue. I have found amusing some comments I’ve heard from people along the lines of ‘This shows the LDs are no different from the other two parties; now I can never vote for them again!’ (for the record, I really disliked that of all policies it was the tuition fees one that was totally dropped)
“It is indeed going to be relatively easy for good, effective Lib Dem local council candidates to win seats off Conservative candidates this May …”
I don’t understand why you should think that, considering that the Tories are still riding pretty high in the polls, while the Lib Dems are in single figures. Obviously the Lib Dems aren’t going to benefit from tactical support by Tories in seats that the Tories already hold!
A lot depends on how the AV referendum goes because if it is a YES vote then
i think a lot of peoples first preference votes will change.
That said i still believe that we will do better in the South than in the North and
Scotland because Labours’ vote is bound to increase a bit now than they are
in opposition.
Labour are irrelevant in lots of Southern seats so a lot of these will be viewed
as Tory/Lib Dem contests which will be interesting.
In terms of messages we must nail the lie that Labour is a party of the left, we
should go back to the old policy of equidistance.
As far as i am concerned we are a party of the centre/centre left with the other
two both being of the centre right.
Your problem is that everyone knew about Tories and Labour but the Lib Dems were the great hope for change. That is why Lib Dems are getting so much vitriol. The electorate expected the Lib Dems to rein in whichever party they went into coalition with. However what happened was a complete give in to the Tories. The welfare changes are the most regressive ever seen and the result will be much poverty and despair. How can Lib Dems in government cheer and pat backs on that? My heart sank watching that and I knew then that I could never vote Lib Dem again. The tuition fee issue was the final nail as that also is close to me. I think it a tragedy that Clegg has capitulated as he has Because now that Tory and Lib Dem appear to be one, I shall not vote for AV as that I think will lead to a permanent Con/Dem coalition and that is not democracy. If a Lib Dem says anything to me on the doorstep, how can I believe it? I won’t.
@Daniel
“Pulling in the Tory tactical voters will do absolutely nothing for us in those seats, whereas losing Labour tactical voters in the tight Tory-Lib marginals will mean our base in the south-west will be annihilated.
Some activists are drawing completely the wrong conclusions from OES. Some people might want to turn a blind eye to the blatant soft-peddling of the Tory campaign, but some of us know it – when I was campaigning there, some residents told me Tory activists had actually TOLD them to vote Lib Dem! We were only saved from complete humiliation by Tories artificially inflating our percentage. Clegg is leading our Party to electoral oblivion, and all our MPs and many of our activists seem happy to let him.”
What a refreshing change to see an activist telling things like it is.
You clearly have first knowledge of what truly went on in OES, and people should sit up and take note.
It is only the activists and the people like yourselves, that will save this party, I am quite sure that there are many more wavering Liberal Democrat Voters, clinging to the hope, that someone arises from the party, who will present something that they can relate too.
People want truth and honesty, they want a party that reflects their own perceptions of the political climate. People don’t want to support a party that is delusional, who keep’s trying to tell them, that things are not as they seem, or things are not really all that bad.
Labour made that mistake, and look where it got them, It saw a mass of disillusioned voters, going over to Liberal Democrats.
Sure Nick Clegg and others on this site have, have rubbished the lefties in the past, and said they where not true Liberal Democrats, so would rather not have them in the party anyway. Weather that is a good idea or not, is a decision for your party.
However, it is quite clear that the Liberal Democrat support, is now down to it’s Core Voters, and you really can not afford for them to become disillusioned and waver.
There is only really 1 party, that would benefit out of the demise of the Liberal Democrat Party, and that is the Conservative Party, and possibly the greens becoming the 3rd party.
I will never in my living day’s support a Tory Government.
@ Matt
“I will never in my living day’s support a Tory Government”
Neither would I but I did when I voted Lib Dem in the GE. Instead of them curbing excesses they went wholeheartedly with them contradicting much of what they had said pre-election Will any of us fall for that again?
The fact that on a reduced turnout, the ‘popular local’ LibDem candidate still lost 3000 votes in just eight months, should set alarm bells, as well as clocks, ringing. This point won’t be lost on the likes of Ashcroft.
‘Because now that Tory and Lib Dem appear to be one, I shall not vote for AV as that I think will lead to a permanent Con/Dem coalition and that is not democracy’
Why would it? If the national polls are correct, though I hope not, any Labour voters in an AV situation can just not put a second preference to ensure the LD do not benefit from them, and signs are LD 2nd preference is still more likely to go to Labour (that article on Political Betting about intended voting in OES for instance), which shows they are still distinct as a party. They appear as one because they are working together and that means they have to reach a decision together and both support it, but it has been a struggle every step of the way; that shows clear as day they are different and just co-operating for the time being. Would you have said Labour and LD appear to be one if that coalition had been formed? I know the Tories would, and it wouldn’t be any less ridiculous.
Besides, it is a cross party issue, not something that will definitely aid the LD. Ed Miliband supports AV, so I doubt he believes it will lead to a permanent Con/Dem coalition (though I do recall some tory worries from last year, buying into the idea of an anti-tory majority, that STV at least would lead to a permanent locking out of the Conservatives with a Lib-Lab pact)
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‘If a Lib Dem says anything to me on the doorstep, how can I believe it?’.
The same way people still believe and vote for Tories and Labour despite innumerable examples of them going back on promises at one time or another, and still elect MPs of all stripes who have fiddled their expenses; it’s fine to never vote LD again because of what they have specifically done since May, and I stress I am not decided on whether I shall vote for them next time – it depends on whether the benefits appear – but to write them off on a general basis that they have ‘lied’ or abandoned pre-election promises as if they are the only party who has acted in such a manner (though without the excuse they would have had to give up some things anyway in a coalition), as so many do phrase these things, is just unfair and setting oneself up for a shock when one of the other parties next go back on something.
They all have done and will do it; do not believe you can vote for any of them and know for certain that they will not change their minds on an issue. Besides, what if you have an MP on the extreme wing of their own party, who might not vote with them on some of the reasons you voted for said party? I’ll bet activists would keep quiet about that on the doorstep unless pressed.
Even if you are right that people knew about the Tories and Labour and that is why the LD are getting so much vitriol now, well, that still doesn’t make much sense to me. People didn’t expect a political party to act like the other political parties?
They haven’t ‘completely given in’ to the Tories, that is just the narrative Labour are trying to create, and the anger of sections of the Tory party at the coalition show it for the lie it is; it is a nakedly partisan tactic at odds with the reality, and would have been used by the Tories if they had not got in, to squeeze LD support even more than would have happened if the govs policies were a 50/50 split between the partners (which would have been unfair to the Tories percentage of the gov).
