By-Election Watch (30/06/10)

It's a bit late this week but here's our current list of forthcoming by-elections. The site hasn't been updated as much as we'd like recently due to busy workloads and a family bereavement. The latter hasn't eased the former but these things happen and hopefully we'll be back on track during July.

Council	Type	Ward	Party	Reason	Date
Lambeth	London	Tulse Hill	Labour	Arrested	1st July
Shropshire	Unitary	Clee	Conservative	Misconduct	1st July
Barking & Dagenham	London	Goresbrook	Labour	Ineligible	8th July
Blaenau Gwent	Wales	Tredegar Central & West	Labour	Death	8th July
Brighton	Unitary	St. Peter's & North Laine	Green	MEP	8th July
Caerphilly	Wales	Blackwood	Independent	Personal	8th July
Darlington	Unitary	Cockerton West	Labour	MP	8th July
Redbridge	London	Chadwell	Labour	Ineligible	8th July
Gwynedd	Wales	Diffwys and Maenofferon	Llais Gwynedd	Arrested	15th July
Surrey	County	Worplesdon	Conservative	Death	15th July
Walsall	Metro.	Bloxwich West	Conservative	Death	15th July
Camden	London	Frognal and Fitzjohns	Conservative	Death	22nd July
Kensington & Chelsea	London	Holland	Conservative	Minister	22nd July
Rhondda Cynon Taff	Wales	Cymmer	Labour	Death	22nd July
Torbay	Unitary	St Mary's with Summercombe	Conservative	Death	22nd July
Wolverhampton	Metro.	Bilston North	Conservative	Death	29th July
Bath & North East Somerset	Unitary	Radstock	Independent	Death	5th Aug
Cumbria	County	Aspatria & Wharrels	Conservative	Death	TBA
Durham	County	Brandon	Labour	Death	TBA
Knowsley	Metro.	Park	Labour	Personal	TBA
Rotherham	Metro.	Sitwell	Conservative	Death	TBA
St Helens	Metro.	Billinge & Seneley Green	Labour	Death	TBA
West Sussex	County	Maidenbower	Conservative	MP	TBA

The two main by-elections this week are for interesting reasons and so although it will be hard to draw general conclusions they could be quite volatile. The Lambeth vote is because the sitting Labour councillor was arrested on suspicion of having child porn images on his computer. The Liberal Democrats were the closest challengers in Tulse Hill a couple of months ago and perhaps the circumstances of the by-election will help gain a seat here tomorrow. Labour have a strong majority on the Council with 43 of the 63 seats, and so losing this one won't make any difference to the balance of power. The Liberal Democrats are their main opposition in Lambeth with 15 Councillors currently.

Candidate	May '10
Ruth Ling (LAB)	51%
Terry Curtis (LD)	28%
George Graham (GRN)	12%
Will Blackburn (CON)	9%
Robin Lambert (UKIP)	-

The by-election in Shropshire will take place because a sitting Conservative Councillor was found guilty of making 'persistent and personal attacks' on a junior employee. The Liberal Democrats came very close to winning the Clee Ward in 2009 and they have selected the same candidate for this by-election. Given the reason for the by-election, and the small swing required, the Lib Dems will certainly be hoping for a gain over their national coalition partners. If they manage to win tomorrow's vote the Lib Dems will then hold 12 of the 74 seats. The Conservatives currently have a very comfortable majority on in Shropshire which won't be at all affected by this by-election.

Candidate	2009
Hayley Fernihough	38%
Richard Huffer	36.9%
Graeme Perks	25.1%

Labour hold on in Conwy and Bedford

On Thursday there were a few by-elections around the country but not many seats changing hands. We previewed the contest in Conwy and Labour managed to hold the seat by 38 votes with a slight swing towards them. This has left the anti-Tory coalition in Conwy with a comfortable majority and Labour will be pleased with this result in an area of Wales where the Conservatives are making headway in Parliamentary and Assembly elections. Labour also successfully defended the Mostyn ward on the Llandudno Town Council.

