National politicians now cannot wait for Sunday when they can return to the safer territory of Britain in Europe. Arguing the whys and wherefores of being ‘in’ or ‘out’ and pushing the United Kingdom Independence party back to where they like it to be: a single issue party. But for now, all three Westminster parties need excuses: the Tories in the south, Labour in the north and the Lib Dems pretty much anywhere. There are three excuses that seem to be playing as the local election results start to roll in.
Excuse number one: it is OK, they will not win any seats in a general election. This may be true, but it is precisely this cynicism on the part of the political elite that is driving normally rational voters to take an irrational punt on a party they really know very little about. With the Scottish referendum yet to come – and another opportunity for the general public to give the Westminster elite a poke in the eye – who knows what kind of momentum might build in the run up to May 2015? Technocratic policies and rational political persuasion are not cutting it. Even if our electoral system does allow a swing back to the mainstream parties next year, the experience of our European neighbours would suggest such excuses are on borrowed time.
Excuse number two: they did not do very well in London. The reason? People are younger, better-educated, more at ease with their diverse communities. How lovely. Such rationale betrays something of the elitist attitude that sometimes emerges in the capital that Ukip voters are raging against. This is especially the case in northern towns where people actually hear: ‘why are you stupid enough to vote Ukip?’ Northern voters are anything but. Their disaffection with the Westminster elite is based upon the strong perception that central government governs in the interests of London alone and those interests are backed up the strong and influential voice of a city mayor and other Westminster-based institutions.
Excuse number three: Nigel Farage has been given so much coverage by the media it is what you would expect. Once again, to the more distant ear this sounds like schoolboy squabbling among the metropolitan elite. Both the expenses scandal and Leveson clearly had a national resonance, but they had much less purchase outside the Westminster bubble as they did within it, and the overall sense from many looking on is that politicians and media alike are like cats in a sack on Millbank … and a plague on all your houses.
So what can be said to the people of Rochdale, Rotherham, Sunderland, Wigan and Essex? Labour has been listening since 2010. The Tories have been heading ever further to the right to no avail. Neither approach holds a compelling answer.
Instead, the progressive left needs to find a new voice. England needs devolution. People need power closer to them, held by real people they can see and touch. England needs cities and towns throbbing with visions and plans and political battles of their own. This is where the left will find its voice again: not in grand policies or political strategies, not in basking in the success of the capital city, not in fawning to the commentariat, but in letting go and local democracy become local democracy again.
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Ed Cox is director of IPPR North. He tweets @edcox_ippr
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Photo: Matt Brown
And the most bizarre excuse of all: That it doesn’t matter that there are millions unemployed, that it’s harder and harder to find a school place, that waiting lists for the NHS and queues at A&E are massive and growing, that housing shortages are outrageous…yet unlimited, unstoppable immigration has nothing at all to do with it
It should be noted that the excuse about London voters being more educated actually came from the lips of one of the UKIP spokesmen. But there is some truth in it, though it does not explain why white working class voters from Barking and Dagenham and Redbridge were immune to Farage’s siren call. Perhaps they do recognise that London has a champion in its elected Mayor. Who speaks up for the north? National politicians of all parties fall over themselves to deny that a North/South divide even exists.
Yes, England needs a devolved administration. But only after its regions have acquired new competencies. Otherwise we risk long-term Tory mis-rule from Whitehall across England. And only as part of a wider constitutional settlement (e.g. a unicameral UK administration).
However, these constitutional issues are absolutely NOT relevant to winning UKIP votes for Labour in 2015.
To win those votes, we have to expose UKIP’s neo-liberalism. That is UKIP’s Achilles heel.
That work needs to start right away. It could easily result in a SPLIT in UKIP which, while united in its fear of the “foreigner”, is not at all united on economic and social issues. Its voters, for example, will not want to pay to see their GPs.
If we don’t start exposing UKIP’s neo-liberalism right away, UKIP will have time to cobble together some semblance of unity.
Good points, but how do they lead to ‘England needs devolution’? It’s worked for Scotland, Wales and NI, but with ~85% of the UK population, an English assembly seems a pointless duplication of representation – not convincing when engagement levels are down! Replace counties with regionals, as New Labour tried to do.