Earlier this week Alice Miles took David Cameron to task for being a little less than firm with local Conservative Associations that do not modernise.  In once sense, her criticism is unfair in that it expected too much of David Cameron's candidate selection process reform too early.  Much of the impetus for change will come from the “new blood” that has joined the Party and is joining the Party as a consequence of Mr Cameron’s leadership.  She fails also to understand one very important characteristic of Conservative Associations – no one can order them about, not by reason of there being any rule that says so, but because it would be un-Conservative to do so. They have to be changed from within and there lies the real problem.  New members will take time to “bed down” and are not likely to rock the boat too soon by pointing out some home truths to the established hierarchy.  As yet, there might not even be enough of them.  However, much of what Ms Miles said was justified.

Whilst rigging a selection process to positively discriminate in favour of say, women or ethnic minorities is not the way forward, for reasons rehearsed elsewhere upon numerous occasions in the past, the current “system” positively discriminates in favour of right-leaning, white, middle-class, middle-aged men.

The solution is very simple.  Mr Cameron must encourage persons of centre-leaning proclivities to join or rejoin the party, take a positive role in the local association and provide support when friction or obstruction arises from the old guard.  In brief, he has to actively court the “wets” who were so effectively marginalised during the Margaret Thatcher years.

I had long ceased to be a member of the Guildford Conservative Association when David Howell MP, now Lord Howell of Guildford, retired but I am well aware of the manner in which the next Conservative parliamentary candidate for Guildford came to be chosen. It is enough to say that the local association was fixated upon choosing another white middle-class male as their candidate. “We’ll have a woman MP over my dead body!” one of the members present at the selection process was overheard to say.  The local association duly ignored two female applicants of high quality and chose the middle class white male, the eminently invisible Nick St Aubyn who promptly lost the seat to the Liberal Democrats’ (female) candidate in the General Election of 2001 after serving just one term as Guildford’s MP.

It was not just a matter of the Association’s pinko-lefties such as myself having been “boiled away” after years of Thatcher worship by the Party generally, it was the fact that the right-winger/fogy alliance had a means of self-propagation ensuring that “their kind” always managed to run the show.

That is the challenge for Mr Cameron, to continue actively enticing Conservatives of a broader political spectrum than currently exists back into the party in such numbers that our opinions can no longer be ignored by the fogies.  We might not be able to increase significantly the number of female or ethnic minority Conservative MPs, but he can rest assured that no candidate will be rejected simply because they are gay or black or Muslim or female.[1]

Analysts seem to agree that the Conservatives face an uphill task in the forthcoming local elections, though “targets” are still being set that might make it difficult for them to avoid what their opponents will describe as an indifferent performance.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph Dr Robert Waller declares, 

“David Cameron's “modern and liberal” leadership will clearly be assessed in the light of the Conservative performance.”

 

“Prospects of [the Conservatives] gaining councils are relatively limited in the areas last contested in 2004, when the [their] showing was equivalent to a national share of around 37 per cent.” 

Dr Waller believes that there are few realistic chances of the Conservatives gaining control in town halls outside London though in London they have better prospects; as in 2002 they won an overall majority in only eight of the thirty-two boroughs.

Dr Waller concludes, 

“Overall, for the Tories, a net gain of 100 council seats across the country would be disappointing, anything over 300 very good progress, and 500-plus would raise hopes of an overall majority in the next general election….” 

whilst, 

“The Lib Dems will perform stronger than in the general election (as usual), and may finish second in national vote share, reinforcing optimism under Sir Menzies Campbell” 

and that, 

“The biggest question is whether the Conservatives can gain enough seats and councils to look as if they are once more credible contenders for national government.” 

In The Sunday Times Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher explained the problems that will be encountered by the Conservatives in that they must “overcome the handicap of the UK electoral system, both nationally and locally”, reminding us that in the May 2005 General Election the Conservatives won 3% less of the vote than Labour, but acquired 150 fewer seats.

In the London borough elections in 2002, when the seats were last contested, the Conservatives secured a similar number of votes to Labour, but won 654 seats to Labour’s 866.  As Messrs Rallings and Thrasher say, 

“It took nearly 900 votes to elect every Tory councillor but only 680 to elect a Labour one. And the boundaries had been reviewed immediately before the elections” 

and,

“Many Tory votes were “wasted” as big majorities were built up in wards where the party was safe. Labour, by contrast, won many of its own safe wards with very low numbers of votes. The average turnout in London in wards won by the Tories (35%) was above that for Labour (28%). The legacy of 2002 is that the Tories will need to be about seven points ahead of Labour in the popular vote to win more seats in the capital. This equates to a swing of 3.5% from Labour to the Tories. Anything less and Labour will be able to disguise the likely slump in its own vote by claiming it is still the leading party in London in terms of seats.”

