We got the election result I wanted yesterday.
The result for Lewes council rather summed it up:
It was a great day for the Greens. It was pretty good for the Lib Dems. Labour can convince itself it is going somewhere. And as for the Tories, wipeout beckons.
I said yesterday that over-extrapolation of these results would be dangerous. I repeat that today. But there are real signs from this.
In the south, and outside cities, the LibDems will provide a real alternative to the Tories at a coming general election.
In a few places voting Green will make sense - and staggeringly so in Suffolk. Caroline Lucas may have her days numbered as the sole Green MP, and she will be delighted.
Labour did make advances in the Red Wall, but not much elsewhere (look at Ipswich and Peterborough for evidence of that).
Tory losses were at the level I could only dream of.
But, there is no clue as to what is happening in Wales, where Plaid Cymru might be having a bad time. Nor is there any indication from Scotland as yet, where the fall out from scandal in the SNP is simply not calculable at present (although I think it will be smaller than many expect: it's very had for an independence supporter to vote Labour, whatever Labour thinks). Add to that the fact that most of these elections were in more rural areas. But all that being said four things stand out.
First, the Tories did really badly. There is no beating about the bush on that one. They said they expected to lose 1,000 seats in advance to make 700 losses look acceptable. Instead they lost 960, and Channel 4 actually thought they had lost 1,005 at one point. No amount of whitewash makes that look like an acceptable outcome. They are out of touch and in decline and I see little changing that by late next year when Sunak will have to go to the country.
The LibDems have recovered from the Coalition. Why? Because they will at least tell the truth on Brexit. In the south that is a big deal. I am sure it will be a massive vote winner for them.
The Greens are breaking through. And yes, I do remember European elections of old when this also seemed to be happening, but the concentration of votes in some areas is now sufficient to let people think voting for them in a general election is not a waste of time now. And I would remind you of the poll I ran here a few days ago: most readers would vote Green if they felt it would be worthwhile.
As for Labour? Talk of victory seems very premature right now. And I cannot see things getting much better for them than this unless they finally decide what they are for, change their economics, and embrace the need to talk about Europe again whilst promising the money to support public sector workers. Since I cannot see them doing any of those things I doubt very much Starmer is going to get into No 10 with a majority, although he will with a minority.
That is the best possible result, because for all the nonsense Labour say now about doing no deals they most certainly will. I doubt there will be a coalition. Who would want one with them? But the price of support will be PR for the LibDems, at least. And this time I think we would get it. The SNP will be frozen out, I suspect.
Do that though and we keep the fascists at bay whilst letting them have a voice to show how unacceptable they are. That is what we need.
We also need sensible coalitions - as many councils now do.
This is what is required to deliver the foundations for a better politics in the UK. I am cheered by yesterday. We are not there yet. It may not happen, There are always events that disrupt matters (Sunak will be longing for a war). But today things look better then they did earlier in the week. I will take that.
Please accept my apologies if moderation is sporadic today. I have an otitis externa, which is quite painful. I will, be spending more of the day in bed than I would usually plan as a result. I have antibiotics: it will get better.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Labour party voted to bring for PR at their last conference. I’m almost certain Starmer and Labour leadership won’t want it though unless, as you say, Lib Dems and Greens really have a say. Politics stinks still in both major parties. There is no democracy in the Labour party. In a lot of cases they’re more right wing than the Tories! It seems clear to me that the majority want more left politics. MSM keep the push to the right
I think your analysis is correct. At some point, the fracture in Labour, between the PLP and the membership will surface again, and the cause is very straightforward, as Richard articulates clearly – on the basis of “it’s the economy, stupid!”, they need to change their economics. Holding to the Treasury line, and telling their voters that what needed or promised changes are “actually unaffordable”, is always the magic key to Tory revival. And then the whole sorry process starts again.
