UK politics: playing away
Saturday 4 May 2013
 I will be in London today talking to the Campaign for an Independent Britain, on the general subject of "the way forward" for euroscepticism.It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that my list of things we must have in order successfully to secure an exit from the EU does not include the Farage Party, which is more and more looking like a cul-de-sac. And in a subliminal message which affirms that, we see the front page of the Daily Mail (left) where any news of the "great victory" is remarkably absent. Unfashionable it may be to say in certain quarters, but to attract the support of 6-8 percent of the electorate in council elections (and 9.4 percent in a by-election) is not evidence of a wildly successful popular campaign. And this is less so when, with each passing election, the pool of engaged voters steadily diminishes, as evidenced by the declining turnouts. As we have remarked before, the obsession with share of the vote, where turnout is in free fall, has the hallmarks of two bald men fighting over a comb – although it is more like a gang of people squabbling over its possession.  It is perhaps appropriate, therefore, that the newspaper that makes the greatest front-page display of the Farage Party success is the loss-making Guardian. This left-wing newspaper is only too well aware that the only way of resuscitating the flagging Labour campaign is to big-up UKIP in the hope of damaging the Conservative Party.Therein lies an uncomfortable truth. However, much it may protest otherwise, at its current level of support, when it has absorbed the transferable votes from the BNP, arising from the collapse of another one-man-band, by far the greater bulk of UKIP's support comes from disaffected Conservatives. Come the general election, which is the only election which matters to the political claque, the Left will certainly be egging on the "party of protest" in the expectation that it will continue to do disproportionate damage to the Right. And, confronted with the challenge, Mr Cameron's Conservatives will do whatever it takes to neutralise the threat. For, if Farage has succeeded in anything, he has certainly got the attention of the political classes. The ironic thing is that the most immediate outcome of grabbing the Guardian front page is one of two possibilities – either the election of the Labour Party to office in the 2015 general election (with or without the Lib-Dems), or resurgent Conservatives who will most likely offer as the bribe to restore their fortunes an EU referendum that we cannot possibly win. I would find this latter even doubly ironic – for UKIP to force upon the nation a referendum for which it is wholly unprepared, where it would be completely outflanked, then to saddle us with a lost vote which will set the eurosceptic movement back a generation. But then, whatever else, Farage has never included amongst his attributes anything approaching tactical acumen or strategic planning. Right now, though, his dogged pursuit of a twenty-year-old game plan might now look on the threshold of a breakthrough. But the truth is that it has no better chance of success now than when he first scribbled it on the back of a beer-soaked bar mat, at the end of a boozy planning session. Perhaps that "plan" emanated from the Grand Old Duke of York pub, because Farage is marching his troops to the top of the hill. Too soon, he will be marching them down again, back into the intellectual cul-de-sac from which his "cunning plan" originated. And that is what I will be telling the CIB today, plus a few more home truths. Those views won't necessarily be welcome, but I suspect there may be a few there capable of straight thinking and I won't have to make a quick dash for the exit. We shall see. COMMENT: COMBINED ELECTION THREAD Richard North 04/05/2013 |
UK politics: fishing in a shrinking pool
Saturday 4 May 2013
 If ever there was a justification for central government intervention, it would be over the scope and presentation of local election results on official local authority websites.Rarely does one find any detail of size of electorate and the number of votes cast, information necessary to calculate the all-important turnout. Some counties give information by ward, in varying levels of detail, but it is incredibility difficult to find one site for the raw data that one needs for analytical purposes, from which to draw conclusions as to the state of play. Local newspapers are of some value though, when following through individual counties. For instance, Derbyshire County Council information is herewhich, with the official site (plus here) andWikipedia, gives one the basics. From these, we can calculate the votes cast, which stand at approximately 203,112, from an electorate 581,982 – yielding a turnout of 34.9 percent. This compares, incidentally, with a turnout in 2009 of 38 percent, when the Tories won overall control, and in 2005 of 63 percent – which coincided with a general election. In this current election, Labour has regained control, taking 43 seats, with a a 42.8 percent share of the vote, against the Conservatives who took 18 seats (losing 13) with 28.8 percent of the vote. UKIP gained 18.7 percent of the vote and took no seat, alongside the Lib-Dems who also failed to score, with 7.6 percent of the vote. Looking at the all-important "mandates", we thus see that Labour walks away with 15 percent, the Conservatives with ten and UKIP with 6.5 percent. In terms of its electoral reach, therefore, UKIP managed to induce less than seven percent of the electorate to vote for it, while the ruling party command the council with the just slightly more than double that. Derbyshire is interesting because it is one of the councils that have actually changed hands, but it can hardly be said that the result is "groundbreaking" for UKIP – at several levels. It has not only failed to induce more than one in fifteen to vote for it, its effect on the contest has not managed to enliven the electoral process, pushing up the turnout. Looking at another county council, this time Essex, we see UKIP gaining nine seats, with a 26.1 percent share of the vote. With a turnout of 27.6 percent (328, 435 votes cast from an electorate of 1,081,428), this gives the party a 7.2 percent proportion of the electorate that voted for it. Interestingly, 6.5 percent in Derbyshire gets no seats, yet 7.2 percent in Essex gives UKIP nine. However, the Conservatives in Essex, with only 9.4 percent of the electorate behind it, get 42 seats. And, to compound the anomalies, Labour, with 4.6 percent of the electorate, also get nine seats, as to the Lib-Dems with the support of a mere three percent of the electorate. For another home counties authority, Buckinghamshire, I am unable to