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I will never in my living day’s support a Tory Government”
Neither would I
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I find opinions like this worrying, just as much if we replace Tory with Labour in the sentence. The parties shift around on the political spectrum so much now, attempting to seize ‘the middle ground’ or whatever they want to call it. Saying you will never vote for one side when both alter on very very significant issues often is too close-minded. Labour wanted to increase detention without trial to 90 days along with a myriad of other reprehensible policies; would a softer Tory party be worse than that? The Tories went to the left on civil liberties when Labour went to the right; would it be better to vote Tory there rather than a Labour government that, in your mind, was being appropriately tough on criminals and terrorists.
Obviously it would depend on which issues you specifically feel are most important to make that judgement(which was one reason I voted LD rather than Tory in May, despite agreeing with the Tory policy to cut this year), but I have never understood those incredibly safe seats which never change hands even if the party holding it has a complete personality shift and you could put up a dead dog as the candidate so long as it has the right coloured rosette. Current Tory/Labour might be anathema to you, you might find the general philosophy not to your liking, but to categorically decide they can never be acceptable to you despite each of them containing internal coalitions, some of which are wildly at odds with the bits you like and which might one day become the norm, is simply wrong.
I do apologise for so much ranting, I shall stop now.
nicolaprigg@
Your description of the second guessing that will have to go on for 1st, 2nd, 3rd choices will be one of the reasons why a lot of people won’t be voting for AV.
That and the realisation that the Lib Dems, now very lowly regarded by the electorate as any poll shows, may hope to benefit from AV.
It’s a ‘miserable little compromise’ as Clegg said, and deliberately tying it up with the Bill on boundary changes is another reason a lot of people will vote No.
You may be hearing from Lib Dem leaning Tories. What I’m hearing are the sound of masses of ex Lib Dems in Wales who will vote Labour, Plaid or Green until the Lib Dems show some remorse for backing Tory cuts policies.
Daniel@ 3.18pm
Very good post, and one that echoes the thoughts of friends who are still [at the moment] clinging to their membership.
This path of trying to attract Tory voters to tactically vote Lib Dem to prop up the coalition will bite you in the backside when it comes to the AV vote, the whole point of AV is to represent that the third party in British Politics are under represented, if the third party are merely a proxy for one of the other two main parties, it makes the exercise pointless.
I’m bemused why people thought the Lib Dems wouldn’t get into an alliance of sorts with the Tories, they did it on Birmingham council some years ago, at a time when Labour had the most seats, so to me, the vote Clegg get Brown posters from the Tories were a nonsense, as were the Lib Dem claims that they should do a deal with the largest party, they didn’t hold true to that in Birmingham. Leeds also has a Tory/Lib Dem deal, so why some think it never happens is a mystery.
Kieran@ “As far as i am concerned we are a party of the centre/centre left”
As the young folks text thingy goes ….lol,
In fact, lots of lols.
@Daniel 3.34/3.37pm – Certainly that is a message I am picking. In terms of whether people are going to vote for the party it doesn’t really matter whether it is ‘true’ that the party went back on its word or not. That is what many people believe. They believe it promised a number of things – including a new politics which would be more principled – and delivered something quite different. And it seems to me that the argument that the LDs are no worse than the other parties in this regard, so people should still vote for us, is a rather weak one. So much for a new politics!
It makes me chuckle at peoples comments ref -‘ Lib Dems are finished’, people wont vote for them next time’ etc. These things were being said this time last year & the year before etc etc etc.
Look the only thing I agree with is – a week IS a long time in Politics – just three days ago – most people media thought the Lib Dems were going to be wiped at Oldham – those in the know or just study GCSE political history knew different.
Labour has left us with the biggest mess ever ( bigger than the 20/30s crash imo) & for any political party to be doing well in the ballot box who are in Government now and over the the next two years at least is highly unlikely.
Two years time when & if people feel ‘better’ about their situation & the countries, the political landscape will be different.
Labour know this & are more interested in their own long term adavantage than the countries, by trying to make this Government ‘lame’. Their dealings before & after the election are clear examples of this.
Comparing vote share with elections prior to 2010 is not really comparing like with like. I assume you are using the old Littleborough and Saddleworth figures? Quite considerable change in electorate and boundaries. You could have shown Chris Davies’s byelection figures (having decided to use pre-2010 figures).
I agree with @Anne completely. As a disabled person myself, I started voting LD in 2005 after it become clear that Labour no longer cared for protecting the sick and disabled. Of course the Tories never cared about people like us (and never will), so I thought the LDs were my natural new home. Until the formation of this nasty coalition, I always saw the LDs as a left-of-centre party and that is how you presented yourselves. Suddenly, when Clegg fell in with the Tories, you discarded your previous promise (among many others) to protect the disabled with all your might.
Why does your party feel the need to attack the most vulnerable people in society? You would normally stand up for us and attack the Tories and right-wing media for labeling all disabled people as “scroungers”. But, of course, you’re all silent on this now. In fact, nobody says anything when Cameron, Clegg and Osborne label people like me as a scounger. I never thought I would see the day when a leader of the Liberal Democrat party would attack the sick and disabled in this way.
For people like me, who live a lonely, miserable, painful and isolated life, things like DLA are a lifeline. It allows people like me to be able to live a (somewhat) more normal life and interact with others. Now this will soon be taken away from me as I am on the lower rate. And what happens when I go for my main “medical” with poverty pimps ATOS who are cruel and far from understanding (as well as making billions off the misery of people like me)? I am in no doubt I will probably lose my ESA and have to go through the entire appeals process again. Which makes my condition much worse. I have to take strong morphine-like painkillers, use an O2 tank and I also have injections for when the pain is at its worst. Most days I spend most of my time in bed, in too much pain to get up. Yet I am still a scrounger to most LDs and especially to your nasty right-wing leadership.
I could go on about how this coalition is putting more of a burden on the weakest in society than the strongest, but it is evident you no longer care about the disabled. We’re just a political football to kick around since most of us are too weak to fight back. If you truly had our interests at heart, you would stand up to the Tories. Your welfare minister Steven Webb MP has said nothing in reply to my letters other than to blame Labour for the “mess we are in” and use weasel words like “we all have to contribute towards the deficit”. I am sick of you blaming Labour for everything, using it as an excuse to drop your principles and human decency towards others. Poor Mr. Clegg says on the news “soon they’ll blame me for the bad weather.” Oh diddums. He’ll never experience true poverty or the heartbreaking feeling of an isolated and painful life.
