The state and local government
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The Greens, as Table 11.6 shows, had candidates in all 14 constituencies in both 2004 and 2008. Their total constituency vote in 2008 increased by 56,288 compared to 2004; and their share of the vote by 0.38 per cent. The Greens total list vote, although their share fell by 0.17 per cent, increased by 43,020. Moreover, due to the tactical agreement with Ken Livingstone – under which the Greens called on their supporters to cast their second choice mayoral votes for him and he called on his supporters to vote Green for their second choice – the first choice votes in 2008 for the Green mayoral candidate Siân Berry increased by 20,043 (up 0.3 per cent) and her second choice votes increased by 123,041 (up 5.7 per cent) compared to Darren Johnson in 2004. All the London Left – including George Galloway’s Respect Renewal which supported Ken Livingstone following Respect’s split into two separate organisations (Respect Renewal and the Respect/Left List) in late 2007 – supported the latter tactic except the Respect/Left List. Lindsey German’s first choice mayoral vote in 2008 when she was the Respect/Left List candidate fell by 44,935 (down by 5.5 per cent of the votes cast) and her second choice vote fell by 28,237 (down by 1.6 per cent of the votes cast) compared to 2004 when she was the Respect candidate. The Respect constituency vote in 2004 was 87,533 compared to the 60,198 combined vote for the Respect/Left List and Respect Renewal in 2008 when they stood separately following the split. Moreover, Respect Renewal in 2008 only stood in one constituency – City and East – where their candidate got 26,760 (14.6 per cent of the votes cast and third place) votes compared to 19,675 (15.3 per cent of the votes cast and third place) for the Respect candidate in 2004. Hence Respect Renewal in 2008, despite standing in only one constituency whereas the Left List stood in all constituencies except Lambeth and Southwark where the Socialist Party stood, got 44.5 per cent of the combined Respect/Left List/Respect Renewal vote. Respect Renewal – which did not stand in the mayoral elections in 2008 and called on its supporters to vote for Ken Livingstone – also got 37,138 more list votes than the Respect/Left List in 2008.
Source: GLA, 2008, p. 6. Table 11.4: London mayoral election results 2004 and 2008862
Source: GLA, 2008, p. 6. Table 11.5: London Assembly result 1 May 2008863
Table 11.6: Green and Left of Labour results in the GLA and mayoral elections in May 2004 and 2008
[a]All constituencies [b]13 constituencies [c]1 constituency. Source: GLA, 2008, p. 74, p. 90, p. 106 and Table 8.2 The Communist Party of Britain (CPB), whose nine list candidates got 7,489 and 0.5 per cent of the votes cast in the 2000 GLA elections, did not stand in 2004.864 In May 2008 London communists contested the GLA elections as part of the Unity for Peace and Socialism (UfPS) coalition: which is a Communist-led alliance between the CPB and overseas Communist and workers parties domiciled in Britain, projecting the key policies of the Left-Wing Programme (see Chapter 14). The 13 London UfPS candidates – which included veteran British communists and working class leaders, members of the Communist Party of Bangladesh, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Greek Communist Party (KKE) based in London plus student activists – received 6,394 list votes, which was only 0.3 per cent of the votes cast. Socialist Alternative in 2008 only stood in the Greenwich and Lewisham constituency where it got 1.08 per cent of the total votes cast; and the Socialist Party only stood in the Lambeth and Southwark constituency where it got 0.97 per cent of the total votes cast. Their share of the total valid votes cast in all 14 constituencies – 0.07 per cent – was similar. Table 11.7: Left of Labour results in the May 2004 and 2008 GLA and mayoral elections
Source: Table 10.5 Table 11.7 shows the Left of Labour vote for 2004 and 2008: and indicates that – whereas the Greens improved their overall position (see Table 11.5) – there was a dramatic decline in support for the Left of Labour parties in London. The Left of Labour vote in 2008 of 145,012 was 149,847 less than the overall vote of 294,859 in 2004 and 49.2 per cent less than in 2004. Respect’s split in 2007 was the main reason for the dramatic decline in the Left of Labour vote, which was compounded by the Socialist Workers Party’s Respect/Left List contesting in the mayoral elections against Ken Livingstone. Conversely, as seen above, Respect Renewal did not contest the mayoral elections and supported Ken Livingstone. Lindsey German’s mayoral first choice votes fell by 44,935 (72.8 per cent) and her second choice votes fell by 28,237 (44.6 per cent). The Left of Labour total constituency vote fell by 54,095 (62.8 per cent): and, as also shown above, Respect Renewal – standing in only one constituency got 44.5 per cent of the combined Respect/Left List/Respect Renewal vote – despite Respect/Left/List candidates contesting in 13 of the 14 constituencies. This may explain why the fall in the Left of Labour total list vote of 22,580 (22.4 per cent) was lower than the fall in the mayoral first choice and second choice votes and the constituency votes. George Galloway – following the Channel 4 TV Dispatches programme’s political assassination of Ken Livingstone on 21 January 2008 – stated that: In these new and developing circumstances, it would be self-indulgence, a