A great set of local election results – but to say that we did “well” or “better than expected” is, in my view, an understatement.
On our resources, which do not include the money of (Lord) David Sainsbury (of Turville), or (Lord) Michael Ashcroft (of Tax Haven) or (Lord) Irvine Laidlaw, we’ve done fantastically. Apologies for the brackets, but I think we can say that their ‘titles’ are optional.
Can we do better? You bet!
Here in Cambridge, for example, I doubt that a single leaflet mentioned Nick Clegg’s name. I think they should have. Our local election campaigns should be building national momentum: raising the profile of our leader, his team and our policies.
Neither did we, here, highlight the Tory-Labour collusion on their tax policies for the super wealthy. We seem to be allowing them to feed their funding habit is a somewhat similar fashion to the way that the media supports the drink and drugs train-wreck lifestyles of various celebrities. If we can be certain of one thing, then it’s not going to be Rupert Murdoch who does the job for us on tax!
On this front, I do hope that by this time next year, a site expanding on something like politicalfundingwatch.blogspot.com is out there and we’re making it very clear who’s pockets the opposition is in. It’s certainly something I’m keen to move forwards.
And, to be clear, the need to attack this Tory-Labour collusion, is not just for our political gain, but more importantly, for the sake of:
– The vast majority of us who need the NHS: polyclinics look likely to benefit big business, not those who use the service;
– Those of us who rely on post offices and small shops;
– Those who need good public transport: we must break the regional monopolies of the bus operators, especially in light of ever increasing fuel prices;
– Those whose prospects are poor because their parents were poor: we want a society where every child born has equal opportunities based on their commitment and ability, not on the wealth of their parents;
– Our children and their children, who, unless we wrestle back control from what is becoming what I can only call a monopolist’s plutocracy, will be faced with a planet raging with conflict, on a path that was set for the short term gains of a few who lacked the compassion to see beyond their own desires.
These and more are being eroded, not because they’re not needed, or because we don’t know how to improve them, but because of the stupid situation that subverts our democracy.
So, my view: A great result? Yes. Can we do better? You bet! Let’s put power back where it belongs: in the hands of the people!
* Neale Upstone is Liberal Democrat councillor for Kings Hedges on Cambridge City Council.
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45 Comments
What?!? A great set of local election results?!? With a government in terminal decline, the Lib Dems only managed to pick up a handful of seats. At a local level I’m sure there are some happy Lib Dems but the national picture was an embarrassment.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
Sorry ‘Letter from a Tory’ we don’t buy your line. the party exceeded the targets and expectations and won over 1800 seats gaining on 4 years ago which was a high water mark in seats.
This was never going to be an easy campign for the Lib Dems this year with poor national profile due to media deluge in favour of the Tories and Nick only new in the job as leader.
the real question to ask is how come the Rories didn’t hurt us at a time when Labour collapsed?
Letters…you are talking absolute twaddle…’terminal decline’ rather than that this election did provide evidence that the Lib Dems are a solid electoral force…..your party failed to sweep the board as impressively as it should have done given the terminal unpopularity of the Labour government and that was due mainly to the solidity of the Lib Dems…
It was always going to be a difficult election precisely because people are seriously wanting to kick Labour….but we still command urban centres like Newcastle and Liverpool and can win in places like St Albans too…so all in all a good set of results (apart from London).
Neale, claiming that this was a great set of elections is rather comical (in the comical Ali sense of the word). Sure, you can claim that the resources were not there, although local election campaigns are not, in my experience, limited by cash but rather by number of feet on the ground. In fact, you could argue that at a time when public perception of mainstream politicians is at an extreme low the Lib Dems, who have done well on their anti-establishment credentials in the past, should have been reaping a happy harvest.
But they didn’t. In London the Lib Dems got squeezed horribly in the Boris-Ken bunfight and in the rest of the country they struggled to pick up the “not Labour” vote, which mostly went to the Tories.
The reasons for this are, I am sure, being dissected in detail by the good and great followers of the great orange pigeon in their Cowley St roost. But to pretend that it should not be of concern is ludicrous.
