Here’s the story of this year’s local elections in three graphics…
First, let’s start with the bald statistics: the Lib Dems made a net loss of 124 councillors on Thursday. As I pointed out here, that’s slightly better than forecast. But still, as the party’s chief executive Tim Gordon noted in his post-election briefing, each is “a real loss to both their local communities and the Liberal Democrat family”.
But here’s the reason Lib Dems are feeling not-quite-so-bad this morning:
Here’s how the party has summarised the good news:
The final tally across all of our held parliamentary seats is Lib Dem 30%, Con 27%, Ukip 17%, Lab 15%. Our vote share in these parliamentary seats continues to be out in front, with the largest vote share across the country in constituencies like Westmorland, Bristol West, North Cornwall Eastbourne and Colchester. In many of these seats we have gained councillors – four more in North Cornwall, two more in Cheltenham, Chippenham, Westmorland & Lonsdale, and we have gained one or held our number in many other seats. Cheltenham – gaining two councillors and winning 43.2% vote share – up more than 5% on 2009. In 2009 the seat was blue, now it is yellow – echoing the strong support received last year in the borough council elections. In Tim Farron’s constituency of Westmorland & Lonsdale, Lib Dems took 53.8% of the vote and won 12 seats, making a net gain of two from the Conservatives. Lib Dems in Cambridgeshire have toppled the Conservative leader of Cambridgeshire County Council. In Lancashire we’ve beaten the Tories in two wards – West Craven and Pendle Central. In the south we are taking two wards off the Tories in Abingdon – Abingdon South and Abingdon East. In a number of our Parliamentary seats we have extended our lead, increasing our vote share over the Tories in in parliamentary seats such as Mid Dorset & North Poole, Eastbourne and Cheltenham. In Taunton Deane, we’re second behind the Tories by just 1.8% (in 2009 we were behind there by 6.8%). In Eastleigh we gained 37.3% vote share, Ukip gained 35.3% and the Tories slumped to just 17.9% – down 12 pts from 2009. There are also a number of seats where we’ve made real progress. There are now a fistful of parliamentary seats we do not hold where we have the highest proportion of vote share – including Winchester, Oxford West and Abingdon, South East Cornwall, St Albans and Watford. We are breathing down the necks of the Tory party in these seats and are the only party that can take them.
Here’s the third reason last night wasn’t quite as bad for the Lib Dems — we were hit least hard by Ukip’s surge:
Which means the party would have retained 50 MPs if (and it’s a big if) the public voted like this in 2015:
Sky News projection update LAB MAJORITY of 4. (Lab 327, Con 247, LD 50, Oth 26)
— Adam Boulton (@adamboultonSKY) May 3, 2013
* Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall.
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57 Comments
I see, so the fact that the Lib Dems came seventh in the South Shields by-election with just 352 votes as opposed to Labour’s winning vote of 12,493; the fact that you came behind the Independent Socialist and the BNP and lost yet another deposit; the fact that you lost 124 council seats; the fact that the combined losses of this coalition government was 459 council seats in Coalition heartlands; all adds up to wonderful news for you. Whereas the fact that Labour won handsomely at South Shields with 12,493 votes; the fact that Labour gained 291 council seats in Coalition heartlands; the fact that Labour won the only two Mayoral contests; (no-one mentions that I notice) is terrible news for the Labour party. Really? Well, I can’t blame you for whistling in the dark, I suppose.
Surely the vote tally in local elections in Lib Dem held parliamentary seats would be pretty meaningless even in the absence of the UKIP factor. I’m sure the seat where I live is not exceptional – and in that seat before 1997 the Lib Dems comfortably outpolled the Tories in local elections but didn’t get within a mile of winning the parliamentary seat.
On top of that, if it’s true that the Lib Dems have suffered least from the UKIP surge, then that is actually an additional cause for concern. It means that if that UKIP vote goes back ‘home’ in a general election (which I reckon it largely will), Labour and the Tories will receive a bigger boost than the Lib Dems.
Now there are dodgy bar charts and dodgy bar charts… but the party claiming that Labour suffered the most from UKIP? Please.
I can only assume someone matched the national share of the vote against the share of the vote in this election, which was primarily across the shires where elections were held and not in Labour heartlands.
Of course it is the licence of the party to spin the result in its favour – but I hope Lib Dem members are not fooled such stuff.
re labour being the biggest loser resulting from UKIP’s rise; this being in line with the prediction that support for UKIP above 18% would come mostly at labours expense (versus support below 18% mainly eroding tory support).
@Mack (a Labour supporter)
The fact that South Shields was a seat where we were in distant third place and the vote polarised into far right and far left, with an incredibly low turnout;
The fact that these are mid term council elections in difficult economic times;
The fact that Labour left an appalling economic mess and the largest peace time budget deficit of over 11% of GDP (now down to 7%)
All these facts seem to have passed you by completely.
This should have been a massive victory for Labour. In fact, it held onto an already safe seat with a tiny share of eligible voters and failed to reach many of its targets in local elections.
It was a bad result for the Lib Dems, but if we can hold onto most of our MPs while carrying the can clearing up Labour’s dreadful economic meltdown at a time when neighbouring economies are in tailspin, then I think we are holding our own. Furthermore, If Labour did get back into power, their popularity would disappear overnight as people realised what an awful mistake they had made in voting them back in. If we can keep a major presence in parliament in 2015 of around 50 MPs, we will be well placed to capitalise on the resulting fallout.
