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Do UKIP and the BNP Really Damage the Conservatives?

One problem that David Cameron has to contend with, in contrast to Tony Blair in the 1990s, is that disgruntled Conservatives have somewhere to go. Neither UKIP, nor the BNP could be regarded as a serious challenger for political power, yet each party has shown that it can obtain significant votes, in individual constituencies.

In 2005, UKIP won 620,000 votes, and saved 35 deposits, and the BNP won 191,000, and saved 36 deposits. Yougov regularly shows each party with 3-4% of the vote, enough to significantly affect the outcome in key marginal seats, although not enough for either party to have a serious chance of winning Parliamentary seats in its own right (with the possible exception of Barking).

I know plenty of former Conservative activists who have joined (or at any rate voted for) UKIP, and one who has joined the BNP. There is no doubt at all, to my mind, that UKIP does do damage to the Conservative Party at the margins.

In all likelihood, there are half a dozen or so constituencies that would have been won by the Conservatives in 2005, without UKIP intervention. Indeed, one of my acquaintances is very proud of the fact that (in his opinion) he won enough votes as a UKIP candidate, to prevent a Conservative from being elected.

I cannot think of any constituency that might have been won by the Conservatives were it not for BNP intervention, but I think there are a couple in West Yorkshire where the Conservatives would have run Labour closer, were it not for such intervention.

Nevertheless, it is politically sensible for David Cameron to concentrate on trying to win over Labour and Liberal Democrat voters, however irritating it might be for him to lose votes on his right flank (so long as he doesn’t lose too many).

In no constituency does either UKIP or the BNP have a realistic chance of unseating a sitting a Conservative. Where Conservatives are under threat, the threat comes from either the Liberal Democrats or Labour.

Likewise, the seats that the Conservatives must win are almost all held by the latter. Any vote gained from the Left is therefore worth two votes lost to the Right. Even if the Conservatives were to finish up with no higher a percentage vote, at the next election than they had in 2005, they would still benefit if their gains from the Left matched their losses to the Right.

There were five local by-elections yesterday.

Ryedale District Council, Sheriff Hutton. Conservative 348, Independent 299. Conservative hold.

Gloucestershire County Council, Lansdowne Park and Warden Hill. Conservative 2,205, Lib Dem 1,605, Labour 226, Green 184. Conservative hold. Both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat vote shares rose sharply here, compared to 2005. This division is located in the ultra-marginal Liberal Democrat seat of Cheltenham, and may point to a very tight contest at the next election.

Portsmouth City Council, Fratton West. Lib. Dem 1,196, Conservative 496, Labour 144, English Democrat 131, Green 56, Independent 17. An easy hold for the Liberal Democrats.

Blaenau Gwent Unitary Authority, Blaina. Independent 381, Labour 315, Independent 310, Independent 149. Independent hold. Apparently, the Independent who won is a real Independent, and the Independent who came a close third is a supporter of Trish Law and Dai Davies. I still have difficulty getting my head around the idea of Blaenau Gwent being a Labour target seat.

Aberdeen City Council, Midstocket/Rosemont. SNP 873, Conservative 821, Lib Dem 693, Labour 518, Solidarity 31, Independent 20 (first ballot). SNP 1258, Conservative 1122 (final ballot). SNP gain from Conservative. This was the first local by-election under STV to be held in Scotland. The Conservative vote share held steady, but the SNP gained from Labour sufficiently to win the seat. In the final round of voting, Liberal Democrat voters split almost evenly between Conservative and SNP.

Sean Fear is a London Tory activist

Are Labour Past the Worst ?

Prior to May’s local elections, I had anticipated that Labour’s projected share of the national vote would fall below 25%, and that they would clearly finish behind the Liberal Democrats. I had thought that the Liberal Democrats (and some minor parties) would make considerable gains at Labour’s expense. These were reasonable assumptions, given that Labour’s local by-election record in the months leading up to the local elections had been dreadful, the Party’s poll ratings seemed to be sliding, membership was in decline, and their activists had plainly given up in many areas, with only 60% of English council seats being contested by them.

