Across the pond

Thursday’s  English local elections show there is no evidence that our democracy is in danger as a result of the month long exposure of MP’s expenses by the Daily Telegraph. This is the conclusion of my own analysis of the results. Before the voting started we all knew that the people were furious with what they had heard about the extravagant expense claims. The opinion polls showed it. As did the angry quotes from men and women in the streets and the re-actions of the audience on national programmes like BBC One Question Time and Radio Four Any Questions. But when the voters got to the polling booths they kept their cool.

The Tories won control of 30 councils, up seven. Labour lost control of four councils, leaving them none at all of those voting yesterday. The Lib Dems lost one council leaving them with one. The councils where no party has an overall majority fell by two to three. In terms of practical political power the results are a big success for David Cameron’s Conservatives. This is almost entirely due to our first past the post voting system.

The result in terms of seats won show a somewhat different picture. The Conservatives won 1476 seats, up 233 on last time. The Lib Dems won 473 down four. Labour won 176 seats, also down four. The others won 164 seats, up 37. (The differencces are again explained by first past the post, which favours the winning party, and the councils voting yesterday were mostly Conservative strongholds.)

The overwhelming majority of the others are the independents, who won 118 seats, up 21. The independents are the survivors of one of the best British political traditions. Local citizens, from all walks of life, who fight and win local elections. They belong to no party at all, because they are well known in their neighbourhoods. They included in the town of my youth, small shop keepers, bus drivers and our window cleaner.).

Next biggest in the Others main group are ‘other others’, too diverse to be categorised, 22 seats up six. They are followed by the Greens, who won 16 seats up six.

The scare about voters turning away to the fringe parties is fuelled by fears of the BNP, which often sounds fascist, and UKIP, a right-wing party united only by a hatred of all things European. Both were fighting these particular council elections for the first time. UKIP won 6 seats. The BNP won 3 seats.

Hence my headline.

 But a lot of people are worried, because the figures quoted most prominently by the mainstream national media are the percentage figures of what the local results would mean to the parties share of the national vote in a general election. They are nearly all based on a complex formula devised by a Scotttish academic.

 What they show is the Conservatives in the lead with 38 per cent, the Lib Dems second with 28 per cent, Labour at a new low of 23 per cent and the others at 11 per cent.

They are, as I hope I have demonstrated here, extremely misleading. No formula can satisfactorily deal with translating local results for the ‘others’, to a national election, where there is no equivalent to the local independents who have been active in their backyards for years.

A much better guide to what the voters are doing is look at the actual seat figures. The 164 ‘others’ vote on Thursday, amounts to 7 per cent of the people who voted. But the total for the BNP, UKIP and the Greens, comes to just 1 per cent. These are the only three fringe parties who also contest national elections.

To conclude, the fears of a take-over by the extreamists are much exaggerated. But there is no doubt that the electorate wants a change of some kind. So I think the next election provides an opportunity for a few independent MPs on the national scene. So long as they are as famous as Esther Rantzen, Martin Bell and Joanna Lumley, they are in with a chance.

And that would be a good thing for our democracy.