Standing to be counted

Labour has nominated more candidates in the local elections, points out Luke Akehurst

Nominations for local council elections in most areas of England outside London closed in early April. The numbers show that Labour's national headquarters, regional offices and local constituency parties have done a magnificent job in increasing the number of candidates we are fielding.

Every year Victoria Street centrally monitors selection progress across the country, but this year the party prioritised candidate selection as a task, with three clear key aims. First, to maximise Labour's national share of the vote; second, to expand Labour's local government base in marginal areas across the country and in our target areas; and, finally, to expand Labour's local government base across the south of England (southeast, southwest and eastern regions) where we had performed badly in the general election.

Overall the pattern is of more Labour candidates standing - with our national total now up to 72.4 per cent from just 60.4 per cent in 2007. This increase in Labour candidates has occurred while the number of Liberal Democrat candidates has declined by four per cent nationally. In 2007 the Liberal Democrats fielded over three per cent more candidates than Labour, while in 2011 Labour fielded over 12 per cent more candidates than the Liberal Democrats.

The north region shows significant increases for all the main parties. Some of this is due to the move to unitary local government in large parts of the region. This has resulted in fewer seats to fill and therefore an easier task for the main parties.



Across the south the pattern shows an increase in the number of Labour candidates running, with the Liberal Democrats down everywhere and the Tories still strong. In the three southern regions Labour stood in just 49.3 per cent of seats last time whereas now it is standing in 65.7 per cent of seats - that's an increase of 16.4 per cent.

In particular, Labour in the east of England has seen an unprecedented increase in the number of candidates standing, up by nearly 19 per cent since 2007.

By contrast, the number of Liberal Democrat candidates has dropped the most in the southeast, the northwest (by nine per cent in both cases) and in Yorkshire (by seven per cent).

In short, it looks likely that many more people will have the chance to vote Labour in this set of local elections than in 2007.

Luke Akehurst is a member of the National Executive Committee

This article was first published on Progress Online

Labour fighting hard in Torbay mayor election

With less than two weeks to go before the local elections, here in Torbay we have the additional excitement of an election for Mayor.

I have written before about the role and its future, but here I summarise the battle for the second (and hopefully last) elected Mayor.

To set the background Torbay decided in a referendum back in 2005 that we should have an elected Mayor. The turnout was low (26%), but that was still 3% more than voted in the actual Mayoral election in the October!

14 candidates contested the election, all three main Parties and a host of Independents. Many of whom were known Conservatives. The Tory, Nick Bye, won on second choice votes, beating the Lib Dems. Labour had a poor result and we lost our deposit.

Now for something you couldn’t make up. In 2005, Nick Bye was the Tory candidate, this time after being deselected by his Party (he also lost out on the Totnes primary by his Party for the Westminster seat), he is standing as an Independent.

The Tory candidate this time, stood as an Independent in 2005! He is currently the Leader of the Council.

There are seven further candidates including our own Patrick Canavan who is standing as Labour & Co-operative. The first time ever that the Co-op has had a Mayoral candidate. There is also a Lib Dem, Green and four more Independents.

So what are the prospects?

The election has to be wide open. The current incumbent has been very unpopular and his own group (as it was then) has postured against him for several months. I would suggest this is more to do with distancing themselves from someone who attracts widespread criticism than ideological differences.

The Tory candidate has attracted criticism over the years from the business community, especially the all important Tourism sector. He would review the future of the recently established Torbay Tourism Company which is doing well to unite a fragmented sector.

The Lib Dem is likely to suffer the same backlash as any Lib Dem On May 5th!

Many of the Independents are likely to attract Tory leaning voters and therefore weaken the Tory vote.

As for Patrick Canavan? Beating the Lib Dems will send a clear message that Labour can win in Torbay. Obviously we need to attract significant enough first choice votes to get in to a probable run-off with the Tories. Then it will be down to second preferences. If this scenario is achieved, Labour in Torbay would have scored a moral victory if nothing else.

But who’s to say those second preferences won’t stack up in our favour?

We have had a high profile campaign, and were the first to select in late summer 2010. Patrick has had several meetings, especially with the business community, to demonstrate our determination to improve Torbay’s fortunes.

The area has the sixth worst local economy in England, the highest regional unemployment, 24% of children living in poverty and a low wage economy. A third of those in work are in the public sector. We need jobs. We need inward investment. That has been our message.