Conwy County Council
CON		PC		IND		LAB		LD
20	-	14	-	14	-	7		4	-

 

Candidate	Votes	Vote %	+/-%
Jobl Hold (E)	348	40.7%	11.5
Garry Burchett	310	36.2%	9.5
Janet Jones	198	23.1%	-8.1

 

There was also a by-election in the Bedford Unitary Authority in which Labour were again the defending party. The Conservatives would have won the seat on a swing of just 0.8% however their vote collapsed and the result was an easy hold for Labour. Bedford Council remains very divided with the Liberal Democrats as the largest party with 13 of the 36 seats.

Bedford Borough Council
LD		CON		LAB		IND
13	-	9	-	7	-	7	-

 

Candidate	Votes	Vote %	+/-%
Shan Hunt (E)	715	52.2%	+9
Martin Quince	384	28%	-13.6
Ant Caprioli	272	19.8%	+4.7

 

Elsewhere, the Conservatives held onto Braintree South in a by-election for the Braintree District Council in Essex. They also gained a seat from an Independent on the Burton Latimer Town Council (Northamptonshire) but lost a seat to Labour on the Shrewsbury Town Council (Shropshire). The Liberal Democrats successfully held onto a couple of seats on the Chippenham Town Council (Wiltshire) and another on the Abingdon Town Council (Oxfordshire).

Labour should be quite pleased with last week's results. The two elections to top tier councils were held in areas of the country the Conservatives have been targeting in recent years. However, neither result has drastically altered the balance of power in either of the Council's. Whilst they are in opposition nationally Labour will increasingly be looking chalk up by-election victories and these two holds will be pleasing. They have a few more tricky seats to defend in the next couple of weeks though as the party will be looking to turn their improved poll ratings into tangible polling victories.

The Emergency Budget: Or how to govern, and how to be the opposition

I am not an economist, I am a political scientist, so I will leave discussion of the effects of the budget to those more knowledgeable than I. Instead I'd like to turn my attention to the political manoeuvring around the budget itself.

In an ideal world any government desires to do only those things which will be popular, unfortunately in the real world government's often times feel like they must do things which won't be. The governing coalition clearly takes the view that the deficit needs dealing with, and fast. Typically people elect that party which they feel will best handle the economy and with the economy in the doldrums, and with the potential, in the wake of the European Sovereign Debt crisis, that it may get worse, it is imperative that the Conservatives and Lib Dems get the economy back on track for their own political survival. From the Conservative point of view the only way to do that is to clamp down on the budget deficit, which at 10.5% of GDP is higher than almost any other first world nation. That means political decisions that will inevitably be unpopular, as the raising of taxes and cutting of spending always is.

Much of political governance is about political capital. A rather nebulous concept the best way of describing political capital is the degree to which the population will accept you doing unpopular things, which is then related to your own popularity. If the economy is doing well, and the citizenship's quality of life is too, generally the citizenship is more likely to assume you know what you're doing and give you the benefit of the doubt. This applies to both democracies and dictatorships, so if we take China for instance, during the 1980s life was bad, many were moving into poverty and so a vast democracy movement sprang up, with Tiananmen Square the most notable expression of it. Now there is almost no democracy movement. China has not become much more democratic or free in the intervening years, but the quality of life of the average Chinese citizen has improved exponentially with massive economic growth. Much of governance, in both democracies and dictatorships (and everything in-between) is about political capital.

New governments, such as the one we now have, have high political capital for several reasons. Firstly for a reasonable period of time people are willing to accept that decisions being taken by the government are as a result of mistakes by the previous government. Secondly people are willing to give new governments the benefit of the doubt, time to prove themselves. Even amongst those who vote for the opposition there is usually a case of people thinking 'Well they're in power now, let's wait and see'. Thirdly their own supporters are usually imbued with a sense of 'we got them out!' rather than the feeling of broken promises that can accompany the mid-term.

