Cambridge has been a Conservative-free city since Labour’s victory in the Coleridge by election in 2010 denied the Conservatives their last remaining seat in the council. The authority is dominated by the ruling Liberal Democrats, who have 25 of the 42 seats, and Labour, with 14. The Greens and a solitary independent make up the remainder of the council.
Of the ten councils we are profiling Cambridge is the only one that represents a straight fight between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Given the national unpopularity of the junior partners in the Coalition, Labour should be confident of a good set of results in May. Despite that don’t expect Labour to record a gain here: in addition to holding the four seats we are defending, we need an additional eight seats to take outright control. Most likely here is Labour gaining East Chesterton, King’s Hedges and Romsey – seats that all recorded Labour gains from the Lib Dems in last year’s city council elections. Labour's prospects have been boosted by the defection of two leading Liberal Democrats in recent weeks.
Despite the electoral challenge facing Labour if it is to take outright control, the party is clearly serious in its intentions as its local manifesto - A Fairer, Safer, Cleaner, Greener and more Prosperous Cambridge - confirms.
Cambridge is another southern council with a small Green group – in this case, two councillors in Abbey ward. The ward elected a Labour councillor in 2011 and it will be interesting to see whether Labour’s Richard Johnson can snatch a seat back from the Greens in a ward that was historically Labour until 2008.
In 1992 Cambridge elected its first Labour MP since 1966 when Anne Campbell took the seat from the Conservatives . She polled over 50% in the landslide of 1997 and held it with a reduced majority in 2001, but was comprehensively defeated in 2005 on a 15% swing to the Liberal Democrats. In this university city, Iraq and tuition fees took their toll on the party. Labour’s parliamentary fortunes worsened in 2010 when Daniel Zeichner was pushed into third place with just 24%.
An improvement in Labour’s parliamentary fortunes in the city is reliant on winning back progressive voters to its banner. How well placed the party is to do this will be evident in the results next month.
Great stuff any chance SF could do a review of non target council -
ReplyDeleteMike
Country Standard
This seems unduly pessimistic. Those four seats are all targets - and whilst I don't know much about the campaign in Romsey this year, doorstep feedback in Abbey and East Chesterton has been very strong and I've heard good things about King's Hedges.
ReplyDeleteBut there are another three seats where Labour can make a credible challenge, and one more where we'll make an impact this year. We lost Market by 89 votes last time, despite not doing any campaigning there. It was a four-way marginal last time, but neither the Greens nor Conservatives are likely to be doing too much work in the ward this year (the former need to defend Abbey, the latter are just chronically under-resourced), whereas Labour have been running an active campaign there for what is probably the first time since 1993.
Newnham and Castle were a little less close in 2011, but we were within 250 votes in both without active campaigns. The former has interest in that the leader of the city council is up this year, whereas in the latter the independent ex-LD is on the ballot and he might take most of the non-student LD vote and let us through the middle.
All three of these wards are important as they're where much of the student population lives. They normally don't turn out except for general elections, but last year was a partial exception and one factor will be whether their turnout falls to its historically low levels or whether it's slightly boosted.
Queen Edith's is the safest Lib Dem ward, but it's seen an impressively dedicated campaigning effort this year. Activists have been working it very hard (in addition to spending time in the target wards) and the campaign does seem to be building up a head of steam. They had a former LD councillor for the ward defect to them a fortnight ago and when Tom Watson was in town last week this was one of the wards he came along to. So whilst I'd be shocked if we won it, there does seem to be something impressive happening there.
It's also worth noting that the Lib Dems are perpetually vulnerable to the Tories in Trumpington and some day they may slip up. So whilst a Labour majority would require them to sweep the table this year, there are plenty of routes by which the council could be put into NOC.