Letters: You also failed to say anything about the difference in resources. Simply put, in a fair fight, without your wealthy mates, could you expect to do so well?
It’s interesting that you have nothing to say about the rest of the article
wot is about these tories that they have such empty lives that they feel obliged to post on ‘the place to talk’ of another party? Frankly, I wouldn’t waste my time reading a torylabour web site, leave alone bothering posting snidey little comments on it….
Felix Holt, we should welcome those of opposing views. They challenge us and help us define what we think, if only because we don’t agree with anything they say (and have to articulate why).
I visit all kinds of blogs, including ToryHome and Iain Dale’s Dairy. Though some of the commentators get to me after a while, it must be said.
Local elections not limited by cash!!! Maybe so for the Tories with their fat-cat donors, but where I live if we were to fight every seat in the city convincingly it would cost £15,000-30,000. How many local parties can afford that (and every year to boot)?
Neale is right…the Lib Dems were indeed squeezed in London but that is the only place really…where we were an established presence people looked to us not the Conservatives and where we weren’t people went to the Conservatives. 44% was a good share of the vote but that was still 3% short of Blair’s high water mark in 95…
Felix,
I imagine you see the political landscape as a set of camps with people sniping at each other, If that is the case then there would, indeed, be no particular reason for people of one party to try to understand the thought processes and beliefs of the others, or indeed for an intellectual dialog between the various camps.
I find your position extremely worrying. It is much akin to 1950s racism, where ignorance breeds contempt; “they eat horses, don’t they”. If you want to inhabit this sad world then you are welcome to it.
Leters, if the Lib Dem performance was as poor as you allege, how is it that the Tories failed to make any headway in areas where they are challenging or being challenged by Lib Dems?
Why the Lib Dem recovery in Winchester, the Tory wipe-out in South Lakeland, or the removal of the final Tory councillor from the highly prosperous suburb of Dore and Totley? Not to mention the continuing solidity of the Lib Dem performance in places such as Berwick-on-Tweed, Eastleigh, Portsmouth South, Southport and Wareham?
When Thatcher won her 1983 landslide on the back of the Falklands War (with 44% of the vote) most of these areas were rock solid Conservative. Indeed, the only constituencies in England now held by a Lib Dem which were held by the Liberal/SDP Alliance in 1983 were Bermondsey, Berwick-on-Tweed and Truro.
I agree with Asquith…its good that people debate here from all different shades of opinion…
Steve,
In England and Wales you are allowed GBP 600 + 5p per elector per ward. I doubt if I have ever spent close to this, and I assure you I have never seen any Ashcroft cash; it all comes in small donations from members.
Now, of course, if you want to fight a campaign in an area that you have no grassroots support then you are going to need a reasonable donor. But in that case you are probably engaging in political games to get some yellow on the map so you deserve every obstacle that you find.
Steve C: Did I give the impression that I thought we should all have ‘loadsamoney’?
I rather took it as read, that I’m in favour of limits on donations.
In fact, my personal view is that we go much lower than the £25k and £50k limits that have been suggested. I think it was in the Guardian I read someone suggest that to cut it to £50k would still mean that you’d very much likely be a millionaire to be making a donation of that size, so it’d still be an exclusive club.
Sesenco,
The reason is that electors are not stupid; there were a lot who were keen not to vote Labour and were happy to vote Lib Dem or Tory depending on who was likely to do the better job. Sadly for the Lib Dems, in the vast majority of areas this was the local Tory.
You miss my point completely, Letters. For Cameron to get inside No 10 his party will have to win seats from the Lib Dems. Last Thursday’s performances suggest this is unlikely to happen.
So Passing Tory admits that most people have no reason to vote Tory other than to get rid of Labour. Hmmm, illuminating.
Sesenco,
That assumes that the electorate are looking for the same things in a general election as in local elections.
But if you want to go and give yourselves a pat on the back and a big group hug then feel free. My money is still on there being some concerned Lib Dem strategists behind the scenes who are desperately trying to work out how to avoid a London-style squeeze in the next GE.
Passing Tory: You are a perfect example of everything that has me fight the liberal democracy corner.
