Monday 30 May 2011

By-Election Watch (30/05/11)

Here are this week's changes to the by-election page:

Council

Type

Ward

Defending Party

Reason

Date

Derbyshire

County

Sawley

Independent

Death

7th July

Southwark

London

Peckham

Labour

Death

7th July

Wakefield

Metro.

Horbury & South Ossett

Conservative

Health

7th July

  

  

  

  

  

  

Gwynedd

Wales

Glyder

Plaid Cymru

Death

TBA

Harrow

London

Stanmore Park

Conservative

Resigned

TBA

Wokingham

Unitary

Reneham, Wargrave & Ruscombe

Conservative

Resigned

TBA

Just the one by-election this week and it's in London; Canons, Harrow to be precise. Preview will be up on Wednesday and we'll be around Thursday night to bring you the result.

Wednesday 25 May 2011

Statement of Persons Nominated Released for Belfast West by-election

As promised yesterday the Statement of Persons Nominated has been published for the Belfast West by-election to replace Gerry Adams. In addition to the three names we had already the UUP, Alliance and People Before Profit Alliance (PBPA) are fielding candidates for this contest.

Bill Manwaring of the UUP and Gerry Carroll of the PBPA both stood for their respective parties at the recent Assembly election and Manwaring was the UUP candidate for the 2010 General Election. The Alliance have selected Aaron McIntyre who unsuccessfully stood for them at the recent Lisburn City Council elections.

Here's the full list of candidates along with the recent election results in the seat:

By-Election Candidate

GE2010

NIA2011

Paul Maskey (SF)

71.1%

66.1%

Alex Attwood (SDLP)

16.4%

13.2%

Brian Kingston (DUP)

7.6%

7.5%

Bill Manwaring (UUP)

3.1%

4.2%

Aaron McIntyre (All)

1.9%

1.1%

Gerry Carroll (PBPA)

-

4.8%

- (Workers Party)

-

1.7%

- (Socialist Party)

-

1.1%

- (IND)

-

0.4%

Sorry Folks!

There are no by-elections this week so don't get your hopes up! Next week is also pretty quiet with the solitary vacancy to be filled in the London Borough of Harrow. From then on the rest of June is going to be very busy with 5 deferred or by-elections on the 9th, 10 on the 16th and 7 on the 23rd. On top of that we have the Belfast West Parliamentary by-election on the 9th as well. So enjoy the break; we will be!!

Candidates for Belfast West (thus far)

UpaI believe that nominations for the Belfast West by-election close tomorrow but there are a few declared candidates already. The seat is vacant because Gerry Adams stood down to contest the Irish General Election and you will be hard pressed to find anyone suggesting that Sinn Fein will not retain this by a comfortable margin. Paul Maskey has won the coveted nomination to be Sinn Fein's candidate and the Belfast West MLA is sure to replace his leader as the new MP on June 9th.

As for the other candidates, the SDLP, who should come second in this Nationalist area, have kept faith with Alex Attwood. He is their sole MLA in Belfast West and has stood for this Westminster seat in every election since 2001. The DUP are the only other party likely to save their deposit at this by-election and they have selected Brian Kingston as their candidate.

Here's last year's General Election and this year's Assembly result for your perusal:

By-Election Candidate

GE2010

NIA2011

Paul Maskey (SF)

71.1%

66.1%

Alex Attwood (SDLP)

16.4%

13.2%

Brian Kingston (DUP)

7.6%

7.5%

- (UUP)

3.1%

4.2%

- (All)

1.9%

1.1%

- (People Before Profit)

-

4.8%

- (Workers Party)

-

1.7%

- (Socialist Party)

-

1.1%

- (IND)

-

0.4%


 

Update (1030): Harry has informed me that nominations closed yesterday afternoon and the Statement of Persons Nominated will be published later on today.

Monday 23 May 2011

Reflections on the House of Lords

Apologies for not doing this sooner, but I am currently spending 12 hours a day either at work, commuting to or from work or getting ready for work, so between that and other general tasks like eating, sleeping, and such I don’t have much time at all!

