THE STORY:
This week's single parliamentary by-election (In escapee David Miliband's former rock solid Labour seat) and multiple council, and mayoral elections have been given General election style media coverage, hype and subsequent entrail examination. Further miles of newsprint will be gobbled up in tomorrow's Sunday papers, the verdicts largely pre-ordained by the political stances of the writers. On the TV Channels the BBC will plough its own institutional left of centre, anything labelled Conservative gets a bit of a snigger, furrow.
To save everyone time, here's what it was all about and what the outcomes mean, especially the 23% of "X" s achieved by UKIP, only recently described by David Cameron,- who got 25%- as a party of and for fruit cakes.
BEFORE THE ELECTION:
- This was the flip side of the 2009 elections when the Brown government was deep in the brown stuff and the Tories did extremely well.
-There was widespread media advance speculation that the Tories would be dealt devastating blows, lose control of many councils by losing 600+ seats.This it was said would put Labour, despite Ed Miliband, on track for a 2015 parliamentary majority.
-This was primarily a battle between the 3 established leaders, Cameron,(Clegg), and Miliband. Few other faces were seen or heard of on soapboxes or in the media. It was as if they were all unavoidably away, working from home or just on holiday. They seemed to want,-or have been ordered,-to keep away.
-In addition there was the known unknown Nigel Farage, leader and again sole face of UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party.
How were the leaders and parties seen/what did they offer?
-Conservatives: In the immediate runup to the polls, Cameron insensitively (blissful unawareness?) reinforced the image and actuality of his inner circle being Etonian, failing which at least leading public school, and Oxbridge and mentally and behaviourally perhaps never having left the cloisters of these places. It is an unfortunate image which has dogged Cameron since the beginning and he has done little or nothing to deal with it. His inner group are visibly the sorts of people he feels most comfortable with and it is all very cosy. Most of its members are undoubtedly very clever and well educated people. Educationally Eton is superb with top university level teaching and mentoring. They turn out an excellent, confident and very polished product. The problem is that it and a few other schools also tend to isolate many of their pupils from any feel for or understanding of other worlds. Parachute them say into Liverpool, Blackburn, Glasgow and they are lost. They could analyse these places and their inhabitants but never understand them. This is a major failing and electoral liability.
-Labour (New Old): If David Miliband had, as expected and backed by individual party members and constituencies ,won the leadership contest in 2010 New Labour would be alive and well . It would now be offering a kind of mature Blair-free grown up slightly left of centre party, probably to the right of where many LibDems actually are. This would have enabled it to hang on to the asiprant middle class voters, particularly in the south, who gave Blair 3 successive general Election victories despite the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan. As the union block vote, led by Unite, managed to overturn the other 2 electoral college groups, we now have Ed Miliband led party heading firmly back to its old roots, habitats (the north) and habits. That leaves most of the south other than parts of London and depressed , mainly seaside, towns looking for somewhere else to cast their votes if they don't go for the Tory boys.
-Liberal Democrat: Nick Clegg looks more miserable, pasty faced and frankly just wet by the day. He has made an art form of looking uncomfortable when sitting next to Cameron in the Commons and has decided that to survive in 2015 he has to visibly wring his hands and obstruct almost any non limp wristed measures proposed by his coalition partners. As result his party doesn't look like one that either of the other two would want to be in coalition with after the next election. He spoke yesterday of the party being in transition from being a party of protest to one of government. It may have been in 2010 but it certainly doesn't look that way now . With the added complication of the rise of UKIP, this looks more like the party of nothing at all after 2015. Not an attractive place to put one's "X" this time then.
-and then there was UKIP, formerly derided by all three above for not really being a party at all but just a collection of right wing no-hopers glued together by a probably racist attitude to immigration and a dislike for wheer the EU has taken and hopes to take Britain. It's more about slamming on the brakes than having an exciting, well thought out and cohesive plan for a new Britain. In its 2010 manifesto it did mention being pro not just one but three new high speed railway lines and that sort of thing .When it came to vote harvesting though and the prospect of juicy electoral gains through a swathe of Tory Buckinghamshire by saying "Oh, but we didn't mean that one" and promising to be even more anti HS 2 than the already near-rabid Conservative opponents of the routing of the line through their heartlands UKIP went for it. So what had UKIP really got to offer ? First, foremost and many would say almost only, Nigel Farage, MEP. Alone amongst the 4 leaders he speaks plain English as understood by the bulk of the population. He is an excellent speaker . Just Google for his speeches in the EU Parliament where he is almost alone in Europe in down to earth, honest, clearly and decisively expressed criticism of the EU's excesses and the culpability for them of its leading lights (?) We do not see such stuff in the Commons where the art of debate and clinical, rather than simply bawling, clinical disection of opponents has almost died out in the generally poorly attended House. Farage is also alone amongst the four leaders in being a man most males in particular can relate to. He says it like it is, has no time for political correctness, looks entirely at home and natural talking to anyone anywhere, particularly in a pub with a pint in one hand and a fag in the other. He is happy to confess to having seen the inside of a pole dancing club and having had a good evening. Just imagine Dave, Ed or Nick making such a confession. They'd probably have had to make it up anyway.