This analysis puts the Conservatives’ task into perspective and to quote Mr Rallings and Mr Thrasher again, 

“It may therefore be unfair to judge Cameron’s impact as leader by seats alone. But he does need to demonstrate the Tories are attracting new support, rather than simply picking up the crumbs from standing still as former Labour voters desert their party for the Liberal Democrats or other smaller parties.”  

Prior to the revelations of this week, I had thought that Conservative success would be limited to a very modest gain in the share of votes cast (which was unlikely to translate into many, if any, new seats) and Labour support would continue its gradual downward drift with a few more seats lost (mainly to the Liberal Democrats) but not on an embarrassing scale.  As such, the Labour defeat could be spun into an “indifferent result”; the Liberal Democrats would claim victory and the Conservatives would be put to a lot of explaining.  Even a few days can be a long time in politics. There is now good reason to expect that support for Labour will significantly ebb.  As  Peter Riddell  said in The Times today, 

“The Blair Government’s luck may, at last, have run out: not primarily because of policies, but because of the appearance of incompetence…..

What really damages a Government is the appearance of not being in charge of prisoners, asylum-seekers or events.” 

Provided their vote holds firm, it is just possible for the Conservatives to secure sufficient gains in the forthcoming local elections to avoid being cast as the losers by New Labour, its media and the Liberal Democrats.

It is perhaps surprising that no one saw Employment Minister Margaret Hodge confiding her “fears” about the BNP to The Sunday Telegraph for what it really was - a clever but cynical ploy to bolster the ethnic Labour vote in wards assessed as liable to fall to the main opposition parties.  At the same time it is calculated that now, the protest vote will drift away from mainstream opposition parties in the best position to challenge Labour, diverting to the BNP candidate who in spite of the hype, is not likely to win.  The anti-Labour vote is further divided and potential advances by the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives,  stymied. 

The ploy is well worth the risk because though it might hand no more a dozen or so seats to the BNP, it will deny scores to the mainstream opposition. This masterly tactic on the part of New Labour has ensured also that the BNP has now enjoyed its fifteen minutes of fame and peaked too early.  The message by Labour candidates to the traditional (but disgruntled) Labour voter is clear.  “We hear you! We feel for you!  We are really on your side!”

Since I posted an article challenging the emerging orthodoxy that Labour were going to lose “big” and the Conservatives should win “hundreds of seats”, wiser heads, armed with more detailed analysis and the latest opinion polls, are now creating a consensus that the election results are most likely to be capable of being spun by each major party as a success of sorts. The Liberal Democrats are still going to have the most to cheer about, at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives.  The sheer determination of Liberal Democrat activists can never be underestimated. It is going to be the Conservatives who suffer what will appear to be an indifferent result.  The rise in popularity of the Conservative party appears to have stalled again according to the latest YouGov poll, though nevertheless positive trends are emerging.  The poll sample seemed to believe that in some respects the Conservatives were thinking along the right lines and that “the Tories under their new leader deserve another year or two to work out their policies”.  For these reasons alone, purportedly indifferent results for the Conservatives will not represent a setback.

One of the many reasons the results of these forthcoming local elections are too close to call is that it is not clear that the electorate is ready to use them as a referendum against the Government. If local issues remain largely to the fore, Labour cannot be punished much more than it has been already.  It follows that those calling for a tactical vote against Labour for the purpose of causing Tony Blair to be deposed in a night of the long knives, are going to be sorely disappointed.  By there not being a landslide against Mr Blair, ironically he can claim victory, come 5^th May 2006. 

For Mr Blair, it might not be that he remains Premier “to infinity and beyond” but at the very least until 2008.

David Cameron has been in charge of the Conservative party for just four months.  He has a lot of work still to do.  For the Labour Government, everything is just hunky-dory.  No matter what it does wrong, it does not appear to be prejudiced unduly in the opinion polls, at least not for long.  For the Liberal Democrats, though in truth their tide is ebbing, they shall shortly enjoy the euphoria of success against both Labour and the Conservatives in the forthcoming local elections.[1]

The Conservatives should not look to achieve short-term success or popularity.  They are working for sustainable success in the long-term.  The Conservatives’ policy review must be given time to correctly identify the electorate’s real concerns and effectively address them.  It matters not that David Cameron’s project to reform his party appears to stall, because in truth, it has not.  Indifferent opinion poll results mean nothing.  To a great extent they are a collective, self-fulfilling prophecy.  The largely pro Labour media must be expected to focus relentlessly upon the Conservatives’ “failure” to effect a break through in popular support, whilst correspondingly ignoring or playing down Government waste, incompetence, venality and/or sheer deceit.  With the dice so heavily loaded against the Conservatives, it is hardly surprising that the going is tough.