Agree completely with Mumin Moin. As a Labour member I have learnt that we have zero say in Labour policy. Fortunately I am too old and deaf to have to stand on doorsteps saying we are not quite as bad as the Tories.
Incidentally the Greens got hammered here in Brighton. Their policy on closing car lanes for extra cycle lanes when a cycle lane already existed was wildly unpopular. As was their plan to close public toilets in a seaside resort. This weak-bladdered pensioner was up in arms
One can argue about who the big gainers are – Green, LD or Labour (or all of the above)….. but this is a massive disaster for the Tories.
Correct me if I am wrong, but that the last time these seats were contested was in 2019 – the final throes of Teresa May’s government. That was hardly a great time for the Tories so to underperform that low benchmark so dramatically 4 years later is truly dire.
Agreed
It’s becoming apparent the Tories are isolated in their quagmire of greed and indifference.
Tories are the party of inequality; most of peoples’ and societies’ ills will be reduced by lowering inequality wherever and whenever politicians decide they can.
I’m quite hopeful after seeing these results. It shows that while most people dislike the Tories, they are not enthused by Starmer’s Labour. I noted that quite a few people that were booted out of the Labour Party for spurious reasons were re-elected as independents or Greens.
I hope that people are brave enough to vote for the party that they feel most represents their political views in the GE. It’s the only way we will achieve proportional representation.
I do hope that somebody is doing some credible research on how well or badly the Tories voter suppression scheme worked.
Prof John Curtice speculated that Labour winning on low turnouts suggested it had not affected results. However, without reliable research that is a very Panglossian view.
I am sure that the Tories will already be doing their own research to try and work out how to make the scheme more effective.
I hope so too
Prof John Curtice may well be right that voter suppression has had little or no effect on a local election with a low turnout. However this tells us little or nothing about what effect it would have on a general election with a high turnout.
Both the low turnout and the the fact that the elections were local will bias the cohort of those voting towards the more politically aware — I.e. those who are more likely to have ensured they have the required ID.
“I.e. those who are more likely to have ensured they have the required ID.”
i.e., the British gerontocracy.
It is shocking that neither Students’ Union cards, nor NHS ID cards were acceptable.
As a resident of newly LD Dacorum, i.e. Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted and Tring, (as it would appear a couple of your other contributors here) I’m celebrating our three new Labour councillors, after four years without any at all.
It was always on the cards that the leafier areas of Dacorum, i.e. Berkhamsted and Tring, would swing to the LD, given our proximity to Chesham & Amersham, and the LD St. Albans. It’s a good outcome, no doubt about that.
We’ve had Tory Sir Mike Penning as our MP for Hemel Hempstead since 2005, an “Essex boy” working class Tory, who is retiring after this parliament. (See current edition of Private Eye for an unflattering profile of him).
It’s difficult to extrapolate from these council elections an assessment of the potential parliamentary outcome, as Berkhamsted and Tring are not part of the parliamentary constituency of Dacorum (hence the name, referring to the “hundred” of yore.)
The LibDems will no doubt claim they have the best chance in 2024/25 in Hemel Hempstead. Labour will not compromise of course, which could easily keep a Tory in place. Until the voting system is changed, we will have to rely on the good burghers of Hemel to choose our political destiny.
Having been on the doorstep lately, it doesn’t fill me with hope. Many angry Tories I met were not going to vote, because “things are so bad, and people coming over here get more than we do”.
That’s me Helen, in Gadebridge. I’d like to think Dacorum could finally get a non Tory MP given that Penning is going and the tories’ have buggered everything so badly.
But as you say, given the arrogant stupid tribalism of labour (and the LDs to some extent), the execrable Tories will get another MP here. Your description of a lot of Hemel voters rings depressingly true. “Asylum seekers are housed in 4 star hotels, whine, we get nothing, whine, the council takes months to do anything, whine”.