The worrying thing for me is that it is likely to lead to a strategy of putting all of the party’s resources into protecting our MPs and post-2015 the party will be even more centred around those at the top who are the reason I will no longer vote for it. I find myself hoping for a combination of incumbency bonus in some areas along with a successful decapitation strategy by our opponents in others so that the parliamentary party after the election is one I can support.
I’m afraid I partly agree with Mac, though he too is whistling in the dark in his assessment of how Labour are doing. It does not do our party any good to extract a few crumbs of comfort from a generally dismal picture because all that does is distract us from what we ought to be learning from what the electorate is saying to us. There is a letter in The Guardian today from Alan Bowen who makes some uncomfortably apposite points: “…the Lib Dems have robbed me of my belief in politics. I imagine I’m feeling a bit like a religious person who’s lost their faith. …it’s taken the Lib Dems to remove the scales from my eyes. And , to be fair, it’s not just the Lib Dems, it’s all of them.” An idealistic party which finds itself in power is bound to disappoint – that is why so many on the left prefer opposition to power. But our leadership seems to have no sense that it is idealism that fuels the activists, and that by betraying the principles that brought us into politics in the first place we are all being robbed of our beliefs.
As a footnote: we may still have outpolled the Tories in Winchester, but they took two seats from us on Thursday and UKIP took the Winchester ward of another. Not really much to celebrate.
“Here’s the third reason last night wasn’t quite as bad for the Lib Dems — we were hit least hard by Ukip’s surge:”
Umm, not quite. According to Prof John Curtice in todays Independent, who said:
“A particularly strong Ukip advance made a 12-point difference to the Tory vote, whereas the equivalent figures for the Liberal Democrats and Labour were six points and five points respectively.” and followed that up with:
“However, once again it was the Tories’ coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, who suffered the biggest drubbing. Overall, their vote was down on four years ago by no less than 12 points. Moreover there was no evidence that the party’s vote was holding up better in its strongholds; its vote went down by 14 points in wards where they won over 45 per cent of the vote in 2009.”
The Boulton tweet was one from 3.14pm when not all the results were in & his final tweet was at 7.27pm in which he said:
“Updated @Sky News projection Labour majority of 12. Lab 331 Con 245 L/D 48 Oth 26.”
Whilst understanding you wish to portray the party as having not done as bady as they have, please at least try to be honest.
@RC “This should have been a massive victory for Labour. In fact, it held onto an already safe seat with a tiny share of eligible voters and failed to reach many of its targets in local elections.”
This seems much too harsh. Labour won the support of around 20% of those eligible to vote – and more than half of those who bothered to vote, better on both accounts than Mike Thornton managed in Eastleigh.
And it does not explain where the Lib Dem voters went. Twice as many BNP and Independent Socialist supporters went out to register their votes for parties with no chance of winning, and eight times as many tories. Why was there no vote of confidence in the coalition from Lib Dems who had voted previously in this safe Labour seat?
Andy: if you mean the graph from myself, then it does compare like with like – the national vote share equivalent from last year against this year, i.e. the figures are adjusted to account for the different areas up for election in each round. It’s therefore a like for like comparison. (As you hint at, comparing raw vote totals, for example, wouldn’t work as that gets distorted by which places are up for election in different years.)
“The fact that South Shields was a seat where we were in distant third place and the vote polarised into far right and far left, with an incredibly low turnout;”
But doesn’t the fact that the turnout was low make the Lib Dem vote share of 1.4% even worse? Only just over 1 in every 200 eligible to vote supported the Lib Dems.
And why should the Lib Dems have been squeezed at all in a contest in which the result was a foregone conclusion?
Martin B: The figures you quote are comparing 2013 with 2009. Several things have happened in those four years, such as Gordon Brown stepping down as Labour leader, the Lib Dems entering government and so on. So to compare 2013 with 2009 risks mixing up several different factors in one. That’s why comparing 2013 with 2012 (adjusting for the different wards up for election so it’s a fair comparison) is useful.
It does amuse me however the number of people who look at the 2013 vs 2012 result and react “BUT THAT’S DIFFERENT FROM WHAT I WANT TO BELIEVE SO IT MUST BE DISHONEST NONSENSE” rather than “But that’s different from what I thought, so that’s interesting to learn something new” 🙂
@MArk – you accuse others of reacting “BUT THAT’S DIFFERENT FROM WHAT I WANT TO BELIEVE SO IT MUST BE DISHONEST NONSENSE” when you used a dishonest statement as fact when you posted Boultons tweet, despite knowing that not all councils had declared by mid-afternoon & as comparing 2012 with 2013 is putting up a straw man since the differences in councils are vast.
That’s why psephologists are generally more trusted with their judgements than the rest of us. I would sooner trust a professor with judging the information than a blogger with an agenda.
I’ll point out that I know people who asked whether they could go and volunteer in South Shields and were actively told by the local campaign team not to bother as it was an incredibly low priority.
Personally I think it was a mistake not to put any effort into South Shields (other than the candidate who ran everything from the boot of his car) but such a dismal result isn’t surprising when we were actively turning away people who wanted to help.
