Local elections: post-mortem

‘Right. You’re in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People’s Front. Splitters!’ The famous scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian was written to parody the divisions on the left of British politics in the 1970s, and came to appear even more prescient when the progressive vote was split three ways in the 1980s, between a Labour Party that was itself troubled by the Trotskyite Militant Tendency, the breakaway Social Democrats and the Liberal Party. As these increasingly disparate groups argued amongst themselves on the slightest of divisions, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives (the ‘Romans’ of the analogy) were able to win three elections and implement a radical right-wing programme that a lot of the infighters opposed, despite never convincing most people in the country.

Thirty years on, it is perhaps amusing to note that the split in British politics is now on the right-hand side of the spectrum. This is the clearest result of Thursday’s local elections. The Conservatives are haemorrhaging support to the UK Independence Party, splitting a once solid vote two ways. Just as Labour and the SDP split their vote almost equally at the 1983 general election (28% and 26%), the 2013 share of the vote, when ‘ironed out’ to consider those parts of the country which did not have elections this time, was 25% for the Conservatives and 23% for UKIP.

UKIP are quite clearly the party that has gained the most from these elections, a very creditable third place in vote share even outstripping their opinion poll ratings. By appealing to disaffected Tories tired of David Cameron’s social liberalism, ‘a plague on all your houses’ protest voters, and those who rarely vote at all, Nigel Farage has built up a formidable voting bloc. His pub-style conservatism (having been in a pub at the same time as Farage at the Eastleigh by-election, I can vouch for that being his natural habitat) seems to strike a chord with many people turned off by seemingly identikit politicians from the three main parties. Whilst the three big parties are much more different than conventional wisdom suggests, and in my view the existence of ‘career politicians’ not being such a bad thing (would you not want your children taught by a ‘career teacher’?) this ‘the liberal metropolitan elite doesn’t understand us’ mindset can be electoral dynamite – see the Tea Party in the US for proof.

Of course, UKIP’s rise leaves David Cameron and the Conservatives in a bit of a pickle. Cameron is faced with a paradox: he failed to win the 2010 election against a government about as popular as cholera because centrist voters weren’t convinced he had ‘detoxified’ the Tory brand, but this stance has turned off many right-wing voters, who have since gone to UKIP. But if he tries to win them back, he further alienates the centrist voters, and so on… Stuck in this bind, all Cameron can do is throw the odd bit of red meat to the right and hope the economy picks up, and that when it comes to choosing a government in 2015, right-wing voters come back.

The Liberal Democrats polled a derisory 14% and their showing only reinforces what we already know. In places where they are already strong, their vote held up; everywhere else, it was a disaster (in the South Shields by-election, also held on Thursday, they came seventh). 2015 could see the Lib Dems retain a large number of their seats on a greatly reduced vote share, as a bid to be a technocratic centrist party implementing austerity because they have to, rather than want to, is a platform that will win some but not much support (see Mario Monti’s Civic Choice party in Italy, who got 10% of the vote on such a platform).

In the same way that Margaret Thatcher kept power because of a divided opposition, Ed Miliband could see Labour return to office, in a mirror image. With UKIP, the Tories and Lib Dems all crowding each other out on the right, Miliband has the whole left to himself, with a solid Labour vote (they lost not one seat to UKIP on Thursday) and the left-leaning former Lib Dem voters who have ‘come home’ to Labour because of the coalition giving him a fair few votes before he’s even started on the floating voters. Gaining just under 300 seats was a slightly underwhelming night for Labour, but as long as Miliband continues to pick up the pace with policy announcements and his reportedly well-received soapbox-style rallies, Labour should not have much to worry about. And so ironically, by being so divided, the Tories and UKIP might make happen what none of them want: a Labour government. The People’s Front of Judea never went away, they just switched sides. Splitters!