News from Nowhere: Going local

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A week, they say, is a long time in politics. One night can seem even longer.

Last Thursday night might certainly have felt unending for many in the British Conservative Party. They would have been perched through the early hours of Friday morning on the edges of their seats. By the end of the count, it appeared that their party’s reputation and prospects had been significantly compromised, in what their leader himself described as ‘a tough night’. The Tories had lost around 500 seats – about a quarter of the council seats contested that it had previously held.

Thursday had seen a set of local elections take place across the United Kingdom. These included elections for local councils in regions of England, Scotland, and Wales, including such major cities as London, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Cardiff. Northern Ireland meanwhile voted for its regional assembly and government.

In Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin (formerly the political wing of the Irish Republican Army) had uncharacteristically played down their ambitions for a united Ireland during the course of the election campaign. This strategy reaped its rewards, as they surged for the first time towards dominance at Stormont. The growth in their credibility may also to some extent be attributed to the incompetence and infighting of their closest rivals, the Democratic Unionist Party, and that party's hostility towards the protocol agreed with the European Union in order to maintain a porous border on the island of Ireland. The republicans won 29 per cent of first-preference votes; the DUP took only 21 per cent.

This development will have sounded alarm bells amongst those determined to preserve the union of four nations that represents the UK. At the same time, the ongoing appeal of the Scottish Nationalists – who have maintained the vociferous volume of their calls for a second referendum on their nation’s independence from Britain – may continue to cause anxiety for some in Westminster. The SNP dominated the Scottish polls with 453 seats; the Conservatives and Labour took just 496 between them.

The increasing mainstream popularity of Irish and Scottish nationalism has in recent years reflected a growing disaffection with established political structures, traditions, and institutions. This was most obviously signalled by the Brexit referendum of 2016, just as it was in the United States by the election of Donald Trump that same year, and in France last month by a presidential election with a remarkably low turnout in which more than forty per cent of voters cast their ballots in favour of a far-right nationalist candidate. 

Over the last couple of years, public distrust in Westminster politicians has been exacerbated by such revelations as those relating to the profiteering which took place during the early months of the Covid crisis, as members of government awarded contracts to business associates who proved incapable of delivering the quality and quantity of equipment and services required. Meanwhile, the apparently immoveable presence of an eccentric and capricious Prime Minister known for a long history of dishonest and dishonourable conduct – from marital infidelities through to irregularities in the reporting of his financial affairs – has hardly helped bolster confidence in the institutions of government.

In spite of the shameless shenanigans at the heart of government, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition has failed to make any great impact on the affections of the electorate. This appears to result from the fact that, although widely regarded as an intelligent and decent man, he has demonstrated neither the rhetorical force and passion expected of charismatic leadership, nor the courage to commit to substantive policy positions. He is, in short, unexciting and uninspiring – something of a Ned Flanders to the Prime Minister’s Homer Simpson, the Virgil Tracy to his Daddy Pig.

So, mainstream democracy in Great Britain has looked to be in the doldrums for quite a while. In recent months and weeks, things have only become worse.

At the end of April, there emerged a series of unprecedented reports as to widespread gender harassment and sexual misconduct within parliament itself. Male members of the House of Commons from both main parties were accused of extraordinarily chauvinistic behaviours. It even emerged that one Tory MP was witnessed by a female minister watching pornography on his mobile phone. The politician in question initially claimed, much to the amusement and incredulity of the entire nation, that he had, at first, accidentally stumbled across the pornographic website while looking online at a page about tractors (yes, tractors), before later returning to the offending site with more immediate intent while waiting in the chamber to vote. (His service to a rural constituency doubtless explained the urgency of his interest in farm machinery.)

Some recent reports have even suggested that allegations of sexual misconduct have been raised against more than fifty parliamentarians. Last month, the former Speaker of the House of Commons was suspended from his membership of the Labour Party after an investigation upheld more than twenty complaints of bullying against him. The current Speaker last week declared that there is an urgent need for a wholesale culture change. At the same time, a parliamentary report warned of the ‘improper lobbying’ of MPs by foreign powers.

This growing sense of the breadth of corruption across parliament has taken some of the pressure off the Conservative Party, by fostering a sense that these politicos, regardless of their ideological inclinations, are all as bad as each other. But it has hardly bolstered public confidence in the processes of democracy itself.

Meanwhile, senior Conservative and Labour politicians (including both parties’ leaders) have also been accused of breaking Covid lockdown rules. Six days before these local elections, the front page of the influential right-wing Daily Mail newspaper reminded its readers that the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, had been photographed holding a bottle of beer at a work event during a period of lockdown last Spring. It has further emerged that, despite previous denials, Labour’s deputy leader was also present at the same event. There are those on the side of the government who have demanded that the police reconsider their initial decision not to investigate that gathering.

