Wednesday 30 June 2010

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%

Sunday 27 June 2010

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.

Tuesday 22 June 2010

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.

Monday 21 June 2010

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.