Of course e the real problem that Mark Pack’s bar chart shows is that the Lib Dems have lost another 2% of their vote from last year, on top of all the losses in previous years. This time it might be down to UKIP. How much lower must we fall before our leaders realise it is their strategy that is failing, not everyone else messing things up?
Considering these elections took place in Tory heartlands, Labour did fairly well all in all.
Liberal Democrats lost a lot of Councillors.
The Tories took a hammering from the rising UKIP.
I think it is pretty safe to say when local elections come up in Labour stronghold in May 2014, The Liberal Democrats will take a beating from Labour.
Conservatives will take another beating from the rising support of UKIP.
This will put Labour in a pretty strong position for the 2015 General Elections, Whilst the Liberal Democrats grassroots would have been pretty much decimated.
I personally think it is a pretty safe bet that Labour will end up being the largest party at the next General Election even if they do not have an overall majority, I think they will have enough MP’s to make a coalition with the likes of the DUP and who knows maybe even a couple of UKIP MP’s
@Matt
“I personally think it is a pretty safe bet that Labour will end up being the largest party at the next General Election even if they do not have an overall majority, I think they will have enough MP’s to make a coalition with the likes of the DUP and who knows maybe even a couple of UKIP MP’s”
Labour go into coalition with UKIP? You are joking aren’t you? Still, the Liberal Democrats did go into coalition with the Tories: and who would have thought that? Certainly not all those students in those university towns.
However, thank you for your balanced and reasonable response to Labour’s achievements.
If you want to stop your grassroots being decimated I suggest that as good Europeans you get out of the coalition and join the pro European Labour Party in opposition to the most xenophobic Tory party we have ever seen. Under pressure from their fifth columnist sister party UKIP they will probably use their disastrous showing in the local elections as a justification for attempting to take this country out of the European Union and into economic and social disaster.
@Mack
The UKIP part was meant as ” tongue in cheek”
The point I was making was, that I think Labour will be the largest party even if they do not have enough for a total majority. If they are short, then it will be by a very minimal amount requiring possibly only the support of the DUP or maybe even plaid.
I do not think Labour would need the support of Libdems to form a government.
So in seats held by Lib Dem MPs, 70% voted against the Lib Dems? Barely a vote of confidence, is it?
Joe – it would only really be a problem if the Labour Party had held its nerve in1997 and in 2011 and had supported a proportional system. As it is, because of the dodgy system we have for our General Elections, these are the figures we have to care about. Long live FPTP! (never thought I’d write that!) 🙂
@Mack(Not a Lib Dem) – any evidence for your preposterous claim that Labour are pro-European? Have you forgotten already Gordon Brown’s dog-whistle anti-immigrant speech (‘British jobs for British workers!’)?
@Martin B – I trust Prof Curtice less and less … he seems to have no awareness that different parties have variable strength in different parts of the country, and constantly reduces everything to ‘average’ percentages, whatever that means.
@Sid Cumberland
I don’t think you’ll find much appetite in the Labour Party for withdrawal from the European Union. It was, as I recall, the Liberal Democrats who were arguing for an in out referendum at the last general Election. But I always assumed that they wanted this to lance the boil. As for dog whistles, Clegg seems very good at blowing them when it’s in his intrests: i.e., turning through 180 degrees from an amnesty for illegals into a cap on immigration and now advocating a bond. However, I do not infer from that that the whole of the Lib Dems are xenophobic or anti-European.
Martin B: It’s odd to praise psephologists in the same comment as you say comparing 2013 with 2012 figures is putting up straw men due to different wards. Why? Well because I’ve used the figures those very same psephologists you praise calculate themselves to adjust for exactly that issue of different wards in different years.
There are two teams who produced their own sets of such national equivalent vote shares each year (and get very similar results each time) and guess who is a leading member of one of them…? John Curtice himself 🙂 That idea of being able to compare the equivalent national votes shares between adjacent years is at the heart of that very work he does.
The only straw man I can see is claiming that because there are different wards up for ele ction last year and this year you can’t compare what happened to the votes. Of course you can’t compare the simple vote totals, you have to adjust for that. But that’s what John Curtice does, that’s what other psephologists do and that’s the figures I’ve used.
@Joe.
Perhaps look through the last 40 years of general elections to see that most governments are not voted in by a majority. Heck, Labour had a large majority after only 35% of the vote in 2005. Given we are now in a four party situation, the need to win 30% to win a seat is going to be common situation. A win by another name is still a win, especially after a period in government.
That’s the system, I do know of one party that wants to change it though…
@matt
“This will put Labour in a pretty strong position for the 2015 General Elections, Whilst the Liberal Democrats grassroots would have been pretty much decimated.
I personally think it is a pretty safe bet that Labour will end up being the largest party at the next General Election even if they do not have an overall majority, I think they will have enough MP’s to make a coalition with the likes of the DUP”
a) Oh boy, you really don’t understand the LibDem grassroots.
“As the election approaches we shall not shirk the battle, nor shall we be diverted by the great volume of criticism which we hope will pour down upon us.
