Saturday, May 08, 2010

Did UKIP Do For Cameron ? They Did.

I looked at a few results at lunchtime yesterday - first to see how Labour's carpetbaggers did. Luciana Berger, the girl* who didn't know who Bill Shankly was, won by a mile.

Tristram Hunt, posh historian and BBC favourite, got in easily too - with the Lib Dems second. Gary Elsby, the Labour councillor who stood against him in protest, got 400 votes.

But in Stoke South Labour only won from the Tories by 4,000 votes. The BNP and UKIP got 5,000 between them.

And in Newcastle under Lyme Labour won from the Tories by just 1500 votes. UKIP got nearly 3,500. Strike one to UKIP.

On arriving home I see EU Referendum devoting a post to the "UKIP effect". They compare the Labour-Tory gap to the combined UKIP-BNP vote, which I think is a little unfair. IMHO at least half the BNP votes will be former Labour votes, whereas 90% of UKIP voters will be former Tories.

It'll be interesting to go through the results and see whether the UKIP effect has cost them the 30-odd seats they needed for a majority. The Guardian has the results as a downloadable spreadsheet.

Watch this space.

UPDATE - I make that 21 seats where the Tories came second and the UKIP vote was bigger than the vote difference between first and second place. The Tories were 20 seats short of a majority.

Seat Candidate Tory Vote
Difference
UKIP Vote
Bolton West "Williams, Susan" 18,235
92
1,901
Derby North "Mold, Stephen" 14,283
613
829
Derbyshire North East "Merriman, Huw" 15,503
2,445
2,636
Dorset Mid and Poole North "King, Nick" 20,831
269
2,109
Dudley North "Brown, Graeme" 14,274
649
3,267
Great Grimsby "Ayling, Victoria" 10,063
714
2,043
Hampstead and Kilburn "Philp, Chris" 17,290
42
408
Middlesbrough South and Cleveland East "Bristow, Paul" 16,461
1,677
1,881
Morley and Outwood "Calvert, Antony" 17,264
1,101
1,506
Newcastle-under-Lyme "Jenrick, Robert" 14,841
1,552
3,491
Plymouth Moor View "Groves, Matthew" 13,845
1,588
3,188
Solihull "Throup, Maggie" 23,460
175
1,200
Somerton and Frome "Rees-Mogg, Annunziata" 26,976
1,817
1,932
Southampton Itchen "Smith, Royston" 16,134
192
1,928
St Austell and Newquay "Righton, Caroline" 18,877
1,312
1,757
St Ives "Thomas, Derek" 17,900
1,719
2,560
Telford "Biggins, Tom" 14,996
978
2,428
Walsall North "Clack, Helyn" 12,395
990
1,737
Walsall South "Hunt, Richard" 14,456
1,755
3,449
Wells "Heathcoat-Amory, David" 23,760
800
1,711
Wirral South "Clarke, Jeff" 15,745
531
1,274

Now you can argue, and doubtless the Cameronians will, that without accepting the results of the cultural revolution (aka 'detoxifying the brand') they would not be anywhere near power. But as I said many a year back, there'd be a price to pay. They're paying it.





* Ms Berger : "You can't ask a girl a football question."

Friday, May 07, 2010

Reflections On Elections

Well, so much for Cleggmania. I arrived in an empty polling station at 8.20 last night, commented on the emptiness and was told that it had been really busy, and they reckoned perhaps 80% of the names on their list had already voted.

I took this in, thought about the Lib Dem surge and my daughter's Catholic school, decided I'd never forgive myself if they took the seat, and voted Blue Labour, having decided on seeing the candidate list outside that I'd go for UKIP (we only got one, Tory, election leaflet this year and I didn't even know who else was standing until I saw the list).

I was sorry to see that Shaun Bailey didn't get in.

Outside of that, the salient feature seems to be that Scotland is decoupling from the rest of the British mainland. While the Tories (probably aided a tad by all those English immigrants to Wales) gained seats in the Principality, the Labour vote held up in Scotland (Gordon Brown actually increased his majority) and the Tories still only have one seat there. While the SNP didn't gain any seats, Alex Salmond must surely think it no bad thing that politics north of the Border is becoming so different to politics south of it.

What I can't understand is why Labour are hanging on up there. OK, Scotland hasn't got mass immigration on the English scale, but I would have thought the many other factors which have told against Labour nationally would count there too. Is it the huge State sector in Scotland ? Massive electoral fraud ? Sympathy for an embattled administration with more than its fair share of Scots - anti-Brown sentiment interpreted as anti-Scottish ?

I dinna ken. Any ideas, anyone ?




(and outside, the Dow Jones is taking a massive hit, the Greek debt crisis rumbles on, perilously near the cliff-edge, and the pound is wobbly. All those put-off or lied-about spending and taxing decisions await. Do we need a National Government ? We certainly won't get one.)

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Laban's Election Choice

I know you've all been waiting for some Labanic pearls of wisdom on the election. I confess that never have I felt less energised, never less impressed with all the Prime Ministerial candidates, from Young Nick, with his radical plans to abolish my daughter's Catholic comprehensive, let all the illegal immigrants stay (and bring their families in) and let all the burglars out, through the Heir To Blair, whose few discernable policies seem none too well thought out, down to the Son of the Manse, or the Manse Who Saved The World.

Nonetheless it is my duty to find a path through these sorry facts, winding and weary though that path be, and come to a conclusion and recommendation.

After much thought, I can announce that I will be voting Labour on Thursday.














And so will the other 56 people in my house.



The number registered to vote at the home of Khales Uddin Ahmed, running to be a councillor in Tower Hamlets, has risen from five to twelve in recent weeks. But a neighbour said that only three people live in the maisonette on a council estate in Bromley-by-Bow.

