Liberal Democrats

The forgotten local elections – Conservatives defied predictions here too

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Chris Game

You’d not have known it from the national media, either before Election Day or since, but the 650 parliamentary contests weren’t the only ones taking place in the UK last Thursday. It was the year in local government’s four-year election cycle that almost all English district and unitary councils – 279 of 293 – had elections, and there were votes too for six mayors, for many parish and town councils, plus the odd local referendum.

There were no council elections in London, Scotland or Wales, but English voters – many doubtless to their surprise – were confronted by up to five ballot papers. Those in Bedford, for example, had votes for an MP, a mayor, two borough councillors, up to 11 parish councillors, and a referendum on their Police and Crime Commissioner’s proposal to increase Council Tax – the first ever of its kind. The proposal – specifically for a 15.8% increase in the Police and Crime Commissioner’s portion of council tax – was rejected by nearly 70% to 30%: Yes 91,086; No 207,551.

These multiple ballots offered electors the obvious opportunity for split-voting: one for their MP or national government, and another more personal, local or protest vote. Minor parties and independents in the council elections could be expected to be chief beneficiaries, but, as shown in the nearly complete results table, that was another ‘expert’ prediction largely confounded.

Blog 11th May

9,500 local elections are even trickier to predict than 650 parliamentary ones, and few are daft or brave enough to try. Those who do will start from the baseline of four years ago – 2011 here – when these actual seats were last fought, compare that year’s results with current national opinion polls, and hope.

2011 was surprisingly good for the Conservatives, a year into their far from popular Coalition with the Liberal Democrats. They gained votes from disaffected Lib Dems, and the coinciding electoral reform referendum galvanised their own supporters. This time, though, the national election effect was expected to boost the turnout of Labour and Lib Dem voters.

The poll standings of both main parties had dropped significantly since 2011. But, with the Conservatives the more damaged by UKIP’s dramatic rise, and defending twice as many seats as Labour, the latter was predicted to make most net gains, with the Lib Dems not suffering “too badly” in losing perhaps “around 50 seats”.

If these predictions echoed those for the General Election, then so did the outcome. The Conservatives were unambiguous winners of these local elections, Labour not just net, but absolute, losers, and the Lib Dems suffered as painfully as they did nationally.  UKIP made progress, but less than it hoped, and the Greens flatlined.

For the Conservatives, their more than 30 gains – mostly, it should be noted, councils previously under arithmetically No Overall Control – will take the local headlines. Two particularly satisfying results, though, will be the retained control in their only two metropolitan boroughs – Solihull and Trafford – both with additional seats. Solihull Greens lost a seat, but, with the Lib Dems losing two, they are still the official opposition.

Conservative unitary council gains include Basingstoke & Deane, Poole, and Bath & North East Somerset, where there are now two Greens, but 14 fewer Lib Dems and a first-time Conservative majority. Districts won include traditionally Independent Babergh, Suffolk, also for the first time in its 41-year history; Amber Valley, Gravesham and North Warwickshire straight from Labour; Hinckley & Bosworth from the Lib Dems; Gloucester, St Albans, Scarborough, Winchester, and Worcester.

Further Labour losses to No Overall Control included Walsall metropolitan borough and the unitaries, Plymouth and Stoke-on-Trent. There was a little compensation perhaps in hanging on to a knife-edge majority in Bradford, thanks to Independents, UKIP and Respect all losing seats, and gaining majorities in unitary Stockton-on-Tees, and, after a suspended recount and overnight rest, Cheshire West & Chester.

Labour is also now largest party on Brighton & Hove council, since 2011 the UK’s first to be run by the Greens. As in the General Election, the Greens’ recent membership surge didn’t really translate into hard results, though they will be encouraged by seven gains in Labour-dominated Bristol, bringing them within touching distance of official opposition.

This time UKIP was the history maker. UKIP leader Nigel Farage had failed to become Thanet South’s MP, but his party reduced Thanet district’s Labour councillors from 24 to 4 and, with 33 of its own, won overall control of its first principal council.

