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| Manchester City Council, with 95 Labour councillors and 1 Liberal Democrat, is a prime example of the need for a greater diversity of unwhipped perspectives in local government. Photograph: Manchester Town Hall by Stephen Douglas (Licence) |
After last year's opportunistic election did not go to plan for Theresa May's Conservative and Unionist Party, her government - propped up by the Northern Irish loyalist Democratic Unionist Party - has been stumbling from one potential crisis to another.
These elections come at a strange time. Despite both main parties struggling, they both remain at around 40% in the polls and have a strangling grip on local government. Is this a chance for smaller parties to make some breakthroughs on councils?
With the majoritarian two-party system reasserting itself, some pushback from smaller parties like the Greens or Lib Dems would be welcome, to ensure representation of a wider set of perspectives - and to increase the accountability of local councils.
Conservatives
This will be the Tories first big electoral test since then. The final totals will need to weighed against the fact that half of the seats up for re-election are currently held by Labour. Yet there could be some headline defeats for the government.
Theresa May's party is particularly at risk of losing council seats in London. This includes control of Wandsworth, their flagship council from the time of Margaret Thatcher, which was used as the pioneer for contracting out local services.
The Conservative have taken a low key approach to the local elections. This may be a result of their own strategists projecting heavy losses to Labour. Downing St may have accepted that and prepared to downplay the significance.
This hasn't stopped local Conservative branches from pursuing aggressive campaigning tactics - including repeating the racist and Islamophobic overtones of the Goldsmith campaign for Mayor of London, which targetted Sadiq Khan's ethnicity and religion.
This time around there has been condemnation from Tory voices. But is the Conservative establishment distancing itself simply because of the timing? Local councillors have said their leaflets were signed off by Conservative HQ.
Mired by the Windrush scandal - entirely of their own creation - and with the media pursuing Labour hard over antisemitism, did the Tories just find it an inconvenient moment to be pursuing openly divisive tactics themselves?
Labour
With Labour holding most of the council seats up for grabs this time around, the party has to make inroads in Conservative areas. Part of that has them focussing very heavily on London - perhaps sensing that there are big headlines to be written.
Key Conservative controlled areas could be vulnerable to Labour and sweeping gains - on a night when they will begin already in a dominant position - will be an emphatic statement that can be milked for publicity and be used to continue the narrative of a Labour Party on the ascent.
For the Labour Party leadership, that would be a much need boost as their forward momentum has been arrested - despite the Tories creating problems for themselves - by their inability to adequately address the issue of antisemitism.
The media and critics have run roughshod over Labour on the issue, and Corbyn and his team have not come up with a way to convincingly show that antisemitism will not be tolerated - and thus diffuse the issue. As a result, a cloud hangs over the party.
So too does the ever looming prospect of a split. It's hard to see how anyone on the opposition benches would benefit, in the short term, from an inamicable split - even though a split increasingly seems like a good idea, to end the spiteful internal squabbling.
A split is hindered however, by the archaic quirks of our electoral system, that does not abide multiple parties and the increase in critical perspectives it can bring, nor the prospect of groups working together despite holding different membership cards.
Opposition
The Green Party laid out this, the big theme of the local elections, in the UK in their campaign launch. Co-leader Jon Bartley called for an end to Britain's "one-party state" local councils, to increase their transparency and accountability to local people.
It's an argument that thinktank Compass and it's chair Neal Lawson also press, stressing that Labour need to overcome their obsession with claiming a monopoly on power - which leads it to absorb or crush any possible rivals, rather than working with them.
In terms of the Green Party's own prospects, their best hope may be in trying to make inroads into Labour dominated councils, whose unchallenged authority has resulted in some poor outcomes - that have left some voters disaffected. Consider, for example, the goings-on under Labour at Haringey or Sheffield.
The other visible party of opposition in local government are the Liberal Democrats. Buoyed perhaps by their consistent - as usual - good form in council by-elections, they've been talking up their chances of a mini-revival at the local government level.
With the polls consistently putting the Conservatives and Labour neck and neck, 40% to 40%, it's difficult to see where the Lib Dems will make inroads - especially after several years of desperate defence, to hang on to what they hold.
As supporters of a Progressive Alliance, The Alternative wants the Lib Dems to refind their progressive side. But at present their best chance of picking up seats may be by, finally, convincing Conservative voters that what they liked about the Coalition was actually the Lib Dems all along.
So watch Lib-Con head-to-heads. This is a dynamic that could have a gigantic affect on a future election, where Lib Dems taking votes and seats directly from the Tories could tip Theresa May out of office and open the way for Labour.
Voter ID
These local elections will also be the first to trial the controversial new Voter ID measures that the Conservatives hope to roll out nationally. Such measures have been deeply criticised by electoral and rights groups.
The reality is that, first of all, Britain has very little in the way of electoral fraud, and second, that Voter ID does little to stop voter fraud. In fact, it does little but deter voters - discriminating particularly against the poor.
The trial runs will take place in Swindon, Gosport, Woking, Bromley, and Watford.
Municipalism
If we are to have effective local government there must be no barriers to participation for the community. Their representatives must be accountable and transparent, and able to hold local bodies to those same standards on the public behalf.
Erecting barriers, especially those disproportionately impacting voters from minority groups, and leaving one-party local councils unchallenged, is a recipe for bad governance. Well run, accountable local government can achieve so much at the municipal level.
There are big ideas out there, from Barcelona to Preston. Municipalism taking root. Local government can empower local people. The first step is to break up the local political monopolies, to leave them no choice but to start hearing criticism and engaging with it.
References
'Conservatives pledge 'cheaper and better' local councils'; on the BBC; 24 April 2018.
Joe Watts' 'Local elections 2018: Conservatives yet to have proper campaign plan despite facing losses, warns Cabinet minister: The frontbencher said the party is taking seriously the prospect of losing key London boroughs in local elections'; in The Independent; 7 February 2018.
Anoosh Chakelian's '“A case study in racist signalling”: What the Havering leaflet reveals about the Tories - Conservative dog-whistle tactics in elections are nothing new. But has the party learned its lesson?'; in the New Statesman; 28 March 2018.
Joe Murphy's 'However, Cllr Damian White, one the 3 Tories on the leaflet, says it was "approved by CCHQ" before it was printed. He strongly denies it is racist & has not been contacted by HQ about it'; from Twitter; 28 March 2018.
Anoosh Chakelian's 'The racial politics of Zac Goldsmith’s London mayoral campaign: The Tory candidate has been accused of racial profiling and stereotyping the capital’s Asian communities. Is this divide-and-rule politics, or legitimate voter targeting?'; in the New Statesman; 6 April 2016.
Pippa Crerar's 'Corbyn casts spotlight on crime and housing in local elections fight: Labour leader to appear alongside London mayor in campaign to push Tories out of power in key boroughs'; in The Guardian; 9 April 2018.
'Sir Vince Cable launches the Lib Dems' English local election campaign'; on the BBC; 4 April 2018.
'Green Party calls for end to 'one-party state' councils'; on the BBC; 5 April 2018.
Neal Lawson's 'Beyond monopoly socialism: why Labour needs to learn to live with complexity and seek power with others, not over them'; from Compass Online; March 2018.
'Voter ID plans 'deeply flawed', says Electoral Reform Society'; on the BBC; 28 April 2018.g
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