Thursday saw three principal council by-elections contested, with an additional election fought on Friday. There was a gain for Labour from the Mansfield Independent Forum in Netherfield on Mansfield DC. The MIF didn’t field a candidate as Labour increased their share of the vote by 12.1% to win by 122 votes ahead of UKIP.
Elsewhere UKIP held their seat in the Thurrock BC ward of Aveley & Uplands after a hard fought campaign with the Conservatives who finished second. The UKIP candidate polled 41% to win with a majority of 227 votes.
There was also a hold for Labour in Longholme ward on Rossendale BC, with the party’s candidate winning ahead of the Conservatives by 115 votes.
In addition the contest on Adur DC saw a rare by-election held on a Friday, with the Conservatives holding their seat in St Mary’s ward with 38.4% of the vote.
No Liberal Democrat candidates were fielded in this weeks round of elections.
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* ALDC is the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors and Campaigners
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31 Comments
I do think ALDC are starting to lose the plot a bit with these “analyses” of sets of by-elections with no LIb Dem candidates. Three of those seats were contested by Lib Dems last time fought
Lib Dems are in trouble and they really need to either stop complaining about the coalition or get out of it.
Two of the Lib Dems I have admired most recently have been Norman Baker and Danny Alexander. Kicking up a big fuss and then staying in it like Cable and Clegg is not going to win many votes.
I supported leaving it recently, but if the Autumn Statement is anything to go by it might be worth staying in it. It was a step in the right direction.
Regards
For years (well, since the fees debacle) people have posted here saying that they are – in effect – on strike.
For years they have been ignored by the ‘grandees’.
Longest slow motion crash in history about to end in May?
From Party to self-interested and self-appointed clique, we are disappearing across the country.
Hywel
I think you might be right. If they have not lost the plot, they have forgotten what it was.
The clue ought to be in their name Assocition of Liberal Democrat C**********.
Perhaps a change of name is needed?
There is an opportunity to use this space in LDV to encourage action, promote democratic involvement, start the rebuilding of the party.
Perhaps ALDC has fallen into the rut of waiting until 8th May, waiting for him to resign in the assumption that his departure will make everything better. We need to start rebuilding now.
The national media now regularly rehearse the story of his resignation as soon as the general election is over (especially after his recent habit of going AWOL when the kitchen gets hot) but we should not wait for that.
Grassroots activists now need to determine what they can best do to start the long slow re-establishment of the party as a credible political organisation instead of a laughing stock.
I think not standing a candidate is partly down to the fact that many activists are headed to held/target seats even now. It is however mad, having contested seats last time to not just put a paper candidate up, but perhaps that’s a good way of protesting against the fact that party HQ is still treating partly members with so much contempt.
Sad that there were no LibDem candidates. Have the relevant Constituency parties been contacted?
@JohnTilley – unfortunately “laughing stock” is approaching the literal truth. Undoubtedly most people here will have seen last night’s “Have I Got News For You” in which Mr. Clegg’s tendency to disappear at difficult moments was the subject of some of the jokes. When it has become a stock device for generating laughs in popular BBC comedy panel shows, it has become a major, major problem for the party.
Neale Upstone – if only that were true. The Tories are much better at crossing boundaries in our part of the world. Had at least two neighbouring Tory MPs (from Totnes and South West Devon) and an MEPs staff, bringing in teams of helpers to try and unseat me today. If you can’t make it all the way down here or to another held seat then send a donation or offer to make some calls from home or at least send a book or two of stamps . If it’s going to be the car crash many are predicting let’s try and rescue a few from the wreckage. Thank you. Adrian
Dear Adrian,
You may have missed my previous question to you when you last asked for help on another thread on this forum.
It was ‘why should people bother to help the MPs when the MPs haven’t tried to oust Clegg, which would have improved their fortunes?’ or words to that effect.
We used to run Adur DC for many, many years going way back to the mid-1970s. Now we don’t have a single councillor there and we don’t field a candidate in a by-election.