I will never, ever vote for your party again. It was disgraceful enough that Labour vilified us and treated us like scum, but it is beyond the pale for you to do this and do it enthusiastically. Have you no sense of compassion and decency? Or are you going to continue to attack the sick and disaabled, labeling us all as evil scroungers while the bankers get away with massive bonuses and plenty of companies cheat us out of billions in tax? You make me even more sick than I already am.
” thank goodness none of the other parties have ever totally reversed themselves on such an important issue.”
Kieran, if we had put ourselves about before this election as ‘just another party’, then we (a) would have gained a lot fewer votes and (b) might not be taking so much flak now.
Take a look again at this Lib Dem PPB video (the clue is in the title)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTLR8R9JXz4&feature=related
And take a look at this, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXw7yqHfxDI
and this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9Smix1YaB4&feature=related
OK so they are just bits of fun – but what propelled people to produce them was not.
I do not reckon the issue of losing those hundreds of thousands of student votes is the ‘big thing’. The ‘big thing’ is that we made a really big thing out of portraying ourselves as being something different than the other two main parties – and SOME of our MPs now seem to think that this is irrelevant..
Now a member of the lib dems I use to be a member of the snp. There will not be a snp conservative formal agreement as it’s not allowed by the SNP const.
Although the agreement has opened up areas of the right we must show our liberal agenda not to loose the left.
The party has a strategy? Pray tell.
@Tony Dawson
I agree to some extent. I can understand why our election team went down this road, especially in a GE when we feared the two-party squeeze might leave us with 40 MPs. But these kind of promises are always pie in the sky – politics is complicated and involves messy compromises whoever is in power (in coalition or with a majority govnt). And politicians have always and will always screw up, both politically and personally, because they’re human like the rest of us. Unless we want to populate parliament with robots, politics will never change until human nature itself changes.
To be fair, though, it’s not like we’re the first to make these kind of pointless ‘we’ll be different’ promises. Tony Blair pre-1997 promised to be ‘whiter than white’. David Cameron promised an end to ‘yah boo politics’. I wish none of them did it, including us.
What we should have done (and should be doing now) is explain why we’re different to Labour and the Conservatives in terms of values and liberal priorities. We’ve been coasting on protest votes for a long time, and the realities of government (especially at a time like this) have shown us all too starkly how badly that needs to change.
@Paul Halliday
Wow, I haven’t heard of any other party with that kind of constitutional clause. Out of curiosity, is it a general prohibition of any formal coalition agreements, or does it apply specifically to the Conservatives?
I really do think that anyone who thinks the Saddleworth result was anything other than a disaster is kidding themselves. It’s pretty clear that many Tories switched to Lib Dem to help Clegg save face on Cameron’s instructions and Lib Dem support was slashed. As for winning marginals off the Tories, I think this is dreamland. Until people in the party realise that Clegg, Alexander and the bumbling Cable and Hughes have undone in 8 months what took years of work to build there will be nothing but more defeat. I have already left the party and can’t see any way back until that lot are gone.
John G
It’s pretty clear that many Tories switched to Lib Dem to help Clegg save face on Cameron’s instructions.
Although it’s normally sad to lose a member from any membership organisation, there are always exceptions.
What arrogant nonsense! When I have taken part in winning campaigns where Labour-inclined (or, in other wards or constituencies, and rather less frequently – up till now – Tory-inclined) voters have been been squeezed enough to enable us to win, I never realised that this was because their respective party High Commands “instructed” them to do so.
I always though it was because we persuaded enough voters to make a rational decision. The fact that we did that so successfully with former Tory-inclined voters in OE&S, and in scores of local council by-elections over the last 8 months is a cause for rejoicing.
Kieran, if we had put ourselves about before this election as ‘just another party’, then we (a) would have gained a lot fewer votes and (b) might not be taking so much flak now.
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I’m surprised people would have believed that and voted because they believed a group of politicians would not act like politicians, but you are not wrong about b) at least in terms of all that ‘new politics’ nonsense. I was inclined to vote LD, but the only’ new’ thing I would have expected was a greater willingness than either of the other parties to agree to consensus, out of necessity of the realities of LD support of course. Catherine points out well that kind of claim is not new either though. Even before the coalition was formed I was predicitnga disaster being the most likely outcome for the party though; the opportunity to come out the other end better off does exist, even now, but the opportunities to alienate various wings of the party, whatever had happened (coalition with anyone, confidence and supply agreement or no deal) were far more numerous.
———–
Kieran@ “As far as i am concerned we are a party of the centre/centre left”
As the young folks text thingy goes ….lol,
———-
That wasn’t me who said that. Truthfully, there are too many issues where I disagree with the party for me to consider myself a LD anyway – just more inclined that way than toward the other parties, at present anyway.
@Simon Shaw
“What arrogant nonsense! When I have taken part in winning campaigns where Labour-inclined (or, in other wards or constituencies, and rather less frequently – up till now – Tory-inclined) voters have been been squeezed enough to enable us to win, I never realised that this was because their respective party High Commands “instructed” them to do so.I always though it was because we persuaded enough voters to make a rational decision. The fact that we did that so successfully with former Tory-inclined voters in OE&S, and in scores of local council by-elections over the last 8 months is a cause for rejoicing”
Simon did you go and campaign on OE&S?
What is your response to people like Daniel, who posted @ 3.18pm
“Some activists are drawing completely the wrong conclusions from OES. Some people might want to turn a blind eye to the blatant soft-peddling of the Tory campaign, but some of us know it – when I was campaigning there, some residents told me Tory activists had actually TOLD them to vote Lib Dem! We were only saved from complete humiliation by Tories artificially inflating our percentage. Clegg is leading our Party to electoral oblivion, and all our MPs and many of our activists seem happy to let him.”
He took the trouble to campaign at OE&S and has 1st hand knowledge, are you saying his post was nonsense?
@ Kieran
Sorry but you have not changed my opinion, I had a longer post but found I was ranting too so decided on the first seven words.
One thing I don’t think anyone else has touched on is tactical voting from LP to LibDem.
It doesn’t affect the seat I am in at any level but if I was in a seat where it was a LibDem v Tory contest with LP nowhere then I would have had no difficulty in voting LibDem. Now I wouldn’t and I think that would be common to a lot of LP supporters – no point in voting for a ToryLibDem Party or coalition so just vote LP.
