All politics is local?
I, like you, laughed like a drain when the Liberal Democrat result in South Shields came in. To come seventh, and to lose your deposit, is the usual role of some eccentric campaigning for more public nudity, or against speed cameras, or to expose the secret role of freemasons in the murder of their friend. But I was reading the results in Eastbourne town hall, where the Liberal Democrats retained every one of their county seats, in a parliamentary constituency which they may hold in 2015. They used to be the receptacle for protest votes; Nigel Farage has cornered that market. But they are still good at using incumbency to shore up their position. There are plenty of Liberal Democrat MPs who may defy national political gravity in 2015, and keep their seats, making another coalition their aspiration. Ed Miliband’s job now is to close down that option.
Posted by Paul Richards on 3 May 2013
I have a similar relationship to the Conservative party as I do to Tottenham Hotspur: it feels good when they lose, even if they don’t actually lose to my team. As a result, I [enjoyed the local election results], for fairly obvious reasons. But I am not convinced that this is a sign of an unstoppable march back to Downing Street in 2015. The election cycle it most reminds me of is not 1994-7 or even 1990-2, but 2003-5. Labour endured a series of heavy losses to a party that outflanked it on the left, that was light on policy and heavy on protest; but it won the 2005 election anyway.
A vote for the United Kingdom Independence party may be many things, but it is something of a stretch to see it as a call for full socialism. Even a depleted Labour party was able to squeeze the Liberal Democrat vote in 2010; why wouldn’t a Lynton Crosby-powered Conservative party be able to pick off a few UKIPers in 2015? Beneath the comforting headline figures, Labour’s poll lead is still troublingly soft, and while Labour remains a blank slate on economic policy, it will remain so.
Posted by Stephen Bush on 3 May 2013
‘Essex Man’ has always been a pretty good barometer of what the population as a whole thinks and feels, and the outcome of [the] local elections bares that out. The Tories had their worst results in Essex for 40 years, losing 19 seats across the county to a range of other parties – Labour, Green, UKIP and independents.
The majority of Tory seats were lost to UKIP. The surge by Nigel Farage’s party in the Tory heartlands of Essex will be a shock to many, not least the Tories themselves. In Clacton, you would have expected arch-Eurosceptic Tory MP Douglas Carswell to have seen off any UKIP challenge, but the rising UKIP tide in this Essex seaside resort saw an independent push between the two parties to claim the sea.
But while the majority of Tory county councillors lost as a result of the UKIP surge, Labour candidates were still failing to make an impact on areas where, back in the heyday of the late 1990s, we were winning. Places like Harlow and Witham, where we had Labour MPs in 1997 and where we need to win in 2015 to form a majority government, still feel tantalisingly out of our grasp.
Posted by Jordan Newell on 3 May 2013
Labour’s responsibility for Thatcherism
Some of what Margaret Thatcher did we should have been in power doing. We should have helped council tenants become homeowners. That is a leftwing idea. We should have made unions ballot before going on strike. That is a leftwing idea. We should have released companies like BT from state control. There is nothing particularly leftwing about state ownership of telephones, particularly when it is an incompetent service. We should have defended the Falklands from a fascist junta – and to Michael Foot’s credit as opposition leader he backed Thatcher on this. We should have renewed Britain’s nuclear deterrent and stood up to the Soviet Union. There is nothing leftwing about being soft on defence or on dictatorships.
Posted by Luke Akehurst on 11 April 2013
What has been evident is the degree of pride and affection in which Tories hold Thatcher. Time is a great healer, but her supporters are relentless in championing council house sales, privatisation, trade union reform and her enthusiasm for enterprise as having changed Britain for the better, despite the devastation that many of her policies caused in Britain’s industrial heartlands and cities. Labour politicians and members should be equally proud of the governments led by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The national minimum wage, nursery education for all three- and four-year-olds, city academies, record investment in the NHS, peace in Northern Ireland and civil partnerships have all changed Britain for the better. New Labour made Britain a more tolerant, dynamic and kinder place to live, where more people than ever before had the opportunity to go to university, to start a business and to live their lives free of prejudice.
Posted by Sally Prentice on 17 April 2013
Why health and safety matters
The tragedy in Dhaka is directly relevant to us in the UK, not only from a perspective of international solidarity between workers, but also because the clothes made there end up in the stores of a number of well-known brands on our high streets. Our own demand for cheap clothes can have devastating consequences if producing them means workers’ health and safety is forgotten. Health and safety is not something that should ever be forgotten. The consequences of doing so are too serious. This is not just a trade union view, it is one that is shared by many of the companies that we work with, who rightly put the safety of their workforce ahead of any other consideration.
Posted by Michael Leahy on 28 April 2013