To say that any political party deserves obstacles puts you firmly in the camp of Robert Mugabe. The whole point of democracy is that we have a society that works for the benefit of all people, not just a privileged few. You really do represent the thinking of an age gone by.
http://thetwowordanswer.blogspot.com
Rob,
Nice try! Where did that “most” creep in from?
Where did the second part of the sentence come from? If you are going to pretend to quote me then at least do it accurately.
Of course there are disillusioned Labour voters at the moment (or did you not spend any time on the doorsteps in the run up to May 1?) and when they are looking where to shift their allegiance the vast majority, very sensibly in my opinion, realise that the Tories have the best candidates and set of policies for their area.
Letters, you have still not addressed my point. In comparable areas where there was a weak Lib Dem presence Tory candidates were scoring over 70%. This does rather suggest that Cameron’s Conservatives are unable to beat Lib Dems in areas where they are a credible force. The “squeeze” only works where the Lib Dem candidate is third placed – which doesn’t apply to any of the constituencies I have mentioned. If I were David Cameron or one of his advisors I would be very, very worried.
In the late 90’s I used to engage in this delusional nonsense when my own party, the Conservatives, used to go around saying how great things really were. Thinking back I actually feel sorry for you.
Your instincts are telling you the Lib Dems are being squeezed and they need to work out how best to take seats from labour to replace the ones they are going to lose to the Conservatives.
Sesenco,
Are you having a larf? I am sure that Cameron’s team will not be complacent, if only because they are likely to have to pick up the pieces of a rapidly deteriorating national government which has fouled up so many economic and social aspects of the country over the last ten years.
However, lets think about how far Clegg’s team are from a post-election analysis where they can say “oh well, we only got 44% of the vote, but if we knuckle down hard then we might improve on this a bit next year”.
Your analysis of the squeeze position may end up being correct, although I wouldn’t stake too much money on it. I think it is far more likely that in a GE people consider they are voting for a government, in which case the LDs will be in a classic 3rd place squeeze on current trends.
And, of course, if Boris confounds his critics and does a good job in London then it is going to be very tough for the Lib Dems to hold on in the South against a demonstrably effective Tory team; however, switching to pick up the disaffected Labour vote is also extremely risky. As I have written before, it is going to be most interesting to see what the LD strategists come up with.
Kevin Davis obviously hasn’t bothered to read the figures, which indicate that Lib Dem support is holding firm against the Conservatives in the areas that matter. There is no evidence that Lib Dems are being squeezed. Indeed, my (admittedly rather poor) arithmetic tells me that 25% is greater than 24%.
Read the figures, Letters. Why did the Conservatives fail to make any impact against the Lib Dems in areas where the Lib Dems are strong? If Cameron is to become PM his party has to sweep the board in Winchester, not lag by 6%. The Tory advance last Thursday was against Labour and Labour only, which tells us that Cameron’s 44% was nothing more than a protest vote. When Labour recovers, those extra votes will vanish.
Sesenco,
Even if your analysis is right w.r.t. these last set of (local) elections, it does not necessarily follow that you can extrapolate to a GE; the dynamics of these two types of election are very different.
And yes, I did realise as I was writing “classic third party squeeze” that the Lib Dems actually got a higher proportion of the (reconstructed) popular vote than Labour. But the problem here is that the Lib Dems are primarily up against the Tories in many of their seats, and many Lib Dem activists prioritise Social Democrat ideals so see the Conservatives as a natural enemy to a far greater extent than Labour. Thus, as the Tories gain strength and Labour loose there is still a real danger (or should I say chance 🙂 that the Lib Dems will end up in a squeeze position.
The Lib Dems are strongest in the South, not the North. There were few elections in the South and where there were the LD’s did not perform well. This is especially true in SW London where they not only performed badly but they were out campaigned for the first time in 20 years.
As Rees-Mogg reported in The Telegraph they even failed to win a Somerset County by-election where Labour did not even put up a candidate! OK, you can’t extrapolate this result across the country but neither can you over-egg the few areas where the Lib Dem support “held up”.
Kevin Davis, in support of a false proposition, is selective with his data.