For those thinking a bit more deeply it actually helps to destroy a right of centre LibDem party by possibly creating a new centre-left LibDem party or just cutting the number of MPs if the right-wing party survived. This really weakens their position with the Tories and the scraps given out will be cut.
If the right wing party continues or is assimilated into the Tory party then the centre left members and activists will abandon completely and a lot will go to LP. One thing I am sure about is that the LP isn’t interested in LibDem MPs as such – oh don’t get me wrong they might take a prize defector for propaganda – but they don’t want people tainted in the public eye.
So I reckon LibDem MPs are really being boxed-in with little wiggle-room.
I felt sorry for the Tory candidate in O&S – he was kicked in the teeth and sacrificed for political reasons way beyond his pay grade.
He has had to grin and bear it because he knows that if he went one note off-song his political carreer was finished – byw I’m not attacking him for this because we have seen many from all parties do the same. But it’s the thing that the public hate – they know the guy was hurting but they also know there was nothing he could do about it.
So they don’t blame him but they can blame Cameron and I hope they do.
Btw the LibDem candidate was playing with fire when he unseated Woolas – I have no argument with his right to do so and the fact that he was personally driven to do so and Woolas was a disgrace and his actions incendiary. But Watkins may well have won at the next GE – I think his chance has now come and gone but that’s not just politics – That’s Life.
Sorry but you have not changed my opinion, I had a longer post but found I was ranting too so decided on the first seven words.
————
Good for you; I don’t manage that often enough, and it is a serious character flaw and just annoys people.
Any of you bothered about what’s actually going on ?? Council budgets slashed, redundancies, NHS about to be decimated ???
@matt
Well, I’m not Simon and sadly couldn’t make it up to OE&S, but I’ve spent plenty of time campaigning in the Southern LD/Tory marginals in which Labour supporters were frequently told by Labour canvassers that their candidate didn’t stand a chance and voting LD was the best bet to keep the Tories out – essentially the same situation as OE&S just with Tory/Labour positions swapped round. I remember in Kingston & Surbiton in 2001 I even saw posters up saying ‘Support Labour, Vote Lib Dem’.
And you can be sure that at the time our perceived closeness to Labour prevented us picking up many (if any) tactical soft Conservative votes. Now the reverse is true – our coalition with the Conservatives will undoubtedly lose us many tactical Labour votes. Will the Conservative tactical voters gained be enough to balance out the Labour tactical voters lost? It’s far too early to tell, and we probably won’t know the answer with any certainty until the next GE, but certainly the fact that Tory supporters were willing to lend us their votes in OE&S is a promising sign.
@EcoJon
I’m sure no Lib Dem MP or activist would deny that the coalition will make it much harder for us to win Lab>LD tactical votes for the next few years. Hopefully the shortfall will be either partly, largely or even fully compensated by Con>LD tactical votes. Having said that though, I think you underestimate the pragmatism of many tactical voters. They’re mostly not purists or idealists and tend to make decisions based on who they like the least, even if the difference in liking is by a very small margin.
I voted Labour in a Lab/Con marginal in 2005 despite Iraq and all the other Labour policies that apalled me. I did so because, however much I disliked Blair’s Labour, I still found them to be very slightly more palatable than Michael Howard’s Conservatives. I didn’t have to like Labour or approve of them one little bit (although their local candidate seemed decent enough).
I agree completely about Elwyn Watkins and Kashif Ali though – this byelection didn’t treat either of them fairly, but then life ain’t fair. I’m not sure I’d count either of them out of becoming MPs in the future though.
“I agree completely about Elwyn Watkins and Kashif Ali though – this byelection didn’t treat either of them fairly, but then life ain’t fair. I’m not sure I’d count either of them out of becoming MPs in the future though”
Oh I don’t doubt for 1 second that Kashif Ali will be compensated, with a more safer seat somewhere, in fact there has been talk of it somewhere over on conservative.home
Whether Elwyn Watkins is as fortunate, I am not so sure.
I think the big strategic problem you face is that you can no longer depend on tactical votes from Labour supporters in future. Many Labour voters in Lib Dem / Tory marginals will be so angry at the Lib Dems propping up a Tory government they will not vote Lib Dem at any price in future elections. I think this will cost you dearly across South & South West. in particular.
The other side of the coin is that your love-in should make it easier for you to win Tory tactical votes in Lib Dem/Labour marginals, but if that strategy fails fairly miserably in the closest marginal there is where there was a 26% Tory vote to sqyeeze fails where do you think it might work?
I don’t think the by-election result makes a huge difference, but it does offer some encouragement.
In the past, our vote has been made up of perhaps four main parts: soft Labour voters, soft Tory voters, anti-government protest voters, and core Lib Dem. As soon as we decided to make a parliamentary deal with either Labour or the Conservatives, we were bound to lose two of those categories.
Nonetheless, in the by-election, our vote marginally rose.
A bit under 30% of our vote came from the Tories. It’s standard for there to be a lot of churn in our vote, where we lose some and gain others from one election to another, so that 30% is not as significant as it sounds. But, clearly, the coalition did make it a lot easier to squeeze the Tories, and a lot harder for us to take votes off Labour.
Our involvement in sorting out the deficit has meant some of the most difficult decisions for a government in fifty years. That was bound to undermine our support.
We’ll only really start to know the long-term political effects of our joining the coalition in three or four years. Until then, Labour will get millions of temporary protest votes (just as Neil Kinnock and Micheal Foot did), and we’ll be particularly hard hit.
In the short term, there are ways the party can improve our image, but there’s no silver bullet that will instantly turn the situation around in the next year. Indeed, whatever we do, as soon as the cuts really bite, things may get worse before they get better.
Oldham and Saddleworth offers some comfort. There’s disappointment, because many of us were hoping Elwyn could clinch it. But, in our hearts, we always knew that was extremely unlikely.
I think it gives clear evidence that, with strong campaigns, it’ll still be possible for some campaigners to take council seats in the May elections.
That so many Tories were willing to vote tactically is encouraging. Those fighting Tory councils have an opportunity, and, if they seize it, it’ll be much harder for the Tories to campaign against us.
Fighting Labour will be harder, but with strong campaigning on local issues not impossible.
But the main thing I took from the by-election was more personal, from the brief time I was there. Tim Farron has described it as a cathartic election, and I think he’s right.
Campaigning does bring you together. Briefly chatting between leaflet runs with other footsore activists is deeply unifying. Especially when some of those footsore activists are leading members of the party.
“That so many Tories were willing to vote tactically is encouraging. Those fighting Tory councils have an opportunity, and, if they seize it, it’ll be much harder for the Tories to campaign against us.”
