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 5th May 2006.
For Mr Blair, it might not be that he remains Premier “to infinity and beyond” but at the very least until 2008.