Unwise council

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, 03 May 2006 22:57.

This time tomorrow we political Brits will be glued to the telly for the pundits’ reading of the exit polls in the 2006 English local authority elections. Now, it happens that none of these great and wise experts predicted Mr Blair’s 2005 General Election majority with much accuracy. But one blogger of no consequence and with no reputation to lose alighted on a figure of 52. It turned out to be not the worst of pure guesses - being 14 seats astray - and beat all the highly-paid pros.

So tomorrow’s poll is another chance for some psephological fame. Accordingly, I am resolutely refusing to rest on my oracular laurels, and eschewing all temptation to be modest and unassuming. Brash and boastful is much more fun.

Here, then, is my prediction, guaranteed 100% accurate and stuff the rest, for the lead item on Friday morning’s news:-

Labour: There is scary talk among Labour MPs of a worst ever performance on Thursday, beating even the 350 council seats lost in 1968. Such a result would mean the disappearance of the Party from many council chambers, and some intense pressure for Blair to make way for Gordon Brown very, very soon. But I wonder whether Charles Clarke’s travails and Prescott’s priapics will play as badly with Labour voters as with the chattering classes. Many will protest, obviously. But I don’t think the night will be quite that bad for the Prime Minister. I think he will bomb but only as far as the outer limits of survivability. That will mean a 250+ loss, still absolutely terrible as these things go - but perhaps not a cause for summary pixiecide.

Conservatives: Expect a pretty flat performance from flat-face. Cameron’s Labour-lite will not delight the electorate with their new green credentials and their anti-racism. They would, of course, have to be complete dolts - as opposed to just ordinary, everyday dolts - not to screw some modest profit from Labour’s tribulations. But it goes without saying that there will be nothing like the sweeping gains that would signal a revived Conservative Party emphatically on course for ... blah, blah. Maybe they’ll bag a 35% share of the vote and gains just shy of three figures. No cause for celebration, then. Instead, a few mild grumblings from unattributed sources stage right. Francis Maude talking about the long-term task of building a credible opposition, true to core values blah, moving steadfastly in the right direction blah blah.

LibDems: The major recipient of the protest vote will be Ming - and not for any reason associated with his own dull lawyer’s personality. No one knows what Ming stands for. No one cares. This will be the election of the protest vote. Ming will garner 100 or better new LibDem councillors.

Greens: Another winner protest-wise, being a Party of supposedly nice, harmless sandal wearers and Druids. 20 new seats. Much earnest media attention, videos of melting City institutions, ice caps, etc to deflect the public from noticing the equivalent success of ...

The BNP: Thank you Margaret Hodge. 15 new seats - less than the greens but there are only 363 BNP candidates fighting nationwide (against the Green’s 1,251). So an excellent performance more than doubling the Party’s current representation. Nick Griffin will be able to horrify the MSM and argue that the patriotic vote was much stronger than the eventual haul of seats. Sympathetic bloggers will adduce that something’s a-stirring deep down in the Olde English political bloodstream, and there’s no going back now.

Respect: Some vibrancy to be expected in wards where everybody flops down facing Folkstone five times a day. This time George Galloway will be, if not direspected, certainly studiously avoided by the BBC. But he will claim anyway that he always intended to restrict his interviews to Bangladesh Television. Alarmed about melting ice caps Bangladesh Television will instead decide to interview the Green’s non-leader, erm ... Ms er ...

UKIP: What is an anti-EU Party doing trying to win seats on Morpeth council, really? Why would anyone waste a protest vote on them when there are so much better recipients on all sides? No one will. Amid much success generally for small Parties and independents, UKIP’s 319 hopefuls will record an ignonimous duck. Yet more joy for Griffin.

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Comments:

Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Thu, 04 May 2006 09:37 | #

Something Bangladesh Television probably doesn’t say.

I’m sure meanwhile the instream of new immigrants simply goes on, because from time to time here in Flanders we hear on the radio about Bangladeshians who missed some connection on the road to England and who were found idly along the motorway.

Posted by Amalek on Thu, 04 May 2006 10:19 | #

Living as I do in what liberal meejah types scornfully call ‘leafy suburbia’ (they are shameless dendrophobes), I always find the disjuncture between the politics of print and screen and the situation on my turf bizarre and amusing.