This really doesn’t make sense. By definition Tories will vote tactically only in order to keep Labour out. Obviously they won’t vote tactically for the Lib Dems in a contest between the Tories and the Lib Dems!
I agree this result shows the Tory vote has softened while the Labour vote has hardened, and this can apply equally in Tory seats provided we are the clear challengers, but not if there is a risk of Labour overhauling us as in Camborne. We won a council seat from the Tories in Earl’s Court in September with a 17% swing, even without much help from Labour voters.
However, we need to take care in assuming that trend will continue until the next general election:
(i) the tuition fees effect can be expected to depress our vote across the board, and it actually affects teenagers from traditionally Tory middle-class families (an extra £20,000 in fees and interest to go to university) much worse than those from poorer backgrounds (who will actually be better off if they only have to pay one year’s fees), subject to (ii) below;
(ii) there is a distinct but reversible anti-Clegg effect (many former Lib Dem voters have told me they will not vote for the Lib Dems again while he is leader);
(iii) before the next election, quite a lot could happen: Scottish/Welsh elections in which we don’t expect to do well but might still end up in coalition with Labour in Scotland, a series of PR elections, and there’s still a good chance of a falling out with the Tories before the next election is due in 2015, which would win us back some supporters but alienate the Tories again.
I agree that the referendum outcome will change everything, but the problem with AV is that we will have to work much harder to hang on to second place in many constituencies, and that is what will probably determine our targeting strategy.
@ Depressed Ex Lib Dem
The evidence from scores of Council by-elections over the last 8 months suggests you are wrong.
It is clear that many more voters who have previously been Tory-inclined are now willing to vote for us.
For example in the first 6 months post-Coalition, Lib Dems gained 9 seats off Conservatives in principal council by-elections, a net gain of 4 seats.
The willingness of Tory-inclined voters to vote tactically is merely part of a broader encouraging picture.
However, as I have been saying for months, it doesn’t make things any easier for Lib Dems for May in the minority of the country which is strongly Labour-inclined.
@Simon Shaw, high turnouts traditionally favour Labour, are you sure about the minority of the country being Labour inclined?
@Depressed Ex Lib Dem. “Obviously they won’t vote tactically for the Lib Dems in a contest between the Tories and the Lib Dems!” Bizarrely they might. In Tory/Lib fights, and I don’t understand why, I’ve come across some voters said they’d like to vote Lib Dem but must keep Labour out and were therefore voting Tory – totally illogical, and I suspected they just didn’t want to admit to being Tories. When I helped by neighbouring local party in the Ipplepen by election (Teignbrigde) where Labour had been unable to get the ten signatures needed to stand. These erstwhile Tory voters in the absence of a Labour candidate now felt it was safe to vote Lib Dem – and we won handsomely. So though it seems counterintuitive we may get better results in Tory/Lib fights. If Labour put up a candidate in a Lib Dem held ward where the Tories are second, it may be possible to squeeze the second placed Tories to ‘stop Labour’.
Simon
I don’t think you can have read properly what I wrote. I’m talking about Tories switching TACTICALLY to the Lib Dems. By definition that won’t happen in Tory/Lib Dem contests, except among the terminally confused. (Of course, Tories may switch to the Lib Dems for other reasons.)
The regressive and evil Tory led and Lib Dem backed cuts to the public sector haven’t fully hit home yet; do not rest easy yet, there is a lot more hatred to follow.
This artificially high vote just gives the pundits an even bigger stick to beat the Lib Dems with in May.
And make no mistake, the glaringly obvious closeness of the Tories to the Lib Dems after Cameron tried to help here will be absolute poison in the Scottish elections and A.V. vote.
But carry on regardless since that is the only ‘strategy’ Nick and his right wing acolytes can think of.
I agree with others that soft Tory voters are now more willing (less unwilling is probably a better way of putting it) to vote for us previously, and this clearly presents an opportunity in narrowly contested Labour seats.
Our electoral problem is that there aren’t too many areas where the contest is Lab v Lib. The key question is whether we can win across enough former Tories in Conservative areas – the Tories who care (liberal Conservatives, if you like) to make up for the loss of tactical support from Labour voters?
As a long-timesupporter of both the Liberal Democrats and Walsall FC, I have been around long enough to know that a single result early on does not actually give enough information upon which to predict the outcome at the end of a season – but you can take something from the manner of the performance.
Winchester was a good example of the risk any party takes challenging a result in court. Howevr, with Old & Sad (nice of them to nickname a bye-election after me… 😉 ) there were such serious issues at stake it was as vital to our democracy in the long run as sorting out MP’s expenses.
People vote for a variety of reasons; I have fond memories of being elected 20 years ago as “that nice young man” as one of my more venerable electors put it.
For whatever reason, as a society we tend to focus on the negative, and find it easy to see the down-side. To maintain our share of the vote under the circumstances was actual not a bad result. Not as good as beating United with a last minute 30 yard screamer, but nowhere near as bad as some part-time non-league side dumping you out of the cup either.
I really do despair of the way in which much of the current debate is being conducted. Rarely should it be appropriate for the discussion to be in absolutes. Politics like football is a “funny old game” and fortunes ebb and flow.
We are still in the first year of a five year term. We cannot afford the luxury of drifting gently through it like Blair did from 1997, because there is one heck of a mess to clear up. Brown’s paradoxical imprudence allied to a round of sovereign debt crises puts us into a quite invidious position. There is never a good time to make a hard decision, but the worst time is when it has become inevitable.
Some increases in general taxation are unavoidable, and so is a reduction in the size of the public sector. There are serious debates to be had around the role of the State in the life if the nation, as well as about a raft of other serious issues.
Britain isn’t broken, but it is a bit uncomfortable. Local and national government ate all the pies under the last administration. Our job is to ensure that the new diet retains the staples of fairness and social justice whilst being affordable – less Selfridges and more Aldi I’m afraid.
We will find that a much more difficult task if we choose introspection and in-fighting as our preferred course. Has the leadership goofed now and then? Yes. Was tuition fees a muck up? Yes? Have Liberal Democrats suddenly become untrustworthy idiots? Er, no.
How about we dust ourselves off and set about working on our constitutional reform programme with a real sense of purpose? So much nicer than some of the recent bickering, don’t you think?
There was another By-Election on Thursday.
In Cornwall, which is traditionally a Conservative and Liberal stronghold. It is notoriously difficult for Labour to win in the South West/East
And Yet, Labour came from 5th Place, to win the seat
The seat was a Conservative/Liberal Marginal
Labour gain from Conservative with 15.6% swing
Lab 239 (33.1%, +22.4), Con 203 (28.1%, -8.8), LD 156 (21.6%, +2.2), Lib 61 (8.4%, +6.2), MK 32 (4.4%, -10.4), Green 31 (4.3%, +4.3).