War, delegates war has always been a confused affair. In bygone days the commanders were taught that when in doubt they should march their troops towards the sound of gunfire. I intend to march my troops towards the sound of gunfire . Politics are a confused affair and the fog of political controversy can obscure many issues. But we will march towards the sound of the guns. ”
Fifty years on and those words still ring true.
b) When Labour bloggers are saying the party is not in a strong position and polls and actual votes cast show Labour aren’t certain to get a majority when they, at present, seem to have an open goal then no, they aren’t in a strong position. Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot were better placed at this stage in a Parliament. Add to the fact more people blame Labour for the economy than the coalition.
c) Labour and the DUP?!?!
@ATF
“a) Oh boy, you really don’t understand the LibDem grassroots.”
You only have to look at dwindling members to see the reality of the situation. Also judging by the number of members on here who have said they will no longer canvass for the party,
“b) When Labour bloggers are saying the party is not in a strong position and polls and actual votes cast show Labour aren’t certain to get a majority when they, at present, seem to have an open goal then no, they aren’t in a strong position. Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot were better placed at this stage in a Parliament. Add to the fact more people blame Labour for the economy than the coalition.”
I think you will find that the polls show that Labour are on course for a majority, and by votes actually cast already show Labour would be the largest party, if not by a majority, then short of only a handful of MP’s
“c) Labour and the DUP?!?!!
Why Not the DUP http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/11/dup-not-ideologically-opposed-coaltion
2015 will really centre around who the voters trust not to damage a weak recovery. Labour already start from a weak position where only half their “voters” trust them with the Economy (Comres 26/3/13) & a third actually distrust them. Added to that they are by far the most divided of the major parties with prominent figures ranging from Communists to some of THE “Blue Labour” people who can sound like UKIP. Labour have avoded exposing their divisions so far by mouthing platitudes or saying nothing but they cant keep that up all the way to 2015.
@ATF “Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot were better placed at this stage in a Parliament.”
Unless you’re anticipating Falklands War Part 2, then comparisons with Michael Foot seem irrelevant (not that it’s stopped Michael Gove making that point). Also, I’m sure Milliband Junior will avoid Kinnock’s Sheffield moment though not the abuse from the right-wing press. But a lot of that will also come our way, so Lib Dems can’t afford to be complacent.
Equally, we don’t have a single party in government (well, in theory we don’t) so it’s very difficult to assess how Labour compares with previous parliaments (or Lib Dems, for that matter). We might as well add the two coalition parties and then lump in the right of centre UKIP as being more of the same and claim that Labour is the worst performing opposition ever.
However, it does me smile when senior Lib Dems and Tories claim that Labour should be doing better: just how rubbish do they think their own coalition is?
@paul barker “Added to that they are by far the most divided of the major parties with prominent figures ranging from Communists to some of THE “Blue Labour” people who can sound like UKIP. Labour have avoded exposing their divisions so far by mouthing platitudes or saying nothing but they cant keep that up all the way to 2015.”
Are these prominent figures all people who joined recently, or did they manage to bury their divisions in the run up to successful elections in 1997, 2001 and 2005? If Labour was going to blow itself apart, I believe it would have done so in the aftermath of the 2010 election.
And what makes you so sure that Labour is “by far” more divided than the tories (Europe and same sex marriage seem to be driving a wedge there) and ourselves (Clegg, Laws & Alexander are political marmite)?
“Perhaps look through the last 40 years of general elections to see that most governments are not voted in by a majority. Heck, Labour had a large majority after only 35% of the vote in 2005. Given we are now in a four party situation, the need to win 30% to win a seat is going to be common situation.”
That’s a meaningless comparison. 35% of the vote averaged across all seats is completely different from 30% of the vote averaged across your own seats.
It’s arithmetically impossible to win a three-cornered fight with 30% of the vote. Obviously in theory you can win a four-cornered fight with 30%, but in practice it would need the votes to be shared out very evenly between the contenders – for example 30%,27%, 23%, 20% – which will happen quite rarely.
So even the 30% figure, if replicated in a general election, would imply the loss of a significant number of Lib Dem seats. Add to that the fact that Lib Dems always poll more strongly in local elections than in Westminster elections, and the possibility that former Tories who voted UKIP this week may return to the fold in a general election, and you’ll see that that bar chart is far from reassuring.
There were clearly some excellent team performances by some Lib Dems this year. There were others which were considerable disappointments. It seems daft to talk too much about averages in the context of 4 party politics. And two years is a long time in politics. It does appear, however, that there are some Liberal Democrats who will not be squashed regardless of what happens nationally.
I’ll start with a confession. On Thursday, I voted Labour. Not because I’m enamoured of the Labour Party, or because I’m terminally disillusioned with the Lib Dems. It was because there was no Lib Dem candidate, and I knew that Labour stood a very good chance of beating the incumbent Tory, which is what happened, by quite a narrow margin. So my vote counted, even though I had to hold my nose to cast it.
Given the economic stagnation, high unemployment, the narrow missing of a triple-dip recession, etc, etc, one would have expected the Labour Party to thoroughly trounce the Tories right across the country. But it didn’t happen. Why? Only the electorate can tell us. Perhaps it had something to do with Labour’s insipid leadership and lack of political drive at Parliamentary level. Or maybe the print media fanning the immigration flames had a hand in it.