Contests for control of councils hereabouts are between Liberal Democrats (tireless pavement politicians, though often with little else to say), Conservatives (mostly elderly, intermittent imitators of the LDs’ localised agitprop) and, increasingly, Residents Association and other independent councillors who ridicule the very idea of national ideological squabbles being laid over neighbourhood needs. For example, St George’s Hill, Weybridge—once the site of Winstanley’s primitive communism and now home to some of Britain’s richest—elected a slate of independents who beat Tories.

This area houses some of the best educated electorates in Britain: political consciousness is well developed and turnouts at quadrennial local polls are high by UK-average standards. So it seems that our voters are expressing utter disengagement from the Punch-and-Judy, bogus-left versus spurious-right sham fights which the national parties, jostling for “the middle ground”, expect us to take seriously. But instead of staying in front of the telly as the chavs do, my neighbours send a positive ‘None of the Above, Especially Not Phoney Tony’ message. If only they would do so in general elections too.

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 05 May 2006 11:44 | #

I will post more fully on the final election outcome. But a quick reading shows that Labour has indeed lost 250+ seats. 251 right now, but the Yorkshire councils are still to declare. The likelihood is that the base-line firmness evident in Labour’s North-West and North-East vote will obtain there too, with the rider that the BNP has a strong chance of some additional gains.

If, amidst all its travails, the Labour Party only bleeds away support to the other Parties down to the level of, say, a 33% general share it can, in fact, take some heart. Perhaps they should start singing “Things Can Only Get Better” again.

I read the Tory runes wrong. An extra five percent on the Tory vote is sweet music to Cameron, and will stifle the simmering discontent on the right. He has held together the traditional support in the country and won back centrists - mostly, I would guess, from Lib-Dems, but some Blairites too.

All the evidence suggests that the Lib-Dems have stalled. Poor Ming should have profited much more than he did from the Labour scandals. But no.

Alright, he was operating off what people will now point out was a high past-electoral platform. But the cruel fact is that if a third Party in a FPTP system is to make headway it just has to expand its support to the point where it can compete with, weaken and replace the Party which is ideologically nearest to it. That’s Labour. But, actually, the Lib-Dem’s past electoral successes have come mostly at the expense of the Tories. In other words, ideologically their new voters have not really stood with them. Rather, they have stood (what now turns out to be) temporarily against the Tories. Give Cameron his due, then. His plan is holding up.

The BNP had a great night, and there will be more good news to come this morning. If I can find all the figures I will examine their performance ward by ward.

The Greens also did pretty well, though slightly short so far of my expectation. They can be satisfied, though how “environmental” their new supporters are - rather than just anti-Labour - is yet to be seen.

Respect came out on top in a handful of East-End floppers’ wards, as expected.

UKIP appears to have bombed totally. It is time for them to eat some humble pie and face facts. They arose as a result of Maastricht. Their function is to give representative voice to anti-EU opinion within the context of European elections. With Cameron positioning himself on the hard edge of Tory anti-EU opinion, they may have no future on that basis, I do not know. But they certainly have no future in local or national UK politics.

Posted by AD on Fri, 05 May 2006 12:35 | #

The BNP’s candidate-standing to candidate-elected ratio is outstanding. The British people seem hungry to vote for them. 26 seats so far(making a total of what, almost 50?). They have made more gains than everyone besides the Tories.

There isn’t much advice one can give them besides get more candidates out there.

Posted by Matt O'Halloran on Fri, 05 May 2006 12:36 | #

Before the poll, Dave and the Cameroonies were running around telling the British to vote for anyone—ANYONE—rather than the evil fascists, or feel themselves beyond the pale:

Eric Pickles, the Conservative deputy chairman and local government spokesman, told The Sunday Telegraph yesterday: “We are not differentiating between the candidates who stand for the BNP and the people who vote for them. We believe it is a shameful act to vote for the BNP, no matter how badly you feel you have been let down by Labour. These people are motivated by race and it is not an acceptable use of a protest vote to vote for the BNP.’‘

The Conservative attack tells its own story. Put bluntly, the Tories do not have as much to lose from insulting prospective BNP supporters as Labour does. Mr Pickles’s comment is a clear indication that the majority of BNP support this week will come not from the Right, but from the Left and disaffected Labour voters…

But where the BNP squared up to the Tories for the respectable white proletarian vote that Lord Salisbury once coveted and Harold Macmillan won… oh dear:

The Tories say that they are fielding more candidates than ever before in wards targeted by the BNP, twice as many in Barking and Dagenham than last year. “I feel particularly aggrieved at the accusation that we are not doing enough,’’ said Mr Pickles. “We have put in an enormous effort to work with Searchlight (the anti- fascist group).’‘

If a number of candidates had not “let the party down’‘, it would be contesting all but six of the wards the BNP are standing in, he said.

http://tinyurl.com/q852y

Result: the BNP now has a dozen seats in Barking. The Tories have two.

