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Predicting the political future: Local elections vs. tea leaves

09May Posted by Tom Clive

The political commentariat get pretty excited around local elections. In a mass media geared more and more towards opinion rather than fact, there is an abundance of differing interpretation. Given this, it’s always worth taking a step back and taking a deep breath.

UKIP’s performance was impressive. Whilst the Party wasn’t exactly short of a political base (three Peers, eleven MEP’s and a former MP), with just twenty councillors it did lack a local presence. This has changed overnight. Although turnout was down some 10% on 2009 to 31%, UKIP nonetheless polled some 23% of all votes cast and this has sent shockwaves throughout the political establishment.

If the results are translated into polling for a general election (as the BBC has calculated) this would translate into another hung Parliament with Labour on 29%, the Tories on 25%, UKIP in third with 23% and the Lib Dems on 14%.

Let’s not get too excited. As has been apparent since the start of the Coalition, the ability of the Lib Dems to pick up the protest vote alongside its (now) traditional heartlands in the South-West has evaporated; with the bulk of this transient support seemingly headed in UKIP’s direction.  On top of this, UKIP have picked up a lot of support from Conservative voters who feel that their concerns on Europe and immigration aren’t being adequately addressed. Interestingly, the same seems to be true of many Labour supporters, whose shift to UKIP has also been spurred by a continued lack of confidence in Ed Miliband.

Add to this the swing voters of British politics’ centre ground who feel alienated from all of the major parties, mix in the low turnout and the reasons behind UKIP’s success begin to emerge. We are not seeing a general shift by voters towards UKIP based on considered, articulated policy, as, with the nicest will in the world, UKIP doesn’t really have any yet. Instead, the Party’s success is based upon an astute, populist, opposition-based appeal to the mainstream political status-quo.

Although there is no denying the Conservatives lost a lot of seats on Thursday, the total of 335 was, to be honest, not too bad a result considering that they are in Government, mid-term and engaged in austerity. If the Party had lost over 600 seats, David Cameron would be facing a big, immediate problem. They came nowhere near to this, and despite the issues posed by the UKIP advance, there will be relief in the knowledge that Labour's poll lead is fickle.

Labour won what it needed to, which was vital, but with just 291 seats gained the win was hardly convincing. Given the extent of the Coalition cuts, any opposition should be polling well at this point in the Parliament. They are not. Rather than touring the TV studios promoting an emphatic victory, Labour pundits and politicos instead found themselves defending the credibility of their victory; insisting that they had won important gains in the key 2015 marginals.

Whist this will be concerning for the Party, it is important to remember that just a year ago there were still thinly veiled mutterings from even the shadow front bench about Ed Miliband’s competency as leader. Blair aside (and even he was shot down pretty rapidly), these have all but disappeared.  Miliband has begun to articulate a policy framework upon which he will gradually build over the next two years – with the next part of the foundations most probably laid down in September following a headline and (ideally) momentum grabbing shadow cabinet reshuffle.Whilst there are unlikely to be large-scale policy announcements the Labour leader is an impressive strategist and is practiced and expert at playing the long game.

Whilst time is on Mr Miliband’s side, he does urgently need to address public sentiment that he is not Prime Ministerial material. His performance in events such as the PMQs, for example, is still far from the finished, convincing product it needs to be.In an ideal world, Miliband would like move into a centre-ground vacated by a panicking, Right-moving Conservative party seeking to win back the votes it feels it has lost to UKIP. Whilst the usual suspects on the Conservative right have been baying for this for years, cooler heads in the party are aware that such a move could cause an electoral disaster for the Party.

The challenge for the Tories is to find a way to remain in the centre whilst at the same time credibly addressing the concerns of a core who now feel that the Party is unrepresentative of their views. Legislation for a referendum on Europe to be held in the next Parliament, or even the newly mooted Private Members Bill on the in/out issue might go some way to addressing this, but the balancing act that the Conservatives will need to play between the swing voters and its rebellious right-wing is unenviable.

Whilst both Labour and the Conservatives can take some positives from last Thursday, for the Lib Dems, the picture is bleak. Although there was good support in safe areas such as Cheltenham, the position in South Shields (some 347 votes) was beyond embarrassing and they lost some 124 councillors overall; despite their well-founded reputation as ruthless, effective local campaigners.

It is hard to see how the Liberal Democrats can come back effectively. Even though their core support base in key safe seats will ensure that they return a large number of their existing MPs in the forthcoming general election, the evaporation of their protest constituency and the dissatisfaction amongst swing voters caused by their reneging on so many pre-coalition policy promises, could easily cost the Parliamentary Party ten seats or more in 2015. This, ironically, would be a lot more without first past the post.

What then for UKIP? If last week’s elections are to have one lasting impact it will be that from now on the major political parties will take the threat from UKIP seriously. The major parties will seek to damage UKIP’s credibility in an attempt to claw back their supporters – especially the Conservatives who, despite their recent protestations, view UKIP as squatters on their ideological territory. Measures announced in the Queen’s Speech on immigration are a good example of what is to come.

So where does this leave us? Last week’s election has demonstrated that the fracture formed at the last election in the political centre-ground remains; with no one mainstream political party convincing a sufficient number of voters. This has been capitalised on by UKIP; who have offered an alternative to the mainstream through populist and nationalist semantics. Whilst this will be of concern to strategists, there is enough time for both the Conservatives and Labour to attempt address their shortfalls – although the strong possibility of a further coalition could easily unnerve business in the run up to the next election.

The next weather vane will be the European elections in 2014. Only then will we really be able to say with any certainty whether or not UKIP has been a flash in the pan or a potentially realistic force in 2015. In the meantime, I’d probably stick to the tea leaves.

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Public Affairs

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