Patrick’s campaign has benefited from visits by Baroness Royall, Lord Jim Knight and Vernon Coaker (Shadow Police Minister whose visit coincided with the announcement that two of Torbay’s three police stations are to close). He also met with Liam Byrne to highlight the need for a new link road.

We are hopeful of our first councillors since 2001 and are standing 18 candidates in total, covering all 15 wards. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the Lib Dems could end up with just two or three councillors. Who knows, Torbay Labour could have more than them!

Our recently launched website has attracted good feedback and indeed one of our candidates was recruited through it. This amply demonstrates the value of every local Party having its presence on the web. Take a look and let us have your feedback at torbaylabour.org.uk or patrick4torbay.com.

Darren Cowell is Chair of Torbay Labour Party.

The View from Wealden

This is a guest post from Roger McCarthy - A Labour candidate for Wealden District Council (Crowborough Jarvis Brook ward).

Wealden is probably fairly typical of southern CLPs - we have a Tory MP with a rock-solid 17,000 majority, a district council with a Tory majority (currently 33 out of 55 seats), a similarly Tory (29 out 49 seats) county council in East Sussex and a number of parish and town councils where most of the seats go uncontested to Tories and Independents.

Although our CLP has rather more Labour members than you might expect (in fact there are Labour-held seats with fewer members), we are scattered across a large semi-rural seat with no real urban centre - so even getting to branch meetings requires considerably more time and effort than most of us can spare - ditto for leafleting, canvassing and pretty much any other political activity you can name.

And 13 years of New Labour in power may have been good for the country - but for us as for most other CLPs the endless compromises and disappointments of government lost us many members (particularly the younger ones) and made those that stayed less and less inclined to work actively for the party.

The consequences in electoral terms were predictably dismal:

• The constituency Labour vote hit 10,000+ in 1997 and 2001 (20%), stayed at 9,360 in 2005 but plummeted to 5,266 (9.6%) last year.
• Our county council vote fell from 9,053 in 2005 to just 1,600 in 2009 with not a single Labour councillor elected from within the constituency.
• And on the district council it would require significant research to find out if Labour has ever held a seat and we only managed to put up 3 candidates in 2007 who won just 424 votes between them.

But as of April 2011 our CLP seems to have magically come back to life - we are standing 22 candidates in 21 out of the 24 Wealden District wards in our constituency - and those candidates are leafleting and getting positive responses on the street and on the doorstep even in picturesque little villages where we haven't actively campaigned in living memory.

And looking at the District Council as a whole (which includes additional wards from Eastbourne, Lewes and Bexhill and Battle constituencies) we can see a wider political pattern emerging:

WDC summary of nominations	Current Councillors	2011 Nominations	2007 Nominations	Change in Nominations
Conservative	33	55	53	+2
Green	2	3	12	-9
Independent	7	15	13	+2
Labour	0	27	3	+24
Liberal Democrat	13	24	35	-11

• The Liberal Democrats who here long ago became the natural party of opposition at council level seem to be suffering a real activists strike - this election they can only find candidates for half of the wards and three of their sitting councillors (including the Wealden LD group leader) have disappeared without their being able to nominate any replacements.
• The Greens (who did rather well in 2007 picking up many votes in seats that Labour did not contest) have imploded even more dramatically - they have abandoned the two seats that they won last time (which the Tories will now walk into without any contest) and can only put up three candidates in total.
• In fact if were not Labour putting up candidates in most wards, no fewer than 15 seats - over a quarter of the council - would have gone to Tories with no contests at all.

But does this mean that we will overtake the Liberal Democrats as the party of opposition here in Wealden?

Unfortunately not (yet):

• Almost all of the 13 Wealden seats that the Lib Dems won last time are Con/Lib Dem marginals (or Con/Lib Dem/Ind marginals) so a collapse in their vote will see most - perhaps as many as 10 - drop into the Tories laps.
• So even if the Conservative vote stays the same and a large proportion of the former Lib Dem (and Green) voters return to Labour, the Tories stand to win considerably more seats on Wealden Council than they did in 2007.
• And absurd though it is given all has happened in the last ten months, we can expect the Lib Dems and their media cheerleaders to begin (Polly Toynbee has already started) the refrain that it is Labour that is splitting the 'anti-Tory' vote in the south - even though it is clear that very few 'progressive' voters will be persuaded to vote tactically for the Lib Dems for as long as they remain part of the most reactionary government since the 1930s.

So we are in for a long haul.

