18 April 2008
With all eyes fixed on the Ken 'n' Boris show in London's mayoral contest, the local elections that are to take place in the rest of England and Wales on May 1 have generated relatively few column inches.
It's certainly the case that this is one of the smaller election rounds in the four-year cycle and, with many councils electing by thirds, the scope for sweeping change is limited.
Nevertheless, the results are likely to deliver some interesting and potentially surprising results, not to say a couple of straws in the wind as to changing political tastes as the country begins to gear up for the next general election.
There are about 4,000 seats in contention. A third of the seats are in play in all of England's 36 metropolitan borough councils as well as in 19 unitary authorities.
A third of the seats are also being contested in 73 English district councils and half the seats in a further seven.
Four separate extraordinary elections will also take place in the new unitary authorities in Northumberland, Durham and east and west Cheshire.
In the 22 councils in Wales, all the available seats will be contested in the election.
The rather patchy nature of this year's elections make them somewhat difficult to analyse. 'Everyone has lowered their expectations – no one is going out on the front foot. Everyone expects to do both badly and well in different places,' one local government observer tells Public Finance.
One significant aspect is the likelihood of a Conservative advance in the urban North. It remains the case that there are no Tory councillors in Manchester (bar one defector), Liverpool and Newcastle.
The two big parties have already locked horns on the issue. Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears last week trumpeted the fact that Labour were fielding more candidates than either the Tories or Liberal Democrats in these elections.
'Despite his warm words, David Cameron isn't serious about building a coalition of support beyond his political comfort zone,' she said.
'It is clear from these figures that there remain large parts of Wales and the North of England where Conservatives still have little or no organisation and no support whatsoever.'
Blears' Tory shadow, Eric Pickles, shot back with the claim that the Tories were fielding candidates in 95% of seats across England (Wales was quietly left to one side), heralding a northern advance for the Conservatives.
'These groundbreaking figures confirm that the Conservative Party is back in the North, and is gaining more and more traction across all parts of the country. Our organisation is stronger and more cohesive in places like the Northwest and Yorkshire, and this has paid dividends in the number of men and women wanting to stand for the Conservatives,' he said.
But Tory insiders are coy. A party spokesman says: 'We're starting from a very high benchmark, with the highest number of councillors since 1985. Labour are starting from a very low benchmark, having got absolutely hammered in 2004… For them, the only way is up. For us… there's less to gain.'
He adds an analogy from trench warfare. 'There'll be a lot of effort for very little gain. For us, it will be a case of ploughing away, laying the foundations, consolidating what we've got and reaffirming our commitment to the northern heartlands.'
Although major gains in the inner cities might yet be beyond the Tories' grasp, their suburban neighbours should be closely scrutinised, say politics watchers. Chipping away at the outer areas of the big conurbations could be the key to a Tory revival. There is a strong possibility that the Tories will topple the Labour administration in Bury in Greater Manchester, and might take control of Bolton as well. The party is also expected to keep control of Coventry, a Tory gain two years ago.
Labour are hoping that things won't get much worse for them. 'I don't really see that there's scope for us losing that much,' one party source tells PF.
But there are vulnerable areas. As well as the northern councils that could fall, Labour could lose control of Reading – its one firm toehold in the Southeast – although there are hopes that it could win back Slough and Thurrock.
Another insider suggests rumours of a Tory advance in the North are not exaggerated. Labour's resources are focused on undermining Liberal Democrat control of beleaguered Liverpool, while elections to the two new shadow unitary authorities in Cheshire have been more or less abandoned as a lost cause for Labour – the Tories are expected to win both.
'The best thing that can happen for us is a handful of mini-successes,' the Labour source adds. 'We don't want a kicking; it would knock the scab off a currently healing wound.'
For the LibDems, Liverpool (along with Newcastle and Stockport) is one of the jewels in their northern crown that party workers will be working hard to defend. There's a chance that the party could add Oldham to its metropolitan collection, but Andrew Stunell, chair of the LibDem local election team, provides an honest analysis.
'We try to be realistic about what our prospects are. We certainly don't expect to go backwards,' he tells PF.
Many of the 700 seats the LibDems are defending were won in 2004, in the aftermath of the Iraq war. 'We are well aware that we benefited from that at that time, so if we can defend something like that high-water mark we would be quite pleased,' Stunell adds.
Just what will be going through voters' minds when they walk into the polling booths on May 1 is always a great subject for speculation.
Local issues will certainly play their part, as refuse collection did last year. Refuse collection is an issue that could resurface this year, along with Post Office closures, even though, in that case, there is little councils can do.
But it's also received wisdom that voters use local elections to send a strong message to the central government of the day. In 2004, post-Iraq, Labour found itself slaughtered at the polls, suffering its worst council result since 1973. Subsequent local elections have only reaffirmed this picture.
Now, with the country poised on the edge of financial crisis and with Labour lagging even further behind in the national opinion polls than it did in 2004, the local elections could provide some telling results.
Chris Game, honorary senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham's Institute of Local Government Studies, cautions against reading direct correlations between local election results and national feeling. However, he adds: 'Do national trends and the respective standings of the political parties in national opinion polls play a part? Of course they do.
'And at the moment you could argue it would be an unusually prominent factor because of Gordon Brown. It's the first opportunity for people to cast any kind of voting judgement on Brown and all the things he's associated with.'
Just what the nature of this judgement will be will emerge on May 2.
PFapr2008