find details of the size of the electorate (as a single figure), but from the official website, we see that the winning Conservatives get 41 percent of the vote, on a turnout of 30.3 percent. That gives them a mandate of 12.4 percent – the support of just one in eight of the electors. For UKIP, we see a gain of six seats, from 27 percent of the vote. On the turnout of 30.3 percent, it thus succeeds in attracting a "mandate" of 8.2 percent. Only one in twelve of the electorate were sufficiently enthused by this protest party to go out and vote for it. Going southwest to Hampshire, we see there a turnout of 31 percent, with the Conservatives leading on 37.5 percent of the vote, which brings them 45 seats for a mandate of 11.6 percent of the electorate. The Lib-Dems, who come second, gain 17 seats with 21.7 percent of the vote, giving them a mandate from 7.2 percent of the electorate. UKIP draw down ten seats with a 24.6 percent of the vote, giving them a mandate of 7.6 percent of the electorate. Labour manage four seats on a mandate of 3.1 percent. In the supposedly strongly contested Lincolnshire County Council election, however, turnout plunges to 29.7 percent, the votes cast recorded at 161,315 from a possible 542,759. This is seven percent down on the figure when voters last went to the polls in 2009 although, in some of the areas in the current poll, the turnout was as low as 14 percent. Out of 77 seats in the county, the Conservatives lost 25, losing control of the council in the process, ending up with 36 seats from a 36 percent of the vote. That gives them a mandate from a mere 10.7 percent of the electorate. UKIP, which came second with 16 seats from 24.3 percent of the vote – have the support of a mere 7.2 percent of the electorate, the same as in Hampshire. This is the county plagued with migrant workers from EU countries, where immigration is a real issue. Yet, when three members of the Ransome family were elected for UKIP, one explained their success as resulting from their policy on potholes. The BBC wryly remarked that none of their vox pops had mentioned road conditions. But for now, UKIP is the pothole party. Potholes aside, UKIP has not made a breakthrough – despite the media hype. It has undoubtedly done well, gaining 139 councillors, but it is falling short on two counts. Firstly, with turnouts remaining stubbornly low and in some cases falling still further from the last election, the party has failed to enliven the political process and bring new voters into the fray. Secondly, with their support from the electorate ranging from 6.5 percent to a level mostly short of eight percent, attempts to create a popular movement have not succeeded. Autonomous Mind points out that anger with the establishment parties runs deep, but it is only being expressed by those who remain politically engaged. Thus, as voters continue to retreat from the political process, the Farage party is fishing in a shrinking pool, with nothing new on offer.
As long as elections remain a spectator sport over which the denizens of the bubble obsess, leaving the bulk of the population indifferent and uninvolved, this will not be the "sea change" in British politics - as Farage currently asserts.
COMMENT: COMBINED ELECTION THREAD Richard North 04/05/2013 |
UK politics: South Shields by-election
Friday 3 May 2013
Understandably, the political classes and the media claque want to focus on the percentage of the vote. But the a turnout tells a different tale. The 24,736 votes cast from a 63,765-strong constituency (38.8 percent based on 2010 figures) give Lewell-Buck a pathetically small mandate of 19.6 percent – less than one in five of the electorate.
Thus does the "none of the above" party win again, although this does not stop the newly-elected MP from being "absolutely ecstatic". And, in a graphic illustration of the disconnect afflicting the political classes, she burbles that the result showed Labour was connecting with voters and the coalition government was taking the country in the "wrong direction". Aside from the winner, much hype attends the performance of UKIP, with candidate Richard Elvin picking up 5,988 votes to come a poor second. He gained 24 percent of the votes cast, displacing the Conservatives, who took second place in the general.
Although this is a stellar performance for a party which did not field a candidate in the general election, the low turnout flatters all party performances. UKIP actually takes a 9.4 percent share of the electorate, compared with a 14.8 percent share at Eastleigh, and 7.3 percent of the available vote at Rotherham.
For the Conservatives, though, there was no relief. Candidate Karen Allen took 2,857 votes, compared with 7,886 polled by the party in the general. That put the Tories in a humiliating third place, behind UKIP, with a mere 4.5 percent of the electorate turning out to vote for them. Ostensibly, this replicated the Eastleigh experience, where the Conservatives were also pushed into second place by UKIP. But there, the Tories lost 13.9 percent of their vote. In South Shields, they lost 10.1 percent of their general election vote. Marginally, this was a less worse performance, as is UKIP's performance not quite as good as it achieved in Eastleigh. An independent Asian candidate, Ahmed Khan, came fourth, with 1,331 votes. This was 5.38 percent of the votes cast, which was enough for him to keep his deposit – a sign of the times perhaps. At Eastleigh, there were ten other parties in the field, including the Monster Raving Loony Party, which collectively polled 2,056 votes. This time round, we only saw five contestants, outside the Lib-Lab-Con plus UKIP matrix. But, with the BNP (which did not stand at Eastleigh), they took a sizeable 3,046 votes, representing 12 percent of the votes cast. This fracturing of the vote is becoming a significant factor in electoral contests. Within this, there was a collapse of the BNP vote, down from 2,382 in the general election, to a mere 711. This is the spectre at the feast. There is much talk about the source of the UKIP votes but – as with Rotherham where the BNP vote dropped from 3,906 at the general election to 1,804 in the 2012 by-election. As before – it looks as if Farage's party could be the beneficiary of the BNP collapse. The other major story from South Shields was the misery of the Lib-Dems, the party crashing into seventh place to lose its deposit with a mere 352 votes, less than half the BNP level and not so very much more than the Loony party. This compared with third place in the general, when the candidate came third, polling 5,189 votes.
Not all is doom and gloom though. The New Statesman sees green shoots of a Lib-Dem recovery appearing. Hope springs eternal.
COMMENT: COMBINED ELECTION THREAD |
Saturday, 4 May 2013
Posts