Good Lib Dem news was at a premium all weekend, but enough of Bedford’s conscientious voters gave their mayoral ballot paper X to Lib Dem Dave Hodgson to re-elect him comfortably for a third term as the borough’s mayor.

In other mayoral votes, Peter Soulsby was re-elected for Labour in Leicester, Gordon Oliver for the Conservatives in Torbay, and Mansfield’s three-term Independent Tony Egginton was succeeded by his Mansfield Independent Forum colleague, Kate Allsop.

Another Independent, Mike Starkie, was elected as the first mayor of Copeland in Cumbria, while in Middlesbrough three-term Independent Ray Mallon has retired and is replaced by Labour’s Dave Budd – though only after a second preference count and the rejection of large numbers of spoilt ballots, presumably from the many Labour members who, despite the result, want the mayoral system abolished.

In these mayoral elections at least, then, there’s something for almost everyone: Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, and Independent.

Chris Game - pic

Chris Game is a Visiting Lecturer at INLOGOV interested in the politics of local government; local elections, electoral reform and other electoral behaviour; party politics; political leadership and management; member-officer relations; central-local relations; use of consumer and opinion research in local government; the modernisation agenda and the implementation of executive local government.

Make elections work for you: check the polls, but follow the money

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Chris Game

Spoiler alert: this is a blog about elections, but not local elections – mainly because it’s about election betting, and, with one conspicuous exception, which will be mentioned, our modern-day local election contests and candidates are rarely of sufficiently general interest to attract much serious fixed odds betting.

My prompt was the Conservatives’ recourse to their apparently hastily conceived Campaign Plan C – following the failures of A: negative, personal and increasingly counter-productive attacks on Ed Miliband; and B: daily, unexplained and increasingly implausible financial treats for everyone from NHS patients and rail users to volunteers and better-off housing association tenants.

Plan C involves drawing on – or alarmingly, in the latter case, ‘weaponising’ – the proven, if contrasting, electioneering skills of famous grey man, soapbox campaigner and former PM, John Major, and safe seat candidate and London Mayor, Boris Johnson.

Let’s start with Johnson, the opening paragraph’s ‘conspicuous exception’. You can currently get odds of 33/1 both on his being the next London mayor and next Deputy Prime Minister, and a very short 1/50 on his becoming MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip – which in itself gives a small hint of the huge growth in recent years of so-called novelty betting in general and political betting in particular.

We wagered over £1 million on Prince George’s arrival in 2013 and could well top that this time. Current shortest odds are on a blonde female, eventually named Alice, born on April 25, with 50/1 on triplets and 1000/1 on the hapless infant being named Boris. But royal births are peanuts compared to political betting. Bookies reckon we laid out £30 million on the 2010 election, £50 million on the Scottish independence referendum, and predict this election will be the first UK non-sports betting event to break £100 million.

With William Hill’s taking bets online of £200,000 and over the counter of £50,000 on a hung parliament – at 2/9 and 1/8 respectively – it suggests some clearly see it as an easy earner, and they could be right. The odds on these big bets may be short – £50,000 at 1/8 would win just £1 for every £8 staked, or £6,250 plus the returned stake. But that doesn’t necessarily make them unattractive compared, say, to the 8/1 (£8 for £1 staked) you could get on an improbable coalition involving the Scottish Nationalists.

The attractiveness of particularly these short odds bets obviously depends on whether you think the bookies can predict the results of election races as skilfully as they can horse races and football matches. Put another way, and the main topic of this blog: who are generally more reliable – pollsters or punters?

Step up, John Major, the country’s most electorally successful living Conservative, thanks to his historic triumph in the 1992 General Election. Averaged out, the then four main final polls put Labour ahead on 39%, the Conservatives on 38%, and projected a comprehensively hung parliament. Next day, Labour managed just 35%, while the Conservatives won nearly 43% and a Commons majority of 21 seats. Major became the only UK party leader ever to win 14 million votes – nearly a third more than Cameron in 2010 – a hung parliament was postponed for another 18 years, and ‘shy Tories’ had arrived as a pollster’s nightmare. For a young and still mistrusted polling industry it was a humiliating setback.

