Well, the good thing about the fact that some people are dissatisfied with the party’s showing in Thursday’s elections is that the party is now being ambitious for us to succeed seriously at a national level - in the past too many people have been happy simply to be a third party in opposition. That seems to have changed.
But those who say the results were awful do need to take a serious look at some context. When I joined the Lib Dems in 1990 we were down in the low single figures in the polls, and for most of the 1990s we were happy to be somewhere around the mid-teens. The average poll rating since then has climbed to around 20%, perhaps a touch more. At the 2005 General Election we scored 22%.
In this context complaining about the 26% showing we scored in the local elections in England on Thursday, hardly seems reasonable. Although it’s true that we often do slightly better in local elections than general elections (for example in last year’s locals we scored 27%), 26% is clearly not the disaster that some are claiming it to be.
On Thursday there were losses in some places, but gains in others: I was personally particularly pleased to see that we gained for the first time a foothold in West Bridgford in Rushcliffe, with a highly impressive 26.4% swing from the Conservatives to us - something we tried and failed to do when I was the PPC there in the run up to the 2001 General Election.
And when comparing the number of councillors and councils won and lost, we need to remember what the benchmark was: the 2003 local elections, when those up for re-election on Thursday were elected, were some of our best results, following as they did immediately after the original invasion of Iraq. To those who think the party’s poll ratings must always go in only one direction: sorry, it just doesn’t work like that.
Yes, these results will not be quoted in the party’s history as one of our great historic steps forward: they were indeed a small step in the wrong direction. But those who think they are some sort of disaster really do need to get a grip.
And those who are calling again for the party to think about changing its leadership as a result are very wide of the mark indeed. Spending the next several months navel-gazing and focussing on internal matters would be absolutely the wrong way to try and take the party forward following these results. Ditching your leader every year and every time you get a poll outcome that isn’t perfect is the sure way to political failure (just look at the Conservatives over the last ten years).
But more importantly some people talk as if there were some great crowd of new and different candidates who would stand for the party leadership, who have suddenly appeared from somewhere since last year’s contest. This is obviously nonsense. Yes, I guess the runner-up from last year’s leadership election would stand again. But I don’t imagine the candidate who came third would do so again and other MPs (including Clegg) wouldn’t stand this year for the same reasons as they didn’t last year.
There is no reason for the party to commit regicide for the second time within 18 months. And especially not when - and saying this isn’t sticking your head in the sand, it’s stating a fact - this is historically a more-than-perfectly-respectable showing.
May 5th, 2007 at 14:47
Why do you put the blame on Huhne supporters, when the only example you can give of someone calling for Campbell’s head (or that I can find) is a well known Hughes supporter? This article does read somewhat like the hysterical over-reaction you used to find in New Labour circles where insecure Blairites would seek to blame Brown for everything, however tenuous.
What have you got against Huhne, and why are you bringing him into it?
May 5th, 2007 at 15:00
Well said Jeremy.
May 5th, 2007 at 15:44
I think if you’re going to argue that the people who are ‘out to get’ Ming were supporters of other candidates at the last leadership election, you can just as easily argue the reverse and say that the people defending him are all people who voted for him in the leadership contest. In other words you’re arguing that opinion on the leadership hasn’t shifted much since the last leadership lection - and I’m sure the answer is far more complex than that. As I blogged way back when, I’ve forgiven Ming for beating the candidate I backed in the leadership!
No, I’m not trying to reopen an old debate - I’m more concerned about now and the future. I have to confess I’d be happier if I woke up tomorrow and MC was back in his natural stamping ground of foreign affairs and someone, I’ll take practically anyone, else was leader. He’s been in post for a year and bit now, and my personal view is that if he heads up a GE campaign, he’ll be awful. That’s a view I’ve held since before he became leader, and the most recent elections only serve to bolster it a little bit. I’ve cut him slack, I will continue to cut him slack for another year, but the purpose of my post was to sound an alarm bell.
I can perfectly understand your desire, and indeed the desire of the majority of the LD blogosphere to talk up the results, but statements like “on Thursday there were losses in some places, but gains in others” are, like James says, bordering on Blairite spin! In a major test of public opinion across the UK we lost four councils. Net, we lost hundreds of councillors. That’s a reversal of fortune, and it’s not a minor one.
I don’t think anyone needs to get a grip, as I don’t think anyone is reading too much in to what happened yesterday - but that doesn’t mean that what happened yesterday wasn’t very serious.
May 5th, 2007 at 15:58
Hi James
I absolutely don’t have anything against Chris Huhne and I think you are reading quite a lot more into it than I was actually saying, in seeing here an attack on a ‘Huhne camp’! I only mentioned Huhne because he is the only obvious person that I would expect would be a candidate if the leadership election they are calling for, were to take place - as I said I don’t see a crowd of potential new candidates and I suspect (though of course I don’t know) that Hughes wouldn’t stand either. I don’t for a moment believe Huhne or anyone close to him is agitating for such a thing (and I really didn’t say they were!).
I was simply trying to say that I think some of those people who didn’t vote for Ming last year, are saying that they still wish he hadn’t won - but that that’s not in itself a good enough reason for another bout of regicide.
May 6th, 2007 at 12:19
Jeremy. I understand your explanation but the last paragraph of your post certainly implies a link between those who supported Chris and those calling for a change of leader, which I am pretty sure there isn’t.
May 6th, 2007 at 16:58
No Jeremy, you explicitly stated that it was Huhne supporters calling for Ming’s head, yet you have not managed to name a single person. That suggests something on an agenda.
May 7th, 2007 at 0:58
Nice analysis.
May 7th, 2007 at 13:36
Just to say that James has also raised this - what he calls my “wild allegations of a Huhnista putsch” on his own blog, in a post about the French Presidential election. From other comments above I obviously did manage in the last paragraph of my article above, to create an impression about a “Huhne camp” that I didn’t intend to, and I apologise for that - I’ve tried to explain at James’ blog what I was trying to say. As a result I’ve also removed the offending two sentences from the final paragraph of the article above.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:53
Jeremy, as someone who might have had the smallest of hands in what happened last Thursday in West Bridgford ;o) drop me a line and I’ll explain in more detail. With a few more troops we might have done even better.