Let’s be clear. If Labour is going to form a majority government in 2015, there are quite a few things they should not have done last Thursday. They should not have failed to win a single seat in Hemel Hempstead. They should not have lost their only seat in Ramsgate to UKIP. They should not have failed to make the slightest impact in towns such as Melksham and Westbury, which were Labour strongholds a generation ago. They should not have allowed the Lib Dems to hold on to their base in Ashfield. By and large, the Labour performance was weaker than the current political and economic environment would suggest, and remains vulnerable to UKIP hoovering up their disillusioned supporters in places like North Kent. Labour still has a mountain to climb, and may yet be dependent on the Liberal Democrats to put them in office.
The Lib Dems have shown that where we work we can just about hold on to what we’ve got. Few people are voting for us for reasons other than local work. Let’s be very, very clear about that. Look at Gloucestershire. In Bourton-on-the-Water and Northleach, the Lib Dems got 1,275 votes to 1,216 for the Tories. Yet in the neighbouring Stow-on-the Wold, a division with almost identical characteristics, the Lib Dems polled 185 votes to the Tories’ 1,643, and that’s behind UKIP, Labour and the Greens. That’s the kind of division where, pre-coalition, we’d get 25% without even putting out a leaflet.
If we want to start winning again, then we have to (1) get out of the coalition and (2) marginalise the Lib Dem right. Ironically, the UKIP surge makes (1) a real possibility. That’s what Lord Healey predicts. I do hope he’s right.
@Peter Watson.
I take your point about the Falklands, though the Kinnock point is still valid. I also agree the LibDems can’t be complacent – but then again, which political movement or party can be?
“Equally, we don’t have a single party in government (well, in theory we don’t) so it’s very difficult to assess how Labour compares with previous parliaments (or Lib Dems, for that matter).”
I agree with the first point, but it’s hard to disagree with a matter of fact, but surely by the further fact that the other two main parties in government should give Labour more of an opportunity not less. Yes, Labour have made gains – but they are still at a lower point in terms of the County Councils then they were at any point between 1979-1997 .
Also, given that the government is having to go through a deeply unpopular series of cuts isn’t that an opportunity for Labour to be doing better? Government’s get unpopular quickly and start to see their number of councillors fall, the first Blair government is a case in point, that Labour didn’t take more seats surprises me.
Furthermore, lumping the the most pro-European party with the most anti seems a tad odd. I know Labour has never been able to grasp that Liberal aren’t Tories but to bung us together with Ukip, well, that’s new to me. What does that make Labour then, seeing as Darling said Labour would need to cut deeper that Thatcher ever did? What about Jim Callaghan saying that cutting taxes and increasing spending (as Labour currently propose) isn’t the way to end a recession? Never forget Labour put monetarism into practice before the Tories (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQKTrKF94f4).
Best,
Tom
Oh what a load of trolls appear here when what we need is a sensible discussions amongst Liberal Democrats.
As for John Curtice, I have found it hard to take him (and his consistent anti-LD bias) seriously after he confidently forecast an SNP gain at the Dunfermline by-eleciton!
Tony Greaves
matt, perhaps the people who are posting on here about they’re not canvassing, have time to do so because they’re not canvassing?
As for tonyhill’s point, I feel more fuelled as an activist by seeing more Lib Dem policies that I voted for (and in one or two cases wrote) such as equal marriage, tax cuts for low earners, Pupil Premium etc. being enacted in Government, than by the “ideological purity of the powerless” as ISTR Paddy put it.
As usual Tony Hill is spot on. However I do find Nick Clegg’s statement that “we are now a Party of Government” a bit rich. Actually we have been very much a party of local government for years and his performance is in the process of erasing that as more and more good councillors lose their seats because of it.
Reading the runes for signs of comfort is not unusual for any political party but I’m with Tony Hill on this. In Hampshire there was not much to play for where Ukip gained 10 funded partly by the loss of 7 LD seats and 3 Labour gains and even a Tory gain. Clegg’s hope is that come the next general election the result will be tight and even if the 57 becomes 30 or even 20 that would be enought to keep the Lib Dems in the power business with Labour or the Tories both Mk 1 and 2
I’d like to see a graph showing the vote shares in LibDem target seats for comparison.
LibDems made gains in a number of areas where local party members support each other and actively campaign on behalf of residents. Those LibDems which saw declines are where local groups have failed to organise.
The thread above shows there is a divide between commenters who talk about big issues and the rest who engage in community politics to make a real difference on the ground.
It’s not about warm wet words, it’s about doing serious work to win – because where LibDems work, LibDems win.
Too many people on all sides look to ‘leaders’ (whether Clegg, Cameron, Miliband, Tony Blair, Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage) to find easy excuses to protest. But voters choose the local candidates who will represent us and champion our communities. Westminster isn’t the local council and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to get sucked into the hysterical bubble.
The political elite do not decide the legislation Parliament passes or rejects – it is a media-driven myth that consuming news instead of engaging in a positive relationship with your neighbour is good civic practice. The appearance of a growing separation between politicians and the public is a reflection of the barrier television, newspapers and the internet creates in humanity.
Democracy is about people, so accountability and justice only truly exists in face-to-face situations.
Liberty requires participation to succeed, so we must get out there and talk to more people – on the doorstep, in meetings and at events.
We aren’t just voices shouting in the wind, we are all real people with real concerns.
There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to compare election results, it depends on what you are trying to find out.
If you want to see how we did this year compared to last, then comparing national equivalent vote share, which is adjusted to take into account the areas up for election, is sensible.