luxury the left can no longer afford, to stand a candidate of the left against Livingstone for mayor. The danger of his defeat by the right is too great. With opinion polls varying between neck-and-neck and a substantial Tory lead, a left candidate opposing Livingstone really could aid the Tories and risk handing the keys to City Hall to the rancid reactionaries around Johnson.865 Subsequently, moreover – after the damage was done – Livingstone’s administration was cleared over grant corruption allegations: following an 18-month independent inquiry for the London Development Agency by the legal firm DLA Piper, which reported in July 2009.866 Lee Japer, Livingstone’s former Policy Director, was also cleared by the District Auditor of all allegations of corruption, fraud and cronyism. The allegations were made by the London Evening Standard in 355 separate articles written about this issue over a 6-month period.867 The London Left, except for the Socialist Workers Party, supported Ken Livingstone: because of his anti-war policies, internationalism, anti-racism and the broad political alliance he developed on transport, the environment, housing and redistribution – despite, for example, opposing his decision to privatise the East London line and support for Sir Ian Blair, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Moreover, Ken Livingstone’s support extends far beyond the traditional Left, as shown by the 1,028,966 first and second choice votes he received even with the massive Conservative turnout in the suburbs. The London results on 1 May 2008, therefore, were significant in the following two key respects:
Scotland Ever since the new local government structure was imposed in 1995, the major trend in Scottish local government has been for Labour to fall back from the high point reached in the 1995 elections, and for the number of councils under no overall control (NOC) to increase. The aim of the reorganisation, as the outgoing Labour leader of Strathclyde Regional Council Robert Gould at the time stated, was ‘to carve up Scotland in the best interests of the Tories’.870 Appendix 10 shows that in 1995 Labour had 613 seats (53 per cent of the total); and they controlled 20 (63 per cent of the total) out of 32 councils, which had fallen to 13 (41 per cent of the total) by the time of the last First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) elections in 2003. No other party had managed to replicate Labour’s dominance, and the number of ‘hung’ councils under no overall control (NOC) rose from only three (9 per cent of the total) in 1995 to 11 (34 per cent of the total) in 2003. Five mainly rural councils remained with Independent majorities all the way through from 1995 (or 1994 in the case of the Island councils) to 2003.871 Local elections were last held in Scotland on 3 May 2007 when the Single Transferable Vote (STV) electoral system was used for the first time to elect all councillors.872 Prior to 2007, under the FPTP system, Labour was still the strongest party in Scottish local government with 509 councillors (42 per cent of the total) elected in May 2003; and they controlled 13 (41 per cent) of the 32 councils Though there were almost as many councils with NOC. Now, however, with STV, Labour only has 349 councillors (28 per cent of the total and 14 per cent less than under FPTP) and only has outright control of two (6 per cent of the total) councils – Glasgow and North Lanarkshire. Independents control three further councils – Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles. In May 2007, as in Wales where 82 per cent of councils have NOC, the norm in Scotland was also NOC with 84 per cent of councils (27 out of 32) under NOC. However, by June 2009, as Appendix 10 shows, the proportion of Scottish councils with NOC had fallen to 63 per cent (20 out of 32) – due to the varied pattern of coalitions that have emerged under STV. The number of Scottish Labour councillors has fallen by 57 per cent since 1995 – from 613 to 349 – and the number of Conservative councillors has increased by 57 per cent from 82 to 141. The Scottish National Party (SNP) now have 365 councillors, 30 per cent of the total and the largest number of councillors in Scotland: but they do not control any council. The number of SNP councillors has therefore increased by 50 per cent since 1995 when they only had 181. The Liberal Democrats now have 169 councillors – six less than in 2003 – when they had 175. There are no fascist BNP councillors in Scotland. The Greens now have eight councillors and there is one Scottish Socialist Party councillor. The 190 councillors now classified as ‘Others’ – the majority of which are Independents – has fallen by 44 since 2003: when there were 234 (see Appendix 10). The 2007 local government elections were held at the same time as the Scottish Parliament elections, following which the main media story – other than the success of the SNP – was the unacceptably high number of rejected ballot papers. However, across Scotland the rate of spoilt papers in the local elections was very much lower than for the parliamentary election. While 1.83 per cent of local government ballots were spoilt, 4.075 per cent of the ballots for constituency candidates and 2.88 per cent for regional lists were spoilt in the parliamentary election. For the local elections the proportion of spoilt ballot papers in 2003 was only 0.64 per cent. Yüklə 5,87 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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