It’s becoming a traditional ceremony. The UK’s ruling New Labour Party kicks off its local election campaigns in England and Wales with a dangerous spat between the Prime Minister Tony Blair and the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.
Brown is snubbed, then Blair is obliged by wiser heads to accept that he needs him. This time Blair’s outriders fired their hand-held rocket launchers at the Brown camp with extra ferocity, delivering preposterous claims that Brown was deliberately sabotaging Labour’s chances in the local elections.
But now Blair and Brown will deliver the required photo opportunity for today’s campaign launch. Up to (but probably not including) the May 4 election day, Blair will buy Brown more ice creams and they will grin together in nurseries, offering tales of their own little ones back home.
They can do it well when they try, a reminder of the dream team they might have been, each one modifying the worse aspects of the other.
May 4 has been written into the diary as Tony Blair’s next “worst week” (assuming he doesn’t have any before then). His office in Downing Street can be heard warning that it will be a “nightmare.” Blairites shake their heads darkly and say it will be “a massacre” — all off the record, but definitely for reporting.
For this is textbook public relations from the chapter on preparing for disaster called “How to manage down expectations.” Tell everyone the sky will fall in and, when some local councils are held, sigh with relief that it wasn’t as bad as feared and, all things considered, it was a pretty good result in the circumstances.
These local elections matter for the bad reason that when London goes to the polls, the London media take more notice in the boroughs where they live. All London votes together every four years, whereas in shire and other city elections a third of the seats revolve each year, making London’s results more striking — and more prone to upset.
What’s more, this time results from outside London are likely to be less dangerous for Labour than in the capital. Here’s why: Local elections outside London in 2004 delivered Labour’s worst results ever, with heartlands lost.
Remember how they resulted in Tony Blair’s wobble, when he nearly threw in the towel. So in those areas it would be hard for Labour to do even worse. Labour may well keep what it holds and even, according to the psephologist John Curtice, make some gains.
But the last London elections in 2002 were a very different story. It was not nearly such a bad year for Labour, then some 17 percent ahead in national polls. All governments get punished in local elections, but 2002 was not calamitous. That means London Labour has a lot further to fall this time, when it is only a couple of points ahead of the Tories nationally.
According to professor Curtice, Labour is likely to lose the London boroughs of Bexley, Croydon, Brent, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Merton. Even Camden is risky, needing less than a 4 percent swing against Labour. Mori mentions Barnet and Haringey as possible fallers, though — with low turnouts and control hanging by a thread in a few wards — these results are hard to predict.
But if some top-scoring councils fall, there will be bitterness that Labour’s reputation in government has damaged the good story that Labour can tell locally about its well-run councils.
It should be easy to run a winning London campaign. First there is London’s Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone, a great campaigning asset. The mayor is not just one of those rare politicians who can make people smile in the street; he is a living symbol of the revival of London government, which was demolished by Margaret Thatcher. Labour has a good story to tell about London in 2006 compared with London in 1996. For a start, Labour councils have twice as many four-star ratings from the Audit Commission as Tory or Liberal Democrat authorities.
Labour’s average council taxes are lower than those of Tory or Lib Dem councils. Tessa Jowell, running London’s campaign, will champion the new and rebuilt schools, hospitals, buses and trains — and especially the Safer Neighborhoods local police teams, popular and well noticed — then add in her “London pride” theme for the Olympics; she now promises it will include a new London safe-cycle network throughout the whole city. Ben Page of Mori says satisfaction with local councils is rising. Contrary to the tales of woe from activist pensioners, only 4 percent of residents put council tax near the top of their concerns.
“The public realm is better because national standards have been imposed,” says Page. His research shows that Labour’s comprehensive performance targets have tightened the screw on all councils, improving standards whichever party is in control. (It is something of an irony that all this improvement may be put at risk by every party’s sudden enthusiasm for the new localism, relaxing powers that have just driven up standards in the name of setting councils “free.”)
So if when Labour does badly in the local elections, it will not be because of failure to run councils well. Few voters will turn out: London has seen a steady decline from 48 percent in 1990 to 32 percent in 2002. Many voters that do turn out will be more driven by hot national issues than by the quality of their council.
This makes local government a thankless task for the average councilor’s 21 hours a week of toil. Research finds that news reports about local government are 4:1 negative. It’s hardly surprising that councilors are getting older — average age now 58 — and that a rising number of them are retired.
Wisely, Labour will not be drawn on how many councils it expects to win or lose, so there is no precise “Blair in peril” high-water mark. But even if expectations are managed down to rock bottom, the party will still shudder if yet more flagship councils are lost. (How did Labour ever lose the likes of the provincial cities of Birmingham and Newcastle?)
MPs in marginal seats know that local results don’t reflect general elections, but panic can spread along already depleted green benches in the UK House of Commons: How many more empty seats next time?
Nick Sparrow of ICM is among pollsters now predicting that the next general election will be as tight as 1992. Though Labour will win, the memory of the Conservative Premier John Major’s struggle with a tiny majority is not an enticing future. But it is not clear how bad May 4 has to be for enough senior Labour people to decide that another year — let alone two — is too long to wait for Labour’s chance of renewal under a new leader with a new agenda.