If you want to see how our national vote is holding up against the same round of elections in the last parliament, then a comparison with the 2009 elections is sensible.
If you want to see how it’s looking in our held and target seats, then looking at the results in those seats is sensible.
I’m primarily interested in how we are going to do in my seat of Oxford West & Abingdon so I’ve compared the aggregate vote across the constituency in the county elections. There have been some small boundary changes which make an absolute comparison impossible, but it looks like we’ve improved from being neck and neck with the Tories in 2009 to being 7% ahead of them this time.
@ATF
The problem for me with the Foot and Kinnock comparisons is the implication that because they both failed in subsequent general elections then so will Milliband. Such an approach could lead to complacency on the part of the government parties, and the sort of personal attacks on Milliband that should not be part of the Lib Dem’s political arsenal. Though perhaps Lib Dems could usefully learn from the tories’ experience against Kinnock that it is worth getting rid of the leader a year or two before the election 😉
Linking UKIP with the coalition was deliberately mischievous but Lib Dems should bare in mind that the party is perceived to have side-stepped to the right by many former voters, and one of the consequences of Labour falling short because of a UKIP surge is that after 2015 Lib Dems could be in coalition with Tories and a parliamentary UKIP or a Tory party that has embraced UKIP’s policies in order retain their vote.
@BrianD:
” I do find Nick Clegg’s statement that “we are now a Party of Government” a bit rich”
Shades of “We are a Grandmother?”
This is basically the party spin on the results. The problem is that this usually gets substituted for proper analysis.
Being ahead of the Tories in our held seats is good – but if that wasn’t the case (and it is pretty close) it would be a pretty major disaster. The key figure is how was that performance 4 years ago and how are we performing now. Big local election results aren’t that good an indicator of anything – eg in one held seat in 2009 we outpolled the Tories 48/38 but went on to lose. If our share has fallen since then then that is a warning sign for the future (though not fatal as there were seats we “lost” in local terms in 09 but went on to win in 2010).
Secondly, the comparison of local and national vote share doesn’t take account of the extent to which local campaigners are distancing themselves from national politics and getting people to focus on a local vote for their local council. There will be many seats we have won that were in no way a vote endorsing the coalition.
Thirdly, our vote share fell further on Thursday – that we didn’t lose more seats was down to the UKIP intervention splitting votes off from the Tories (as in Eastleigh).
And finally the idea that we are not being affected in our held seats runs counter to the Eastleigh result where we lost about as much vote share (14 points) as in South Shields (13.5 points) .
Like the Eastleigh result these were not good for the party. Trying to portray them as such is incredibly dangerous as it will mean we don’t address the problems the party is facing in the
All parties in government will suffer electoral setbacks in the backdrop of world recession and austerity.
Having said that the LibDems have achieved raising the income tax threshold and freezing the ever increasing council tax.
However these successes LDs have let claimed by the Tories with the Tory leadership to be able news manage and dumping of bad news onto the LibDems.
The LD leadership need to (make a better job to) challenge the Conservative propaganda lie/news management machine.
It is the coalition and the Conservative ideology that is causing the problems.
People like and warm to liberal principles but now associate the LibDems with putting and keeping the Tories in office. This is damaging to the LibDems as we are being distance from the liberal ideology we wish to propagate.
Case in point: In the Isle of Wight (a seat associated with Liberals for a long time) we LD lost a good councillor in Ryde ain those elections and are down to only 1 seat on the council of 40 members. more worrying the official LDs only contested less than half a dozen seats officially. I say ‘officially’ as many of the Liberal democrat minded people including our last council leader and also our party secretary stood as ‘Independents’ and did a lot better than their official counterparts, as they distance themselves from the Tory coalition.
Yes, Liberals without the Tory coalition baggage. Incidently, these standing outside the coalition tainted party took enough seats to remove the Tories from overall control on the council (Isle of Wight is now the only seat in the South east where the Tories have no majority).
Liberal Democrats need to distance ourselves from the dying Conservative party machine, particularly as it prepares for its general election fight.
Those economy policies are not working, the conditions in the banking sector still exists to causes a repeat of 1929/2008.
Tory policies have insured that when austerity is removed all the printed money from the central bank in the form of QE to bail out out the failed commercial banks will cause rapid inflation. Its not working.
What are we to do?
“Oh what a load of trolls appear here when what we need is a sensible discussions amongst Liberal Democrats.”
If you want to participate in discussions only with party members, surely the members’ forum is the appropriate place?
And you really need to learn the difference between “troll” and “someone who doesn’t support my party”. I can’t see any post in this thread that would appropriately be described as trolling. I suggest you reflect that there are a lot of disillusioned former supporters around, and that calling them names isn’t going to do anything to attract them.
@Ernest
“Having said that the LibDems have achieved raising the income tax threshold and freezing the ever increasing council tax.
However these successes LDs have let claimed by the Tories with the Tory leadership to be able news manage and dumping of bad news onto the LibDems.”
You do realise that a council tax freeze was in the CP manifesto? It’s something they banged on about for ages, so you shouldn’t be overly shocked if they claim it – especially as it wasn’t in the LD manifesto and (I seem to recall) it was ridiculed in the usual political way prior to the GE.
The Liberals were wrecked by the Lib-Con coalition that became the National Government (tory-led) of the1930’s depression era, and emerged post-war with six or seven seats as a rump party. The same fate looms for the LD’s in the national Coalition government today, similarly bungling its way through the current great depression.