Therefore it is usually best to get as much as is unpopular out of the way as quickly as possible. Which brings us to this budget, with the government in power for less than 2 months the coalition has presented a budget that is truly miserable reading. While there are some notes that will be regarded as good ideas fairly universally, the restoration of the earnings link with pensions, the raised personal allowance for income tax, and a banking levy and so on most of it will be unpopular. Child benefit and housing benefit cuts, cuts to universities, and THAT VAT increase to 20%. We have somewhat been softened up for this. Much of the time since the government came to power has been spent highlighting 'crazy' spending promises made by the previous government. Yet, in a sense, this budget is not just a budget for the next year, but for the next five. The eventual aim according to Osbourne is to erase the structural deficit by 2015. Basically they've lined up all the cuts in this budget so that later budgets can concentrate on dolling out the spending, on more personal allowance threshold rises, on corporation tax cuts, and probably, eventually, on reducing VAT back down again.

After the budget had been delivered up stood Harriet Harman; Osborne had made her job extremely easy after all. Labour are extremely well-placed as an opposition party, for they will be the sole credible choice to get the coalition out of power at the next election. Laying into obviously unpopular decisions is an easy game to play. Yet they must be careful, the fact that Cameron did not attain a majority is testament to what can happen when a party simply attacks the government and does not provide constructive opposition. The facts are that:

• Labour never ruled out a VAT rise either
  
• Labour had promised £44 billion worth of cuts already with Alistair Darling promising that if they won a fourth term they'd 'cut more than Thatcher'
  

Even Labour knows that cuts and tax rises are necessary; it cannot credibly argue that this is not the case from opposition. If the Tories are clever they will deploy this to delegitimise Labour attacks. Labour should be careful about being too boisterous in its opposition to coalition cuts. Labour must be careful to set out alternative cuts and ways of raising revenue.

By-Election Watch (21/06/2010)

Here are all the top tier by-elections I'm aware of.

Council	Type	Ward	Party	Reason	Date
Conwy	Wales	Mostyn	Labour	Death	24th June
Lambeth	London	Tulse Hill	Labour	Arrested	1st July
Shropshire	Unitary	Clee	Conservative	Misconduct	1st July
Barking & Dagenham	London	Goresbrook	Labour	Ineligible	8th July
Blaenau Gwent	Wales	Tredegar Central & West	Labour	Death	8th July
Brighton	Unitary	St. Peter's & North Laine	Green	MEP	8th July
Caerphilly	Wales	Blackwood	Independent	Personal	8th July
Darlington	Unitary	Cockerton West	Labour	MP	8th July
Redbridge	London	Chadwell	Labour	Ineligible	8th July
Gwynedd	Wales	Diffwys and Maenofferon	Llais Gwynedd	Arrested	15th July
Surrey	County	Worplesdon	Conservative	Death	15th July
Walsall	Metro.	Bloxwich West	Conservative	Death	15th July
Torbay	Unitary	St Mary's with Summercombe	Conservative	Death	22nd July
Bath & North East Somerset	Unitary	Radstock	Independent	Death	TBA
Camden	London	Frognal and Fitzjohns	Conservative	Death	TBA
Cumbria	County	Aspatria & Wharrels	Conservative	Death	TBA
Durham	County	Brandon	Labour	Death	TBA
Knowsley	Metro.	Park	Labour	Personal	TBA
Rhondda Cynon Taff	Wales	Cymmer	Labour	Death	TBA
Rotherham	Metro.	Sitwell	Conservative	Death	TBA
St Helens	Metro.	Billinge & Seneley Green	Labour	Death	TBA
Wolverhampton	Metro.	Bilston North	Conservative	Death	TBA

For the first time in a few weeks we have Principle Authority by-election. On Thursday, voters in the Mostyn ward of the Conwy County Council (North Wales) will head to their polling stations to elect a new councillor. This is due to the death of the sitting Labour Councillor Alun Barrett. The Council is currently controlled by an anti-Conservative rainbow coalition and, although the Tories have the most seats, the rest combined have a comfortable majority. Three candidates are contesting the election and the Conservatives appear to have the best chance of a gain. Two candidates were elected in the 2008 election of the whole council and although Barrett topped the poll the Conservatives gained the second seat. Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats both hold seats on the Conwy Council but they are not contesting this election.

Candidate	2008
Jobl Hold	36%
Garry Burchett	34.3%
Janet Jones	21%

*percentages are of the combined vote. PC fielded a candidate in 2008 but are not in this by-election.