It has, as the current campaign daily demonstrates, recovered, grown, and evolved methodologically almost beyond recognition. At the same time, particularly with the proliferation of smaller parties, both polling and seat prediction have become considerably more hazardous. All political pollsters, however, are parts of large commercial companies. Screw up, and their other clients immediately know, so generally they’re highly rigorous and pretty good – provided you judge them reasonably.

They’re not predictors or forecasters. They take time-specific opinion snapshots, with different interrogatory cameras – some using online panels, some random digit phone dialling – of what they hope are politically as well as demographically representative samples of the whole electorate. But because they’re samples, mostly of between 1,000 and 2,000, not much more than 19 times in 20 will any single response be within 3 per cent (plus or minus) of what it would be, had the whole population been surveyed.

This means two things: first, roughly every 20th finding or poll will be outside that +/- 3 per cent margin of error; second, that ‘rogue poll’ will invariably attract more media attention than the rest put together.

That’s almost certainly what happened in the last fortnight of the Scottish referendum campaign. Of nearly 40 polls published between June and the September 18 polling day, only two put the Yes vote ahead. The coverage given to particularly the first of these polls was enough, though, to prompt all three major party leaders to panic in concert, rush up to Scotland, and make desperate vows and commitments they’re still regretting.

It doesn’t, though, explain why the averaged five final polls put the No vote on 49.2%, with a lead of just 4.2% – when the actual result was 55.3% to 44.7%, and a No lead of 10.6%. Poor methodology, very late change, shy No voters, whatever – the pollsters got it wrong.

And they got it as badly wrong – or, in fairness, their Israeli counterparts did – in this year’s perhaps most publicised elections: those in March to the Israeli Knesset, called early by Prime Minister and Likud Party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.  The averaged seat projections of the final seven polls published before Israel’s five-day pre-election poll ban gave Likud 22 seats and its main opposition, Isaac Herzog’s two-party Zionist Union 26 – prompting newspaper headlines like the Daily Telegraph’s ‘Bye-bye for Bibi?’.

The three exit polls suggested that the four-point gap had been closed in the final few days’ campaigning, but none came anywhere near the actual result of a six-seat lead (30-24) to Likud/Netanyahu. In what is a 120-seat legislature, with 10 parties having at least five seats, forming a government is tricky, but, in these matters anyway, Israelis are more patient than we are, and the permitted 42 days have been extended to allow Netanyahu until May 6 to name his.

Those ‘Bye Bye, Bibi’ headlines, however, weren’t the only ones. Gambling sites and the more refined ‘prediction markets’ were giving Netanyahu “an 81% chance of being re-elected”, and offering the equivalent of fractional odds of 1/6 on his winning and 4/1on losing.

It could have been a replay of the Scottish referendum. Over that final ten days, while English politicians and pollsters were over-reacting, the betting odds, overwhelmingly predicting No throughout the campaign, hardly wobbled: around 7/2 against Yes, and 1/4 for No. Indeed, one firm paid out a six-figure sum on a No bet three days before polling day.

These cases of the betting industry having a better sense (no apologies; pun deliberate!) of what’s actually happening aren’t the exceptions that prove the rule; they are the rule – a rule, moreover, that’s logically to be expected. Pollsters ask about our voting intentions and opinions, whereas bookies and bettors focus only on results and outcomes. Above all, though, they back their judgement with their money. So watch the polls carefully, as the bookies do, but if in doubt, then, as Americans might say, follow the frogskins (greenbacks for the alliteratively inclined).

At the time of writing – Wednesday 22nd – there have been 11 new polls since last Thursday’s BBC1Opposition Leaders’ debate. Five put the Conservatives ahead in percentage votes, five Labour, and one had them tied on 34 per cent.  There have also been seven poll-based seat forecasts: five showing the Conservatives ahead, two Labour.