Pickles, it will be recalled, is an ex-council leader in Yorkshire who had to flee south to get a seat in the Commons, like so many other Tory northerners and Scotchmen. The BNP has assumed the role of defender of white interests in the North of England, which the Conservatives once toyed with—before they finally succumbed to multiculti, Jewish campaign finance and letting Gerry Gable’s little smearing team do their research.

Posted by AD on Fri, 05 May 2006 13:20 | #

England First Party (http://www.efp.org.uk/) won two seats in Blackburn…. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/4974984.stm

More ‘openly racial’ than the BNP(they actually link to National Vanguard on their site).

Posted by AD on Fri, 05 May 2006 13:54 | #

Yes, think about it, people who would probably see MR as “too moderate on racial issues” are getting elected as councillors in England.

Posted by AD on Fri, 05 May 2006 14:18 | #

Billy Bragg laments BNP Barking gains

It makes my day when ideologically-retarded-out-of-touch-has-beens- who-live-in-rich-white-rural-areas-but-are-hypocritically-pro-multicult lament

Posted by AD on Fri, 05 May 2006 14:23 | #

<a href=“http://www.peterboroughnow.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?Secti>Show of support for BNP is condemned</a>

THERE was condemnation by many candidates over a large amount of ballot papers spoiled by voters writing BNP on their cards.

Without an official BNP candidates on offer, many voters decided to scrawl the party’s name on their ballot papers in protest over issues of asylum seekers and immigration.

The ballot cards were weeded out by counters and marked as spoiled, but many elected councillors were worried by the alarming number of people who registered their support of the far-right party.

Posted by Matra on Fri, 05 May 2006 14:59 | #

If Billy Bragg is upset then this is a glorious day! I sense an opportunity for him and other aging rockers to resurrect their Rock Against Racism gig.

Bragg fancies himself to be a bit of an expert on Canada. Whenever he’s here he always comments on local politics. He likes Canada more than the U.S. because we have a social democratic party, the NDP, and he’s a fan of our bilingualism. Bragg, who supported NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia, is also attracted to our anti-militarism.

Posted by Nick Tamiroff on Fri, 05 May 2006 23:41 | #

SOREN- Do I screw up the “moderate” tone of MR by posting “nigger"once in a while?If so,I will desist-I do not wish to be barred[as I am at AMREN].I totally enjoy this blog,and ALL the contributors-I’m working on my post doctoral degrees,totally based on the education I am getting HERE.You are welcome to PM me if I have transgressed.

Posted by The Mighty Mole on Sat, 06 May 2006 23:02 | #

Amalek wrote:

NuLab, the party which chucked out socialism and cloth caps and loony lefties to make itself palatable to the bourgeoisie, and which the liberal commentators assume is in government for the rest of its unnatural life, barely exists here, 20 miles from Cherie’s lair. I have not had so much as a leaflet from the governing party during this election ‘campaign’. They have three councillors in one chav enclave, among 48. Nobody can remember when they won anywhere else. On one adjacent council they have no seats at all; on another, three in a prole-ghetto ward.

Contests for control of councils hereabouts are between Liberal Democrats (tireless pavement politicians, though often with little else to say), Conservatives (mostly elderly, intermittent imitators of the LDs’ localised agitprop) and, increasingly, Residents Association and other independent councillors who ridicule the very idea of national ideological squabbles being laid over neighbourhood needs. For example, St George’s Hill, Weybridge—once the site of Winstanley’s primitive communism and now home to some of Britain’s richest—elected a slate of independents who beat Tories.

Fuck me Amalek, you live in Surrey too? So do I, and I just wrote a virtually identical post at Harry’s Place, creepy eh?

Perhaps we should discuss this disdain for mainstream politics in the home-counties down at the golf club with Albion4Ever, Jack the Bear and Love Supreme, or maybe at a dinner party with Luniversal and Effra.

I could give my American cousin Millard Foolmore a ring too, we do love discussing the war in Iraq and the two branches of the welfare/warfare party.

I’m afraid dear old Bill Phillips sends his excuses (again), but I’m not sure he is a real person, more like the sock puppet of a semi-retired Daily Mail hack with too much time on his hands.