That said, we would be amiss at Britain-Votes if we did not attempt to cover the government’s proposals on Lords reform last week. So I’ve read through the entire white paper, which can be found here if you’re interested.

The reform is quite clearly attempting to bring democratic accountability to a currently unelected house which is often seen as aloof, filled with party lackeys and sometimes even corrupt. The long-time impact of the 2006 ‘Cash for Honours’ scandal has particularly undermined the Lords.

Yet, in many ways, it is easy to be hypercritical of the Lords, but what does the Lords do well, and what do we want out of an upper house.

In democracies upper houses exist to balance out the tendencies of the lower houses. Lower houses are generally directly elected democratic institutions with more power than upper houses. Upper houses are thus used to create a brake on democracy, which can be short-termist and lead to abuses of power if the public wills it. In many countries upper houses are also used to purposefully over-represent some sort of minority – typically a geographic one, with the most common form of upper house being one where federal states are represented equally to make sure the will of the largest states cannot override the will of the smallest. Such upper houses can be seen in the US, Switzerland, Australia et al.

The House of Lords has basically come to be a ‘house of experts’. It has come to be a house filled with experts in various spheres. Former cabinet ministers, constitutional lawyers, scientists, academics and more can all be found on the benches of the Lords. For example when the subject of IVF comes up the Lords can depend on the knowledge of Lord Winston, an expert in fertility science. The reforms have therefore been designed to retain as much of this as possible while introducing a majority democratic component.

In a sense the Lords goes to the heart of our system. When visiting the Commons in 2010 I was told by one of the men showing me around that Britain was a ‘talking democracy’. A democracy built on a belief in debate and argument. As a ‘house of experts’ the Lords fulfils a role in our system by giving a voice to those with the greatest knowledge.

So what are the basics of the reforms?

Overall the House will be reduced in size from 789 to 300. Being a Lord will become a full time job with a full salary and peerages would become a honour, like a knighthood. The house will not be 100% elected, it will 80% elected with a 20% unelected component (about 60 seats). The unelected component is designed to keep in some of the crossbenchers, independent peers who often have a large degree of knowledge, and will also include 12 CoE bishops (the Lords currently includes 36 ‘Lords Spiritual’).

The plan is to elect 80 peers at every general election (unless an election takes place within 2 years of a previous one). These would be three sets of 80 peers, and peers would not be able to run for re-election. With five year terms that would generally mean that peers would have one 15 year term in the Lords. That would mean that peers would not be able to be easily whipped by their parties, as a party would not be able to threaten their re-election prospects, and the hope is that a 15 year term will give them a long-term view. Additionally peers would not be allowed to run to be MPs for a period five years before until five years after their term in office, that would create a 25 year period where peers could not run to be MPs, the hope being that this will cause the Lords to attract a different sort of politician, one which would not be attracted to the usual life of a MP. So the theory is that this should all create a House that is detached from government and still independent.

The current version of the draft bill specifies that elections will take place under the Single Transferable Vote. This system is similar to AV, but in multi-member seats. It is vaguely proportional, provided the multi-member seats are big enough. Unlike what we usually think of as ‘proportional representation’ however it does not involve lists. In STV a party will run multiple candidates but voters can rank candidates however they like, including across party lines. So therefore the government needs to draw multi-member constituencies across the UK for 80 peers. As it happens we Brits already elect 70 representatives in multi-member seats by proportional representation every 5 years – when we elect MEPs to the European Parliament. However the European Parliament constituencies vary largely in size. The South East England constituency elects 10 MEPs, whereas the North East England constituency elects 3. In STV it is always best not to have constituencies that are too big because the number of candidates can get overwhelming, whereas constituencies that are too small produce disproportional outcomes.

The white paper therefore sets out a system where counties and administrative areas can shift between constituencies until each constituency in England has 5-7 MEPs, which is pretty much the STV sweet spot between too big and too small. An exception will be made for the three nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and they will be kept whole. As Northern Ireland and Wales have less population than most UK regions they will be assigned less seats than the norm, though a floor of 3 will be placed in the bill to make sure that Northern Ireland’s allocation does not get not too small.

