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Let the battle commence
Local Government Chronicle -
19 January 2005
Suddenly the stakes in May’s local government elections have got bigger- much bigger. The Tories, under a new leader setting about with an iconoclastic will to smash the party’s images, needed to demonstrate the first indisputable evidence of resurgence. Labour, into its third-term of government but with none of its policy and personality clashes resolved, was inevitably destined for a pretty torrid evening as the results came in. The task of its spin-doctors was to persuade the political market that the results were merely disastrous when they could have been catastrophic.
The turmoil in the Liberal Democrats has put the pressure on both the main parties. David Cameron could hardly face a more favourable scenario- not only a groggy government but now a Liberal Democrat party apparently determined to spend the best part of two months arguing with itself about what it exists for. But it also means that the Tories need not just a good result in May but a very good result. A strong performance in London, rolling back the Liberal advances in areas like Calderdale and Kirklees and gaining those elusive toe-holds in the big northern metropolitan authorities will be even more necessary to demonstrate that the Cameron revolution has momentum- and brings results.
The Government will smell an opportunity to halt the insidious Liberal advance in the cities where they claim to be the only challenger to Labour. To see a swathe of Labour wards falling to a party which is trying to recover from civil war will be even worse news that that already anticipated.
I am not sure how grateful Liberal Democrat councillors and candidates will be at the solicitude shown by the parliamentary party to get the leadership battle over before the May deadline. At least they will acknowledge the small mercy that the party was not tempted by the utterly dotty idea of postponing the contest (but not, of course, the war) until after the local elections!
It will be bad enough if the party frames the contest as a choice between ideologies: the economic liberalism of the “modernisers” (where have we heard that expression before?) against public funded social liberalism. A Faustian battle for the soul of the party may be dramatic but as a form of catharsis it has its drawbacks – as the Tories have taken a long time to discover.
So what of the local government battlefield? Well, the place not to start is with the party estimates of their own chances- that is part of the spin. The Tories will understate their hoped-for gains to maximise the impact of a good outcome. Labour will do the opposite. The Liberals, if they have any sense, will try to focus expectations on a handful of councils where the pendulum swung so violently against them last time that they have a reasonable hope of a come-back – the London Borough of Richmond comes to mind.;
The best test will be the Rawlings/Thresher calculation of national equivalent vote: in other words, if the outcome of the local elections were reproduced across all councils what would the final tallies look like. In 2002 – the last time these seats were contested – the Tories emerged with 34 per cent of the vote, Labour with 33 per cent and the Liberal Democrats with 27 per cent. A much smaller clutch of elections in 2004 (no London boroughs) produced 38 per cent, 26 per cent and 29 per cent respectively.
Of the 4,375 seats being contested in 177 English councils the Tories emerged from the last test with 1,490 seats, Labour 1,753 and Liberals 887. The Tories may have no seats in Manchester, Liverpool or Newcastle but they control Trafford so may hope to nudge into neighbouring wards in Manchester. Dudley, Walsall and Coventry (thanks to a casting vote) carry the Tory flag in the Midlands where they control Birmingham with Liberal Democrat support (in Leeds the favour is returned).
In London Kingston and Croydon will be battle-grounds (along with Richmond where the Tories creamed the Liberals last time round) but the party thinks that recent by-election form gives it cautious hopes of gaining a presence in Barking and Dagenham, Tower Hamlets and Newham. London also has a clutch of councils with no overall control including Lambeth (where seven Tories sustain the Liberal Democrat administration), Southwark, Havering and Harrow.
Local Government elections are funny things. The reality of victory or defeat is implacable for individual councillors. But for the national parties what matters is who tells the most convincing story- remember when Kenneth Baker, the Tory chairman, turned a national trouncing into a PR triumph based entirely on the results in Wandsworth?
Within Labour no-one seriously disputes the resigned expectation of a bad night. But for David Cameron and Liberal Democrat X the narrative will be everything. The stakes are far too huge to leave the outcome to chance!
© Local Government Chronicle
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