Heard Thornbury yesterday as usual avoiding anything concrete about policy but saying they will be getting together in the summer with unions , etc etc to firm up policy for the election. Dont really believe it but there may still be a glimmer of a possibility to get them to score the open goal of ‘rescueing/saving the NHS’.
I know Starmer is reputedly a politics -ree zone, and can only talk about ‘reform’ (privatise?) but surely it is worth trying to get a slot on whatever advisory panel might exist to try to convince them there is money to do that?
There is no hope I would get that
Nor would I want it
I am not in the party
I watched some of Politics Live yesterday. Not a program i usually watch.
It showed, IMHO, the real problem with our politics. Liam Fox was claiming that our inflation was ‘largely’ due to Ukraine. ( not profiteering or Brexit?) he said ‘inflation has massively affected the Government’s finances pushing up the debt interest from £30 billion last year to £106 billion this year which means there is not public money available to deliver all the things they’d like to. But it can change when inflation falls’ ….and one thinks of ‘give away budgets’ next year just before the election.
Joshua Reynolds of Labour did not challenge the figures. He did not ask who got the £76 billion difference. He did not mention a third of the national Debt is due to QE and we need not pay a penny. No mention of a windfall tax on bank profits. Or of creating money to ‘deliver’. Or how due to the multiplier effect, it could largely pay for itself. Or maybe I have it wrong.
There is a conspiracy on this issue
Good morning Richard
Good news also in the Havant Council borough elections – a Green councillor elected for the first time and I believe it was in the normally solid-Tory ward of Emsworth. I don’t live in Emsworth, so didn’t get the chance to vote for a Green – which is my first preference in any election.
Meanwhile – it appears that many of the shops in that apparently rabid monarchist village/small town are staying open today ‘by popular request.’ The times they are a-changin’, as Bob Dylan once sang.
Indeed
There is only one word I can use to sum up Stymied’s Labour: ‘Folly’.
Can someone here explain to me what happened in Slough?
To me, Stymied has not done enough. For me, the Lib Dems are next to useless as a party. I still have no idea what they stand for. The Lib Dems are still to me at least the ‘Just don’t won’t to be Labour’ party. My heart is with the Greens, but like too many political parties, their inability to provide a compelling method for how they would pay for things is a huge chasm (MMT).
My attitude is driven by the reality of the FPTP system. What we have is a an opposition vote diluted by other choices. Labour’s gains don’t seem to be convincing to me.
Stymied had better realise this and get his fingers out and start making friends.
Except that he won’t?
Labour caused a financial crisis in Slough and paid the price
The LibDems. The weak Party of Nick Clegg? The Party that argued for Austerity? The Party that simply does not understand anything about money and debt? That LibDems? If the weak, witless and hapless LibDems are the answer … : what on earth is the question? There isn’t one adequate to the task. We are living through farce, dressed as politics, or some reptilian simalcrum; the Theatre of the Absurd brought to nightmarish life. A fitting late flowering if our precious Union. I need my darkened room.
The question is – Who else apart from the Conservatives? Which is harder to stomach – your choice! 🙂
Just a reminder that the first Austerity First government took office thanks to the enthusiastic support of Clegg and the LibDems, squandering their surge in votes in 2010 to support the Conservatives.
And worst of all, in my mind, conspired with the Tories to allow Lansley’s Health and Social Care Act into being – the blueprint for the NHS’s dismantling and the introduction of a selloff of any possibly private service to profit-making corporations. Read Tamsin Cave’s Open Democracy article on the Lansley Diaries.
The Lib Dems can’t be trusted. They don’t know what they stand for except they want ‘power’.
What really scares me on the doorstep is the amount of people who believe “they are all the same, what’s the point in voting, or voting for a change”
We all know that local elections give people a chance to bash their party without too much real danger of upheaval, correctly or not. Come the GE people may stick with what they know and hey presto another 5 years of torture. With another year for their press mates to demonise Starmer et al the Tories will pull it off again.