In the event, Labour’s performance, while very bad, was still better than I had anticipated. The party’s vote share was, at any rate, no worse than it had been the year before (and in 2004), and the anticipated losses to the Liberal Democrats did not materialise. Importantly, the Party did not come third in terms of vote share. In some metropolitan boroughs, the threat of losses to the BNP stimulated a recovery in the Labour vote. Since then, Labour has seen its poll ratings rise a little, so that is now only a couple of points behind the Conservatives on average. Underlying poll ratings, on trust and competence issues, are encouraging for Gordon Brown, and it is clear that the Conservatives are not going to surge into the sort of lead that some opinion polls had suggested, when voters were asked how they would vote if Brown were Prime Minister.

Unless things go very badly wrong for Labour, over the coming year, it is hard to see them losing very much in the next round of local elections. Reading and Barnsley will probably fall to No Overall Control, and the Conservatives will probably take control of Bury, but Labour may well be able to win back Coventry, where they performed well this year. The big prize for the Conservatives would be to win the London Mayoralty. In my view, a reasonably competent Conservative candidate ought to win, given that the Conservatives have a clear lead in London, and given the relative narrowness of Ken Livingstone’s win in 2004. However, the Conservatives’ failure to get their act together, and to choose a candidate, must enhance Livingstone’s chances of winning.

Last night’s results were generally good for the Conservatives.

Suffolk CC Stowmarket North and Stowupland Conservative 628, Lib. Dem 431, Labour 317, Green 296, UKIP 185, Independent 172. Conservative hold. Labour fell to third place.

South Staffordshire DC Featherstone/Sharehill Independent 557/383, Conservative 310/211 Labour 242/168, UKIP 132. 1 independent hold, 1 independent gain from Labour. This was a delayed poll from May, and this result means that South Staffordshire is another council without Labour representation.

Gravesham BC Meopham North. Conservative 681/662, Lib Dem. 200/178, Green 104, Labour 59/57, Looney 31. Conservative hold. This too was a delayed poll, and showed an easy Conservative win in a safe seat.

Vale Royal BC, Davenham and Moulton. Lib. Dem., 758/525/479. Conservative 680, 642,612, Labour 489, Independent 418, Green 168. Conservative hold two, Liberal Democrats hold one. This was a delayed poll, and the result gives the Conservatives overall control of the council by one seat.

Oxfordshire CC, Carterton SW. Conservative 934, Lib Dem 348, Labour 102. Conservative hold.

West Oxfordshire DC, Carterton NE. Conservative 427, Independent 133, Labour 50.
Conservative hold.

Oswestry BC, Llanyblodwel and Pant: Conservative 254, Independent 91, Independent 81, Independent 34. Conservative gain from Independent. I discovered from Vote 2007 that Welsh was spoken in this part of Shropshire as late as the eighteenth century, which explains the ward’s name.

Mid Devon DC: Upper Culm. Conservative 422, Lib Dem 287, Independent 181, UKIP 75. Conservative gain from Independent.

Ryedale DC: Pickering. Liberal 577, Conservative 313, Independent 185. Liberal gain from Independent. The winner should not be confused with a Liberal Democrat. This is a gain for those Liberals who refused to accept the merger with the SDP.

Cannock Chase BC, Hednesford South. Labour 397, Conservative 243, Lib Dem 117, Independent 114. Labour hold.

Sean Fear

For Labour’s sake, Tony Blair must go now

Regular readers of this site will know that I am not one of New Labour’s greatest fans. In fact, I would be happy to see the Labour Party go the same way as the Liberals in the 1920s. Nonetheless, I am not being cynical in offering my opinion that the sooner Tony Blair goes, the better for Labour.

Tony Blair’s own opinion poll ratings are dreadful. YouGov’s BrandIndex and MORI are at one in giving him ratings of –40% or worse. These are as bad as Margaret Thatcher’s ratings in the Summer of 1990, and it is clear that Tony Blair has become a terrible liability to his party. Matthew Parris’s prediction that while Margaret Thatcher left office respected, but not liked, and John Major left office liked, but not respected, Tony Blair would leave office neither liked, nor respected, is being borne out.

This has potentially terrible consequences for Labour in next May’s local elections. Despite years of losses, Labour will still be defending over 3,000 seats in May. Most of these seats were last contested in 2003, when Labour won the equivalent of 30% nationwide, and some were contested in 2004, when the party won 26%. So long as Tony Blair remains as Prime Minister, I cannot see Labour even managing to win 25% of the vote in May. That is, Labour will achieve a lower share of the national vote share than even the Conservatives did, in May 1995. Labour’s share of local council seats is already at its lowest level since 1978, and it is set to fall even further next year.

