Politics is in flux and everything is up in the air, but the shifts and winding patterns of the last few years have nevertheless established two eternal truths. Back bench Tories talking a good rebellion but tripping over themselves to capitulate is one of them. And the other is the studied refusal of what was the establishment centre left to reconcile themselves with Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. And lo as Westminster has broken up for the Christmas hols and the immediate pressure of the government's shambles dissipates, filling the void comes an avalanche of whingeing and belly aching about, you guessed it, Jeremy Corbyn.
Complementing my warm desire for a slap up dinner and a mince pie this morning was the wisdom of one David Miliband. You'll remember him, the former cabinet minister once touted as the heir to Blair, but dithered and was seen to be dithering over a coup against the blessed Gordon Brown. The man, we were told, who would have won us the 2015 general election - even though he spectacularly failed to win a leadership contest stacked in his favour, and that Labour's contact rate in his own South Shields constituency stood at an impressive 0.5% after departing office. You see, the legend of David Miliband is entirely fictional. Apart from his Macron-levels of arrogance there was nothing to commend him, and his reputation is a phantasm of wish fulfillment concocted by others. An exercise, if you will, in centrist fantasising.
Fantasy is apt when we consider his grand intervention into the Brexit debate. It's almost as if there are two Labour Brexit strategies: the one that really exists, which bases Brexit on a customs union with the European Union and a trade deal with single market access, and the one entirely made up by the galaxy brain of David Miliband. For Labour-loyal comrades without my sunny disposition, I'm sure the headline, 'Corbyn has given up on Europe. For the good of Britain, we cannot' and the blurb, "As Labour subscribes to the government’s dangerous Brexit fantasies, a people’s vote is now the only way to ensure stability" would have been enough for the red mist to descend. But let's be generous and put this topping down to the sub-editing. And we can afford to be because there's enough evidence here to convict the Prince Across the Water with dishonesty, performative ignorance, and downright nincompoopery.
Setting the bar low, he at least makes it through the first paragraph without fibbing about his opponents, but he quickly disassembles in the second. "The first illusion [leaders have in Brexit] is that the fundamental problem with Brexit is the faulty negotiating tactics of the government." He cites Boris Johnson as evidence, who as readers will know has been writing the same Telegraph article since the summer castigating Theresa May for not being bold enough, not being ambitious enough, etcetera ad nauseam. We are then told that the Labour leadership are guilty of the same sin. This, of course, is rubbish. Brexit is shit, to coin a phrase, but depending on your political priorities a range of different Brexits can be negotiated. Labour's "jobs first Brexit" is more than trite spin, it is a pointer to what kind of settlement it would be seeking - one that, funnily enough, is about protecting employment before all else. Hence why the party is opposed to May's deal, because of the extremely stringent state aid rules worked into her fudge so the Tories can close the borders to EU citizens. It's not about negotiation tactics but a substantive political difference.
Buffeted by his ignorance, David reduces Corbyn's talking points in the now infamous weekend interview with The Graun to a "better atmosphere" in the negotiation if Labour was to take them over. Thankfully, there is this thing called the internet which archives such things and we can read the article for ourselves. Corbs notes,
I think the state aid rules do need to be looked at again, because quite clearly, if you want to regenerate an economy, as we would want to do in government, then I don’t want to be told by somebody else that we can’t use state aid in order to be able to develop industry in this country.
Now, you can call this many things. You can spend time arguing about the chances of the EU accepting a customs deal with this as a red line, but "confusion", like David does? No, it's a straightforward position. Then David launches off into an irrelevant aside about the problem with Brexit, that May's negotiations and the mess the Tories have got themselves into are a product of fever dreams making contact with an unsympathetic real. True enough, but hardly a revealed truth or a keen insight. More a case of filling up the word count with faux erudition to cover up the fact you don't know what you're talking about.
We then come to David's "second illusion": the idea that once Brexit is complete politics will go back to normal. Not so. Once we leave on 29th March we have the joys of the future relationship to negotiate, not least of which being the character of trade. As David wonkily puts its, "there is no realistic future where we continue to negotiate with the EU and have the bandwidth to mobilise national willpower for the big challenges ahead." He might have a point, though with his characteristic dishonesty he cannot come up with an instance of anyone in the Labour leadership suggesting the old times are going to come back. Then again, he might not have a point. Even if May by hook and by crook gets her deal through the Commons in mid-January, the arguments and rows will move on to how the trade deal is going to look - a process, which David notes, will take years and years. True. And because it's a long time and doesn't require parliamentary timetabling, there is space to think about other things. If he'd paid any attention to British politics in the two years since Article 50 was triggered, he'd know a hell of a lot can happen.
