Challenging conventional wisdom about the elections


by Don Paskini    
8:45 am - May 10th 2011

Tweet       Share on Tumblr

Following last week’s elections, the conventional wisdom can be summarised roughly as follows. The cause of electoral reform is dead; Labour did well in Northern England but poorly in Southern England; Labour’s defeat in Scotland was unprecedented and historic; the Lib Dems got hammered by Labour; and Labour needs to move to attract ‘centrist’ voters and fight the Tories for the ‘centre ground’. I think the lessons of the elections give cause to challenge all of these.

Electoral reform: I don’t really want to add to the blame game about the fiasco of the AV referendum. As long as reformers learn the lessons, then this need not be a generational setback. By the time of the next election, Labour and the Lib Dems will both be preparing for a possible coalition. The idea of a referendum imposed from the top down thanks to a backroom deal was always a terrible one. A commitment to something like citizens’ assemblies which develop ideas for democratic reform from the grassroots, leading to options which have popular legitimacy when put forward in a referendum, has worked in other countries. This kind of approach could unite reformers from a range of political traditions and be part of the programme of the next government in five years, not twenty.

The other lesson for the Labour Party specifically is that Labour’s self-styled “next generation” should listen less to pressure groups like Progress and Compass, neither of which proved to have much ability to craft a compelling campaign, and more to some of the “dinosaurs”, from the Labour No campaign which forced the Tories to spend millions on undermining the Coalition, to Yes campaigners like Peter Mandelson who correctly, but too late, hit the No campaign where it knew it was weakest.

North/South divide: Labour has more support in Northern England, and the Tories in Southern England. But the picture is more nuanced than this. Labour failed to overtake the Tories in areas such as Warrington South, Stockton South, Morecambe, Wirral South, Keighley and many other Northern marginal seats. Meanwhile, in the South, Labour overtook the Tories in the popular vote in places won by the Tories in 2010 like Plymouth Moor View, South Swindon, Stevenage, Ipswich, Waveney, Thurrock, while picking up councillors in places like Abingdon in Oxfordshire and even matching the Tories vote for vote in central Witney.

The analysis is more nuanced than a simple geographical divide would suggest. I don’t have a full explanation, but successes seem to be clustered around active and campaigning local Labour parties in places as diverse as Gedling, Chesterfield, Manchester, Oxford, Liverpool, Reading and Birmingham Edgbaston, as well as the efforts of activists in places where Labour is starting local campaigning for the first time in many years. Bringing more areas up to the standards of the best over the next four years needs to be the absolute top priority for the party’s review.

Scotland: Going back to the 1950s, there has been a natural anti-Labour majority in Scotland – Labour’s support is narrow but deep (and much less widespread than in Wales). The problem which Labour faces isn’t that its natural hegemony has been broken, it is that the SNP have managed to reunite the anti-Labour coalition which was fractured by Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown. In other words, it’s not as bad as it looks for Labour in Scotland, it’s worse (though how much support the SNP will have after they impose savage spending cuts remains to be seen).

Lib Dems: The Lib Dems did badly in many contests with Labour, most hilariously in the case of Lord Storey of Wavertree versus Labour’s eighteen year old candidate. But in many of the areas that Labour will be trying to win from the Lib Dems at the next general election, the Lib Dem vote proved resilient. The Lib Dems also defeated the Tories in areas like Bedford, Watford and Eastleigh. Rumours of their demise are much exaggerated.

Taking leftie voters for granted: One notable thing about the local elections is that leftie voters didn’t automatically rally round Labour in areas where they had a plausible alternative. While the Trade Unionist and Socialist candidates made no impression, the Greens cleaned up in Brighton, and held on to wards in other areas in Lancaster, Liverpool, Norwich and others where they have an active local presence. If Labour decide to take leftie voters for granted and focus all their efforts on winning over Tories, they may find that these voters decide that they do have other places to go to.

   Tweet   Share on Tumblr   submit to reddit  


About the author
Don Paskini is deputy-editor of LC. He also blogs at donpaskini. He is on twitter as @donpaskini
· Other posts by


Story Filed Under: Blog ,Green party ,Labour party ,Libdems ,Our democracy


Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.


Reader comments


1. punkscience

Re: “Taking leftie voters for granted:”

Maybe Labour and its supporter should admit that it doesn’t adequately represent anyone on the Left any more. It is almost entirely a centrist party.

2. oldpolitics

“Maybe Labour and its supporter should admit that it doesn’t adequately represent anyone on the Left any more.”

Then what percentage of the population do you think are left-wing, given the risible national vote share obtained by the Greens and fringe left-wing groups?

3. Tyler

All it tells me is there aren’t nearly as many Guardian-reading lentil munching progressives out there as the said same think there are….

,,,,and it also tells me the majority of the population are a lot more sensible than we give them credit for. We know we are spending too much and have too much debt, and that cuts are inevitable. It’s only self interest groups who don’t seem to see that. Labour doesn’t seem to represent anything or anyone particularly any more and Milliband may as well be sitting on some union leaders lap with the guy’s hand up his arse.

4. Mike Shaughnessy

My take on the recent elections…

http://haringeygreens.blogspot.com/2011/05/lib-dems-elections-disaster.html

5. Margin4error

Interesting article and there is truth in every part of it.

Bland sweeping generalisations have not really delivered much of an understanding of the results at all.

Only thing is – by 2015 the Lib Dems may well be preparing for oblivion rather than coalition. Running at 10% does not make for influence. It makes for getting only a dozen MPs.

6. Peter

Don

Disagree on your Scotland analysis.

I think what Scotland shows is that there is a core labour vote but a soft vote that decides elections. Until recently it had been giving its support to Lib Dems and now has switched to the Nats. We need to make a coherent pitch for that soft vote to get anywhere. And that people will vote differently for Holyrood, Westminster and local elections. Our message needs to be as sophisticated and adaptable as the Scottish electorate are.

7. Margin4error

Peter

Given Labour’s success in winning round some of that soft vote in England – one has to ask why it failed in Scotland.

8. Peter

Put simply a poor national campaign.

Locally (Edinburgh) we increased vote share across the board but not enough to beat the SNP (with the exception of North and Leith) through really strong local campaigning. We needed a campaign that focussed on the weaknesses in SNP record in Government and also on their future plans. At the same time we needed to lay out an alternative vision for Scotland. By the time this was realised at a national level it was too late.

9. Richard

I don’t know how Lancaster could be spun as a good result for the Greens. They lost 4 Cllrs (a quarter of their group).

10. Richard

Sorry. Terrible maths :-( The Greens lost a third of their group in Lancaster. Labour gained 11 seats across the district, including 6 in Morecambe.


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
  1. Liberal Conspiracy

    Challenging conventional wisdom about the elections http://bit.ly/lXOLGc

  2. Nick Watts

    RT @libcon: Challenging conventional wisdom about the elections http://bit.ly/lXOLGc





Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.