John Curtice: Never before has a party suffered a total wipe-out
Labour's fear is that this time it will be the BNP that makes a sudden breakthrough
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Independent Minds
They are meant to be about the future of Europe and the delivery of vital local services such as schools and social care. But in truth it will be the future of Gordon Brown that will be the main question hanging over the European and local elections on 4 June.
If Labour does badly, the recently revived muttering and perhaps even the plotting about the Prime Minister's future can be expected to thicken. The expectation that David Cameron is on course for victory in a general election next year will grow. If, on the other hand, Labour avoids disaster Mr Brown will be safe and on the Labour benches hope will be rekindled that Mr Cameron could yet be denied.
At first glance the European elections would seem to be the more severe of the two electoral tests for Mr Brown. The whole country will get the chance to vote in a straightforward proportional representation election. Labour's success or failure will be unambiguously recorded for all to see.
In contrast local elections are only taking place in shire – and thus mostly Tory – England. Only 27 county and seven unitary councils (including five new ones) are at stake. Any shortcomings in Labour's performance would seem capable of being dismissed on the grounds that little of national significance can be read into such unrepresentative results.
In truth, Mr Brown may well have less to fear in the European elections than he does in the local contests. This is for one simple reason. When the country last voted in European elections in 2004 Labour performed abysmally. It won less than 23 per cent of the nationwide vote, not least because the party was beginning to pay for the unpopularity of the Iraq war. Yet just 12 months later Tony Blair still went on to win a historic third term. Even the most recent opinion polls still suggest the party stands at 27 per cent in Westminster voting intentions. Getting 23 per cent or thereabouts ought not be too difficult. And so long as the result is not significantly worse than 2004, Labour's spin machine will be able to argue it can recover in 2010 just as it did in 2005.
Mind you, European elections have the habit of throwing up the unexpected. In 1989 the Greens famously won as much as 15 per cent of the vote, largely at the expense of the Liberal Democrats. Five years ago, Ukip that took the country by storm, securing as much as 16 per cent of the vote, with the Conservatives (and again the Liberal Democrats) losing out.
Labour's fear is that this time it will be the BNP that makes a sudden breakthrough and Labour will take the hit. Nick Griffin's party does best in working-class areas with high ethnic-minority populations in the North of England and the Midlands – in other words in traditional Labour territory.
But if past precedent is kind to Mr Brown in the European elections, it could be a serious source of embarrassment to him in the local elections. For this particular round of elections was last contested on general election day 2005.
True, people did not vote in those local elections in exactly the same way they did in the general election – the Liberal Democrats fared better and Labour and the Conservatives rather worse.
But even so, the results will provide a direct measure of how much Labour has fallen from favour since its last election victory.
Moreover, the few scraps of power Labour does have in shire England are all vulnerable. The party is defending just four councils: Derbyshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire. All four will be lost if the swing against Labour reflects that currently registered by the opinion polls. And never before has a party suffered a complete wipe-out on local election day.
Those with long memories will recall the last and only time that Labour suffered defeat in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. It was in 1977 during the darkest days of the last Labour government under Jim Callaghan, a government whose demise heralded 18 years of Tory rule. So perhaps Labour MPs would regard losing those two counties again as the clearest sign of all that Mr Brown is leading them to serious defeat.
John Curtice is professor of politics at Strathclyde University
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Comments
Brown has ruined our pensions, ruined our savings, ruined our jobs, ruined our businesses, ruined our economy and ruined our prospects of recovery for two generations. His decisions have been catastrophic. His financial aspects have come to zero and virtually bankrupt our country. His warmongering exploits supported Blair in an illegal Iraq war which has cost the lives of many of our gallant military and countless billions. He has recklessly borrowed and wasted our money.He has promoted greed, sleaze and selfishness that has produced a Government composed of champagne socialists with no moral sence of right and wrong.
Brown and his Government deserve to be thrown out of office because their record has treated the electorate with utter contempt. The sooner there is a General election the better for the British people.
Harriet Harman today insisted that there were ?no circumstances? in which she would run for the
Labour leadership, even if the Prime Minister were to go.
David Cameron holds Gordon Brown?s political life in his hands after the Prime Minister?s decision to risk a Commons defeat over the Royal Mail sell-off next month, senior government figures believe.
Easy access to buy-to-let mortgages over the past decade has meant that the number of private landlords has risen to about one million in England and Wales, and ministers are worried that a growing number of unscrupulous landlords are exploiting tenants.
All private landlords would have to be registered before letting residential property under government plans to curb abuses in the growing rental market,
David Cameron and George Osborne are now well ahead as the better team, on 42 per cent. This compares with 35 per cent on Budget night itself. The Tory team is, however, still slightly below its 45 per cent rating on the weekend before the Budget
David Cameron holds Gordon Brown?s political life in his hands after the Prime Minister?s decision to risk a Commons defeat over the Royal Mail sell-off next month, senior government figures believe.