As Adrian has said to Neale Upstone, not standing a candidate is not down to many activists heading to held/target seats. It’s down to many activists being far less active than they once were or giving up altogether and leaving the party.
Tsar Nicolas 6th Dec ’14 – 7:57pm
You yourself need to discriminate between those MPs who have been happy to be lobby fodder for Coalition madness and those who have stuck out for Liberal Democrat values, principles and policies. It is not difficult, just check the voting records.
Adrian Sanders is one of the few MPs to actually contribute comments to LDV. Unlike some MPs has has a background in the party that ought to speak for itself and ought to command support now that it is needed.
I would urge you and anybody reading this to heed Adrian Sander’s request and help in whatever you can. Everybody can afford a few books of stamps, many people can afford a few hundred quid, or they could do telephone canvassing, which can be done from the comfort of your own home. Don’t wait to be asked — work out for yourself who needs help, which seats could help make a difference and who deserves help on the basis of how they have acted as MPs over the last four years.
I think this is the second time that Adrian has posted openly on this site, appealing for help.
The fact that the neighbouring Tory MPs feel free to go over to campaign against him Torbay is surely a consequence of the Lib Dem decision (taken centrally) to define Totnes and South West Devon as two seats that “do not matter” to us. It is inevitable that the Tory MPs there feel safe and at liberty to go elsewhere.
Perhaps Adrian should direct his remarks to Nick Clegg and his strategic advisers.
John Tilley
I agree with much of what you say – and Adrian’s position in Torbay is precarious (30-30 with the Tories according to the latest Ashcroft poll) and one where outside hep can make the difference.
However, I am still trying to get understand why there has not been the slightest effort on the part of the parliamentary party to get rid of the Dear Leader.
I have been asking activists I meet how they envisage the party being rebuilt after 2015. I genuinely don’t know how it can be done, but several of them have suggested that ALDC needs to take the lead. ALC and then ALDC used to act as an alternative campaigning power base to the parliamentary party and headquarters. This gradually diminished as Chris Rennard made campaigning central to HQ’s function but after his departure this no longer seems to be the case. My suspicion is that Clegg is quite happy not to have any alternative power bases that could challenge him. Is it possible to revitalise ALDC? What is the problem – lack of financial resources? Being tied too closely to the centre? The losses of activists/councillors we have sustained during the coalition? We have to have a plan to rebuild after 2015, and it needs to be a plan owned by the activists, not by the party centrally.
Thank you tonyhill for your thoughts. When we hit rockbottom after the merger between the Liberals and the SDP, it was ALDC who led the fight back despite having next to no money and they should do so again.
Kay is right. She was there and played a leading part in producing and ‘marketing’ the People first Campaigns. It required a campaigning orientated Association and a receptive leadership.
Neither of those factors are now present. As Martin Land wrote perceptively, recently , ALDC has become the northern office of the Camapigns and Field Department. ( hope it was you Martin).
I remember when Adur was something of an LD mini stronghold in West Sussex. The tactic now is not even to turn up for the match so you can’t lose-geddit.
We used to have Adur Council completely sewn-up under Cllrs. John Robinson & Peter Bartram.
Nick Clegg would do well to read Peter Bartram’s advice on effective PR and writing quotable soundbites here: http://www.peterbartram.co.uk/
These are difficult times, and in seats where there is no history of community politics, candidates can, and do, get embarrassingly low numbers of votes. In those circumstances it is very difficult to get anyone to stand. As one long standing member remarked, he would get a higher vote standing as an independent. The Liberal Democrat brand has a negative effect.
In many of these areas the constituency parties themselves are weak, sometime several constituencies have been combined to a single organisation, putting even greater strain on resources that are already stretched. This strategy can work against local associations, with all the resources and contacts concentrated in areas of strength, and involvement outside those areas being restricted to helping out in other places at elections.
I don’t think much can be done until after the general election, when we need to review the structure of the party, and look at a strategy that provides for something more than 30 by elections.
