02 May 2018

Local Anesthetic. A very low-key set of council elections campaigns comes to an end tomorrow

83D64D42-06B4-46C8-83B5F6813C265552.jpg

Westminster has spent much of the past few weeks asking itself what exactly the Home Secretary knew when, about whether or not national or local ‘targets’ of some form existed, in relation to expelling from the country those who could not prove that they were entitled to be here, a stance which was entirely consistent with stated official policy on the subject. In the end, the sheer weight of inconsistency and implicit incoherence triggered what was an extremely high-profile resignation.

In fairness to Ms Rudd, and indeed her predecessor as Home Secretary and now Prime Minister, it is not entirely clear that critics of their stance were aiming at the right target. The person who decided that the UK should seek to reduce net immigration to the ‘tens of thousands’ was actually David William Donald Cameron.

Much as was his approach to the declaration in January 2013, that any majority Conservative Government would call an ‘in or out’ referendum on EU membership, the former Prime Minister appears to have adopted his stand on immigration solely for short-term electoral advantage, against his own natural instincts and with little thought about how the pledge might end up being realised if it had to be delivered. Demanding Mr Cameron’s resignation right now, however, is somewhat pointless as he quit in June 2016, so Ms Rudd has had to deal with it.

This saga is afforded a rest because political attention is about to move, fairly fleetingly possibly, to the local elections to be conducted tomorrow. Although these are, strictly speaking, ‘the largest test of public opinion since the June 2017 general election’, there is not much evidence that even in the areas where the battle is theoretically at its most intense, that many voters have been inspired. The elections for local councils in Britain rarely trigger strong passions at the mass level but even if one allows for that, the contests appear to have been especially low-key on this occasion.

This will not, though, prevent the media interpreting them as having deep implications for national politics or stop the BBC and Sky spending a lot of money on computers that can crunch the numbers to produce a notional national share of the vote and keep Professors Rawlings and Thrasher across their airwaves.

So in the spirit of attempting to be excited about this democratic Nirvana, what should we look for?

Turnout

Before we all get too enthralled as to what the votes cast tomorrow might ‘mean’, the first question to ask is how many people decided to avail themselves of a polling station and a ballot paper at all.

Except in those years when local elections find themselves taking place on the same day as general elections (2010 and 2015 in recent memory), turnout in UK council elections tends to be somewhere in a 30%-40% range. The higher the proportion of elections in very urban areas, the more it creeps towards the lower end of that spectrum.

In 2014, which was when almost all of the council contests tomorrow were last fought, the overall turnout figure was 36%, but in that year it was decided that the local elections should be scheduled on the same day as the European Parliament elections. This may have had the effect of driving up turnout slightly as those who detested the EU and wanted to record their sentiments by backing UKIP headed in the direction of the ballot box, and while there participated in the local elections as well if they were also happening in their area.

So, in 2018 there are decent reasons for suspecting that turnout will be down on 2014, not least because in the past three years the UK public have been asked to involve themselves with a general election in 2015, a referendum on EU membership in 2016 and another ‘surprise’ general election almost a year ago. This is a modest plus for the Conservatives as, all things being equal, a lower turnout would mean an electorate that was older than the norm, more white than is typical and more affluent than usual.

The battle for London

A large proportion of the elections that are to be held this year are in the 32 London boroughs. This capital city effect is magnified by the fact that a ‘national’ media is London-centric. This means that the shift of a few hundred votes in a clutch of marginal wards in a small set of swing boroughs will be the subject of inspection.

At the start of the campaign, the Conservatives had lowered expectations so that it was widely expected that Kensington and Chelsea, Wandsworth and Westminster would all fall to Labour without much trouble. That now seems far less certain. If the Conservatives can keep this trio, they will hail the night as a triumph. More forensic attention will be offered to the borough of Barnet, hard fought terrain and with a significant minority of Jewish electors, which the press will deem a case study as to whether Labour’s anti-Semitism difficulties have had a real impact.

In the south-west of London, whether the Liberal Democrats can retain the borough of Sutton and win in Richmond and Kingston will be viewed as crucial to an overall assessment of their fortunes. That this should be very favourable territory for them (as it was until 2010) is apparently entirely immaterial.

Labour’s long-shots

It is just possible, despite the above, that in the lesser paragraphs of the reporting in the Saturday newspapers, analysts might look beyond the area covered by Transport for London. If so, then it will be Labour ‘long-shots’ – parts of England where a Labour advance may suggest that Jeremy Corbyn could become Prime Minister (if a general election had been called for 3 May 2018) – which will fall under some scrutiny.

The sort of places that might, therefore, be mentioned include Trafford (which would require a striking swing to Labour), Swindon (more competitive) and Plymouth (where the student vote may be influential). The impact of any Labour surge here would be offset if Mr Corbyn were to suffer losses in his northern heartlands in traditional red areas with anti-EU tendencies. On balance, he might be content to see London seize the lion’s share of headlines after these elections.

The Lib Dems outside London

The Liberal Democrats local council base was so badly battered during the coalition era that there are few places outside of the bottom corner of London where they can realistically expect to win a majority of seats in an authority.

That does not make the rest of England inconsequential to them. They have been doing much better in local by-elections than their national opinion poll ratings. Sir Vince Cable needs to see more evidence of this positive effect to justify his rather understated style of leadership, which has concentrated on repairing badly damaged internal infrastructure and making highly private overtures to pro-EU, anti-Corbyn Labour MPs as they decide where their future lies. At a minimum, he must beat the 13% of the national vote that Nick Clegg obtained in the 2014 ballot.

UKIP, RIP?

Which he should be able to do because it is now UKIP, not the Lib Dems, who are on the verge of a ‘Dead Parrot’ standing in British politics.

Back in 2014, Nigel Farage was the peak of his powers and UKIP won 17% of the national vote in the local elections and acquired 163 council seats. Today, their latest, albeit explicitly interim, leader Gerard Batten would be right to regard winning 1.7% of the national vote and 1.63 council seats as entirely acceptable. For there is the serious risk that UKIP will not manage even 1% of the final vote share as divined by the BBC/Sky, and that not one of their incumbent councilors will be returned to office.

If so, the ironic ultimate legacy of the 2018 local elections that really stands the test of time is to kill off the United Kingdom Independence Party a number of months before the United Kingdom itself formally leaves the European Union.

Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA


×

Update your login details

We updated our website and supporting systems on 12th December. 

If you previously had an account, please reset your password. If it's your first-time logging in, please register to create an account. For assistance, please contact the BVCA Membership Team

Login