Still what can we take from these results?
Liberal Democrats, couldn’t rely on Labour to vote tactically, They certainly couldn’t rely on Tories to vote tactically.
And the same is true for Conservatives, not being able to rely on Liberal Democrats.
Ian
“The key question is whether we can win across enough former Tories in Conservative areas – the Tories who care (liberal Conservatives, if you like) to make up for the loss of tactical support from Labour voters?”
The evidence from many council by-elections since the Coalition was formed is that we can and do.
Lib Dems gained 9 seats off Conservatives in principal council by-elections in the first 6 months post-Coalition, a net gain of 4 seats.
“Lib Dems gained 9 seats off Conservatives in principal council by-elections in the first 6 months post-Coalition, a net gain of 4 seats.”
Maybe so, but things were very different “in the first 6 months post-Coalition.” Take ICM – on average they were giving the Lib Dems nearly 19% between May and October last year. Now it’s 13%. In contrast, the Tories are pretty much as popular now as they were back then.
What Simon fails to tell people, is Liberal Democrats do better in council by-elections, where there isn’t even a Labour candidate running.
Liberal Democrats share of the vote has been collapsing in council elections, up and down the country.
If Labour stands some strong candidates, down the South East and West, and put more resources into campaigning, Liberal Democrats could see themselves in some real trouble.
Labour has a real chance now too start making a move in the South East/West, which was never really a prospect for Labour over the last couple of Decades.
The volume of tatical voting by soft labour supporters in the South West/East is huge and has been so since the 90s. This was motivated by a strong dislike of the tory party. While the libdems appeared to be the best choice to stop the blues, labour voters carried on voting libdem. What will happen is that the soft labour vote will go back to voting labour or not voting at all. This will lead to electoral collapse in these areas for the libdems and will result in many tory gains. That is the sad fact and the tory party is well aware of this.
@Depressed Ex Lib Dem
Sorry you’ve resigned your membership and are so unhappy.
The last few days, I found a way to really cheer me up. Go to a by-election, meet lots of wonderful, idealistic people, and fight against a cynical Labour machine whose previous candidate lost his seat because he broke the law. It was a real tonic to meet lots of real voters, rather than the anonymous cynicism all too common on the internet. Though the best candidate didn’t win, it was great to see party members pulling together, with a real sense of friendship and shared purpose. And lots of exercise and fresh air is great for lifting a depressed mood.
So, what’s going to happen when the Tories want their Voters back?
“For whatever reason, as a society we tend to focus on the negative, and find it easy to see the down-side. To maintain our share of the vote under the circumstances was actual not a bad result.”
I completely disagree. Our party has always suffered from its tendency to see everything through rose-tinted spectacles. But this has become far worse since the Coalition. How else can anyone explain the fact that 71% of the members polled recently think we should make a commitment to phasing out tuition fees at the next election, and yet 51% of the same group of members support what the Coalition did on tuition fees?
https://www.libdemvoice.org/tuition-fees-what-lib-dem-members-think-now-3-of-3-22718.html
That means that at least 22% of our members, though wishing to oppose fees at the next election, are simultaneously willing to congratulate our Coalition for tripling them now! Which means, frankly, that at least 22% of our members are totally unsuited to engage in any serious political activity, except in Fairyland!
Now we have yet another thread which seems designed to provide pastoral support for the wilfully self-deluded, this time on the OES byelection. It is quite clear what happened – a classic byelection third-place squeeze, a typical Rennard speciality. A third of the Tory voters were persuaded to switch to the Lib Dems in the hopes of keeping Labour out. Unfortunately, a third of the 2010 Lib Dem voters also switched over to Labour, despite all the evidence of Woolas’s despicable behaviour and Watkins’ personal bravery in challenging the lies. Hence the net result, that our vote percentage was hardly changed, conceals massive changes in who voted for us.
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2011/01/14/what-were-the-cross-party-splits/
So, this was a big swing against the Coalition as a whole – despite Woolas, despite Miliband’s low personal ratings. Nobody without rose-tinted spectacles welded permanently in place could possibly see this as a good result for the Lib Dems. Nobody, in fact, except a professional Lib Dem loyalist.
We need a new campaign to rescue our party. Shoot The Ostrich!
If Stephen Tall thinks that he or one of his chums is going to be the next MP for Oxford East he is off his head. We have squandered a generation of student, graduate and academic votes and will be lucky if Labour’s majority doesn’t rocket to 1997 levels. Tactical voting from the remaining Tories who we have spent 20 years posting those god-awful ‘Only Lib Dems can beat Labour here’ graphs won’t save us.
Maybe we just have to accept that some people vote on principle and won’t vote tactically no more how many leaflets we shove through their door.
It is policy and trust that will get us elected. Not political manoeuvring.
George Kendall
Thanks for the pep talk, but surely it shouldn’t take too much gumption to work out that I’m not going to be knocking on any doors for the Lib Dems again.
As a matter of fact, my last day of knocking-up for the party was a pretty depressing experience, because I encountered not one but two recently bereaved and quite upset people.
CowleyJon – You are 100 % correct !! We need to forget about ever winning Oxford East, and concentrate on winning back Oxford West and Abingdon !!!
Frankly, most of the rest of this is rubbish – I really DO NOT think Labour or Tory Campaign Managers spend all their waking hours fretting as to how they can win over “tactical votes” from other parties – for Goodness Sake this is Pathetic – we need to start getting a decent Lib Dem core vote together, and that means our OWN Policies, our OWN views to be expressed Coalition or not, and IF we get AV or some better form of PR we need to be trying to get a Lib Dem Govt, NOT relying on “tactical votes”. I really think some of our bretheren have done too much navel gazing for too long !! If we are forever just to be an add-on to another political party then we urgently need to think why on earth we are an Independent Liberal Party ???
Let’s get out there and start selling our wares !!
matt
“What Simon fails to tell people, is Liberal Democrats do better in council by-elections, where there isn’t even a Labour candidate running.”
Sorry, is that meant to be bad news for Lib Dems? It’s like saying that “other parties tend to get a higher percentage of the vote in council by-elections where the Conservatives don’t stand, compared to those where they do.”
matt
“Liberal Democrats share of the vote has been collapsing in council elections, up and down the country.
