andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2025-05-02 11:46 pm
andrewducker) wrote2025-05-02 11:46 pm
Some thoughts on today's council election results
The big news headlines are about Reform doing well. But, basically, the numbers show that Reform are up by 676 councillors and the Conservatives are down by 677. So this is mostly Right-leaning voters deciding that the Conservatives are incompetent and corrupt, so time to try someone else.
A perfect example of this is going to be Durham, which Reform now runs, where he has already told a host of council workers that they "all better be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly". Much like Trump in the USA I suspect a bunch of his supporters are about to find out themselves in for a nasty shock. Hopefully it'll be enough to put others off of voting for Reform in a few years time.
Labour, on the other hand, have discovered that there is a limit to how much they can stop being a party of the Left before people decide to take a risk on someone else. As one Labour MP put it "People voted for change – voted for Labour – but the government isn't looking Labour enough, and people are asking 'what's the point?'". See this BBC article for more.
All of which has Labour down 186, Lib Dems up 163 and Greens up 45 (the remaining losses are from Independents, down 20). The Lib Dems now also control a bunch of councils.
The projected National Vote Share from all of this puts Reform on 30% of the vote, Labour on 20%, Lib Dems on 17%, Conservatives on 15%, Greens on 11%, and "Other" on 7%. I assume that about half of that 7% is the SNP, with the remainder being Plaid Cymru and the various Northern Irish parties. All of which would be a reasonable basis to make predictions about the next general election if it wasn't for two big factors:
1) Those figures will produce *very* odd results under FPTP.
2) Labour have 4 years to turn things around. And while I think they're going the wrong way about at least some of it, there are definitely plans I think will pull things in the right direction, and they have plenty of time to find some kind of feel-good economic factor by 2029.
Which leads me back to the reasons why this is all happening. Labour haven't reformed the voting system. Which means they have to be a broad tent. And they thought they could depend on the left-wing vote (because under FPTP you couldn't go elsewhere without letting The Baddies in). So they tack rightwards in order to pick up enough voters to get elected. But, importantly, if every time The Right push things their way your response is to go "How do we compromise with this in order to get some of their voters" then (a) you legitimise them and (b) you push away some of your own voters. And in the long run it doesn't work, because after you've joined in the "It's all the fault of immigrants" song enough times, you've now left a bunch of people thinking "Well, everyone says it's the fault of the immigrants, and Labour aren't willing to do as much about it as Reform, so I'll vote for Reform."
There was a fantastic quote on PoliticsHome "We've absolutely killed Labour," a senior Reform source told PoliticsHome, adding: "The more they sing our tune, the more we win"* and that captures it entirely. If you turn yourself into a wishy-washy copy of another party, you're just doing their marketing for them. And a chunk of your previous voters have buggered off to vote for people who don't spout fascist nonsense.
In any case, we've now reached the point where the system is completely broken. We now have 5 viable national parties using a system that doesn't scale beyond 2. Either they're going to have to merge in some way** or the next election is going to end up producing the some very odd results indeed. Truly, we are living in interesting times!
*Sadly, in a story that's now been taken down. No idea why. I can still see the quote if I google for "the more they sing our tune the more we win"
** Which might happen with Reform/Conservatives. But a fair number of Conservative voters will not vote for Reform. So if they make an official pact/merger then they'll lose a bunch of their voters to the Lib Dems.
A perfect example of this is going to be Durham, which Reform now runs, where he has already told a host of council workers that they "all better be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly". Much like Trump in the USA I suspect a bunch of his supporters are about to find out themselves in for a nasty shock. Hopefully it'll be enough to put others off of voting for Reform in a few years time.
Labour, on the other hand, have discovered that there is a limit to how much they can stop being a party of the Left before people decide to take a risk on someone else. As one Labour MP put it "People voted for change – voted for Labour – but the government isn't looking Labour enough, and people are asking 'what's the point?'". See this BBC article for more.
All of which has Labour down 186, Lib Dems up 163 and Greens up 45 (the remaining losses are from Independents, down 20). The Lib Dems now also control a bunch of councils.
The projected National Vote Share from all of this puts Reform on 30% of the vote, Labour on 20%, Lib Dems on 17%, Conservatives on 15%, Greens on 11%, and "Other" on 7%. I assume that about half of that 7% is the SNP, with the remainder being Plaid Cymru and the various Northern Irish parties. All of which would be a reasonable basis to make predictions about the next general election if it wasn't for two big factors:
1) Those figures will produce *very* odd results under FPTP.
2) Labour have 4 years to turn things around. And while I think they're going the wrong way about at least some of it, there are definitely plans I think will pull things in the right direction, and they have plenty of time to find some kind of feel-good economic factor by 2029.
Which leads me back to the reasons why this is all happening. Labour haven't reformed the voting system. Which means they have to be a broad tent. And they thought they could depend on the left-wing vote (because under FPTP you couldn't go elsewhere without letting The Baddies in). So they tack rightwards in order to pick up enough voters to get elected. But, importantly, if every time The Right push things their way your response is to go "How do we compromise with this in order to get some of their voters" then (a) you legitimise them and (b) you push away some of your own voters. And in the long run it doesn't work, because after you've joined in the "It's all the fault of immigrants" song enough times, you've now left a bunch of people thinking "Well, everyone says it's the fault of the immigrants, and Labour aren't willing to do as much about it as Reform, so I'll vote for Reform."
There was a fantastic quote on PoliticsHome "We've absolutely killed Labour," a senior Reform source told PoliticsHome, adding: "The more they sing our tune, the more we win"* and that captures it entirely. If you turn yourself into a wishy-washy copy of another party, you're just doing their marketing for them. And a chunk of your previous voters have buggered off to vote for people who don't spout fascist nonsense.
In any case, we've now reached the point where the system is completely broken. We now have 5 viable national parties using a system that doesn't scale beyond 2. Either they're going to have to merge in some way** or the next election is going to end up producing the some very odd results indeed. Truly, we are living in interesting times!
*Sadly, in a story that's now been taken down. No idea why. I can still see the quote if I google for "the more they sing our tune the more we win"
** Which might happen with Reform/Conservatives. But a fair number of Conservative voters will not vote for Reform. So if they make an official pact/merger then they'll lose a bunch of their voters to the Lib Dems.
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And, yes, Labour under Starmer seems to be hewing even more rightward than under Blair, sigh. I don't know what people think of the LibDems these days but under Corbyn at least I had a sense of what Labour stood for.
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On the other hand, I don't want either of them, so I'm not one to talk.
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Barry Goldwater campaigned under the slogan, "A Choice, Not an Echo."
That didn't work, but 16 years later they got the formula right.
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