5May
Welsh elections: Labour, we think, has done enough to retain power, though they'll need to rely a formal coalition with the Lib Dems. Part of that is due to the curious Overhang rules, which put Labour four seats closer to an overall majority than they deserve. Plaid Cymru didn't really break out of their heartland, and couldn't repeat their remarkable results from 1999. Success for the Lib Dems was spotty. The Conservatives have made distinct progress in their traditional heartlands - the M4 corridor, Clwyd, and Pembrokeshire - but will be disappointed not to have become the second-largest party by seat or any vote.
Scottish Parliament avoided a very quiet constitutional crisis by a whisker. We would have been shouting from the rooftops had Labour been the largest party purely because of their unadjusted Overhangseats. As it is, the SNP and Lib Dems cannot form a coalition on their own, and must rely on the support of the two Greens. Allan Massie in the Torygraph proposes an SNP and Conservative government; this could command a majority on its own, but we really don't see it happening. A combined SNP+Con opposition, though, feels like just the sort of mischief-making that would help both parties. A win for the SNP, but more by default - Labour clearly lost, the Conservatives lost one seat, the Lib Dems are no longer kingmakers, and the minor parties are out.
Scottish councils show some interesting detail, and put the SNP clearly ahead of Labour, with the Lib Dems and Conservatives roughly equal for third. Doctor Vee was rather unhappy that in his three-member ward, there were two Labour candidates, and one from four other parties (the three biggies and the Sheridanites.) Six candidates for three places stinks of a carve-up, he suggests. Mat in the comments argues that it's sensible, as otherwise whole slates of candidates can be eliminated even though they have a quota between them. The documents we pointed out last week about the Irish implementation of STV (1 2) may help to explain this esoteric point further.
Far less helpful is the BBC's insistence that No Overall Control gains %any Scottish council%. This is by design. It's like saying, Aeroplane takes off, flies about, and lands. This is the system working correctly, and is not news.
Lost in the mix of the Scottish Parliament elections is the removal of most of the fringe parties. The SSCUP are out of parliament, which comes as something of a surprise. Evidently specialist parties for senior citizens are not the wave of the future. Less surprise to find that the SSP has also fallen off the radar, following the damaging splits in the party last year. It looks like many of the SSP votes, and other Labour protest votes, have gone to the SNP - gains in Cunninghame North, Fife Central, Kilmarnock, and Stirling are striking into Labour's heartland.
The other talking point was the large number of spoiled ballots in Scotland. Three different tiers, two different methods of casting a ballot. We assumed that an X on the STV paper would be interpreted as a First Preference for that candidate, then Non-Transference. We're not sure that this happened. It would have been more sensible to hold off the local elections for a year, and spend the time educating the Scottish citizenry about how this Single Transferable Vote works, and the Scottish Office (for the date of council elections, remarkably, is a Reserved matter) needs to apologise for forcing this confusing measure through.
English councils: The devil here is in the detail. Labour has lost nine councils and 500 seats; just about all of these were last fought in 2003 (a poor year for Labour) and 2004. Though the party polled slightly more votes than last year, it's still falling. Next year's elections are the last remnants of the 2004 Big Bang, when combined local and European elections, plus a fair amount of ballot-stuffing, worked in Labour's favour.
Labour has lost ground in its heartlands - Blackburn lost to no overall control, Plymouth and Lincoln straight to the Tories. There are some consolations - denying Conservative control in Thurrock, gaining Humberside South - but overall the picture is of a slow decline across the board. Don't be fooled by Labour claiming that it wasn't as bad as expected - the party has scored about 27% of the national vote. It's up 1% on last year, but still a lower percentage than the 1983 general election.
The Conservatives have gains across the board - Bournemouth, Torbay, and Windsor from the Lib Dems; Dartford from NOC-Labour; South Derbyshire, Oswestry, and Gravesham from Labour. These are all places that traditionally elected Conservative MPs, and need to do so again for a Cameron government to form. There are very limited signs of recovery in the urban north; the lack of support in Manchester or Liverpool is embarrassing, but nowhere near as fatal to the Conservatives' chances of forming a national government as other parties suggest - where are the Labour councillors in Tunbridge Wells, for instance. Another 38 councils and nigh-on 900 councillors is nothing to be sniffed at. A static vote ensures that this is a good result for the Conservatives, but may not be part of a flower-strewn path to Number Ten. There was some headroom to tilt at, and the Tories didn't progress.
The Lib Dems, meanwhile, continue to confuse. They've replaced Labour as the party of opposition in the south-west, but lost control of other councils to the Conservatives. They remain the only opposition to Labour in the urban north, and do battle with the nationalists in the sparsely-populated rural seats of the Celtic fringes. The net result is a loss of around 250 councillors - something over a tenth of their defences - and four councils. They seem to be the second choice everywhere, but the winners almost nowhere.
The BBC's Notional Share is C 40%, Lab 27%, LD 26%, though any single party's rating is subject to a margin of error around 1%. The share of the vote is almost identical to the 42-28-26 of the 1983 general election. However, this will not lead to a 140-seat Conservative majority; part of this is due to boundary changes, and part from better organisation by the left-wing parties to avoid splitting the anti-Conservative vote. Our current projection is for a Conservative overall majority of around 24, most of their gains coming in the suburban and rural areas of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and the East Midlands.
The overall conclusion? Steve Richards argues that Blair's progressive coalition has fallen apart. We never believed that such a thing existed, merely a desire to get the Conservatives out. Now replaced by get Labour out. No, we have the same feeling as immediately before the 2005 election: we may be coming out of the era of national parties, and into more localised groupings. The Conservatives are the party of the country, and of the London commuter belt. Labour is the party of the cities, particularly the urban north. The Lib Dems and Nationalists are the parties of protest. It increasingly feels as if none of the parties commands the majority of the country, and that the UK could follow Canada's lead, by electing minority government after minority government in a series of inconclusive elections.