SO WHO DID WE VOTE FOR?
Were the Tories wiped out? Did Labour get those 600+ gains and do anything more than get back to where they were before the great Brown disaster?
The figures are simple:
Labour 29%
Conservative 25%
UKIP 23%
LibDem 14%
Put another way, that means:
Parties of the Right (Cons and UKIP) 48%
Parties of the Left (Lab and LibDem) 43%.
Not much more than one of Farage's cigarette papers between them then,with just a 5% difference overall between the right and left.
David Cameron as a leader isn't making much of an impact and there are no signs that he can. He doesn't appear comfortable outside his own circle, regardless of whether he is in London, at Chequers or at his Cotswold home and the thumbs down given to the Conservatives in these elections in his own constituency is significant. Labour's repeated dogwhistle cries of "Out of touch" have been very clever, found a resonance and stuck. Cameron does not come over as speaking "human" or someone you could have a good chat with in the pub, train, cafe or wherever. Indeed it is unlikely that you would find him in any of these unless surrounded by minders so normal contact is probably out of the question. Nor does he appear to have any normal sense of humour.
Ed Miliband is not disimilar in most of these respects . He is not therefore harvesting the benefit of Cameron's social isolation. He comes over to many as some kind of techi-geek from another planet and not as someone with whom you would enjoy a good easy going chat. That makes him a bit Brown-like though he probably wouldn't recognise the similarity. His appearances standing on a wooden pallet have often not drawn much of a crowd, if any, and have looked and been contrived and stage managed. Ditto all appearances of politicians in supermarkets, talking in schools and hospitals and the rest. They just don't look natural and so reinforce a feeling of artificiality so obvious that the audience feel demeaned for being taken to be mugs.
As for poor Nick, what can we say?
WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN FOR THE 2015 GENERAL ELECTION?
-In theory the outcome is pretty open and there is everything to play for.
-If the economic situation improves, so will the Conservative vote, but probably mainly at the expense of UKIP.
-If the economic situation remains as now or deteriorates the Labour vote will increase at the LibDems expense as well as the Conservatives.
-The LibDems are unlikely to play any part in a post 2015 government. Apart from anything else, who would trust them? If Labour were the largest party it would probably do what the Tories should have done in 2010 and accept power as a minority government and then call a new election on their first defeat, standing on a platform of "Give us a mandate and we will do the job. If you don't you've got the Tories and UKIP."
-The interesting question would be whether the Conservatives would really offer UKIP a coalition or go for the same "no coalition" policy as above. The fun would then seriously begin if a second election produced the same result as then deals really would have to be done.
..AND LASTLY...............
UKIP came out of almost nowhere to achieve 235 of the vote, not just as a protest but above all because they have in Nigel Farage a leader who can genuinely connect with people and talk easily to and with them in simple non politically correct English unimpeded by politico-speak and evasion. For the Tories , Boris Johnson similarly defies the odds simply because he comes over as fun, humorous, plain speaking and above all human. His being an Etonian doesn't come into the equation. People don't much care about that or debate whether or not he would make a good Prime Minister . They just like his apparent down to earth directness and humour. That's why he won the 2012 London Mayoral Election despite the odds. He too could be having a cheery weekend.
Despite the parties of the right being 5% ahead in voting numbers, ironically this may not translate into a victory in 2015. The reverse in fact. By taking this percentage of the vote UKIP could fail to gain any seats of its own but undermine the Conservative numbers in many constituencies by enough to give Labour the wins. That could translate into Labour gaining an overall parliamentary majority despite them and the other party of the left being outvoted by those of the right.
Although today's media seemed to have missed that point it is unlikely to have passed unnoticed by the two main party leaders. It could be causing deep frowns wherever Dave is this Bank Holiday weekend and some genuine smiles wherever Ed is. Two very different Sunday lunches coming up. Elsewhere Nigel Farage is likely to be found in the sun outside the pub with his trademark pint, a fag and the broad smile of one who has just launched the cat amongst the pidgeons and is now sitting back to watch the sport.
