Results 2007 - 5 comments

It would be a bit odd if I didn't have anything to say about the Council elections, so here we go. Even if Labour avoided "meltdown" (how's that for ambition?), losing close to 500 councillors in England, and power in both Scotland and Wales, is a pretty lousy result.

Let's face it, Labour doesn't have any divine right to form a government, and governments are put in place to do a job, grudgingly (so the turnout figures say), by the public. Neither the Labour Party nor the Labour government should expect thanks, or even appreciation from the public, however many good things have been done, and are yet to be done. Nonetheless they must carry on governing roughly in accordance with the will of, and in the interests of the public. Just as individuals remember their own achievements, conveniently forgetting or dismissing their far more numerous failures, the majority of the public, who see themselves in opposition to (perhaps, subject to) governments in general, will tend to forget or dismiss governments' achievements, harking back to well-publicised failures or embarrassments.

What doesn't help is that seemingly doomed administrations are not marked by failure of policy, but by a hostile, bored media, hungry for intrigue and scandal. It's this poisonous cloud that is so dangerous for governments, for parties, and so unappealing to the electorate. Can it be dispersed - perhaps with the help of this blogosphere of ours?

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Back to the results, we had a particularly bad result here in Brighton & Hove, with Labour losing 10 of its 23 seats to the Greens, and to the Conservatives, who are now by far the largest party.

In the Brunswick and Adelaide ward (my side of the road) - once (intriguingly) the SNP's power base in England - Labour collapsed from second to fourth, their vote halving with the reduced turnout.

2003: LD 2325 (48.3%), Lab 1164 (24.2%), Green 680 (14.1%), Con 535 (11.1%), Others 110
2007: LD 1671 (41.1%), Green 913 (22.5%), Con 725 (17.8%), Lab 547 (13.5%), Others 208

The result was only marginally less bad in Central Hove (the other side of my road):

2003: Con 2154 (38.7%), LD 1731 (31.1%), Lab 1057 (19.0%), Green 618 (11.1%)
2007: Con 1865 (45.9%), LD 1359 (33.4%), Green 753 (18.5%), Lab 621 (15.3%), Others 109

Our only substantial share of the vote was the 41.2% achieved in East Brighton. Overall the score was: Con 36.6%, Lab 26.3%, Green 21.7%, LD 10.2%, Others 5.3%.

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Chris Dillow has more on the disappointing turnout, while Skuds covers compulsory voting. I wouldn't mind seeing a pilot project at a future election, though I agree that punishing people who decide not to vote is not a solution to the lack of interest in local politics. Furthermore, the democratic process is supposed to put the population in control, and introducing compulsion reverses this.

That is, of course, also an argument in favour of first past the post, against voting systems that use party lists and where the formation of governments is a matter of negotiation among politicians, where policies and principles can be put aside in order to make a large enough coalition. It's perhaps with this in mind that the Scottish Liberal Democrats, winners of a mere 16 out of 129 seats, seem to believe they're free to pick and choose coalition partners to give themselves a say in the running of Scotland:

"The Scottish Liberal Democrats will work constructively to promote our positive policies in the new Parliament."

The last eight years of the Scottish Parliament have seen Scotland run by a Labour-led coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Earlier, Tavish Scott, who ran the Lib Dems' election campaign, said his party would not share power with Labour.

Sadly, the SNP won that election - in terms of both votes and seats - so it falls to them to govern Scotland. The Liberal Democrats, who came fourth, should go off into a little corner and keep their noses out.

Update (09/05): See also this on PR, from Shuggy.