And then we have our third illusion: that countries are lining up for trade deals with the UK. I think David needs to sort out his glasses prescription because he's obviously mistaken Liam Fox's speeches for Jeremy Corbyn's. Yes, David is right. By detaching the UK from one of the world's largest trading blocs it will find itself buffeted more by the capricious waters of the global economy, not less. The likes of Boris Johnson, the Moggites, and the freakish fauna of their backbenches sold leave voters a false prospectus: a diminution of UK sovereignty dressed up as greater independence. Again, nothing to do with Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, but quite a bit to do with the kinds of interests this section of the Tory party articulates: the hedge funds, the financiers, the disaster capitalists.
Summing it all up, our David declares "We have no time to lose in getting to grips with reality, sloughing off the illusions that have held sway on right and left, and embracing a vision of Britain’s future that is positive, empowered, progressive – and European". Does that "we" include you, David, or are you staying in exile with your obscene salary, leaving the "getting to grips with reality" for others to do? David's article is less a despatch from over the water and more a letter from another time, one in which masses of people aren't interested in politics and much fancied red princes carry all before them. There is no awareness that politics at the close of 2018 has moved on from the politics he left in 2013, that a cadre of notables hanging on his every word exist no longer, and that, well, he's irrelevant. When masses of people are politicised establishment politicians can try and intersect with it in some way, as others are David's ilk are doing, or play on the sidelines with figments of your imagination. Such is David Miliband. Pathetic, really.
Like his genuinely popular and admired successor, Charles Kennedy, Paddy Ashdown cut a charismatic if not avuncular figure among the big beasts and creepy crawlies of the Westminster jungle. As the publisher's blurb for his 2010 autobiography says, "Ashdown’s appeal ... is that he transcends party political allegiances, and is seen as a genuinely honest and decent man unafraid to take on the hardest challenges." The tributes from Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May typify this, with the Sunday schedules rammed with admiring obituaries from all quarters. But apart from his sparkling reputation, which few politicians can ever aspire to, where does his political significance lie?
Contrary to claims that we was the most talented politician never to have held high office, Ashdown was thought of well enough to be put forward for a couple of United Nations posts, being appointed as the UN's high representative - effectively the premier - for Bosnia in the aftermath of the war, topping off a career that saw action in Northern Ireland and Indonesia before moving into diplomacy. In a number of ways, Ashdown's career mirrored that of the officer class in earlier times, beginning with military service on the empire's frontiers, a bit of diplomacy and politics in the middle, and then culminating in the governor's office and a Lords' sinecure.
Much has also been made of his "saving" the Liberal Democrats. When the party was formed in 1988 following the merger of the old Liberals and the Social Democratic Party, a lot of the support the Alliance commanded between the 1983 and 1987 general elections melted away, bleeding mainly back to a Labour Party experiencing a slow recovery under Neil Kinnock. Yet, paradoxically, Ashdown's decision to fish in the same left, anti-Tory political waters as Labour meant the LibDems were able to build up their influence. As someone on the social democratic-leaning wing of the old Liberals, Ashdown positioned the party alongside the mainstream left, occasionally using its more marginalised position to take up sharper positions than Labour felt it was able to. For example, in 1997 Ashdown took the LibDems into the general election promising to raise income tax to pay for education - a total no-no as far as New Labour and mainstream political wisdom was concerned. Under Ashdown and later Kennedy there was also a softening of the anti-Labour rhetoric and more of a stress on attacking the Tories, which meant anti-Tory tactical voting became an important facet of LibDem support. This was typified in the famous Ribble Valley by-election victory in 1991 that came off the back of a massive surge in support for the party while the Labour vote went backwards. A similar feat was repeated later in 1991 in Kincardine and Deeside, again with a lowering of Labour's support, and of the seven by-elections between 1992 and 1997 in Tory-held seats the LibDems took four of them - albeit Labour's support rose significantly in the latter two as liberal-inclined Tories started finding Blair congeal.
Repeated in 1997, Ashdown's then-impressive haul of 44 seats underlined the efficacy of the strategy, and it is credit to Charles Kennedy's political nous that he carried this on. Brent East and Leicester South were taken from Labour in 2003 and 2004 respectively by tacking to Labour's left - chiefly on the Iraq War, but also opposition to Blair's demonisation of asylum seekers, Islamophobia, and authoritarianism played a role too. Building on the Ashdown strategy resulted in 62 seats coming into the LibDem fold at the 2005 election. It is a strange coincidence then that Charlie died just as Nick Clegg's junking of the Ashdown/Kennedy strategy brought the LibDems their worst election result since 1970, and Ashdown's passing comes just as the LibDems are heavily bashing Labour when the moment requires a recapitulation of the strong anti-Tory orientation he pioneered.
Paddy Ashdown then had the misfortune of seeing his third party learn hard lessons about its position vis a vis the duopoly of Westminster politics and what needs to be done to erode it. And then shoving all this political wisdom down the disposal chute of inconvenient memory as Clegg's openly neoliberal faction pursued alignment with the Tories, and Tim Farron and Vince Cable compounded the party's irrelevance by concentrating their ire at Labour. If I was a LibDem and wanted to honour Ashdown's memory, retweeting quotable snippets or gushing retrospectives isn't the way to do it. Paying attention to the strategy that catapulted the LibDems to political relevance and seeking to apply it now is the best tribute to his legacy.