Downing Street insisted last night that Mr Brown was determined to press ahead, despite weekend reports that he was preparing to shelve reforms championed by Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary.
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
Straw - criminally incompetent
Miliband - in the service of a foreign power
Smith - criminally incompetent and with two homes paid by the tax-payer
Hoon - war criminal
Pound - thuggish war-mongering bully-boy
All claiming salaries and expenses. All utterly useless. Time to go.
The USA. Uniformly executes the policy requirements of the USA, fights the USA's wars, sides with the USA over Israel, defends US military adventures in Georgia, has two children in the USA, is married to an American.
Should that not be sides with the USA and Israel ahead of OUR national interests?
WHOOPEE OH YEAH I'M RIGHT AGAIN
BNP IS SOARING AND MAKING GAIN
LABOUR IS DONE ON WAY OUT
NOW NICK WILL HAVE SOME CLOUT
THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY
SILENT MAJORITY WILL HAVE THEIR DAY
And there are few things on this planet more DISGUSTING than nazis...
Within this Nation, the labour Government has been slowly out-sourcing political power and moving that power from organisations backed by Royal Oath, (the lawful Oath being a protector of all of us, the people who Grant the Soveriegn her power), and moving those powers to the corporate "third sector" Where a communist backed charity by the name of "Common Purpose" has infiltrated and helped move more and more powers out of the public domain to the corporate domain. Mussolini stated correctly that the merging of state and corporations in this manner was fascism, AKA corporatism. It is an insidieous creeping republicanism that has NOTHING to do with protecting life, liberty or OUR freedoms and rights, but is entirely about stealing power from the democratic institutions of the UK. It is a coup by stealth.
We must remove these real (anti-white, anti-male) racist, sexist fascists from power.
The BNP may very well be racist, vile and disgusting, but they are not fascists and they are not in power. REAL fascists are. Now they are admitting that the implementation of the new ID cards will mean that you are ALSO required that one presents your fingerprints to be taken with every purchase where an ID card needs to be presented.
They intend to OWN you. When the ID card becomes compulsory, then you MUST comply with identity registration. The word 'registration' in legalese means to hand over ownership of. So in the legal world, you are handing over ownership of your person to the Government when you register.
You are in actual legal fact declaring yourself to be a slave and that you voluntarily consent to be a slave. Consensus Facit Legem!
They are misguided and often wrong, and if you want to vote against them then by all means do...but vote tory, libdem, green....ANYONE but the BNP.
The BNP are NAZIS, and that's all there is that's worth saying about them...
Oh and I am NOT voting BNP. I will not support any coward that has to stand under a party flag of convenience. But even if I did choose to do so, that is between me and the ballot box and I shall not be told whom I shall or shall not vote for. Anyone should be free to vote for whomever they please in a free democracy.
As for my intention? I will only support decent, honest, law abiding free men who care about and wish to represent the needs and wishes of their constituents as independent candidates. I cannot support ANY party as they are all capable of being infiltrated and corrupted to act against the interest of their members (as has happened to labour and UKIP).
I just find it exasperating when people falsely knee-jerk against the BNP and denounce them as fascists, when they are clearly no such thing and we already have bona fide fascists IN POWER NOW!
And national socialism is an amiguous term at best, as far as I know first used by the original nazi party as much because the name was an attractive one to the bitter populace as anything else, and it loosely fit with the ideology that they wanted to espouse.
While I can not say that the BNP follows a particularly socialist line, they are undeniably nationalist and racist. I just find it exasperating when ignorant people try to justify their existence.
Seriously? They are a political party that is only open to white members, has repatriotisation of non-whites as a policy, and has only changed their public face from that of overt thuggish racism to that of concerned men on the street since the media savvy Nick Clegg took over.
Frankly, considering this, if I want to call them nazis I'm going to. I didn't use the word fascist, you did. These people are nazis, and should be viewed and reviled as such.
You can vote for whoever you want, but you are who you vote for.
Only nazis vote for nazis.
I recently gave an example in commenting on Vince Cable's article. I wouldnt support the undemocratic EU, so UKIP might be an option were not UKIP pro-nuclear, the one disaster waiting to happen that repels me even more than the Eurocracy. Nor can I vote Lib Dem. They are against the nuclear madness but uncritical to the point of supineness about the EU.
What about the Greens? Even if they were anti-Eurocratic, they had their vote split by a Socialist Greens party, last time in the Yorkshire and Humber Euro-constituency.
The trouble with party list systems is that the X-vote can be split between parties just as it can be split between individual candidates under First Past The Post.
Proper reform requires a preference vote (in 1, 2, 3, etc order of choice for individual candidates) to end split voting, as well as a proportional count to end wasted votes. That democratic combination is the system called STV (single transferable vote) which Ulster got for its Euro-elections but which the House of Commons made sure that the British people as a whole did not learn about thru Euro-elections.