Sunday, May 08, 2011

Apathy or Common Sense?


We are all familiar with the old urban myth about a particular constituency being so dyed in the wool red or blue (or yellow in a couple of cases) that a donkey could stand for election and win if it was wearing the appropriate coloured rosette. Well, in parts of Dorset the services of said donkey weren't required last week as many of the seats went uncontested in the local elections.

In East Dorset for example a third of the Conservative councillors didn't even have to get out of bed on Thursday to defend their seats as seven of the seats went uncontested. Is this really democracy in operation, I mean couldn't the wards concerned at least find an independent to stand? In our ward we had two Independents standing and they were both elected, this in a town where only three of the 24 seats aren't Conservative and we have returned a Conservative MP in every election bar one (1993 by-election) since the constituency came into existence in 1983*.

Across the local area (from Lymington to Poole) it seems that people took the opportunity to give the Lib Dems a real spanking for their performance at national level, this seems a very strange way of conducting local politics and many councillors who were considered to have served their wards very well in the previous administration now find themselves appearing in the local press above the words 'former Councillor'. There's no doubt either that in the areas where they made the biggest gains the Conservative local activists fought a very good campaign, something you rarely see outside of a General Election.

You have to wonder where does this leave the Lib Dems and indeed the coalition. Both Labour and Conservative made significant gains during the local elections, indeed they both made pretty much the number of gains that had been predicted but the Lib Dems have slipped back, whilst the BNP have become the party of one man, one councillor - so much for the expected rise of right wing politics. AV was a disaster for the yellow party and you have to wonder for how much longer can the loveless marriage of convenience continue, presumably until the next General Election when you have to think it will be a straight fight between Labour and Conservative.


*Christchurch was a parliamentary borough from 1572 to 1918, and was part of various parliamentary boroughs/constituencies between 1918 and 1974 when it joined with Lymington.

3 comments:

Span Ows said...

Thanks for all the comments btw. And for the link in this post.

I think the Coalition is doing OK and will last the term. After that however, unless something drastic happens, the LDs could be toast; in th esouth this will favour Conservative and in the cities and oop north it will favour Labour. Reading Tim Montomerie's account of the red/blue cooperation (I linked to it this morning) you have to think you are right and that a sort of two-party hegemony is their goal (swapping a roles every few elections), certainly of the die-hard party members and 'donkey voters', I wonder if the debates and the "I agree with Nick" and the Cleggmania made them decid ethat this pesky bug needs crushing.

Paul said...

I think your last sentence is spot on - I also think that people will not trust Labour for a while, in the south at any rate, and give the coalition a decent go.

The Great Gildersleeve said...

We only had the referendum here...no local elections but normally in a local or general election, its a fair bet one party wins every time and some don't even attempt to make a fight of it.

You'll have seen some of my posts over at Span's anyhow...;-)