The electorate is not going to be convinced overnight.  The Labour Party’s success in rebuilding itself after spending years in the political wilderness was not achieved during Mr Blair’s brief few years as Leader of the Opposition; the process had started years earlier under Neil Kinnock.  It cannot be any different for the Conservatives, no matter what the legion of pro Labour political commentators and journalists say or infer to the contrary.

The results of the local elections on 4^th  May 2006 will be used as much as the electorate’s purported verdict on David Cameron’s leadership as a referendum on Mr Blair’s continued premiership.  Already the “hurdles” that the Conservatives are being required to clear before being able to claim success have been raised ominously.

“Overall, election analysts believe the Tories should be looking for an extra 300 councillors in England to be able to claim victory,”

we are told and,

“In London, the Tories did relatively well in last year's general election and so Mr Cameron cannot have any excuses if he fails to make real progress.”

However, for the Liberal Democrats,

 “According to the analysts, 100 overall gains would make it a good night for Sir Menzies while net losses would be seen as a bad performance.”

The problem for the Conservatives is that at a local election level, Labour has been unpopular for a few years now. Conservative seats that fell to other parties during the last years of  John Major's Conservative Government have been recovered, more or less. Furthermore, the most vulnerable Labour seats have already fallen to the opposition parties.  A protest vote against Labour councillors is more likely to benefit the Liberal Democrats than the Conservatives.  Thus, though the Conservatives will make steady progress, it will be the Liberal Democrats who will appear to be the winners of the forthcoming local elections.  Even “election experts”,

 “admit it will not be easy for [David Cameron] to make sweeping gains because the Tories are already the largest party in local government,”

and,

 “Far from shooting at an open goal, David Cameron's first nationwide electoral test in May [2006] sees him having to defend something of a Conservative high water mark,”

according to Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, directors of the Local Government Chronicle Elections Centre at Plymouth University.

The Conservatives will not achieve 300 gains.  It is nonsense to suggest they should, while holding the Liberal Democrats to a mere 100.[1]  At this point, is important to bear in mind that as far as local politics are concerned, this is a three horse race.  After all, the Liberal Democrats have 4,300 councillors and control 34 authorities.

For the opposition parties to achieve their gains, Labour will have to suffer 400 net losses.[2]  Unless the Labour vote collapses, this is a tall order.  Whilst the English blogosphere has taken largely against Labour, opinion polls indicate that the general public has not.  Labour has already lost most of its vulnerable seats.  Votes for the opposition might pile up in seats already lost, but Labour is not going to lose many hundreds more seats.

 The Conservatives must be careful not to accept or have foisted upon them a “consensus” as to how many gains they must achieve before they are considered successful, particularly when the Liberal Democrats are being allowed such a modest target by “the experts”. Unless the Conservatives  inject some realism into the projections currently being broached, they will hand a “victory” to the Liberal Democrats, let Labour off the hook and provoke unending speculation about David Cameron's leadership and the Party’s future prospects.[3]

"New blood ends decades of Tory power!" declares the Surrey Guardian (aka Surrey Advertiser) this week as it reports the victory of an Independent candidate Diane James in a by election for the vacant Waverley Borough Council seat for Ewhurst.

The former incumbent of the seat, the Conservative Richard Warby had resigned and the Conservative candidate Richard Cleaves failed to retain it. The result was close, with Mr Cleaves losing by just twelve votes.  The election result was curious for a number of reasons. The Labour vote did not just collapse - it almost ceased to exist.  Labour's Richard Chaundy received just six votes.  The Liberal Democrats, who had almost snatched the seat from the Conservatives at the previous election, saw their vote fall by nearly a hundred votes, even though there was an increased (and rather impressive) turnout of 58.6% of the electorate.[1]

The point that puzzles me is this.  Prior to the election, the Liberal Democrats held 29 seats, the Conservatives 28 and the Independents 2.  Now the ratio is 29:27:3.  I recollect that Waverley Borough Council had "gone" Lib Dem quite a few local elections ago anyway, in which case "decades of Tory power" ended then, not now.  Quite obviously I am not possessed of all the facts and no doubt someone will enlighten me.[2]