No division among the bookies, though. The best seat-number odds being offered on Labour by any of Oddschecker’s 24 bookmakers were 21/10, while the best on the Conservatives were 1/2. Next PM, though, is very different: Miliband was 3/4 and shortening; Cameron 11/8 and drifting – rather like his party’s campaign.

Chris Game - pic

Chris Game is a Visiting Lecturer at INLOGOV interested in the politics of local government; local elections, electoral reform and other electoral behaviour; party politics; political leadership and management; member-officer relations; central-local relations; use of consumer and opinion research in local government; the modernisation agenda and the implementation of executive local government.

Who’ll work with the Lib Dems?

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Chris Game

One of the few perks of my first paid research job was visiting the major party conferences. This was in the early 1970s, when policies were genuinely debated, votes were taken and mattered, and leaders’ speeches didn’t have to be delivered without visible notes.

I recall particularly Harold Wilson, then Opposition Leader and past his prime, but still, it seemed to me, master in that conference hall of all he surveyed. And still, more than a decade after the man’s death, getting himself an easy ovation by quoting one of Labour Conference’s forever favourite sons, Aneurin Bevan.  One such quote, used by Wilson on probably numerous occasions, was: Why look into the crystal ball when you can consult the book?

I was reminded of it this week in relation, as it happens, to the Lib Dems’ conference. There were two polls last weekend – one of Lib Dem members for the Independent on Sunday, one of Lib Dem councillors for BBC1’s Sunday Politics programme – both showing that the respondents would greatly prefer Labour, the devil they don’t really know, to the one they’re currently in coalition with.

Not exactly new news, and, moreover, entirely crystal ball stuff.  Wouldn’t it be more interesting, rather than speculating about what national politicians might do in the event of a future hung parliament, to read the metaphorical book and see what local politicians have actually done when confronted with hung councils? That’s what the rest of this blog is about.

There are currently more than 50 English hung councils, or more than 1 in 7. In the majority of these (28) there are no formal coalitions, alliances or pacts at all, because they’re run by single parties as minority administrations: 16 Conservative, 7 Labour, 3 Lib Dem (Bath & NE Somerset, Stockport, Cambridge), 1 Green (Brighton & Hove), and 1Independent (Isle of Wight).

One of these – Harrow’s Conservative minority administration – came into existence only this week, but in such exceptional circumstances that, even without any significant Lib Dem involvement, it seems worth a couple of parenthetical paragraphs before continuing with the mostly more mundane happenings recounted in the remainder of the blog.

In one of many noteworthy results buried under the post-General Election headlines in May 2010, Labour, under Bill Stevenson, took majority control of Harrow LBC. Last October, Stephenson stood down due to poor health and was replaced by Thaya Idaikkadar, the UK’s first Sri Lankan council leader. At the Labour group’s AGM in May, however, he lost the group leadership to David Perry, prompting allegations of unfairness and “elements of racism”.

Idaikkadar and 8 other councillors left the Labour Party and formed their own Independent Labour Group, leaving Labour and the Conservatives each with 25 seats. Still Council Leader, Idaikkadar sacked his entire Labour cabinet and created a kind of Independent Labour-Conservative minority coalition, but with the two Conservative cabinet members holding only non-executive posts. This ended last Monday at an extraordinary (in every sense) meeting of the Council, called by the Conservative group and at which, with sufficient Independent Labour support, they elected their own leader, Susan Hall, to head a Conservative minority administration.

These were exceptional events, but in one sense they do reflect the reality and uncertainty behind the formation of any minority administration. Even where the party concerned has the most seats and is close to an overall majority, it’s still a risk, and some sort of at least informal agreement will usually be needed to get the party over the hurdle of the annual meeting, as indicated in my blog following this May’s county council elections.

Warwickshire was one example. The Conservatives had lost their majority control of the 62-member council, but remained the largest party with 26 seats. Labour were up to 22, and there were 9 Lib Dems, 2 Greens and 3 Independents.  The Lib Dems and Greens wanted a multi-party rainbow coalition, but, as regularly happens in local government, Labour preferred to do business with their traditional opponents.