This week's single parliamentary by-election (In escapee David Miliband's former rock solid Labour seat) and multiple council, and mayoral elections have been given General election style media coverage, hype and subsequent entrail examination. Further miles of newsprint will be gobbled up in tomorrow's Sunday papers, the verdicts largely pre-ordained by the political stances of the writers. On the TV Channels the BBC will plough its own institutional left of centre, anything labelled Conservative gets a bit of a snigger, furrow.
To save everyone time, here's what it was all about and what the outcomes mean, especially the 23% of "X" s achieved by UKIP, only recently described by David Cameron,- who got 25%- as a party of and for fruit cakes.
BEFORE THE ELECTION:
- This was the flip side of the 2009 elections when the Brown government was deep in the brown stuff and the Tories did extremely well.
-There was widespread media advance speculation that the Tories would be dealt devastating blows, lose control of many councils by losing 600+ seats.This it was said would put Labour, despite Ed Miliband, on track for a 2015 parliamentary majority.
-This was primarily a battle between the 3 established leaders, Cameron,(Clegg), and Miliband. Few other faces were seen or heard of on soapboxes or in the media. It was as if they were all unavoidably away, working from home or just on holiday. They seemed to want,-or have been ordered,-to keep away.
-In addition there was the known unknown Nigel Farage, leader and again sole face of UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party.
How were the leaders and parties seen/what did they offer?
-Conservatives: In the immediate runup to the polls, Cameron insensitively (blissful unawareness?) reinforced the image and actuality of his inner circle being Etonian, failing which at least leading public school, and Oxbridge and mentally and behaviourally perhaps never having left the cloisters of these places. It is an unfortunate image which has dogged Cameron since the beginning and he has done little or nothing to deal with it. His inner group are visibly the sorts of people he feels most comfortable with and it is all very cosy. Most of its members are undoubtedly very clever and well educated people. Educationally Eton is superb with top university level teaching and mentoring. They turn out an excellent, confident and very polished product. The problem is that it and a few other schools also tend to isolate many of their pupils from any feel for or understanding of other worlds. Parachute them say into Liverpool, Blackburn, Glasgow and they are lost. They could analyse these places and their inhabitants but never understand them. This is a major failing and electoral liability.
-Labour (New Old): If David Miliband had, as expected and backed by individual party members and constituencies ,won the leadership contest in 2010 New Labour would be alive and well . It would now be offering a kind of mature Blair-free grown up slightly left of centre party, probably to the right of where many LibDems actually are. This would have enabled it to hang on to the asiprant middle class voters, particularly in the south, who gave Blair 3 successive general Election victories despite the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan. As the union block vote, led by Unite, managed to overturn the other 2 electoral college groups, we now have Ed Miliband led party heading firmly back to its old roots, habitats (the north) and habits. That leaves most of the south other than parts of London and depressed , mainly seaside, towns looking for somewhere else to cast their votes if they don't go for the Tory boys.
-Liberal Democrat: Nick Clegg looks more miserable, pasty faced and frankly just wet by the day. He has made an art form of looking uncomfortable when sitting next to Cameron in the Commons and has decided that to survive in 2015 he has to visibly wring his hands and obstruct almost any non limp wristed measures proposed by his coalition partners. As result his party doesn't look like one that either of the other two would want to be in coalition with after the next election. He spoke yesterday of the party being in transition from being a party of protest to one of government. It may have been in 2010 but it certainly doesn't look that way now . With the added complication of the rise of UKIP, this looks more like the party of nothing at all after 2015. Not an attractive place to put one's "X" this time then.
-and then there was UKIP, formerly derided by all three above for not really being a party at all but just a collection of right wing no-hopers glued together by a probably racist attitude to immigration and a dislike for wheer the EU has taken and hopes to take Britain. It's more about slamming on the brakes than having an exciting, well thought out and cohesive plan for a new Britain. In its 2010 manifesto it did mention being pro not just one but three new high speed railway lines and that sort of thing .When it came to vote harvesting though and the prospect of juicy electoral gains through a swathe of Tory Buckinghamshire by saying "Oh, but we didn't mean that one" and promising to be even more anti HS 2 than the already near-rabid Conservative opponents of the routing of the line through their heartlands UKIP went for it. So what had UKIP really got to offer ? First, foremost and many would say almost only, Nigel Farage, MEP. Alone amongst the 4 leaders he speaks plain English as understood by the bulk of the population. He is an excellent speaker . Just Google for his speeches in the EU Parliament where he is almost alone in Europe in down to earth, honest, clearly and decisively expressed criticism of the EU's excesses and the culpability for them of its leading lights (?) We do not see such stuff in the Commons where the art of debate and clinical, rather than simply bawling, clinical disection of opponents has almost died out in the generally poorly attended House. Farage is also alone amongst the four leaders in being a man most males in particular can relate to. He says it like it is, has no time for political correctness, looks entirely at home and natural talking to anyone anywhere, particularly in a pub with a pint in one hand and a fag in the other. He is happy to confess to having seen the inside of a pole dancing club and having had a good evening. Just imagine Dave, Ed or Nick making such a confession. They'd probably have had to make it up anyway.
