Aviva Total Politics 2010 Election Map

Total Politics - because knowledge is power

 

National Issues Resonate with

Local Elections

 

Colin Rallings & Michael Thrasher

 

 

The latest local elections sent shock waves through the political community. The Conservatives polled well over 40% of the national equivalent vote for the first time since Black Wednesday in 1992. Labour was humiliated by its lowest ever recorded share of the vote. Across Britain the Conservatives now have more councillors and control nearly three times as many councils as Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined. Labour has a majority on just 36 of the 202 single or top-tier authorities responsible for the bulk of council spending. 


Were commentators right to use the results to begin writing the obituary of the Brown government rather than to focus on the nuances of voting in different local authorities? As Paul Coen, the Local Government Association’s Chief Executive, put it, “…watching the coverage on TV and listening to it on the radio, you would be forgiven for not knowing that these were local elections at all. I saw not one local politician interviewed”. 


On the ground, however, different attitudes and behaviour often prevail. Radio phone-ins and newspaper features about the council’s record and current issues are a staple diet of the local media each May. Many councillors believe, at least until the ballots are counted, their own reputation and hard work can insulate them from a swing against their party. 


There is harder evidence that many voters make locally relevant choices. For example, each of the last three general elections (1997, 2001 and 2005), have coincided with annual local contests. Survey data suggests that as many as one in four of those who had both a national and local vote on those occasions used them to support different political parties. Some may have been voting tactically to maximise the opportunity to depose the party they least liked, but others certainly took a ‘horses for course’ approach. One party was favoured to run the country; another could better be trusted with decisions about the immediate locality. In recent years the Liberal Democrats have been particularly successful in campaigning as the ‘local government’ party. 


Just as over time electors tend to become fed up with national governments and amenable to a simple ‘time for a change’ message, so incumbent councils are vulnerable to a similar reaction to their longevity or policies. The Conservatives in Richmond-upon-Thames in 2006 and Eastbourne in 2007 were abruptly thrown out by the local electorate despite the party performing well nationally. 
Local issues too can be pivotal. In 2007 the ruling party in several councils like Ellesmere Port and Neston (Labour), Salisbury (Conservative) and Waverley (Liberal Democrat) which had introduced or were proposing a fortnightly refuse collection all suffered adverse swings. In 2008 Labour won an overall majority in Slough following the conviction of a Conservative councillor for election fraud. 


The importance of ‘localism’ can also be seen in the modest renaissance of Independents and other smaller parties in a trend towards ‘a plague on all your houses’ voting. In excess of 350 such groups are currently registered with the Electoral Commission, most designating a geographical area in their title.  This May, for example, the For Darwen party made three gains in Blackburn, and the five councillors elected by the Blaenau Gwent People’s Voice party had an important role in helping to depose Labour for the first time in over 30 years.


Even more remarkably, on General Election day 2005, the Ingleby Barwick Independent Society polled over 50% of the local vote in two wards in Stockton-on-Tees despite facing opposition from each of the three major parties. 


And yet the national trend will almost always bear out.  Most people do behave in local elections with one eye firmly fixed on the party battle nationwide. It is disillusioned government loyalists who tend to stay at home, particularly it seems when Labour is in power, whereas opposition supporters are more motivated to make their voices heard. The contests are also used to register surprisingly effective general or particular protests about government policy. In 1990 a high turnout and anti-Conservative swing marked the beginning of the end for both the ‘poll tax’ and Mrs Thatcher. This year, compensation for those disadvantaged by the abolition of the 10 pence tax band followed swiftly on from Labour’s poll drubbing. 

 

Although governments tend to dismiss poor local election results as examples of the ‘mid-term blues’, there is a clear trend for this phenomenon to get worse as each mid-term succeeds the last. During the Conservatives period in office from 1979-1997 there was a virtual year on year decline in their number of councillors from over 12,000 to fewer than 4,500. Similarly, Labour’s councillor numbers have slumped from nearly 11,000 in 1997 to scarcely more than 5,000 today. 

At some point a tipping point is reached where the governing party’s influence in local government is so diminished and its councillor/activist base so decimated, that the political wind shifts in its main opponent’s direction. The difference in the number of helpers that the Labour and Conservative parties managed to mobilise for the Crewe by-election is a concrete illustration of the point.


So it is with some justification that this year’s local election results can be seen as a mirror image of those in 1995. In both cases the major opposition party managed to translate favourable opinion poll ratings to the more significant arena of votes actually cast in the ballot box. 

 
History also suggests what we might expect between now and the 2010 General Election. A comparison of the national equivalent share of the vote achieved by the parties two years before each of the last 5 general elections with the result of that election shows a clear recovery of up to about 10 points in government support; a somewhat smaller drop in the opposition share, especially for the Conservatives; and a modest decline for the Liberal Democrats. If the past proves a reliable guide, then we might expect the Conservatives to beat Labour by a margin in the popular vote of something like 40 to 32. Whether that would be sufficient to give Cameron an overall majority rests with the vagaries of the electoral system, but it would certainly spell the end of the Brown premiership.  


In the meantime party support can be tracked not only through the polls, but by keeping an eye on local by-elections. These occur up and down the country each week and must be treated with even greater caution than the annual May elections.  But precisely because they take place out of the limelight, and discounting the occasional idiosyncratic result, they have proved a reasonably reliable reflection of underlying political opinion. On this measure Labour has been in third place ever since the change in leadership last summer. 


The national media may fail to acknowledge this for many people and in many places local elections remain just local, but this time they probably got the overall story itself right. 

 

 

Councillors and council control, Great Britain 2008

 

Councillors Con Lab LD Ind/Other Nat  
  9721 5122 4467 2225 569  
Council control Con Lab LD Ind/Other Nat No overall control
  215 48 29 13 0 135

 

 

National equivalent vote at local elections two years before a general election and change in share of the vote at general election (governing party in bold)

 

  Con Lab LD   Con Lab LD
1985 locals 32 39 26 1987 General +11 -7 -3
1990 locals 33 44 17 1992 General +10 -9 +1
1995 locals 25 47 23 1997 General +7 -3 -6
1999 locals 34 36 25 2001 General -1 +6 -6
2003 locals 35 30 26 2005 General -2 +6 -3
2008 locals 43 24 23 2010 General ? ? ?