Tag: Liberal Democrats

MILIBAND FLAT AND FORGETFUL.

 

 

 

SCOTTISH VOTE BLESSING AND CURSE FOR LABOUR.

 

Labour’s conference in Manchester certainly didn’t feel like 1996 when the party was last preparing to take power.

 

Long before Ed Miliband’s blunder in “forgetting” to deliver his remarks on the economy and immigration, it was clear this gathering was not going to be the launch pad to victory. This was because the Scottish Referendum result has cast gloom not optimism across the Labour Party.

 

It was a victory for “no” which Labour supported but at what a price. The campaign exposed the degree to which previously loyal members in the industrial heart of Scotland (particularly Glasgow) were prepared to express their disillusionment with a party that is no longer radical enough for them. Then there were the images of Ed Miliband being jostled in a shopping mall whilst Gordon Brown showed what effective speech making was all about. Finally the referendum campaign has left Labour floundering for an answer on the English votes for English laws question.

 

Two last points on the Scotland vote. The high turnout wasn’t just because the question being asked was of the highest importance. Every vote mattered and was campaigned for whether it be in Kirkwall or Kilmarnock. In General Elections we have seen a growing trend for the parties to concentrate on 150 odd marginals. In the “safe” seats there is often little campaigning so it is no wonder the turnout next May could be around 65%. The other one is votes for 16/17 year olds. Ed Miliband was quite right to commit Labour to this extension of the electorate. The Scots youngsters were great. Let’s hope the other parties commit to the same proposal at a time when the issue of the prosperous old and the debt burdened young is rearing its head and needs a political voice.

 

 

LABOUR IN MANCHESTER.

 

So Labour delegates arrived in Manchester with a mixture of relief that Scotland was staying and concern about the trap being laid for them by the Prime Minister over English votes for English laws.

 

They remain ahead in the polls but can they win a majority or will they have to contemplate a deal with what’s left of the Liberal Democrats? I attended a couple of fringe meetings on that subject. There is a lot of antipathy to any deal. A Liverpool Unite delegate said the party would stop supporting Labour if such a thing happened, but there are pragmatists too.

Ed Miliband needed to make a game changing speech but failed. Both he and Ed Balls (for different reasons) are the weakness at the head of the party. However there is potential on the front bench. Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham’s idea to bring social and health care together is good. A policy well explained at conference by a man who must have another run for leader. Women like Mary Creagh, Stella Creasey and Rachel Reeves are also future stars.

 

This was the last Labour conference in Manchester until at least 2019. My sources suggest the city has priced itself out of the party’s reach. Liverpool have stepped in to host the next two northern conferences.

 

Now it is on to Birmingham and the Conservatives. You can write the lines now “Ed Miliband may have forgotten the economy but we haven’t etc”. However economic optimism is likely to be overshadowed by how the Tories deal with UKIP who could be poised for by election victories not only in Clacton but Heywood and Middleton too.

 

 

 

 

 

THE END OF URBAN LIBERALISM IN THE NORTH?

 

From the seventies to the noughties the Liberals and then the Liberal Democrats came to occupy the space vacated by the Tories as the opposition to northern Town Hall Labourism. In many cities the Lib Dems actually came to power. Ten years ago I goaded a political commentator into predicting that Labour would lose its majority in Manchester. That didn’t happen and from its peak in the early years of this century, it has been a downhill slide for the Lib Dems.

It became precipitous after the Coalition government was formed in 2010. So going into these local elections Leeds and Liverpool councils have just ten Lib Dem councillors and Manchester nine. They could be all but wiped out as a serious political force in our big cities on May 22nd. That would be very unhealthy for Town Hall politics. With the Tories showing no sign of ending 40 years of impotence in our big cities, the result of a Lib Dem meltdown will be massive Labour majorities and the danger of arrogance and lack of scrutiny that goes with it.

Little attention will be paid to these local elections because, for once, the European Parliament elections held on the same day will command centre stage. That’s partly because of UKIP but also because Labour has already acquired supremacy across most local councils across the North. For four years they have been benefiting from being out of government. Their recovery began in 2010 . Even as Gordon Brown was leaving No 10, Joe Anderson was celebrating Labour taking Liverpool.

So there is less to fight for than usual in our local elections. Nevertheless there will be polls for a third of the seats on the councils that control our great northern conurbations around Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. A third of the seats are also to be contested in the unitary authorities of Blackburn with Darwen and Warrington. A few councils outside our big cities also have elections including West Lancashire, Preston, Burnley and Harrogate.

There are some interesting contests. Trafford rarely lets us down for drama. The only Conservative controlled metropolitan council in the country, the Tories will surely lose their wafer thin grip on power. This will be a disappointment for the recently appointed Sean Anstee, the youngest council leader in the country. West Lancashire can also be expected to fall to Labour. Harrogate may remain a rare patch of blue in the North but the hung councils of Kirklees, Calderdale and Bradford are all being targeted by Labour.

In what is likely to be otherwise a grim night, the torch of Liberalism is likely to remain alight in South Lakeland where Lib Dem President Tim Farron has kept his party in power since 2006. The party is likely to continue holding the balance of power in Pendle where all three parties are almost equal. Stockport is the biggest challenge for the Lib Dems where one net loss could end their power deal with some ratepayers. Labour are the challengers with the Tories continuing to under perform in this leafy part of Greater Manchester. Adding spice to the elections here will be the return of Dave Goddard, the former Lib Dem council leader who was specifically targeted by his former Labour colleagues two years ago.