I would not expect Labour to perform particularly well next year, regardless of who is Labour. But I do not believe the party will suffer the same degree of damage at the polls as it would with Tony Blair at the helm, such is the degree of public antipathy to him. A loss of perhaps 1,000-1,500 seats, under Tony Blair, would do further damage to Labour’s already-depleted activist base, and reduce the party to little more than a shell outside some of its heartlands.

So my view is that the sooner Tony Blair goes, the greater the number of seats the party will hold on to in May.

Last night brought more bad news for Labour:-

North Somerset UA, Pill: Independent 360, Labour 353, Lib Dem 202, Conservative 147. Independent gain from Labour. Until last night, this was a rarity – a safe Labour ward in Somerset.

Warrington UA, Poulton North: Lib Dem 1,358, Labour 505, Conservative 209, Green 43. Lib Dem hold. This result showed a very big swing to the Lib Dems in a marginal ward, compared to May.

Sean Fear is a London Conservative activist and writes a weekly column for politicalbetting.com.

Turnout recovers

One feature of the first six years of this Government was declining turnout in local elections. Throughout the 1980’s, and the first half of the 1990’s turnout in local elections regularly exceeded 40%, historically, a high figure. After 1997, it declined steadily, reaching a low of 28% in 2000. In one by-election that year, in Liverpool, it even fell as low as 6%. This was mirrored in the General Election of 2001, when turnout reached 59%, the lowest figure since 1918.

This has concerned the Government, which believes the legitimacy of local elections is compromised by low turnouts. It has encouraged all sorts of pilot schemes to try and boost turnout. Local councils have experimented with methods such as internet voting, text message voting, or polling booths in supermarkets, while the Government has made it much easier to vote by post. None of these methods, it must be said, have had much success in boosting turnout. The one method which has been successful is compulsory postal voting. However, this has proved controversial, given well-publicised cases of fraudulent postal voting. It is arguable whether low turnout undermines the legitimacy of local government; it is beyond dispute that fraud does so.

2004 saw a rise in local election turnout to 42%, a very good figure. In part this was down to the introduction of compulsory postal voting in parts of the country. However, those parts of the country which used traditional voting methods also saw turnout rise. The reason for this was that the local elections were held on the same day as the European elections. The level of interest generated by parties such as UKIP drew people to the polls who would not usually vote in local elections. This year, turnout was also at a comparatively high level, 37%, despite the fact that no local authority, as far as I am aware, experimented with compulsory postal voting. The reasons for this seem clear to me. Firstly, politics is competitive again. For the first time since the early 1990s, Labour looks as though it can be beaten. That has generated more interest in elections generally. Both anti-Labour voters, and Labour supporters, who have not been terribly interested in local elections over the past few years, came out to vote. A good example of this was in the ward I contested in Brent, Fryent. My vote was up by 375 on the Conservative vote four years, previously, but the Labour vote was also up by 350. Secondly, minor parties are now motivating people to come out and vote, both for and against them. This is seen most strikingly in contests involving the British National Party. In Barking and Dagenham for example, turnout rose from 23% in 2002, to 39% in May, due to the fact that the BNP were contesting seats there for the first time.

Last night saw just two by-election results:-

East Staffordshire BC - Town: C 664, Lab 255, Ukip 104. Con hold. This represents a strong swing to the Conservatives from Labour .

Tonbridge and Malling BC - Ightham: C 352, Lib Dem 301. Con hold. This is a near loss to the Liberal Democrats in what was a very safe Conservative seat.

Sean Fear is a London Conservative activist and writes a weekly column for politicalbetting.com.

Universities are still hostile to the Tories

In the days of Sir Maurice Bowra, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, it would have been hard to imagine Oxford as being anything other than a Conservative stronghold. Academics, students, and college servants were all overwhelmingly Conservative in their sympathies, and Conservatives dominated the City Council. Sadly, that has all changed. Mark Senior’s description of the Conservatives as a “minor party” in the City is all too true. The Conservatives don’t have a single councillor, and nor did they even come close to winning a seat on May 5th. They are the fifth party in Oxford, behind the Greens and something called the Independent Working Class Association.

In most areas dominated by universities, the situation is similar. There are no Conservative councillors in Cambridge, although they did manage to win 22% of the vote in May, and achieved close second places in two wards. In Manchester, there is not a single Conservative councillor. In Sheffield Hallam, Conservative until 1997, there are two out of twelve. Bristol West, once safely Conservative, is now dominated by Liberal Democrat councillors. In the student-dominated Headingley ward of Leeds, the Conservative vote is derisory.