Indeed, the following day, the Mail continued its pre-poll assault upon the credibility of the Opposition with a front-page headline which screamed that the police had now been ‘told to investigate Labour lies’. Three days before the elections, it went on to demand that the Labour leader ‘show us the proof’ that he had not broken lockdown rules. It did not however present any evidence that he had. Twenty-four hours before voters cast their ballots, the Mail’s front page condemned Sir Keir as a ‘man who just can’t answer a straight question’. Then, on polling day itself, it trumpeted the news that Mr. Starmer had not only drunk a bottle of beer on that fateful night at the end of April 2021: it could now be revealed that he had also consumed a takeaway curry. The controversy as to whether this was a working meal or a social gathering has continued to rage. On Friday, as the election results poured in, the police announced that they would open an investigation into the Labour Party’s leader.

The Daily Mail’s campaign to smear the reputation of Sir Keir Starmer has been brazen even by its own standards. By contrast, however, the paper has at the same time tried to downplay the seriousness of the allegations of multiple breaches of his own administration’s Covid restrictions by the Prime Minister himself. Those breaches occurred at a series of parties which took place right at the heart of government – in Number 10 Downing Street – during periods of national lockdown. One of those incidents has already resulted in the imposition of a police fine against Mr. Johnson. Yet the paper has echoed Boris Johnson’s argument that it is time to move on from concerns that he broke his own government’s laws and repeatedly misled the House of Commons in relation to these matters – even despite the recent initiation of a parliamentary inquiry into his conduct. 

Mr. Johnson is the first British Prime Minister to have been sanctioned for unlawful acts while in office. He is also the first Prime Minister to be formally investigated for lying to parliament.

London’s Metropolitan Police had announced that during the period of so-called purdah immediately prior to the elections (during which precedent prevents public officials making political announcements) it would not be releasing information on any further fines. Nevertheless, Downing Street itself showed no such scruples and seized the initiative by announcing that the Prime Minister had not been subject to any more of these sanctions. This might have appeared to have given Boris Johnson something of a public relations advantage.

As it has turned out, however, despite the levels of support he continued to receive from the country’s most powerful newspaper, many British voters had already made their minds up as to how they felt about Mr. Johnson’s decision to attend and host a series of social gatherings even as the public themselves, following strict rules issued by Johnson’s government, had been unable to visit close family members, sick and dying in poorly prepared hospitals and care homes. 

Public outrage at the Prime Minister’s actions was intensified by a High Court ruling, issued at the end of April, that the government’s policy of discharging patients from hospitals without Covid testing had been unlawful. This practice had undoubtedly contributed to the toll of deaths, from the virus, of nearly 20,000 care home residents during the first wave of the pandemic alone.

The primary communications strategy of the government and its supporters in the press has over the past fortnight been to suggest that, although their conduct has clearly been rather prehensible, the behaviour of their political rivals really hasn’t been very much better.

The days immediately preceding these local elections also saw, despite the purdah protocols, a series of government and party announcements calculated to boost the Tories’ support in a last-minute bid to fight back against the threat of electoral humiliation. Most prominently, a plan to give housing association tenants the right to buy their rental properties clearly sought to echo the impact of a controversial flagship policy launched by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. The proposal was heralded by the right-wing Daily Express as a ‘vote winner’ three days before people went to the polls.

The day before those polls opened, the Conservative Transport Secretary complained that London’s Labour Mayor had ‘cynically’ broken purdah rules by announcing that later this month a new trainline through London, the most hotly contested prize of these elections, will go into operation. The minister appeared somewhat peeved at having his own thunder stolen. Neither side mentioned that the completion of this rail link is now four years late.

The timing of the Prime Minister’s decision to address the Ukrainian parliament by video link last Tuesday was similarly denounced by the Liberal Democrats as a ‘cynical’ attempt to boost his party’s electoral hopes. On the same day, Mr. Johnson vowed that there was more that could be done to alleviate the country’s cost-of-living crisis, but he neglected to say what he actually proposed to do about it.

When, that day, a television interviewer confronted him with the story of an elderly lady, unable to afford to heat her home, who spent her days travelling around town on endless bus journeys in order to keep warm, the Prime Minister caused jaws to drop across the nation (and in his own party) when he attempted to take the credit for giving her the travel pass she used for her unlimited free journeys by bus. The following morning, on the eve of the elections, The Guardian newspaper reported that this latest gaffe had exasperated and angered his own MPs, while the Daily Star declared the ‘fibber’ premier to be a ‘shameless buffoon’.

