This year’s local elections take place in tough territory for Labour but advances are possible, writes Lewis Baston
LOCAL elections will take place in May for 27 English shire county councils, eight unitary authorities in England and two mayoral contests. In Wales the election for the Isle of Anglesey council was postponed in 2012 and takes place instead in 2013. For the most part, these elections are outside Labour’s geographical and political comfort zone as the big metropolitan areas are not going to the polls, and neither are most of the city unitary authorities. However, the English counties are politically important. Their budgets and responsibilities are much greater than those of the district councils which voted in 2011, and they are an important opportunity to develop Labour’s strength in a large number of marginal seats the party needs to win in the general election.
Labour’s performance in the 2009 county council elections was diabolical. The vote came in the midst of the expenses scandal and an economic slump and on the same day as the European parliament election, which stimulated rightwing turnout. Labour lost all of the ‘shire’ counties it was defending and there is only one of these authorities, Cumbria, where the Conservatives are not in control. The only authority being defended by Labour is the unitary County Durham council. Looking on the bright side, this disastrous background gives Labour considerable room for gains in May.
The 2009 meltdown saw Labour lose several Midlands counties which had previously been run by Labour majorities since 1981. Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire should be near-certainties to revert to Labour, as the party lost these areas by only three percentage points in the 2010 general election and Labour’s candidates won the police and crime commissioner elections comfortably in November 2012.
Staffordshire is more challenging for Labour this time round, with the party being 16 points behind in 2010 and also losing to the Conservatives in a straight fight in the PCC election in 2012 – which, unlike the county council, also covers Stoke-on-Trent. Labour was completely routed in Staffordshire in 2009, going from 32 seats and overall control to three seats out of 62, fewer than the UK Independence party or the Liberal Democrats. The other key Midlands contest is Warwickshire, where Labour lagged by 18 points in 2010 but led on the first preference count in the PCC elections. Both counties contain a concentration of marginal seats, including Cannock Chase, Nuneaton and Warwick and Leamington.
In the north-west, Labour should gain Lancashire, where it was six points behind in 2010 and secured a good win in the PCC election, although Cumbria, where it trailed nine points three years ago, might be a challenge because the county is quite polarised between strong Labour towns in the west and the Conservative-Liberal Democrat areas in the east, and there are fewer marginal wards to gain than the vote totals may suggest.
A very good Labour result in 2013 would see Labour winning Northamptonshire and the unitary Northumberland county council and becoming the largest single party in any one of Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Norfolk or Suffolk.
In most of the other county elections there is little hope of depriving the Conservatives of overall control, despite the party retaining only Buckinghamshire in its 1993 county elections debacle. A repeat of 1993 is not possible for two reasons. One is that the creation of unitary authorities has resulted in the best Labour areas leaving the shire counties – for instance, Southampton and Portsmouth were part of Hampshire when it was a hung council in 1993 but when they were removed the remnant would have had a Tory majority even then. The other reason for not expecting the Tories to relinquish their county heartlands is that in 1993 the Liberal Democrats were doing well and won a lot of normally Conservative wards. This is very unlikely to happen in 2013. Nor does it seem likely that UKIP will be able to have a big effect on the parties’ fortunes in the county elections, except perhaps in Staffordshire. The main risk for the Tories would be the emergence of strong independent candidates.
The Conservatives must be accounted entirely safe in Surrey, West Sussex, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, Dorset, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lincolnshire and Oxfordshire, and in the unitary county authorities of Isle of Wight, Shropshire and Wiltshire. It would be very bad news for the Tories if they could not also add East Sussex and Worcestershire to the tally, and see off Liberal Democrat challenges in Devon and Somerset. However, Labour should be looking at a few ‘red shoots’ popping up in county halls representing wards in marginal constituencies like Redditch and Dartford, where Labour was eliminated in 2009, and hopefully extending the party’s presence into some more ambitious areas as well.