There are a few shafts of sunlight for the Conservatives. They gained a seat in Pennsylvania ward, Exeter, and came a strong second in Duryard, both wards dominated by Exeter University. Across Bristol as a whole, they managed to come first in terms of vote share in May, although Clifton and Cotham wards were uncontested this year. But overall, it’s clear that the best way of killing off the Conservative vote in any area is to build a university there.

In a way this is puzzling, as Universities like Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge, and Exeter have large and active Conservative associations. Nor are students anything like as left-wing, in general, as they are often portrayed (most are not particularly interested in politics). But there is no doubt that academics, and university workers, who are much more likely to vote locally than undergraduates, are now well to the left of the population as a whole in their politics. The local elections in May suggest that the Conservatives have made no headway among this section of the population at all, or indeed, among “Guardian Man and Woman” voters generally, in places like Twickenham and Hornsey & Wood Green.

This is hardly an exclusively British phenomenon. In the United States, and Australia, areas dominated by universities are also very strongly left-wing in their political sympathies.

Last night saw three by-elections:-

Harrow LBC: Harrow Weald. Lib Dem 1,288; Conservative 1,088; Labour 295; Green 74. Lib Dem gain from Conservative. This is a very good result for the Lib Dems as it enables them to form a group on Harrow Council. Harrow Weald was for a long time, a Lib Dem stronghold, and it was perhaps surprising that the Conservatives should have taken all three seats in May.

Statford DC: Alcester. Conservative 798; Lib Dem 638; Labour 54. Conservative gain from Lib Dem. A very strong Conservative performance, in a council which the Lib Dems seemed set to capture before 2003.

Elmbridge DC: Walton Central. Resident 656; Conservative 482; Lib Dem 115; Labour 53. Resident Hold.

Sean Fear is a London Conservative activist and writes a weekly column on local elections.

Nobody can win in West Yorkshire

West Yorkshire is unusual in having evolved a multi-party system in local elections. This is unusual under first past the post elections, as there is pressure on the voters to choose between two alternatives, in order to provide one party with an overall majority.

Four out of five Metropolitan borough councils, Leeds, Bradford, Kirklees and Calderdale, are now under No Overall Control. What’s more, there is little prospect of that changing in future elections. In addition to the three main parties, both the Greens, and the British National Party, with ten and eight councillors respectively, have substantial support in this part of the Country, and can expect to win additional seats in future elections. Making an overall majority even harder to obtain is the fact that Independent candidates also poll well here, holding sixteen council seats in these five boroughs. Local politicians, who are used to winning power outright, or losing it, must now get used to working in coalitions with parties with whom they may have little in common.

It is likely that West Yorkshire, with its support for parties outside of the mainstream, and its coalitions, represents a growing trend in this country. It was striking that last night, Independent candidates were able to defeat the Labour machine in the Blaenau Gwent by-elections. At the same time, in Bromley and Chislehurst, minor party candidates won sixteen per cent of the vote, and one of them, Nigel Farage of UKIP, even beat the Labour candidate into fourth place.

Last night’s local by-elections produced nothing like the degree of excitement generated by the Parliamentary by-elections. However, there was a strong swing to the Liberal Democrats in Canterbury, and quite strong performances by the British National Party in four seats they were contesting for the first time.

Canterbury CC - Sturry South: C 474, Lib Dem 318, Lab 89, Ind 24. Con Hold.

East Staffordshire BC - Shobnall: Lab 581, C 441, BNP 291, Lib Dem 102. Labour hold.

Epsom and Ewell BC - Ruxley: Residents 313, C 292, Lab 152, Lib Dem 66, UKIP 42. Residents’ Hold.

Lincoln CC - Moorland: C 640, Lab 569, BNP 254, Lib Dem 96, Ukip 46. Con Hold.

Tameside MBC - Denton South: Lab 900, C 346, BNP 316, Lib Dem 115, Green 47. Lab Hold.

Tameside MBC - Stalybridge North: Lab 773, C 427, BNP 283, Green 137, Lib Dem 75. Lab hold.

Wealden District - Uckfield DC: Lib Dem 381, C 211, Green 60. Lib Dem hold.

Sean Fear, a Tory activist, writes a regular column on local elections.