Why? because voters have learnt that while Liberal principles will not be implemented if we loose (though we can temper Tory excesses while in Opposition) we also can not implement them if we win in Coalition: our basic commitments such as welfare, student support, open justice etc. are brushed aside along with a lack-lustre AV campaign. So why bother? Our Party leaders have licked the lollipop of mediocrity: we could have survived defeat. but will not survive betrayal and destruction of hope.
What to do? Go back and rebuild as we did once before, with radical reform initiatives? Yes unless have the new men, the new ideas, have slipped away too far? Then we have become the same tired old Cleggite Liberals. proclaiming the need for new ideas without actually having any.
Michael Parsons,
the Liberal Party of the 1930s was not the same party as they transformed into after Llandudno, when we adopted community politics as our political method. This changed the whole dynamic because it places the emphasis on active campaigning in your community and no longer depends on manipulating favourable editorials in national news.
If you want to make a positive difference it will only happen if people stop trying to be clever and get active. It is a matter of having a personal responsibility to society.
Oranjepan
Having been occasionally clever and often active in the post-war Liberal rebuild I know something of that transformation , and also know the feel of the Party then and now: I can only offer you my analysis on the basis of many years. Get active yes: but behind the Orange Book rehash of old 1970’s ideas? Not credible. We need to start by doing some serious thinking. Why is it UKIP that is discussing not taxing workers’ incomes, and taxing “economic rent”instead? as the Liberals used to propose? Why are Scottish Nationalists starting to look seriously at policies to end the UK’s decline into a low-wage, low-skill economy in which markets rule, public services dwindle and the gulf between rich and poor widens?(The “Common Weal” policy). Once we worked with them as an anti-Unionist party. Time now to pick up our social commitments again . Time to bury Thatcherism too.
Michael,
no, not serious thinking, serious campaigning.
Inequality is the product of failing to connect ideas to effective action with lasting results. In their desire to split from the UK and EU, UKIP and the SNP embody disintegration and disconnection from wider communities – they propose a negative vision of politics which liberals must counter.
So while it’s to our credit that they are now listening to the concerns we’ve raised over many years, it’s important we also show how their narrow perspective isn’t in the general interest by saying those policies we originally advanced and are now growing in popularity again are only a small part of a comprehensive policy agenda which require a principled framework to avoid legislative conflict.
So don’t make the mistake of trying to use the Orange Book to cast aspertions, it was a significant step on the way to transforming our party and way of doing things into the more purposeful organisation we need to be if we ever want to form a majority LibDem government. We need a more balanced approach on a variety of issues to win the support we need to introduce our ideas, which means being more consensual and cooperative rather than unilateral and polemic.
Thatcher remains controversial because was only half-wrong; we don’t need to bury her and we couldn’t bury her legacy if we tried, we need to resurrect understanding of the context of the times in which she operated and how this differs from today’s challenges.
I fully support public services, such as universal health and education – because they fulfil a specific role in the promotion of greater equality of opportunity. But we do need to redefine the boundaries of the state to reestablish better social relations and the legitimacy of authority.
We mustn’t fooled into the assumption made by some that services are an end in themself – they are the means by which individuals can find peace and liberty, not the means for cynical politicians to bribe electorates. Bribery is dishonest because it is inefficient and unsustainable policy, it creates unhealthy mutual dependency rather than providing healthy mutual support.
The paradox was that Thatcher helped precipitate the end of a century of conflict and polarisation by being the most confrontational and divisive figure on the political stage.
We now live in a period of globalisation and pluralisation – so our horizons have grown, we must be more ambitious!
Replying to Chris_sh comment, yes, the the CP manifesto did have a commitment to freeze council tax. There was a general opinion that the council tax couldn’t just rise year on year without incomes growing in pace. That is why the LD proposed that we switch to local income tax, at least we have a more permanent solution. What is the Tories next move cut, cut and more cuts. Or Labour party let it rip and all go broke.
Freezing council tax is an immediate temporary solution: local income tax is the permanent solution we must aim for.
Oranjepan
I doubt if self-congratulation is either appropriate or effective under present circumstances. If Liberal notions of taxing pure rents, or for Home Rule as now emerging in Scotland, are at last bearing fruit, why have these policies withered on your particular vine? As to “wider community interest” have you actually read the Reid Foundation Common Weal proposals? A host of ideas for restoring communities here too, I suspect.
http://reidfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/The-Common-Weal.pdf
With all respect the first step to even seeing the possibility of regeneration, let alone working for it, is getting down off the high horse.
Michael,
it struck me you were the on one their high horse. I sit in my tree and swing through the political undergrowth.
Oranjepan
Given the contempt (I don’t think that is too strong a word) and widespread distrust in which politics is held. I shouldn’t think there is much “living undergrowth” left for you.! I mean seriously what sort of political discussion is this? If we can do no better, RIP and sooner the better.
I don’t blame the internet and media, despite the fact it encourages bad communication. It is for each of us to accept our responsibilities and with it the consequences.
I completely disagree that the political habitat is being destroyed – what the changed environment means is that we’ve got to be better at finding the places for discussion and debate. Let me tell you, the undergrowth is thicker, deeper and more luxuriant than it has been for decades.