Overall Labour will find further gains hard to make. The Tories and Lib Dems will be hoping the economic recovery helps them to minimise their losses. All eyes will be on UKIP. They have made no breakthrough in northern Town Halls so far but may benefit from double support as people cast their European and local votes at the same time.

If UKIP do get a substantial number of councillors, it will be interesting to see if they are actually able to actually cope with issues like elderly care and planning.

Next week I’ll be looking at the fascinating European election contests in Yorkshire and the Humber and the North West.

TORY MINORITY GOVERNMENT ?

 

 

If the economic recovery continues until May next year there is at least a possibility that the Conservatives will be the largest party after the General Election.

 

Since 1979 voters have rewarded governments with at least three terms in office and although the Tories didn’t win outright in 2010 they will get most of the credit for turning the economy around. Labour is still vulnerable to being characterised as the party that got us into the mess. It’s a rough old world but reference to the worldwide recession by the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls won’t wash with many voters.

 

But it is only largest party status that the Conservatives can realistically hope for. The failure to reform constituency boundaries will cost them 20 odd seats. They will also lose votes to UKIP if their recent lacklustre campaign in Wythenshawe is anything to go by. The Tory candidate there was a hapless vicar who party managers allowed to be filmed on TV wandering around on his own having his leaflets refused by shoppers. They tried to pass off criticism by saying that a constituency which historically had one of the largest council estates in Europe was not their territory. That wasn’t Harold Macmillan’s view when he built hundreds of thousands of houses in the fifties or Margaret Thatcher when she introduced the right to buy.

 

The Tories are never going to win seats like Wythenshawe and South Shields but they should try and beat UKIP into second place. In six northern by elections in this parliament they have trailed in behind Nigel Farage. Across the north UKIP may become the default vote for blue collar workers who aren’t Labour.

 

All that said I still think the Tories could be the largest party in May 2015, so what happens then?

 

There has been speculation that David Cameron is set to promise to rule out a further coalition with the Lib Dems in advance of the poll. The advantages of this would be to focus people’s minds on a straight choice between Tories and Labour and it would avoid an embarrassing row with right wing Conservative backbenchers who are determined to reject a further deal with Nick Clegg. I think it is very likely that if Cameron tried to continue the current arrangement, he’d be removed.

 

The idea of a Conservative minority government has been dismissed on the grounds that it would be unstable and wouldn’t last. That presupposes that the defeated Labour and Liberal Democrat parties would be eager to force a second election. This is nonsense. In a second election the voters would likely repeat their message that they preferred the Tories and might even give them an overall majority to punish the parties that hadn’t got the message. The evidence of recent “replay” elections bears this out. Labour won narrowly in 1964 and handsomely in 1966. They were short of a majority exactly 40 years ago in March 1974 and won a slim lead the following October.

 

There is no reason why a Conservative minority government couldn’t rule for a parliament provided it steered a moderate course. It could even reasonably renegotiate our terms of membership with the European Union and seek to put it to a referendum. Would Labour and the Liberal Democrats oppose this with the 2020 General Election already coming into view?

 

 

ALL PARTY LEADERS UNEASY WITH ACTIVISTS

David Cameron has sought to reassure his party workers that he loves them really. We shall see if he has put Loongate to bed when they meet him at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester this autumn.

 

There is nothing new in this story of tension between the Conservative leadership and the poor bloody infantry who get them elected. A former Tory leader, Arthur Balfour, remarked a hundred years ago that he would rather take advice from his valet than the Conservative Party conference.

 

But this tension between party leaderships and grass root activists is not confined to the Tories.

 

Before Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson spoilt it all, the Labour Party conference used to be the occasion for a really interesting debate between pragmatic leaders who had one eye on the voters, and left wing activists who wanted the revolution tomorrow. That tension is still there but it is masked by party managers who want Labour to fight from the centre ground.

 

The result is that the Labour Party conference has become schizophrenic. On the debating floor, a series of anodyne debates are staged whilst on the fringes a really dynamic conversation is taking place. The public aren’t fooled and many party members leave mainstream politics in despair.

 

It is also true of the Liberal Democrats, and their predecessor party the Liberals. In the sixties and seventies there was tremendous tension between the then leader Jeremy Thorpe and the Young Liberals led by Peter Hain (now an ex Labour Minister). That tension resurfaced when the Lib Dems and the Social Democrats merged, bringing into the Alliance people like David Owen who believed in Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

 

An old friend of mine, Viv Bingham, who sadly died last year, lead a strong campaign for unilateralism.

He was at one time President of the Party, but always had an uneasy relationship with leaders like David Steel. Viv represented a distinctive trend of northern Liberalism committed to the cooperative movement, public service and opposition to nuclear weapons. It is interesting that the Southport MP John Pugh is calling this weekend on his party to recognise the different northern priorities as the Lib Dems prepare for the General Election campaign.

 

What Tory activists, left wing Labour supporters and radical Liberal Democrats are all battling against is the mentality of the London elite. Politicians in power get sucked into the world of civil servants who know little of life beyond the M25. Then they are surrounded by special advisers who have little sympathy with the fact that the ministers only got their because of the hard work of activists who believe in distinctive Tory, Socialist or Liberal principals.

 

Of course some of the ideas of grass roots activists are idealistic, too expensive or would turn off the voters. However the disconnect in the three main parties between the leadership and the grass roots, partly explains the rise of UKIP.

 

In my opinion many of them are swivel-eyed loons, but there is no gap between them and their leader Nigel Farage.