The Tories are drinking in the last chance saloon. With the national political picture so stacked against them, if there is to be a Tory revival it should be in local government.
But while the May 2002 elections might give the Tories a chance of a comeback in some parts of Britain, in London the challenge is more complex.
Several factors contribute to the political picture in London: the increasing choice of candidates for the electorate, the changing face of the suburbs and the new regionalism engendered by the return of elected London government.
The general election threw up some interesting results. When Stephen Twigg was elected in Enfield Southgate in 1997 many saw it as a one-term victory. In reality it marked a shift in suburban voting. Look too at Harrow West, which Labour held, and even Uxbridge and Chipping Barnet, where Labour did not win, but was in with a shout in 2001.
With much lower turnouts in many heartlands there is a higher percentage of the electorate voting Labour in what were former Tory strongholds, such as Enfield, than in traditional Labour areas such as Islington. And the Tories are not gaining ground in the inner city. Here the picture is much more fragmented. But generally the percentage of voters, if not of the electorate, voting Labour remains high in traditionally safe seats.
In Islington voters clearly distinguished between local and national on 7 June. Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn retained a good majority (of those who voted) but, in the council by-election held on the same day, there was a marked swing to the Liberal Democrats, even if Labour won the seat.
By-elections in London since 1998 show some interesting results. Hackney, which was hung for nearly three years, has seen seven consecutive Labour wins in by-elections. Even with the troubled financial situation the electorate is turning back to Labour.
Amidst all this, what of the other parties? The Liberal Democrats will no doubt target their scarce resources in a handful of boroughs. With the Liberal Democrats you get what is locally expedient, candidates often being picked before becoming party members. It’s not unusual to find that Liberal Democrat policies do not even cross borough boundaries. Whether this will help or hinder the Liberal Democrats long term we will see.
As for the minority parties, only the Greens have any hope of a seat. Voters often mistake them for a greener version of Labour. In reality they are conservative and quite often reactionary. At London level the Green Party has withdrawn from involvement in most of the work of the Assembly, choosing to cherry pick issues and often having little or nothing to say on issues outside their environmental focus.
Our increasingly choosy electorate will sometimes think it’s worth taking a chance on a Green as they’ll never win control. This was evident from the results of the 2000 Greater London Authority elections where three out of 11 members under the list system were Greens. But beware. In Islington if a single Green councillor had been elected in 1998, he or she would have held the balance of power. Although there is a perception that the Greens steal Labour voters, their appeal to nimbyism appeals to right-of-centre voters.
All this raises wider issues for all political parties, particularly for Labour which has wholeheartedly embraced regional government. We have been used to one national party line. But with the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Greater London Authority the landscape is different. Politics was never monolithic, but the advent of regional government provides a clearer focus for regional and local differences. Values remain eternal, but policies change over time and implementation increasingly changes with location.
Politicians of all parties need to hammer home the importance of distinctive regional standpoints. In the words of the great Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O’Neil: ‘All politics is local.’ This is not to gainsay the importance of national political views, but to embrace the dialogue of regionalism within party policy debates.