Friday 4 May 2012The face of defeat
Friday, 4 May 2012
Few outside the benighted city of Bradford will know the name, but what the face represents is unmistakable. This is Ian Greenwood, former leader of the Labour group, councillor for seventeen years, now ousted by George Galloway's renegade Respect Party, by a mere 17 votes.
Greenwood's seat was the last to declare in a nail-biting finale to the local elections, which went to four recounts.
On the night, Labour gains two seats overall. Respect now holds five. This leaves Labour with 45, exactly half the 90 on the council, preventing the group taking overall control of the city. The Tories have 24 seats and the Lib-Dims have eight.
In a bizarre twist, the balance of power is held by the dubious Imdad Hussain - the councillor recentlykicked out of the Labour group after being disqualified as a director when £314,873 disappeared from his failed business.
It is thought that Hussain, who was not standing for re-election this round, may vote with the Labour group, giving it a de facto majority, preventing Respect from being king-makers. Such an arrangement, though, cannot improve the already tawdry image of Bradford politics.
But, even than it was not all Galloway's night. In the Wibsey ward of the South Bradford constituency - once very briefly a Labour marginal - UKIP stormed into second place with 781 votes to Labour's 1,753 – against 399 for the Tory candidate and 384 for the Lib-Dims.
The steadily strengthening local performance of this party, in the absence of a BNP candidate, may have it holding the balance of power in the next general election, preventing the Tories taking down the Labour incumbent.
The possibility of this is marked by the fate of the Queensbury ward, which returned a Tory candidate with 1,073 votes, while the combined UKIP and BNP vote came to 1,433. Labour struggled to make 956.
Needless to say, the national focus is on the "good" performance of Labour, which has taken the equivalent of 39 percent of the national vote. The Tories trail on 31 percent and the Lib-Dims pull in 16. The number of Lib-Dim councillors has fallen below 3,000 for the first time since the party was formed in 1988 – all against the lowest turnout since 2000, on 32 percent.
But snapping at their heels are the so-called "insurgent" parties – not enough yet to make the difference, but enough of a presence to prevent the establishment calling the night its own.
Richard North 04/05/2012
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