They agreed to abstain in the key vote at the annual meeting, allowed the Conservatives to form a minority administration, and in exchange took control of the scrutiny committees. There were accusations, naturally, of a stitch-up, but no cabinet seats were involved, so Labour could argue that they remain free to work and vote with the smaller parties to defeat any policies they wish to oppose.

A similar informal Conservative-Labour arrangement was negotiated in Gloucestershire, but in Lancashire it was the Conservatives who lost out. Labour had failed to regain their majority control, but with 39 of the 84 seats were the largest party. Sensing a lifeline, the Conservatives (35) tried talking with anyone who might be interested in forming an anti-Labour coalition. But the Independents (3) didn’t want an alliance with anyone, which left the 6 Lib Dems agreeing to support a Labour minority administration, its budget, but not necessarily anything further.

It’s by no means always, though, the largest party that calls the shots, and in arithmetical terms perhaps the most remarkable outcome of the May county elections was in Norfolk. The Conservatives were overwhelmingly the largest party – or should have been, with 40 out of 84 seats – but they were comprehensively outmanoeuvred. While their leader thought he had an agreement with the 9 Lib Dems to enable him to form a minority administration, Labour (14) and the Lib Dems had negotiated a (very) minority coalition of their own, with backing from the 15-strong UKIP group.

Here was one example, then, of the kind of arrangement most Lib Dems say they favour. There are others in Cumbria, in Broxtowe (Notts), where the two parties have a power-sharing history dating back ten years now, and, most recently and with some similarities to Harrow, in Worcester.

While most election-watchers’ attention back in May was on the county elections and in Worcestershire on Labour’s ultimately dashed hopes of winning enough seats to recreate the Lab/Lib Dem pact that had run the council in the 1990s, the heavy action was not in County Hall at all, but in the City Council’s Guildhall, where Labour staged a notable coup.

At 9.00 p.m. on Tuesday 14th May, the 17 Conservatives were running the 35-member council as a minority administration, backed by the 2 Lib Dems. Then by 10.00 p.m. they weren’t, having been dramatically ousted by a coalition of Labour’s 15 members, the single Green, and, yes, those same Lib Dems. They described their turnabout as a carefully considered “change of mind”; the Conservatives pronounced it shameless, unprincipled and considerably worse.

There are two other examples of Lib Dem/Labour partnerships. In Colchester the 26 Lib Dems are very much the lead party, so it is presumably their decision to extend their coalition to include the 3 Highwoods Independents, even though not arithmetically necessary for a majority.

In Stroud, by contrast, every vote in the Labour/LibDem/Green coalition counts. The Conservatives in 2012 were comfortably the largest party on the 51-member council and, with 22 seats, might reasonably have hoped to form a majority alliance with the 5 Lib Dems. However, Labour, though starting from only 16 seats, could and did assemble a similar majority in coalition with the 6 Lib Dems and 5 Greens: trickier but apparently more harmonious.

In all, then, there are 7 current examples of Labour/Lib Dem coalitions, compared to just 4 involving Conservatives and Lib Dems – Lincolnshire, Redbridge, Walsall, and Pendle, in all of which the Lib Dems are the minor partners and generally very much so.  Add in North Devon’s Lib Dem/Independent administration, and it turns out that the Lib Dems (12) are involved in at least slightly more of these formalised local coalitions than either Conservatives (10) or Labour (9).

It is interesting that there seems such minimal enthusiasm in local government to follow the lead of the Conservative and Lib Dem parties at Westminster. As to whether it’s significant, or offers any clues at all to what might happen in 2015, the answer I’m afraid must be a resounding NO.

game

Chris Game is a Visiting Lecturer at INLOGOV interested in the politics of local government; local elections, electoral reform and other electoral behaviour; party politics; political leadership and management; member-officer relations; central-local relations; use of consumer and opinion research in local government; the modernisation agenda and the implementation of executive local government.