STV’s advantages in this case is that it allows voters to vote for whatever their preference and every Lord will be able to claim a genuine mandate of their own. It will allow for the election of fringe parties and independents. Ireland, which uses STV for its national elections, consistently has the highest number of independents in its parliament in Europe.

The downside is that many people currently in the Lords are currently there precisely because they are not particularly electable fellows and STV can produce a certain personality politics as with voters having a choice within parties as well as between STV may have an effect of biasing towards the more charismatic candidates. There is evidently a chance a list system could be adopted instead and I suspect the Tories and Labour would prefer one as such a system would allow them to ‘appoint’ less easily electable members every 5 years. The Lib Dems, however, have always seen STV as the best electoral system and I would expect Clegg, who is, after all, over all responsible for the reform, to push for STV.

The Lords will not officially have any change in powers, but it is my feeling that a mostly elected Lords will show a higher willingness to act as a brake on government. The reason for this is that Lords will now have a democratic mandate of their own and can therefore claim more moral authority to the people’s will. A similar effect can already be seen in the form of Labour’s removal of the majority of the hereditary peers. By removing hereditary aristocracy the Lords came to see itself as more legitimate and has become more rebellious, so while the Lords has had no increase in powers it has become more willing to defeat the government. It is my feeling that an elected Lords will only increase this effect. Indeed a directly elected Lords is likely to undermine a couple of the conventions associated with it, such as the convention that the Lords will always back manifesto content as Lords will presumably consider themselves to be elected on a manifesto of their own, of sorts.

The reforms are planned to be phased in with the white paper suggesting different types of ‘transitional period’. As the white paper paper says, this is evolution, not revolution.

What if what you wanted WAS a revolution though? The reality is that you were never going to get it. Constitutional reforms like this – bit by bit changes inevitably must fit in with the pre-established institutions of the UK and the way our system works. A political system is not just a a series of separate parts acting independently from each other, it is a living, breathing organic structure. Inevitably a change to one part must therefore be evolutionary not revolutionary as it must fit broadly in the same vacated by what it replaces. In my view the reform proposals are a pretty good stab at replicating the current House of Lords on elected lines, and I genuinely think this is a very good proposal.

Two big questions remain, they are whether it can pass and the final details. The electoral system, the details of the transitional period, and even the House's name are still not set in stone. The white paper proposes several options. Time is somewhat of the essence, however, because the Lords can probably be expected to block the reform though I expect the Commons to pass the proposals (even if there is a significant Conservative rebellion, though I expect them to be whipped, I would expect a lot of Labour MPs to back the reform). The Lords can, of course, only block for so long before the Parliament Act can be used to force the bill through but this will all take time and the electoral commission will need some sort of head start if the first House of Lords election is to coincide with the next general election, which I’m assuming is the government’s hope. However, the Lib Dems are likely to focus strongly on the reform now that AV has failed. Indeed, while Lords reform is consistently on the agenda my feeling is that only a coalition involving the Lib Dems would give it enough steam to actually pass.

By-Election Watch (23/05/11)

Here are this week's changes to the by-election page:

Council

Type

Ward

Defending Party

Reason

Date

Derbyshire

County

Eckington

Labour

Resigned

16th June

Rushcliffe

District

Manvers

Conservative

Deferred

16th June

Staffordshire

County

Burton Town

Labour

Death

16th June

Derbyshire Dales

District

Stanton

Vacant (no candidate)

23rd June

Isle of Wight

Unitary

Binstead & Fishbourne

Conservative

Death

23rd June

Torbay

Unitary

Cockington-with-Chelston

Conservative

Resigned

23rd June

Wychavon

District

Elmley Castle & Somerville

Vacant (no candidate)

23rd June

Wandsworth

London

Thamesfield

Conservative

Resigned

30th June

Purbeck

District

Lychett Matravers

Lib Dem

Health

7th July

The SNP juggernaut continues

There were no surprises in the two by-elections last Thursday as the Scottish Nationalists eased to a first round victory in Aberdeen and the Conservatives comfortably held their seat in Surrey. In both wards the Liberal Democrats came second at the previous election and their fortunes varied greatly in the two contests. Their sharp drop in Aberdeen was very much in line with the Scottish Parliament results earlier in the month but in Surrey their vote share held up much better than the recent local election results would have suggested.