I have to disagree
I really think the Tories will lose
I agree that the Tories may well lose the GE.
But what will we get?
Tory behaviour has been shocking – they don’t in my view deserve to be in any form of power.
And to correct this, they need to be out of power for a long time – if not forever. And look at the mess they are leaving.
So yes, I’ve sought solace too from their losses but………………well, as I’ve made clear above, relief from the Tories might be all too brief and the ‘alternatives’ somewhat familiar.
I DO hope you’re right, Richard, but the shape of the left hook, right hook Tory anti-Starner strategy is now very clear.
Left hook: “Who can believe a word yoy say, Mr Starmer”,with all his abandoned pledges, missions, promises, statements?
The man is TRULY stupid, IMO – eg “No I’ve never ….” followed by video clips of him saying just that (friend of Jeremy Corbyn is the classic.
He’s not smart enough to say “Yes, I used to …., but now I’ve studied 5hr matter more closely…..”, so following Keynes’s admirable observation, “When the facts change, I change my mind!”
He’s the master of nothing but the hyper-flip-flop, and seems blissfully unaware that, in this digital age, EVERYTHING is recorded.
Right Hook: As a flat-earther economist, he’s wedded to, welded even!, to his neoliberal ideas about money and the money supply, taxation, fiscal probity and deficits and fiscal rules, and seems totally unaware of the multiplier, and the benefits of getting spending power into the economy. And most particularly about the non-existence of the Magic Money Tree.
Sunak, by contrast, is not fooled by any of that, having presided over a massive injection of money into the economy via QE etc, such as eg his furlough scheme, he’s well aware of how Government can create money out of thin air.
All it takes is for Sunak and Hunt to proclaim some improvements in the economy (and believe me they will!!) that will allow a loosening of tight money – fe.g. forcing the BoE to slash interest rates, cancelling (how sweet a revenge!!) massive amounts of student debt, putting money in the pockets of the young, etc. etc., cutting tax on motor fuel, all allowing local economies and the feelgood factor to thrive (add in your own suggestions) and Starmer will just look like an outmoded Scrooge – and untrustworthy with it!!
Left hook, right hook coming your way.
Here’s an example of the Left Hook in action already.
https://twitter.com/simonmaginn/status/1653678358713049089?t=C9u-QIuUIRLWfTvI6EaQPA&s=19
I can’t see the tweet referred to so I post this in good faith
Mr Dickie,
Hammer. Nail. Head. Hit.
Starmer’s promises to win the leadership abandoned; trenchantly skewered on GMB-TV; and Reeves waffled in reply; but when pursued gamely, adopted the Keynesian line; the pandemic, Ukraine, whatever had changed. Starmer-off-hook. We changed. In the immortal words of theresa May, so appropriate to this political pantomime; Oh No It Hasn’t. Labour is flanneling. You are being sold another ….. I can’t make out if it is a pup, or a turkey; but it is going to be a big. big disappointment. Again.
The truth is Labour are scared witless of the Sun, Telegraph and Mail (and their power to overwhelm terrestrial broadcaster ‘impartiality’ – a miserable reed in a storm); they are too scared to change anything big (and clearly on economics, Starmer; yet another lawyer doesn’t understand money or economics). They will fiddle at the edges; it is all beyond them. Labour? LibDems? It will be neoliberal Déjà vu; all over again ….
Where Greens concentrated on core issues (Mid Suffolk) they did very well. Where they became obsessed with identity issues, they suffered badly (Brighton).
Young people I talk to really do nit like identity politics
They think that identity issues should be taken as read and not be the focus of political concern
That may be significant in some places
Admittedly these results look as if it will be hard for the Conservatives to attract enough votes to be the largest party after the next election. Which is a cause for mild optimism.
However it is not at all obvious that Labour could achieve an overall majority, and there are quite a few “hung” scenarios that would make workable government very difficult. It would need parties to collaborate, formally or informally, on a shared aim of governing for the benefit of the entire country – and it isn’t clear that the nationalist parties could do that.
