LONDON, 1 May 2008 — Britons vote in local polls today in England and Wales, amid warnings that heavy losses for the ruling Labour Party — notably in London — could spell disaster for Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Labour is facing 21-year lows in the polls and Brown a slump in his own personal ratings going into what is his first major electoral test since taking over from Tony Blair last June. The tightly-fought race to become London’s next mayor is seen by many as a litmus test of public opinion on the Labour administration, with a general election in the offing in the next two years.
The capital is a big political prize: The mayor controls an annual budget of more than 11 billion pounds ($22 billion) and his policy decisions affect 7.5 million Londoners and millions more who visit.
Victory for the main opposition Conservative Party challenger Boris Johnson over Labour’s Ken Livingstone would be a symbolic boost for the center-right Tories at a time when they are riding high in the opinion polls. A third consecutive four-year term for Livingstone, however, could reassure center-left Labour that their recent dip in form is only temporary and they can recover before the country goes to the polls sometime before May 2010.
Brown has himself recognized that the government has faced a hard time as the impact of the global credit crunch begins to bite, hitting the housing market and economic growth, alongside rising food and fuel prices. But in an interview with GMTV Tuesday, he refused to be drawn about whether he expected a “kicking” at the ballot box. “I want people to come out and vote and see that there is a choice,” he said.
Some 13,000 candidates are fighting for more than 4,000 seats on 159 municipal councils in England and Wales as well as the 25-member London Assembly, which holds the capital’s mayor to account.
Analysts predict that Labour will do well to better their performance the last time the seats were contested in 2004, when they came third in the national vote equivalent with a 30 percent share of the vote.
Then, the fall-out from Britain’s involvement in the widely unpopular Iraq war hit them hard, but the party still recovered to win the 2005 general election, albeit with a reduced parliamentary majority.
This time, national issues, particularly the government’s recent economic record, could be a factor.
There was widespread opposition to the use of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to prop up the Northern Rock bank, which collapsed in the wake of the global credit crunch and was later nationalized. The government’s abolition of the 10 percent tax threshold has also caused outrage in the Labour ranks, with claims the party had abandoned its core principles of helping the most needy in society.
Threatened with a parliamentary rebellion, Brown made concessions last week but analysts believe the damage may already have been done. According to analysis from the Electoral Reform Society, “an NVE (national vote equivalent) of 25 percent or less, and losses of more than about 200 seats net and London, would be enough to cause a serious crisis in Labour morale”.