“
Well it certainly hasn’t been collapsing in seats where we are in with a chance – otherwise how do you explain 9 gains from the Conservatives? Also, the Oldham result rather undermines your suggestion.
As I have said repeatedly, in strong Labour areas we have seen some very disappointing Lib Dem performances over the last 6 months – but we weren’t going to win those seats anyway.
David Allen
“How else can anyone explain the fact that 71% of the members polled recently think we should make a commitment to phasing out tuition fees at the next election”
I completely agree with you, David.
A completely mad position for a majority of those polled to take. Of course, I never set much store by opinion polls anyway.
you know exactly what i meant Simon, The point I was making was, Liberal Democrats make most gains against the Conservatives in elections where there is no Labour Candidate. I am suggesting that if a Labour candidate was to run, things would probably be very different 😉
And the vote did collapse in Oldham, Simon, Tory Activists where telling Tory Voters to vote Liberal Democrats.
That’s not Liberal Democrats “squeezing” the Tory vote, That’s the Tories “telling” their supporters to vote Liberal Democrats.
In my Eyes, there is a very big difference
matt
“And the vote did collapse in Oldham, Simon, Tory Activists where telling Tory Voters to vote Liberal Democrats.”
That’s rather a silly comment to make. If you check the BBC website I think you will find you are mistaken:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12187965
Also, if you really believe that the Tories were “telling” voters to vote Lib Dem, don’t you think that the press would have followed it up – shouldn’t be that difficult to investigate.
So are you suggesting that Daniel who Posted on 15th January 2011 at 3:18 pm Is Liar then?
” when I was campaigning there, some residents told me Tory activists had actually TOLD them to vote Lib Dem! We were only saved from complete humiliation by Tories artificially inflating our percentage. Clegg is leading our Party to electoral oblivion, and all our MPs and many of our activists seem happy to let him.”
And it was hardly a secret Tories where encouraging people to Vote Libdem.
The Tories Vote collapsed by 7200 votes, The Liberal Democrats vote collapsed by 2923 Votes, You may have retained the same share of the vote on a decreased turn out, But I would class losing almost 3000 Votes whilst being propped up by at least 20% of the Tory Voters, as Liberal Democrats vote collapsing 😉
matt
“And it was hardly a secret Tories where encouraging people to Vote Libdem.”
If this were really true, then it would be the political news story of the decade.
Why don’t you get in touch with (say) The Daily Telegraph, who I am sure would pay you very good money for all your evidence.
matt
“You may have retained the same share of the vote on a decreased turn out”
Well spotted – the BBC News website can be really useful at times.
I think you will find that if you “retained the same share of the vote”, then you can’t have “collapsed” at the same time.
Simon Shaw
“I completely agree with you, David.”
Oh no you don’t. You have merely taken the opportunity (at 8.59pm) to misread and reverse-spin what I said (at 6.52 pm), so as to imply that I meant the opposite of what I said.
Do you think that’s clever?
@Cllr Nick Cotter who said: ‘Let’s get out there and start selling our wares !!’
As a LP member I can only observe that I wonder what the LibDem ‘wares’ actually are as it seems that even LibDem members are very unclear about that currently and it appears obvious that the party is going through internal turmoil although perhaps the Spring Conference will provide c lear direction – but perhaps not.
@Simon Shaw
I think that it shows the weakness of your position to be quoting a BBC website on 14/01 as confirmation especially when it seems to me that few LibDems have any respect for the BBC.
Knowledge has moved on since the initial reporting after the count and it’s actually quite hard for any journo, including the BBC, to know what is being said on the doorstep unless actually present. This means that the best alternative source is polling and if you care to look at more up-to-date coverage I think that any independent observer would have no difficulty in concluding that Tories voted LibDem.
You may argue – despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary – that Toriy activists on the ground weren’t telling their supporters to Vote LibDem and you may well be correct. However, as Cameron all but instructed Tories to vote LibDem I find your hair-splitting ludicrous.
If the LibDems ever get back to embracing reality perhaps you will be able to remove your blue-tinted specs 🙂
In any case are you ashamed to be taking Tory votes – after all you have taken their policies and adopted them – no problem.
@Simon Shaw
Why are you not answering my question about Daniel?
He is an activist who went down to OE&S and he posted what he was told on the doorstep.
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2960
“An increase in Labour support of about 10 points is very much in line with the national picture anyway, more interesting is the degree of tactical voting by Conservative supporters in favour of the Lib Dems, which made up for a large loss of Lib Dem support to Labour and allowed them to retain their vote share. Populus’s poll already had 22% of 2010 Conservative voters switching to the Lib Dems, and presumably the actual figure was higher given the apparent shift in the vote since the pre-by-election polls”
So again, Losing 3000 votes, whilst being propped up by at least 22% of the Conservative voters, is a collapse in the vote.
Dear oh Dear Simon, are you trying out for the title of “Chief Spinner” for Clegg’s office or something or what?
@Simon Shaw who said: ‘If this were really true, then it would be the political news story of the decade’.
I think we should always at least attempt not to just keep our feet on the ground but not to shape-shift to another galaxy.
I very much doubt whether the LibDems being hammered in O&S for the party’s political betrayals and lack of principles actually rates to be news story of the week never mind the decade.
We have seen brave Tunisians fight and die for democracy in their country – somethings the LibDem party appears to have turned its back on – and many other people throughout the world die as a result of ‘natural’ disasters. I think these may be better contenders than bruised LibDem egos.
Hopefully the LibDems may some day return to what is important rather than desperately trying to cling onto power to push through savage Tory cuts.
EcoJon
“I think that it shows the weakness of your position to be quoting a BBC website on 14/01 as confirmation especially when it seems to me that few LibDems have any respect for the BBC.”
I was only quoting the BBC News website as a source of the Oldham result, which matt appeared to be unaware of.
Are you saying the BBC misreported the result? I think not.
matt
“Why are you not answering my question about Daniel?
He is an activist who went down to OE&S and he posted what he was told on the doorstep.”
What is Daniel’s surname, matt? I know one Lib Dem activist called Daniel, but he certainly didn’t say those things.
Are you disputing the fact that certain elements in the press would love hard evidence of what you suggest? Doesn’t the fact that, as far as I know, it hasn’t been reported make you think that (just possibly) there might not be any hard evidence?
@Simon
Firstly, I see no reason not to believe, Daniel wouldn’t be who he says he is.
I am sure one of the editors would have pointed out if he was not a regular or a member of the forum.
secondly. I was well aware of the fact of the BBC website, I was also well aware of the results of the election in 2010 and 2011. That is how I made my “informed” decision.