We can win council seats even in such hostile territory to Labour as Wealden and when we do we will put up a far more principled and effective campaign against the cuts than whatever demoralised rump of Liberal Democrats is left on the council after May 5th.

But it took the Liberal Democrats 49 years (starting with the 1962 Orpington by-election) of the doorstep politics of which they used to be so proud to replace Labour as the main opposition to the Tories in the south.

Clegg and Co. may have thrown away all of that hard-won political capital in just a few short months, but the Liberal Democrat collapse will leave a vacuum which will initially be mostly occupied by the Tories.

And even if stuffing the Liberal Democrats back into the dustbin of history again takes much less time than the half a century it took them to climb out of it, that process really has only just begun.

So we need to realistically manage our expectations and to start thinking hard about how we build on whatever local successes we do gain on May 5th for the 2013 County Council and 2015 general election campaigns (assuming that the coalition doesn't crumple altogether and present us with a snap election before then).

But Wealden's experience is that the key to bringing back the party from near-dead in constituencies like ours is quite simply to stand in every contest we can:

• Nothing else will energise existing, bring back departed and recruit new members.
• Nothing else will remind Labour voters that we still exist and that even under an unfair electoral system we can win seats and offer real opposition to coalition policies locally.
• Nothing else will prevent the Liberal Democrats and Greens desertion of the battlefield from handing over many seats to the Tories without even the formality of a contest.

If you want to get involved in our campaign please contact me by e-mail or phone (01892 660224).

Migration from London is a ticking housing time bomb for the South

David Cameron tried to make electoral headway last week with his much publicised speech on immigration. But migration isn’t just about foreigners. In the next few years, towns in the south and east are going to see far more new arrivals from London than they will from overseas, as the government’s housing policies push poorer families out of the capital.

From Boris Johnson to Polly Toynbee, there’s been plenty of coverage about what will happen to London when social housing and benefits changes bite – the end of mixed communities in the capital.

Too little attention has been paid to what happens in the places where people move to: the towns and districts around London, which are some of Labour’s key battlegrounds in winning back the south.

People have an instinctive aversion to the overblown rhetoric which some have used to describe these changes, such as ‘Kosovo-style social cleansing’ or ‘final solutions’. But nevertheless, we should be clear on the scale of what’s going on.

London Councils, the body representing the 32 London Boroughs, undertook a study using DWP’s own figures showing that London would see 82,000 families forced out of their homes because of the cuts to housing benefit in the private sector. That’s the equivalent of every household in Basildon and ten thousand more on top, packing their bags and hitting the road.

That’s just in the private rented sector. In social housing, the government is pushing housing association rents up to 80% of the market rate. That makes social housing massively more expensive in London than in surrounding towns and counties. To take one example: 80% of market rent for a three bed social home in Bethnal Green in Tower Hamlets is £416 a week, which is £238 more than in Harlow or £256 more than Crawley per week.

Many families in need of housing will find their only choice is to get on a waiting list outside of London or rent privately in south eastern towns.

These new arrivals will be the families on the lowest incomes, placing greater pressures on shrinking public services in towns around London. There will be even greater pressure on social housing. Campaigners know the importance of housing as a source of anger and frustration across key seats in the south, and how easily it is linked to issues of race and immigration. These problems may get a lot worse in the coming years.

Families moving out from London will disproportionately be from ethnic minority groups. Anyone familiar with the BNP’s campaigns across the east and south east will know that the campaigns were made credible by something that people did see around them; a rapid increase in ethnic minority families. This was, in many cases, the result of people being re-housed temporarily out of London while major regeneration schemes (for example in Canning Town began or while they waited for social housing to become available in their home borough.

That will now take place on a far larger scale but this time, with no right of return.

This will be a big challenge for activists, councillors and candidates. We need to raise early the concrete concerns about new pressures on housing and public services. We should put the Tory MPs and council leaders on the spot: do they think these policies are right? Have they lobbied their government for resources to manage the change? What provision are they making for housing, schools and health?

And, we must also be the first to articulate people’s legitimate concerns about the nature, speed and scale of change in their community. We didn’t do that in the past as part of the immigration debate and neglected to address the feelings people have about change they can’t control and the sense of powerlessness that can create. We can’t afford now to be caught flat-footed on an issue that the right and far-right can capitalise on.

At the same time, we need to be advocates of those forced out of London and make them part of the campaign. Active local Labour parties are well placed to see first where new families arrive, what their needs are and how best to engage with them. We should help foster through local institutions, community and faith groups the integration of those moving into south eastern towns from London – any separation will only breed distrust.