Berwick-on-Tweed, Cheltenham, Colchester, Dorset Mid and Poole North, Eastleigh, Hazel Grove, Oxford West and Abingdon, Portsmouth South, Sheffield Hallam, Solihull, South Lakeland, Southport, Winchester.
All the above are Lib Dem authorities with Lib Dem MPs representing all or part of their territories. In every case, the Conservatives failed to make progress against the Lib Dems (and in one or two cases slipped back). Yet, at the same time, the Tories made very substantial gains from Labour.
Surely this indicates that the enhanced portion of the Tory vote last Thursday was a protest vote only, and will evaporate once Labour recovers?
The London election has peculiar features and it is difficult to draw too many inferences from it. Letters from a Tory and Kevin Davis cannot have their cake and eat it. They cannot point to the poor Lib Dem performance but at the same time ignore Labour’s strong showing relative to the rest of the country.
Sorry – for “Dorset Mid and Poole North” read “Purbeck”.
I’m not quite as sanguine as some other posters here: we certainly had some good results, particularly bearing in mind that we were defending gains made in 2004 when post-Iraq disillusion was at its height. But I look at election results with a ‘rationality filter’: a result is rational if the party that runs the council has done a lousy job and its candidates are defeated; or if it has done a good job but a particular councillor is useless and is defeated; or if there is a particular local issue that a sitting councillor has taken an unpopular view on (which usually means that they are right and their opponents are wrong – but nonetheless their defeat is still rational). A result is irrational if the ruling party has done a lousy job of running the council but still wins; or if a useless candidate beats an excellent sitting councillor. Last year there were a lot of irrational results due to the Tory surge: this year there were fewer affecting LibDems but, I suspect, many affecting Labour. The one thing that gives me hope that support for the Tories at the next general election will not be irrational is that so far Cameron has almost completely failed to provide a narrative for a Conservative government beyond ‘not Labour’. This is in stark contrast to Margaret Thatcher in 1979 or even Blair in 1997.
Tony,
Your rationality metric is quite a nice one although some of your conclusions seem a little bit subjective to me.
Is it fair to compare Cameron’s position now with Thatcher’s in ’79. Surely Thatcher in ’77 would be a better comparison. Cameron still has a LOT of time to fill out his message and indeed if he were to do so right now it would all seem frightfully stale come the election. I realise you want to see him fail but he seems to be rather admirably sticking to his own schedule.
And, of course, with the chance to demonstrate what a Conservative administration is capable of in London, there is a fantastic opportunity to make the choice of voting Conservative in the next GE entirely rational.
Sesenco seems to make my point for me as some of those Councils he mentions are not in the south!
Your vote share was lower than it was under Ming last year and apart from a few Councils you performed worse than a year ago.
Despite all the hard work the votes are returning to two party politics and the Lib Dems as a party pof protest, rather than a vote for change, has returned.
The fact is a procession of Lib Dem leaders and their colleagues have squandered the opportunity to “break the mould”, as you would put, by acting to do what is best for the current crop of mainly southern MP’s rather than what is best for your party. For the first time in twenty years I have just sat through an election, in one of your strong Westminster seats, where you were out campaigned. There were very few of what were tawdry and dull leaflets, no canvassing, not a single poster, not a single teller in sight, no knocking up. All this in a seat you expect to hold on to. All this from a party that pretends it is “Working for you all year round”. Maybe they are working only when they think they can win?
It does not matter to me what you do or don’t do about this if it means we will go on beating you. I don’t suggest we are exactly flooded with activists but it is clear yours is disappearing fast.
I don’t think any Lib Dem should be worried about threats from Yeovil Conservative PPC Kevin Davis ‘go(ing) on beating you’.
This after all is the same Kevin Davis who lost one of the safest Conservative seats to the Lib Dems in Surbiton at the last Council election despite his party making significant gains elsewhere in the Borough.
It was in Tony Hill’s term ‘a rational result’ 😉
Usual lies from Dan, but as I say, if you want to go on believing all that you are saying it is your loss not mine.
It is interesting, if only because his analysis says:
“The Liberal Democrats, for a long time the beneficiaries of protest votes, first from the Tories and then from Labour, show signs of running out of steam.