Thirdly, I think it was being pretty well reported that there where suggestions Conservative voters should vote LibDem, I certainly heard it enough times when they where talking about Tebbit suggesting Tories should vote UKIP.
You only had to read the posts in conservative.home to see how angry some of them where about it as well.
I have shown you the ukpolling report on the matter, if you wish to continue spinning a different story, that is your right i guess.
@George Kendall
“a cynical Labour machine whose previous candidate lost his seat because he broke the law.”
Oldham East and Saddleworth should have been a shoe-in for you then. As it was, Labour had a better election result there in Jan 2011 than it had in its landslide year of 1997 on a greatly reduced turnout (down from 73.9% in 1997 to 48% in 2011) Last Thursday the combined Liberal Democrat/ Tory vote collapsed by 10,000.
That’s why Labour are cock a hoop. We won in the most unpropitious circumstances imaginable. We increased our majority X 35 when 13% less people voted than in May 2010. Extrapolate our victory across every parliamentary seat and Labour will have a 100 plus majority and the Liberal democrats will be back to the days when they didn’t have enough MPs to fill a taxi. But it had nothing to do with you and your coalition partner’s policies of course! You could start retrenching now by voting down Lansley’s viscious privatisation of the Health Service when the bill comes up this week.
@Simon Shaw – I feel that you never ever actually seem to answer anything but just counter with another question or spurious point. However, I will repeat something I posted earlier:
‘You may argue – despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary – that Toriy activists on the ground weren’t telling their supporters to Vote LibDem and you may well be correct. However, as Cameron all but instructed Tories to vote LibDem I find your hair-splitting ludicrous.’
And I further observed that you appear to be ashamed of these Tory votes that prevented you being wiped-out. Use a bit of common-sense about all this and try and find a bit of objectivity. Cameron makes it clear publicly that Tories should support the LibDems so why do you think that activists eager to please the party machine didn’t help ‘whip’ the Tory faithful into line.
I feel sorry for the Tory candidate but he has kept his mouth shut and he’ll be rewarded with another seat – that’s politics and the sooner you realise what goes on behind the scenes then the easier it will be for you to make sensible statements based on fact.
And it really does help in forming rounded-opinions not to just automatically reject as wrong any opinion coming a member of another political party. We have much to learn from each other and in the process we come to understand each other more.
Whether we like what we see is another matter but at least the viewpoint is hopefully formed on some kind of factual basis and not just pure hostility to a contrary opinion or viewpoint.
@MacK
“Extrapolate our victory across every parliamentary seat and Labour will have a 100 plus majority and the Liberal democrats will be back to the days when they didn’t have enough MPs to fill a taxi.”
The Lib Dem share of the vote went *up*. If you extrapolate the result across the country, according to one of the seat calculators, the Lib Dem seats would rise to 81. Pretty big taxi.
Of course, for anyone who believes extrapolating a by-election across the country is more than an amusing game, I have a bridge to sell you.
@George kendall
Yes, but it would be a taxi full of Tory supporters, George, that’s the only reason your vote went up.
@George Kendall
“Of course, for anyone who believes extrapolating a by-election across the country is more than an amusing game, I have a bridge to sell you.”
Would that be the bridge you bought from the Tories back in May 2010?
In OES more people voted for the candidates who supported the Coalition than voted Labour. Ig you consider that we have a Coalition government, then its the first time for yonks that the Government won a by-election!
I am disappointed at the emotionality that seems to have taken over some of these interchanges. OE&S showed that in an environment where the national media and Labour Party were trying to write the Lib Dems out as any kind of credible force, with an established local candidate, ‘special circumstances’ and a Tory Party doing NOTHING for two thirds of the effective campaign, a well-organised campaign withvery much effective political message and a great ‘squeeze’ campaign managed to prove them wrong in a kind of ‘score draw’.
It was, however, far from a triumph. The Labour vote was slightly up in numbers on May: the Coalition vote was down TEN THOUSAND. But the, we had a coalition government in the throes of introducing a range of really painful and unpopular policies. Does no one remember the Sutton in Ashfield by-election after David Marquand’s resignation? Such a result was bad and just what you might expect in the circumstances.
Good Lib Dem campaigners should be realistically targeting gains from poorer Tory council groups/councillors not through ‘tactical’ effects but because the caution and antipathy towards Lib Dems held historically by many Tory voters appears to have significantly-evaporated under the Coalition. Nick Clegg is far more popular among Tories than he is among Lib Dems at the moment. One Tory vote in such a seat is worth the equivalent of two Lib Dem transfers to Labour. But, of course, if you are not good campaigners, you will not win these Tory votes and seats.
@Simon Shaw
Just like Gove encouraging people to vote for (y)our party.
I messed up the quote system on the post above.
The portion that’s missing is dealing with my disillusionment with the party hence (y)our part – It’s no longer a party I can give my vote to…
It was also missing the context of the quote from Simon
——————————————————————————————————————-
“And it was hardly a secret Tories where encouraging people to Vote Libdem.”
If this were really true, then it would be the political news story of the decade.
Why don’t you get in touch with (say) The Daily Telegraph, who I am sure would pay you very good money for all your evidence.
————————————————————————————————————-
Wonder how you feel about that now ?
@eco
“as Cameron all but instructed Tories to vote LibDem”
Err, sorry, but when you say “all but,” you in fact mean “didn’t”, but wish to insinuate otherwise.
That’s grammar, I’m afraid.
What I find depressing about debates such as this is the continual tribal demonisation of the people of our country for holding different different political beliefs or simply for seeing the world differently. I don’t believe that Tories eat babies, nor do I believe that the Labour Party consists of card carrying communists. They are simply our fellow citizens, and by and large want pretty much the same as everyone else in the country. The tribal rhetoric is simply overblown. The Liberal Democrats can and should be prepared to work with any other democratic party. That rules out the BNP. Apart from that, Lib Dems should be unashamed to work in coalition, as a minority or supporting a minority, with Conservatives, Labour, SNP, Plaid, UKIP or Green in any administration up and down the land. There will always be red lines that will not be crossed under any cicrumstances – and those should be both realistic and clearly stated.
The less political parties demonise those who see things differently, the more likely they are to attract support. I think some of the Labour “correspondents” to LDV ought to consider that. Eventually the tactic wears thin, particularly when, after time, the worst fails to materialise.
I agree strongly with the poster who urged a clear statement of Liberal Democratic philosophy and concentration on the long term strategy of building a core vote, rather than continual tactical calculation of where to hawk for floating or tactical voters.