I correct you
It isn’t clear Labour in Westminster would do that
Labour and PC cooperate in Wales
Accepted. In Wales.
Apologies if this is just too off-topic, without any link to elections. It’s a fascinating article about the history of nursing (not entirely irrelevant at the moment in Richard’s case, by the sound of it), and the last two paragraphs are inspirational and, I would say, very much in keeping with the general tenor of debate on this blog.
https://lithub.com/the-problematic-myth-of-florence-nightingale/
(I came across via the daily newsletter from https://thebrowser.com)
“Imagine a world in which the conditions necessary for health are enjoyed by all people. Nurses have a unique ability to bring such a world to fruition, if they choose it. The rest of us do too.
“When we understand nursing as the skilled modern expression of a fundamental, universal and ancient human instinct, we can also understand ourselves differently: Maybe it is not inevitable that we dominate each other, organize ourselves into false hierarchies. Maybe we don’t have to live according to a cruel and distorted fantasy of survival of the fittest written into laws and policy that leave people behind.
“Instead, we could organize ourselves around the very old, very powerful idea that everyone, everywhere deserves care. Maybe we were made for that.”
Thanks
And then this happens:
Labour criticised for giving global banks access to parliament
Exclusive: HSBC and NatWest staffers seconded to shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds’s team
The Guardian, Rowena Mason, Sun 7 May 2023
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/07/labour-criticised-for-giving-global-banks-access-to-parliament-hsbc-natwest
Why, oh why?
Don’t they have better people to take advice from?
I’d strongly support Labour bringing in some business people to link to and understand the sector (s). SMEs, manufacturing, creative, hospitality etc. But bankers are not business people. They are a big part of the problem for business as they financialise everything they touch.
Correct
Reflecting on why Labour, or its least its leadership, are so resistant to PR – and the coalitions which would almost certainly result. I wonder if part of the problem is that Labour are themselves a coalition and one that is frequently struggling to hold it together. Tories are much the same but just hide it better. That makes negotiating with another party to form a coalition (…of coalitions) even more difficult. Perhaps where PR is in place, individual parties become more coherent and homogeneous which makes coalitions more clear cut and negotiations more straight forward.
It is a problem to be concerned about as there is a finite probability that Labour will need to form some form of coalition or confidence and supply arrangement next time. Last time they were in that situation they turned it down – Brown’s stubbornness and deep resistance from other senior members. Could have been very different. And thats first hand from someone who was in the room at the time with Brown and co. We were stood in the actual room as he described what happened. And no it does not fit with the popular narrative as it would mean Labour have to take at least some responsibility for walking away from what would have to have been a better option. Cameron made them an offer they could not refuse – though like all those offers the LDs came to regret it and it nearly destroyed them
However, after 13 years all the parties and most of the personalities have changed so not much point in harking back. The Tories won’t be touched with a barge pole, especially by the LibDems who were deeply scarred. I suspect that both they and Greens (SNP..?!) will be extremely hard-nosed to ensure that they are not shafted by Labour as the LDs were by the Tories. Confidence and supply is more likely and even then with some non-negotiable demands – like PR. Labour better be prepared for that scenario. Does not look much like it at the moment.
I agree
Confidence and supply much more likely
Interestingly with PR it would probably make it more likely that Labour would either split and/or lean back left. The pseudo-Tory right wing leadership would no longer have the backing of the entire party since those who oppose the leadership would no longer fear electoral failure in a FPTP system.
Funding is another aspect to think about. The Tories have the advantage of very wealthy donors, especially from the murkier parts of the City. Would they go to a far-Right UKIP/Reform grouping? Or to a more centre-Right (one Nation?) group? For Labour, assuming a simple split into Left and centre-Left, where would union funding go? In a PR world, smaller parties might become much more attractive to donors and members, large and small.