We'll start in Scotland where the SNP stormed to victory in the Dyce by-election, winning the seat on first preference votes alone. The victory was made on an emphatic swing, largely from the Liberal Democrats to the SNP as was seen across the country at the Holyrood elections. The SNP's share of first preference votes rose by over 15% compared to 2007, while the Liberal Democrats fell by the same percentage. The Labour, Conservative and Green shares remained more or less the same as four years ago.

This will be seen as a good omen to the SNP, who are already looking to next year's local elections with aspirations of maintaining their momentum to take control of councils across Scotland. It will also give them encouragement for another by-election being held in Aberdeen next month, in the Airyhall, Broomhill and Garthdee ward, where they narrowly failed to win a seat in 2007.

This gain from the Liberal Democrats has turned the SNP into the largest party on Aberdeen City Council, and already they have called on the current council leader to resign to allow the SNP to take overall control of the administration. It is as yet unclear whether the Lib Dem council leader will accept these calls, and if he does then whether his party would be willing to continue in coalition with the SNP. KK

Aberdeen City Council

SNP

LD

LAB

CON

ACN*

IND

VAC

14

+1

13

-1

10

-

2

-

2

-

1

-

1

-

Dyce/Bucksburn/Danestone

By-Election Candidate

Votes

Vote %

+/-

Neil MacGregor (E)

2090

51.4%

+15.2%

Graeme Lawrence

941

23.1%

-1.8%

Kristian Chapman

446

11.0%

-15.2%

Ross Thomson

352

8.7%

+0.3%

Angela Joss

150

3.7%

+3.7%

Rhonda Reekie

88

2.2%

+0.1%

Compared to the Scottish result the Liberal Democrats' vote was surprisingly resilient in Surrey. Having fallen 63 votes short of winning the St Johns & Brookwood County Council ward in 2009 this is the sort of by-election the Lib Dems would be looking to win in recent years but circumstances have changed over the past six months or so and a strong second would have been a welcome relief. They managed that much, although the Conservatives' enjoyed a 4.4% swing to them from their national coalition partners as they held the seat comfortable.

The movement in vote share was surprisingly orderly as the Tories 6% increase was mirrored in UKIPs 6% decreased. Given that the last election in this ward took place on the same day as the 2009 European Election, when UKIP came second nationally, this is more a reflection on their good performance two years ago. The Liberal Democrats lost 3% on their 2009 result which was seemingly picked up by Labour, who overtook UKIP for 3rd place. Linda Kemeny's 285 vote win increased the Tories majority on Surrey County Council to 32. TH

St Johns & Brookwood (Surrey)

By-Election Candidate

Votes

Vote %

+/-

Linda Kemeny (E)

1343

48.9%

+5.9%

Tina Liddington

1058

38.6%

-2.9%

Janice Worgan

188

6.9%

+3.1%

Duncan Clarke

155

5.6%

-6.1%

Thursday 19 May 2011

By-Election Preview (19th May)

So after the bumper night at the start of the month we're back with our by-election coverage. There are two this week; one in Surrey and one in Scotland. The Liberal Democrats will be the focus as they have a difficult defence in Aberdeen and in recent years they have run the Conservatives close in the vacant Surrey ward.

We'll start in Scotland with the first by-election in Scotland since the SNP's landslide win in the Scottish parliamentary elections two weeks ago. A vacancy arose in the four-member Dyce, Buckburn and Danestone ward due to the death of Lib Dem Cllr Ron Clark.