Despite all this, I still think we were right to enter in to coalition, and much of what has followed is the inevitable result when a ‘protest party’ enters government. For a longer explanation of the same position Read Andrew Rawnsley today :http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/07/nick-clegg-lib-dems-coalition-balancing-act-next-election-woo-voters
Andrew Rawnsley has again misinterpreted the position (? lapped up the Cleggite propaganda?). He claims that “the topsoil is very thin, and has been blown away” when referring to the loss of radical supporters and activists. He makes the same claim made by the Cleggies, and some of the newer Lib Dem recruits, that the radicals in the Party are “those who have recently come over from Labour”. As with Matthew Huntbach, and no doubt many other radical Liberals from the past, this sort of comment makes my blood boil. Clegg, in his speeches, has talked of moving away from protest, and being a Party of Government. What the Party has been is preparing for a new politics, a new government; Clegg’s approach has been, in the main, to accept the old patterns from the Labour Tory duopoly. If, Stephen Donnelly, we can have coalition moving away from the old to a more modern model, then bring it on. If all it means is accepting more of the same, it is hardly surprising that much of our support decides it wants little to do with us.
Rawnsley is also wrong to say that the Liberals held the balance of power in February 1974. The figures were Labour 301 seats; Conservative 296 seats; Liberal 14 seats; others 23 seats, giving a total of 635. Do the maths.
Peter Chegwyn 7th Dec ’14 – 5:14pm
I am still waiting for the second volume of Peter Bartram’s ‘David Steel – His Life and Politics’.
The first volume was published in 1981 so there are at least another 30 years to catch up on. 🙂
The simple fact is that Nick Clegg has led our party to ruin, and at every stage MPs have not been prepared to stand up to him. Still the same old lame excuse – “It was always going to be difficult in coalition.” Well it certainly was if you were not prepared to behave like Liberal Democrats, but instead like any other party in power, kowtowing to the leader and awaiting a lordship. Being personally unsullied is not an excuse for wilful indolence.
Forty years worth of hard work by activists across the country sacrificed for a few bits of legislation and bums on ministerial limos. Whether we end up with 35 or 15 MPs in 2015, it will still be a long steady decline going forward as the loss of MPs & MEPs staff unwinds and every seat where an MP stands down is lost in 2020, 2025 and probably onward from that as well. Nick’s legacy will be pure poison for us, while our voters turn to the SNP, the Greens, Labour and even UKIP in disgust.
Nick has to go now, not after May. Do any of our MPs have the courage to say it? Or are they all waiting for someone else to make something happen?
Nick is only 47; I believe he anticipates another 30 years or so as leader.
“Kay Kirkham 7th Dec ’14 – 12:26pm
Thank you tonyhill for your thoughts. When we hit rockbottom after the merger between the Liberals and the SDP, it was ALDC who led the fight back despite having next to no money and they should do so again.”
Kay, you are right. However, it helped to have Paddy visiting various parts of the country, talking to people, even to ALDC in Swansea. Meanwhile, the Dear Leader has still not commented on Rochester or Clacton, although he has tweeted about Formula 1.
David-1 8th Dec ’14 – 2:32am
On the evidence of the last seven years what would he lead for the next 30 years or so as leader?
The rate of attrition is such that after the massacre in a few weeks time the rump in the Commons will be only slightly bigger than October 1974.
If the destruction of the party is maintained he will lead a group of MPs after 2020 no bigger than the “group” of one MEP elected in May of this year.
The astonishing irony is that the only Liberal Democrat group to increase in size whilst Clegg has been leader has been the group in The House of Lords.
Now remind me who was it in this parliament who was going to give us the greatest constitutional reform since 1832?
Who was it that was going to get rid of the obscenity of unelected and hereditary peers?
Tim13
“Andrew Rawnsley … makes the same claim made by the Cleggies, and some of the newer Lib Dem recruits, that the radicals in the Party are “those who have recently come over from Labour”. As with Matthew Huntbach, and no doubt many other radical Liberals from the past, this sort of comment makes my blood boil. ”
Except that Rawnsley just doesn’t say that, and doesn’t say anything remotely like it. Blood boiling over, I fear!