I can’t speak for you but my experience of getting out there and having those face-to-face conversations is that ‘contempt’ is a completely false description, while ‘distrust’ is actually a good thing. If you’re not having those face-to-face conversations then, well, how do you know?
People are angry because the political classes are not reaching out and engaging, which is both caused by and leads to fragmentation.
This prevents ordinary voters from holding to account community and national leadership alike. But equally it is because ordinary voters no longer see ourselves as part of civic political infrastructure – as part of the political process which organises and shapes society.
Thatcher’s most hateful comment that there is no such thing continues to provide ample justification for those seeking excuses to be lazy – so, paradoxically, your conditional ‘RIP’ would actually be evidence of your agreement with her, the opposite of what you oringinally said.
Such commentary has overtaken meaningful action in recent years and with it the sense of detachment has grown. Yet politics was always uncool because it is the forum for disagreement and debate. As such it often happens behind the backs of politicians, where it can’t be seen, so commentators are lulled into calling it by some other name and this creates a detatchment in the public mind.
As liberals we want to reverse that trend, and that means ignoring all the false proclaimations and predictions. It doesn’t depend on ‘them’, it depends on each and every single one of us. I won’t say ‘you’re either part of the problem or part of the solution’, but the efforts of many do not correpond exactly with their stated intentions.
…maybe I was wrong above – if you do need to do some serious thinking, perhaps you should think seriously about getting campaigning again.
Oranjepan
But equally it is because ordinary voters no longer see ourselves as part of civic political infrastructure – as part of the political process which organises and shapes society.
Thatcher’s most hateful comment that there is no such thing continues to provide ample justification for those seeking excuses to be lazy
This is the usual misreading of that comment, which if you look at closely and in context does not say at all what it is generally interpreted as saying.
What Thatcher actually meant here was that there was no separate abstract thing called “society” which is separate from the people who make up society. So if everyone sits around waiting for this abstract thing to do something, nothing will happen. In the end it dos rely on individuals being motivated to do something. Thatcher was NOT arguing that we should not be socially motivated, in fact she was arguing the opposite – that we SHOULD be socially motivated, that we should not sit around waiting for others to do things. In fact, Oranjepan, the very opposite of what you accuse her of here.
In much the same way and for much the same reasons we can also say “there is no such thing as The Market, there are just people”. It is a useful thing to say, not because one despises the very idea of market economics, but as a reminder that it is a mistake to rely on simplistic market theory while forgetting the human element.
Ernest
I say ‘officially’ as many of the Liberal democrat minded people including our last council leader and also our party secretary stood as ‘Independents’ and did a lot better than their official counterparts, as they distance themselves from the Tory coalition.
This seems to have happened in quite a few places. It shows just how wrong the Liberal Democrat leader was to claim that any success of party candidates in the local elections was an endorsement of his leadership tactics. He is dragging us down, down, down. He is a liability. Our party is being destroyed by him staying on top. We have good people working for it at local level, good people who can get local support, and now they are finding they get that local support better when they cut off anything which identifies them with what’s at the top.
Oranjepan
So don’t make the mistake of trying to use the Orange Book to cast aspertions, it was a significant step on the way to transforming our party and way of doing things into the more purposeful organisation we need to be if we ever want to form a majority LibDem government.
It was jumping on a sinking ship. It was like issuing a pamphlet promoting state-centralist socialism and promoting the USSR as a model of society we should try to emulate more in around the year 1980.
Sure, we should be aware of the basic idea of the free market and be able to make use of it when it works, we should understand the arguments in its favour. But we didn’t need to do this when the Orange Book came out, the Conservative Party had been doing it since 1979, and the Labour Party since 1997. There wasn’t a need for us to say “we too”. The urgent need was to adopt a critical attitude to what by then had become conventional orthodoxy, not denying it altogether, but asking why in practice it doesn’t seem to deliver what it promises – just as a few decades earlier there was an urgent need to do the same regarding socialism when that was the favoured orthodoxy.
Matthe Huntbach
Yes absolutely right.
I am beginning to suspect that public awareness and revulsion are running deeper than anyone ever imagined: we seem to have widely institutionalised criminality – the swindling MP’s. the tax-dodging rich, the corrupt police, the complicit “regulators” the unpunished acts of blatant criminality b y bankers that have destroyed their own institutions and been used as an excuse for impoverishing workers and savers, the abuses of position by “sexual predators” among the respected in all walks of life,, the lying and cover-ups, the whole farce of “adversarial politics” (my figures are better than yours. the obvious scams like promises of referendums which we have all learned will be re-run till the “right” result is obtained, the skilful diversion of debates on petitions etc.)
Why should we be bothered with these people further? That question has emerged and I think explains why at the very heart of the “free market” scam – the IMF and EU financial authorities – there is now a panic-driven demand for more “growth” , to appear to be reversing their attack on the public in the hope of escaping the looming consequences of our rejection and disbelief.
In short, I think the disillusion goes way beyond mere “party politics,” if only because the parties are rightly judged not to be believed, and will not easily regain even a tithe of the trust they have squandered, young Clegg among them too. How to go forward? Not by playing the politicians’ games, but by casting off fearful silence and so discussing and speaking out as we are now: until change comes: as Voltaire put it long before the Sun newspaper “it was books what done it.” or words to that effect.