In terms of council seats, Labour lost 291 seats, holding only 178 seats, in 2009. Reversing this disaster should be possible although the areas covered are not exactly the same as they were in 2009. The party should also hope to win both mayoral contests, although it has underperformed in this type of election. North Tyneside is politically marginal, having been Conservative 2002-5, Labour 2005-9, and Conservative again since then. Doncaster is a political oddity: its mayor is Peter Davies of the English Democrats.
The 2013 local elections do not involve any local Labour powerbases, Durham aside. They are taking place in marginal towns and suburbs, and some rural areas where Labour has tended to be weak. If anything, this makes them even more important for the party as it needs to rebuild its campaigning strength in the marginals and establish a presence even in difficult territory. Labour supporters in London and the metropolitan areas would do well to help colleagues in the shires. After all, there is a point about One Nation to prove.
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Lewis Baston is senior research fellow at Democratic Audit
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“The main risk for the Tories would be the emergence of strong independent candidates.”
Probably a daft suggest but how about Labour offering strong candidates and giving the electorate a reason to for them?
I live in what was classed by my closed shop CLP as a safe Tory ward which, in turn, wasn’t worth bothering with.
I bothered and the ward was won.
Sadly staggering incompetence by those elected will probably result in the ward being lost (at the next locals) but it is only because of their inability not because the seat is ‘safe’ Tory, although I am sure that should it happen HQ analysis, aided by head in the sand beliefs that all really is rosy, will decree it was for that reason and not actual reality.
With regards to Lancashire and the PCC election one of the areas ‘we’ didn’t win was South Ribble and it was by something like 76 votes.
I could have got those votes, had I been asked to try, in the very same “safe ward we could never win” but the closed shop CLP’s deliberate failures ensured it didn’t happen.
This will fall on deaf ears because the hierarchy and their fixed analysis are not prepared to grasp awkward nettles but the only reason “safe areas” for any party these days remain ‘safe areas’ is because what is being offered isn’t what the electorate want or believe in.
Somerset is a certainty and Devon probable to go to NOC . The LD’s have a chance of taking overall control in Somerset but not in Devon . There are new boundaries in Somerset and a small reduction in the number of councillors which are also slightly unfavourable to the Conservatives .
Thanks both for comments, and also to Sam Prest who pointed out that I’d neglected North Yorkshire. Although a pretty certain ‘Con hold’ Labour has work to do in establishing its presence in Scarborough and Selby.
Mark – thanks for the insight into Somerset and Devon. If the LDs make progress in Somerset it would mark some recovery since 2011 when two districts (South Somerset and Taunton Deane) were both fairly evenly split and the other three (Mendip, Sedgemoor, West Somerset) were Conservative-dominated. Given the three marginal parliamentary seats in the county it would be encouraging for the LDs to hold on (unless they mess it up when running the council, as tends to happen to both parties in Torbay, but that’s another story).
Andy – I’m sympathetic. Labour does need, particularly after an election like 2010, to avoid just consolidating known support but reach out – a lot of the approach to ‘voter ID’ was defensive, which is OK if you are coming from an election victory like 1997 but not from a defeat like 2010. There are areas where a strong local appeal can win unpromising territory – note how David Drew (ex MP) won a rural ward in 2011 in Stroud. County elections, though, tend to be a bit more party political than district elections. Given the general disillusion with party politics, it is easier for voters who are leaving the Conservatives to support Independents than Labour candidates, which is what happened in the 2012 PCC elections.
Can only speak for my bit / area were there was no independent standing. ‘We’ lost because of the Labour ward councillors lying to residents when they didn’t have to. Residents who were going to vote Labour just didn’t, it really is that simple and the marginal loss could have been a win if that hadn’t happened.
Sadly (for us) the utter incompetence of the closed shop will not be analysed because the ultimate result was that the full election was won.
That is fine (in the eyes of HQ) but what it means is those willing to campaign no longer are, those who voted no longer see the point and the deserved negativity towards the closed shop CLP will be carried into future elections, which in turn will add to further bigger and more important losses.