Going back to Hywel’s original comment about ALDC starting to lose the plot.
If only ALDC was a bit more like 38 Degrees.
I have just had an e-mail from some campaigners who have NOT lost the plot, which included —
PS: 2014 has been an incredible year for 38 Degrees. We’ve grown to a community of millions, and we’ve done hugely exciting things. Here are a few highlights:
In April, 38 Degrees members stopped Jeremy Hunt giving himself the power to close hospitals without asking local people or doctors. You funded an expert legal briefing to change Hunt’s law – together we pushed the government to backtrack. [1]
In July, 38 Degrees members swarmed on Downing Street and stopped Syngenta’s attempt to lift an EU-wide ban on bee-killing pesticides. [2]
In August, together we took on retail giant Matalan with a huge petition, emails and calls to its managers, a social media frenzy and direct action in their stores. Eventually Matalan coughed up £60,000 for the compensation fund of the victims of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh. They didn’t give enough, but it showed corporate giants that their customers won’t stand by whilst they treat their workers terribly. [3]
In September, 38 Degrees members forced the scary EU-US trade deal, TTIP, out into the open with 10,000 people taking to the streets around the UK.
The public are now more aware and politicians have been forced to speak up. [4]
In November, in just 24 hours a whopping 150,000 of us signed a petition calling the government not to sell off our forests. We helped organisations like Save our Woods push the government to enshrine protection of our forests in law. [5]
Throughout 2014, thousands of 38 Degrees members have been running their own campaigns on the “Campaigns By You” area of the website.
Chris and the Dorset Hospital Campaign saved their local hospital lab from privatisation. [6]
Simon in Portsmouth pushed the Council to build a road crossing so local children could get to school safely. [7]
And a partnership campaign with Women’s Aid pushed the government to commit £10m to keep women’s refuges open. [8]
It is being in Government and, to an extent, the party’s policies which have caused a drop in support. Looking at by election results there has been a collapse in areas where the Liberal Democrats had never been very strong but had attracted some voters because they were not seen as a governing party. Most of these have either stopped voting or gone to other parties like UKIP, the Greens or Labour. As someone posted on another thread, it appears that actual support for Liberalism was not high but in areas where there was a tradition of Liberal support there has been a decline but not yet a collapse. Those who want to protest against the system have other alternatives now.
One might have expected a surge in support for the Labour Party if people really hated the Government so much but that has not happened to any great extent, possibly because their leader has been demonised by the Tory press, just as Clegg has been, but also because their policies do not seem credible. They cannot be blamed for the world’s financial problems but under Brown and Balls they followed the same misguided policies as places like France, the US, Italy, Greece etc, spending money they did not dare raise in taxes by excessive borrowing to maintain an unsustainable standard of living just as the gentry and minor nobility tried to do before WWII until they were forced to give up and sell their mortgaged estates and great houses. Now ordinary people cannot afford small houses. Wealth is moving to the Far East and we cannot expect the people there to live in poverty so that Western people can enjoy a standard of living they do not earn. There are millions who have no skills and live on benefits while the work is done by immigrants as in the Roman Empire where slaves did the work and Roman Citizens were given bread by the Emperor and circuses at the Coliseum to keep them out of mischief. The modern equivalent would be 100s of TV channels and online pornography.
Turnouts at by elections have been lower than at the General Election and we do not know who those who did not vote would have voted for. People always blame the leader when things go wrong but having Ramsey McDonald, Attlee etc as leader sdid not prevent the advance of the Labour Party because people in the 1930s, 40s and 50s liked their policies and when they no longer liked them they drifted off to the Liberals or Conservatives, not to the Communists or Socialist Workers party and in Scotland and Wales to the SNP and Plaid. People are always looking for something new, hoping things will somehow get better because they usually have done but may not do so in the future
@ John Tilley,
Apart from the inconvenience of so many e-mails from 38 Degrees, it is an excellent way in which the general population can put pressure on the government.
The NHS Action Party is another pressure group that for a minimum of £5 membership sends regular e-mails allowing ordinary people to learn exactly what is going on.