Overall, 109,066 votes were cast over 55 local authority (tier one and tier two) contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. For comparison you can view Quarter Three's results here.
Party | Number of Candidates | Total Vote | % | +/-
Q3
| +/- Q4 2017 | Average | +/-
Seats |
Conservative | 54 | 35,358 | 32.4% | -2.0% | +0.0% | 655 | -2 |
Labour | 51 | 34,292 | 31.4% | +0.7% | -3.3% | 672 | -1 |
LibDem | 47 | 21,769 | 20.0% | +2.8% | +1.8% | 463 | +1 |
UKIP | 17 | 1,911 | 1.8% | +0.6% | -0.8% | 112 | -1 |
Green | 30 | 4,838 | 4.4% | +0.0% | +1.2% | 161 | 0 |
SNP* | 3 | 3,685 | 3.4% | +1.4% | +0.2% | 1,228 | +1 |
PC | 0 | | |
| | | 0 |
Ind*** | 23 | 6,192 | 5.7% | -1.0% | +1.3% | 269 | +2 |
Other**** | 11 | 1,921 | 1.8% | -0.5% | +0.9% | 175 | 0 |
* There were three by-elections in Scotland
** There were no by-elections in Wales
*** There were two Independent clashes
**** Others this quarter consisted of Yorkshire Party (108), Women's Equality Party (84), Christian People's Alliance (30), Harlow Alliance Party (99, 63) NFPP (223), Women's Equality Party (79), Stratford First (345), Scottish Libertarian (8), Ashfield Independents (856), Democrats and Veterans (26)
Another quarter, another set of by-elections that say little about the state of British politics. The Tories win the popular vote by virtue of scraping together more candidates than everyone else (a remarkable achievement now they're falling to bits), but in reality there's a cigarette paper between their results. The LibDems continue to poll well, but the days of their commanding a fifth of the vote in an actual general election are a long way off. And, happily, UKIP do worse than they did this time last year. No complaints here if 2019 finishes them off for good.
Well, politics is going to be even more of a biggie in 2019, so who knows how durable the results we see above will prove to be.
Party | Number of Candidates | Total Vote | % | +/-
Nov
| +/- Dec17 | Average/
Contest | +/-
Seats |
Conservative | 12 | 6,732 | 23.6% | -13.5% | -2.5% | 561 | 0 |
Labour | 10 | 8,614 | 30.2% | -4.2% | -10.9% | 861 | -1 |
LibDem | 10 | 5,262 | 18.5% | -1.8% | -1.1% | 526 | -2 |
UKIP | 5 | 265 | 0.9% | -0.3% | +0.0% | 53 | 0 |
Green | 7 | 1,463 | 5.1% | +1.7% | +1.3% | 209 | 0 |
SNP | 2 | 2,342
| 8.2% | +8.2% | +8.2% | 1,171 | +1 |
PC** | 0 | | | | | | 0 |
Ind*** | 5 | 2,926
| 10.3% |
+8.1% | +1.8% | 585 | +1 |
Other**** | 3 | 890 | 3.1% | +1.4%
| +3.1% | 297 | +1 |
* There were two by-elections in Scotland
** No by-elections in Wales this month
*** There was one independent clash
**** Others this month consisted of Scottish Libertarian (8), Ashfield Independents (856), Democrats and Veterans (26)
And so 2018's by-elections draw to a close with a set of results that say absolutely nothing about the national picture. With only 12 contests to shout about (who wants to campaign when mince pies are better?), the healthy popular vote edge Labour has over the Tories means very little. Humph. Likewise, the fall in the Conservative vote has more to do with the geographic spread of challenges than a red insurgency. Double humph.
All in all, an unremarkable month. The LibDems continue to do well in terms of vote share, though we know from 2017 that good local results are no salve against falling badly at a general election. UKIP are nowhere and are likely to continue to be - even with Brexit nonsense set to come to a climax in 2019 their fash flirtation makes their revival as a mainstream anti-manistream party most unlikely. And happily for the Greens, they finish the year well.
Predictions will be held over to the year-end round up of results. Preview: who knows what's going to happen?
6th December
Highland UA, Wester Ross, Strathpeffer & Lochalsh SNP gain from LDem
Leicester UA, Walgrave Lab hold
Oxford BC, Overcote LDem hold
Surrey CC, The Byfleets Ind gain from Con
12th December
Ashfield DC, Sutton Junction & Harlow Wood Oth gain from Lab
13th December
Dumfries and Galloway UA, Dee and Glenkens Con hold
Haringey LB, West Green Lab hold
Harlow DC, Toddbrook Lab hold
Middlesbrough UA, Brambles & Thorntree Lab hold
20th December
Charnwood BC, Antsey Con gain from LDem
Cumbria CC, Kenty Estuary LDem hold
South Lakeland DC, Arnside & Milnthorpe LDem hold