A change of leadership has not performed the trick this time and there are few more rehearsals before the general election is upon us.”
Kevin Davis makes an irrelevant dsitinction between seats in the North and seats in the South. I make a relevant distinction between seats where the Lib Dems are strong and seats where the Lib Dems are weak. In the former category, the Conservatives failed to make any headway last Thursday despite their national score of 44%.
Why should this be? Is it because the votes they are winning from Labour are protest votes? Ofcourse, in some areas protest votes go to Lib Dems, and we may lose them come the General Election. But most of our MPs are threatened by Tories, not Labour.
I suspect that if the electorate really was so deeply smitten with David Cameron, the Tories would be winning in precisely those areas where they won so handsomely in 1983 (the last time the Tories got 44% at a General Election). But that isn’t happening. In fact, in areas where the Lib Dems are strong, the Lib Dem vote is holding fast and nudging ahead.
Which is why Tories like Kevin Davis will go on losing to Lib Dems.
It is a bit rich of biased opposing commetators like letters from a tory or passing tory to suggest they are participating in intellectual dialogue when they indulge in selectivity, assumptions and partisan slanging.
The comments of tory PPC Kevin Davies are also wide of the mark because his perspective that we LibDems are a party of protest are clearly contradicted by the fact that we consistently nudge at around and above 20% in national polls and are managing the transition to a political movement capable of challenging seriously for government – we have become a coherent and unified political force as evidenced by recent facts that no internal ructions are capable of distracting or dividing us.
The next few years will see the tory ilk weeping into their champagne as they futilely attempt to resist our growing momentum.
I am highly amused by their outmoded denials.
LOL
I’m glad you’re amused, Mr Davies, now let’s get on with squeezing this ridiculous and unpopular Labour balloon to popping point between your frustratingly immovable tory establishment and our beautifully irresitable liberal force.
I think we ought to make a distinction between the “tory”s who comment on this site. “Letters from” is a right-wing head-banger who enjoys winding up the opposition (not that there’s anything wrong in that); “Passing” comments here because he/she really wants to be persuaded by us to be a LibDem.
“Passing Tory”: to be honest I don’t remember how Margaret Thatcher was perceived by 1977, but I would be surprised if the ideology she was projecting by that point was quite as fuzzy as David Cameron’s. I am not actually arguing the rather trite point that Cameron’s Conservatives don’t have any policies because I can quite see that detailed policies for a future government are pointless years ahead of the time when they might need to be implemented. You say I wish to see him fail: that’s not exactly true – I want things for this country that I do not believe conservatism is capable of delivering. I remember the LibDem leader of our council telling me after John Major had won the 1992 general election that we were in real trouble because he would be such a good manager: I retorted that the opposite was the case – he might be a good manager but he had no ideology. Blair searched for years for an ideology (having eschewed socialism or even social democracy), and Labour are now reaping the consequences of his failure. Cameron has similarly emasculated traditional conservatism but without finding a narrative with which he can turn the fissiparous strands that form the Conservative Party into something coherent enough to govern successfully.
Tony 🙂
Just go on believing that if you want.
It wasn’t a bad result for the Lib Dems, but it’s really overegging things a bit to talk about Lib Dem support holding firm in areas where they have MPs. For a start, the Conservatives heavily outpolled the Lib Dems in South West London, not just for the Mayoralty, but also for the Assembly. At the start of the campaign, there was a lot of talk about the Lib Dems winning the South West London seat, whereas they actually fell back sharply. Solihull was regained by the Conservatives, which no one expected, and the Conservatives now hold half the seats in Harrogate.
Moreover, the Lib Dems have always polled better in local than in national elections (even when they’re held on the same day). When people are actually choosing between Conservatives and Labour, at a general election, there must be a risk the Lib Dems will lose Parliamentary seats, even in areas of local government strength.
Kevin, yes the Somerset seat was held by the Tories, but a few week earlier a Devon Tory seat was lost to the Lib Dems with 60%. Even with a Green standing.
The Tory gains in Solihull and Harrogate were in wards that are not part of either Burt’s or Willis’ constituency