That morning, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, George Eustice, advised that cash-strapped consumers could successfully manage their household budgets by buying from supermarkets’ own cheaper ‘value’ ranges rather than more expensive branded products. As the price of groceries soared at its fastest rate for more than a decade, the privately educated former PR executive’s masterclass in ill-informed condescension was roundly ridiculed. Rightly is he called ‘George Useless’ even by his fellow Tories.

Then, on election day, the social justice think-tank the New Economics Foundation published a report which showed that a further 2.2 million British people – ordinary working people on middle incomes – would be pushed into poverty, unable to afford basic living essentials, during the course of this year. Also that day, the Bank of England predicted that inflation rates would hit double figures, and forecast that the UK economy would shrink both this year and next.

Yet it wasn’t all bad news for the government that week. The swift resignation of that Conservative MP who had been caught watching pornography in parliament would have come as a great relief to party chiefs – as would the decision of another Tory MP (one who had attempted to cast doubt upon the recent conviction of a pedophile colleague) to retire at the end of this parliamentary term. At the same time, another high-profile Tory apologized for his defense last month of Downing Street’s lockdown-breaching party culture on the grounds that, as he supposed, both nurses and teachers had been doing precisely the same thing.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives’ claim that the original source of a notoriously chauvinistic comment about the Labour Party’s deputy leader had not been a Tory MP (as was initially reported) but had in fact been that deputy leader herself was, of course, robustly rejected by the Opposition. Labour understandably denied that she had asserted that her debating skills were so inferior to the Prime Minister’s that she sought to bamboozle him in the chamber by flashing him a view of her legs. There were however those who pointed out that this remark had reflected far worse on the Prime Minister, an individual renowned for his short attention span and his preternatural capacity for erotic fixation.

In the end, though, the local election results were disappointing for both main parties. They were very poor for the government, but they were hardly a triumph for the Opposition either.

The Conservative MP for the London seat of Wimbledon observed that the ‘Partygate’ scandal had made ‘angry Tories’ come out against the government, which, he said, should instead be concentrating on addressing the cost-of-living crisis. Down on the south coast, Portsmouth’s Tory leader suggested that the Prime Minister should take ‘a good strong look in the mirror’. Up in the north of England, the outgoing Tory leader of Carlisle Council was more explicit in his criticism of Boris Johnson, saying that he no longer believed voters could be confident ‘that the Prime Minister can be relied upon to tell the truth.’

As the BBC’s political editor pointed out, this was ‘a deeply uncomfortable set of results' which had fallen towards ‘the worse end of pundits’ expectations’. It had shown, as polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice put it, that Boris Johnson is ‘electorally mortal’.

Saturday morning saw the front page of The Times newspaper declare that the Conservatives had been ‘punished’ in the south of England, while The Guardian reported that the Prime Minister was being ‘blamed for Tory election woes’.

Mr. Johnson’s one scrap of consolation was that, though his party did pretty badly, the Labour Party did not do quite as briilliantly as it had hoped. As the results were declared, it became evident that Keir Starmer still has a mountain to climb. The Labour mayor of Salford called for his party to develop ‘real clarity’ on national policy. One incoming Labour council leader in London admitted that his party’s gains, such as they were, were not the result their ‘being wonderful’ so much as the electorate’s ‘alienation’ with the Johnson administration.

Labour did particularly well in the capital. This reflected the popularity of its incumbent mayor and its leader’s southern metropolitan powerbase. But it conspicuously failed to make such major inroads in regaining crucial seats in the north of England, its historical heartlands whose support it has in recent years lost to right-wing Brexiteers. Overall, its performance was remarkably unspectacular. It had hardly demonstrated that unambiguous flourish of momentum necessary to sweep Mr. Starmer into Downing Street at the next national poll.

The real winners across England were the smaller parties, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, who gained much more than Labour from the Conservative losses. Public disaffection with the major players in Westminster politics again seemed clear. Labour took twice as many seats as the Tories – more than 2,200 – but only gained just over 50. The Greens gained 60, more than doubling their numbers. The Liberal Democrats grew its haul of seats by more than 35 per cent, gaining nearly 200.

The next few days and weeks will show whether, following the drubbing it received at these polls, the Conservative Party will continue to tolerate the toxic presence of its disgraced leader. In the short term at least, it may well do so.

Meanwhile, until such a time as its own leader starts to show his worth as an electoral asset (or unless the ‘Beergate' scandal forces his departure), there are many in the Labour Party who will – despite all their calls for the Prime Minister to quit – be secretly hoping that the Tories’ greatest electoral liability, Mr. Johnson himself, will continue to prove impossible to shift.