In the south, Labour should tackle this issue head on and make it a key campaign which unites existing communities and those leaving London. It should be a campaign against a Tory government’s market fundamentalism that thinks nothing of uprooting tens of thousands of people from their families, neighbourhoods and jobs and forcing them into areas and communities which are not well placed to receive them.

Tony Clements was a Policy Advisor to the last Labour Housing Minister, John Healey MP.

Blue Labour and Family, Faith & Flag

Over at Labour Uncut Dan Hodges has added his thoughts to the debate about Blue Labour. He makes some very good points and his article is well worth a read.

Instinctively, I find myself attracted to the notion that Labour needs to ensure that its policy platform can pass a Family, Faith & Flag test (very distinct from a cricket test, I might add). The problem is that the last Labour Government never "walked the walk" in the same way that it "talked the talk". Patriotic soundbites about British jobs for British workers seemed hollow when the public knew that a million of the new jobs created by the last Labour government went to EU migrant workers.

But I find Jon Cruddas's interpretation of Blue Labour too narrow to be resonant with more than a handful of estuary Essex constituencies. I can't see it offering much electoral appeal in Harlow, Hove or Hastings; but it could with better calibration. Hodges seems to appreciate this point, for he is right when he says that Labour needs to reacquaint itself "with those traditional working class values that were trampled under foot in the dash to occupy middle England and subsequent backlash towards liberal intellectualism".

The way Labour re-connects is by wanting to reconnect. That means not simply delivering publicity all year round, but making sure that the leaflets delivered talk about issues relevant to these target communities. Labour’s difficulty is that too few of our members actually live in and come from the communities that would respond to the type of message Blue Labour is attempting to articulate. That explains in part why Blue Labour is being greeted with suspicion for its focus on putting ourselves back in touch with the core of our core vote.

Labour dominated by a narrow, middle class, London liberal elite? Who’d have thought it?

Co-operative Party 1000 Challenge

For the last month the Co-operative Party has been giving over its HQ in London Bridge on Tuesday nights for phone canvassing. I’ve been making calls on behalf of candidates in Plymouth and volunteers giving up their Tuesday nights to call voters in Devon has already identified new Labour voters, helped us sign up new postal voters and allowed us to highlight local failings of our Tory Council.

Now, the campaigning boffins at the Co-op Party have hit upon a new wheeze to entice some of London’s thousands and thousands of Labour members help campaigns across the country on polling day by posing what can only be described as a mammoth challenge: can we make 1,000 contacts in one night on the phones?

Telephone canvassing is a great way of reaching voters and quickly but 1,000 contacts is a lot of phone calls. That kind of effort is what helps swing seats in Labour’s favour on polling day by giving canvassers the information they need to get out the vote.

On Tuesday next week, I’ll be joining volunteers from London in calling marginal seats across the country. We already have volunteers signed up to call marginal seats in Plymouth, Brighton and in key battleground seats in Scotland. Can you spare an hour of two and help the Co-op party hit its target of 1,000 contacts in one night?

It is a big challenge but one I think we can achieve it. Can you help?

Sign up to attend on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/event.php?eid=123180437758977

Luke Pollard was Labour’s candidate in South West Devon at the last General Election. He lives in Plymouth but works in London during the week.

Deprivation is also an issue in the South

A number of southern councils have shown some of the biggest increases in deprivation over the past three years, according the the Government's own official rankings. Castle Point in Essex showed the second biggest increase of all England's councils in the 2010 Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), compared with the rankings for 2007. It rose 45 places in the rankings, moving up to 204. Kettering in Northamptonshire recorded the largest rise (up 50 places from 214). The IMD is put together by the Department for Communities and Local Government, and assesses the relative deprivation within a council arfea , using a series of indicators that include local levels of income, unemployment, health, education and crime. Four other southern authorities featured in the list of top ten risers: at no. 4 was Cambridge City Council; 5. Cherwell in Oxfordshire; 7. West Berkshire Council; and 10. Eastleigh Borough Council in Hampshire.

Labour on the ballot in two thirds of southern seats

The efforts of Labour staff at Head Office, in the three regions and, most importantly, in southern constituencies has been rewarded by a significant increase in Labour candidates standing in next month’s local elections.

Across the political south Labour will be standing over 650 more candidates than 2007, when these seats were last up for election – an increase of 25%

Labour is contesting just over half of the seats up for election in the south west (up from 39% four years ago); 65% of seats in the south east (up from 53%) and an impressive 78% in the east of England*.