SO WHO DID WE VOTE FOR?
Were the Tories wiped out? Did Labour get those 600+ gains and do anything more than get back to where they were before the great Brown disaster?
The figures are simple:
Labour 29%
Conservative 25%
UKIP 23%
LibDem 14%
Put another way, that means:
Parties of the Right (Cons and UKIP) 48%
Parties of the Left (Lab and LibDem) 43%.
Not much more than one of Farage's cigarette papers between them then,with just a 5% difference overall between the right and left.
David Cameron as a leader isn't making much of an impact and there are no signs that he can. He doesn't appear comfortable outside his own circle, regardless of whether he is in London, at Chequers or at his Cotswold home and the thumbs down given to the Conservatives in these elections in his own constituency is significant. Labour's repeated dogwhistle cries of "Out of touch" have been very clever, found a resonance and stuck. Cameron does not come over as speaking "human" or someone you could have a good chat with in the pub, train, cafe or wherever. Indeed it is unlikely that you would find him in any of these unless surrounded by minders so normal contact is probably out of the question. Nor does he appear to have any normal sense of humour.
Ed Miliband is not disimilar in most of these respects . He is not therefore harvesting the benefit of Cameron's social isolation. He comes over to many as some kind of techi-geek from another planet and not as someone with whom you would enjoy a good easy going chat. That makes him a bit Brown-like though he probably wouldn't recognise the similarity. His appearances standing on a wooden pallet have often not drawn much of a crowd, if any, and have looked and been contrived and stage managed. Ditto all appearances of politicians in supermarkets, talking in schools and hospitals and the rest. They just don't look natural and so reinforce a feeling of artificiality so obvious that the audience feel demeaned for being taken to be mugs.
As for poor Nick, what can we say?
WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN FOR THE 2015 GENERAL ELECTION?
-In theory the outcome is pretty open and there is everything to play for.
-If the economic situation improves, so will the Conservative vote, but probably mainly at the expense of UKIP.
-If the economic situation remains as now or deteriorates the Labour vote will increase at the LibDems expense as well as the Conservatives.
-The LibDems are unlikely to play any part in a post 2015 government. Apart from anything else, who would trust them? If Labour were the largest party it would probably do what the Tories should have done in 2010 and accept power as a minority government and then call a new election on their first defeat, standing on a platform of "Give us a mandate and we will do the job. If you don't you've got the Tories and UKIP."
-The interesting question would be whether the Conservatives would really offer UKIP a coalition or go for the same "no coalition" policy as above. The fun would then seriously begin if a second election produced the same result as then deals really would have to be done.
..AND LASTLY...............
UKIP came out of almost nowhere to achieve 235 of the vote, not just as a protest but above all because they have in Nigel Farage a leader who can genuinely connect with people and talk easily to and with them in simple non politically correct English unimpeded by politico-speak and evasion. For the Tories , Boris Johnson similarly defies the odds simply because he comes over as fun, humorous, plain speaking and above all human. His being an Etonian doesn't come into the equation. People don't much care about that or debate whether or not he would make a good Prime Minister . They just like his apparent down to earth directness and humour. That's why he won the 2012 London Mayoral Election despite the odds. He too could be having a cheery weekend.
Despite the parties of the right being 5% ahead in voting numbers, ironically this may not translate into a victory in 2015. The reverse in fact. By taking this percentage of the vote UKIP could fail to gain any seats of its own but undermine the Conservative numbers in many constituencies by enough to give Labour the wins. That could translate into Labour gaining an overall parliamentary majority despite them and the other party of the left being outvoted by those of the right.
Although today's media seemed to have missed that point it is unlikely to have passed unnoticed by the two main party leaders. It could be causing deep frowns wherever Dave is this Bank Holiday weekend and some genuine smiles wherever Ed is. Two very different Sunday lunches coming up. Elsewhere Nigel Farage is likely to be found in the sun outside the pub with his trademark pint, a fag and the broad smile of one who has just launched the cat amongst the pidgeons and is now sitting back to watch the sport.