The SNP only fielded one candidate in most wards in the first council elections run under the new Single Transferable Vote system, creating a false-winner effect when many of their candidates won nearly two quotas on first preferences alone. The result from Dyce last time was:

  

COUNT

  

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

SNP

2,620

  

  

  

  

  

  

Labour

1,801

1,801

  

  

  

  

  

Lib Dem

1,534

1,534

1,534

  

  

  

  

Conservative

603

701

730

738

752

781

833

Lib Dem #2

360

593

667

713

727

769

885

Green

147

298

330

335

348

409

  

Independent #1

116

190

211

214

260

  

  

Independent #2

57

117

131

133

  

  

  

The quota was 1,448 with the first three seats being won by the SNP, Labour and Liberal Democrats on first preferences alone. The Conservatives were ahead to win the fourth seat until the final round where the Green votes transferred strongly in favour of the second Liberal Democrat candidate.

On 2007 first preference totals alone, the SNP should be expected to win this seat easily. Their council coalition partners, the Lib Dems, had the second largest total of first preferences between their two candidates, with Labour not far behind them.

Dyce/Bucksburn/Danestone

By-Election Candidate

2007

Neil MacGregor (SNP)

36.2%

Kristian Chapman (LD)

26.1%

Graeme Lawrence (LAB)

24.9%

Ross Thomson (CON)

8.3%

Rhonda Reekie (GRN)

2.0%

N/C (IND)

1.6%

N/C (IND)

0.8%

Angela Joss (IND)

0.0%

There could be a local backlash against the SNP and the Lib Dems over council spending cuts, but we are more likely to see a great squeeze in the Lib Dem vote with the SNP benefiting, as was the national picture in the parliamentary elections two weeks ago. The Lib Dems are also facing other problems in the city with another sitting councillor Gordon Leslie admitting in court to loitering in the city's red light district.

In the Parliamentary elections, the SNP held the Aberdeen North constituency containing this ward with a vastly increased majority. Across the North East Scotland region as a whole they managed to win every single constituency and still gain a top-up seat on the regional list, something Labour has never been able to do even in its strongholds of Glasgow or Central Scotland. The scale of the SNP win tonight will help to determine whether that result was something the SNP can sustain through to next year's local elections or whether it was more of a flash in the pan event.

Aberdeen City Council has a total of 43 councillors elected across 13 wards by the Single Transferable Vote method of proportional representation. The council is currently run by a Liberal Democrat-SNP coalition, who have increasingly come under attack for making heavy spending cuts made to fill a large deficit in the council budget. The current composition of the council is:

Aberdeen City Council

SNP

LD

LAB

CON

A-CON*

IND

VAC*

13

13

10

2

2

1

2

If the SNP do win, it would turn them from being junior coalition partners to the larger coalition party, which could have a knock on effect in terms of the council leadership and committee posts. However, there is unlikely to be any change in the administration as a whole, and the result is likely to end up reflecting what should have happened back in 2007 if the SNP had stood two candidates for this ward. KK


 

The other by-election taking place today is in the South East, more specifically the St Johns & Brookwood ward for the Surrey County Council. The vacancy has arisen following the resignation of the Conservative Councillor Elizabeth Compton, apparently to prevent the 6 month rule getting invoked against her. In 2009 Compton just managed to hang on to her seat by a margin of 63 votes from her Liberal Democrat challenger. This is the sort of by-election that the Lib Dems would expect to perform well in but given their performance in this month's local elections a gain won't be easy.

Only one of the two wards that make up this County seat was up for election this year and both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives saw their vote share reduced in St John's and Hook Heath following the addition of a Labour candidate. This ward is very safe for the Tories and the marginal Brookwood would have been a better gauge of the Liberal Democrat's prospects, but if Labour take votes off both coalition partners then it could still be tight. The Tories have a big majority on the County Council so if they do fail to hold this seat it won't affect the political balance. TH

St Johns & Brookwood (Surrey)

By-Election Candidate

2009

Linda Kemeny (CON)

43.0%

Tina Liddington (LD)

41.4%

Duncan Clarke (UKIP)

11.8%

Janice Worgan (LAB)

3.8%


 

* The Conservative Group in Aberdeen split in half (2 'Scottish' Conservatives and 2 'Aberdeen' Conservatives) after a dispute over committee posts, but both groups remain recognised as official Conservative councillors by their own party. There is also another vacancy in Airyhall, Broomhill and Garthdee ward due to be filled in a by-election on 23 June.