The figures are as follows (2007 in brackets):

South West
+148 Labour candidates

Labour candidates 643 (495)
Total councillors to be elected 1259 (1267)
Labour candidates as percentage 51% (39%)

South East
+223 Labour candidates

Labour candidates 1352 (1129)
Total councillors to be elected 2072 (2123)
Labour candidates as percentage 65% (53%)

East of England
+293 Labour candidates

Labour candidates 1155 (862)
Total councillors to be elected 1470 (1433)
Labour candidates as percentage 78% (60%)

Total for South
+664 Labour candidates

Labour candidates 3150 (2486)
Total councillors to be elected 4801 (4823)
Labour candidates as percentage 65% (52%)

Elections are not decided by the number of candidates; but you cannot win an election if you don't have a candidate in the race, and these figures suggest a Labour party in the south that is motivated and enthused. Thousands of additional southern voters now have the chance to vote Labour in next week's elections - the task now we have the candidates, is to get them elected.



* while these successes are the result of much work on the ground by a great many staff and members, Alan Olive in the East of England regional office deserves particular recognition.

Twin to Win

NEC member Luke Akehurst, makes a very strong case for Labour supporters in London and other areas without elections to get out and support candidates in those areas where we are contesting seats.

Read the full article here.

UPDATE: Luke has also written an article for Progress on the improvement in the number of Labour candidates contesting next month's local elections. It can be read here.

Close of Nominations

Today is the deadline for candidates to submit their nomination papers to stand in next month's local elections. Party staff - at HQ and in the regional offices - have made a real and determined effort to ensure Labour fields as many candidates as possible. We'll be doing our best to analyse the details over the course of this week, but in the meantime, here is a reminder of the figures for 2007:

• 1241 wards did not have a Labour candidate on the ballot


• In only 44 authorities were Labour able to field a full slate of candidates (out of 140 councils)


• In Cotswold, Mid Devon & North Devon councils Labour did not field any candidates at all

Labour are on course to do well in next month's elections, although success is likely to look like a considerable gain in seats, but relatively few extra councils becoming Labour controlled. Labour can look forward to the current tally of councils without a single Labour councillor (64) falling as Labour re-establishes a presence in southern town halls once more.

What Labour needs to learn from Borehamwood

Labour can learn a lot from Borehamwood; indeed, there is a lot Labour needs to learn from Borehamwood. Its 33,000 residents live in what local estate agents refer to as an area “consisting of a good choice of two and three bedroom properties priced up to £250,000”. Borehamwood presents a much more affordable choice to homebuyers than nearby Elstree and Radlett. This popular Hertfordshire town is located firmly within the London commuter belt, situated as it is less than 20 minutes and miles north of the capital.

From the 1920s onwards, Borehamwood became known as one of the main centres of the UK film, and later television, industries due to the presence of production studios. Following World War II, the town's population greatly increased, with large areas of council housing set up for displaced Londoners, most of which are now in private ownership.

Borehamwood, along with Radlett, Potter’s Bar and Bushey, is one of the four towns that make up the consistently Conservative parliamentary seat of Hertsmere, which carries the same name as the local council. Hertsmere has been Conservative since the seat was established in 1983. Its MP, James Clappison, is the slightly less colourful successor to one Cecil Parkinson.

Clappison’s 18,000 majority at the last election might look fireproof now, but in the halcyon days of 1997, Labour came within 3,000 votes of snatching this true blue seat. Labour has consistently remained second place in the constituency, with its vote concentrated in and around Borehamwood. Indeed, all three of Labour’s councillors on the local authority are elected in one of Borehamwood’s four wards (Cowley Hill).

Aspirational in outlook and affluent – but not that affluent, why is it that more voters in places like Borehamwood don’t see Labour as the party for them? Sure, partly because Labour has never needed to carry towns like Borehamwood in order to get the keys to Downing Street. So there has never been a need for Labour to work hard to listen to and learn from local voters.

The other reason is cultural: not everyone inside the Labour family understands the importance of aspiration for voters in these commuter belt seats. Some inside Labour see our role as exclusively about helping people who are struggling to get by and not also about helping those who are struggling to get on in life. This has been best encapsulated by Labour MP David Cairns, who said that Labour didn’t understand why someone would want a conservatory. Plenty of people have – or want – conservatories in Borehamwood. Until Labour understands why people want conservatories, these voters will continue to prefer Conservatives.

Stuart King is editor of Southern Front.