It is one of several cases where new names have been suddenly added to the voting register as living at addresses occupied by Labour candidates in the borough, which has a history of allegations of voting irregularities.

A last-minute surge of electoral registrations in the borough means that 5,000 have gone through without any checks.

When approached by The Times yesterday, Mr Ahmed, a restaurateur, locked himself behind his door and insisted that all the other occupants were out. “You are discriminating our family,” he said. “I am not going to give you any information.” He declined to say how many bedrooms he had. Round the corner, in a house where a mother and daughter, both Labour councillors, live, three people have recently been added to the voting register, bringing the total to eight.

Rania Khan said that the new names at the four-bedroom house were her husband and two nurses they had taken in as lodgers. “That’s showing the need of the people of Tower Hamlets with the overcrowding situation,” she said.

At a maisonette in Poplar, where a Labour councillor, her husband and four children live, three new adults have been recently added to the roll. When The Times asked to speak to the newcomers, Shiria Khatun, who is standing in the elections, slammed the door. Her husband shouted: “Get out from here, bloody bastard.” Ms Khatun later said by telephone that the new residents were two nieces and a nephew who were sleeping on a sofa and the floor.

You Are Jeremy Clarkson ...



And I claim my £5.

Monday, May 03, 2010

Quote of The Day

Natalie Bennett :

"One of the things that I’ve noticed on the doorstep around St Pancras and Somers Town in this and previous election is the enthusiasm among the Somali community for democracy and engagement with it."


Alas, that enthusiasm doesn't seem to extend to the folks back home.

"The Heroes of Balsall Heath"

I hadn't noticed that "the role of the state has been one of the key dividing lines in this election", but the BBC have, and in this context interviewed Michael Gove, Tory Shadow Schools Secretary, on the "Big Society".

Explaining the idea to Today presenter Evan Davis, he said the crux of the issue was for public services to stop doing things "in a beaurocratic pattern" (sic) and instead to act in a way "which fits with the needs of the people they serve".

"There is already a model that we have developed in opposition, that we can apply in government, that brings individuals together, that is respectful of autonomy and diversity, and also harnesses... the idealism of volunteers," he says.

Gove talked about a 'Big Society Bank', whose cash would be disgorged to support community projects, run by a partnership of government, local authorities, and the 'third sector' - charities and other NGOs. Sounds pretty much like what happens at the moment, doesn't it ? And you can see what a difference that makes. There are far more pro-criminal charities getting taxpayer cash than pro-victim ones, for example. When Government cash heads for the 'third sector' you'll find it's funding vital initiatives like Age Concern's battle against homophobia - a subject that never fails to come up when an elder is talking.

The trouble is that many of the projects that citizens would come up with, left to their own devices, would be considered by government, local authorities and 'the third sector' to be vigilantism. And we can't have that (nor would we need to in a society where the law protected the law-abiding). Remember 'the people have spoken, the bastards' ?

Evan Davis was (rightfully IMHO) cynical about the whole thing, continually pressing for examples. Gove, towards the end of the interview, supplied one when talking about a proposed 'Big Society Day'.


".. there are an army of volunteers out there, many of whose efforts are transforming our society, and many more of whom we want to enlist in changing society for the better - and I think it's a good thing if government chooses to celebrate, those people who, for example, devote themselves to helping the homeless, who devote themselves to dealing with drug and alcohol addiction, to those who are making a difference on the ground. If you have an institution like the group of people who transformed Balsall Heath in Birmingham, a group of citizen volunteers, who've taken an area that was polluted by prostitution, that was scarred by drug addiction, that faced underdevelopment and deprivation - and those individuals, by their own efforts, working in partnership with Birmingham Council - they've transformed Balsall Heath for the better - now, I'm talking about that part of Birmingham on the Radio 4 Today programme for the first time, because Today, and the press generally, always tend to look at Government initiatives, they always tend to say 'how can we spend more State money ?'. What they rarely do is celebrate the power of civil society to transform our lives. Now I believe that Government, if we have a change of government, can do that, and the heroes of Balsall Heath can have their achievement celebrated on the Today programme, and the heroines of Birkenshaw and Gomersall , the mums and dads who want a transformed education system, they too can have their moment instead of being marginalised".
Gove is talking about the 1994 campaign I covered here :

At the height of the picket, Amin had 500 people on the streets every night, armed with notebooks to take down the numberplates of kerbcrawlers and posters which warned, 'Your wife will get to hear of this.'

'The Muslim community had the will-power, the determination and the cohesion to act,' says Ward. The Christian community was split over the need to be compassionate towards the prostitutes' problems, an approach which baffles and infuriates the Muslims. As a result, Ward was the only clergyman to give the campaign his backing.

Meanwhile, the police were watching the pickets with concern. 'We were afraid of a backlash from the pimps,' says community liaison officer Sergeant Steven Bruton. 'We thought any day one might wind down his car window and blast away at the pickets with a gun. We were afraid the prostitutes might get assaulted. And we were afraid there might be riots. When it first started, the picket attracted a lot of people from all over. We thought the hotheads might have a go.'

In spite of a few allegations of assault, threats from the pimps and accusations from a group of liberal feminists, these fears did not materialize. 'The people involved were decent, God-fearing people,' explains Bruton.
The heroes of Balsall Heath inspired the heroes of Lumb Lane, Bradford a year later. I remember it both because I knew the area well and because a female friend had her car stoned as she drove past the end of Lumb Lane :

On the edge of Bradford's red-light district, in a dimly lit Indian restaurant, sit two scared prostitutes. They shake, smoke and drink coffee. Sally and Fran have just been chased from their regular spot on Lumb Lane, north of the city centre, by a car of masked youths which hurtled towards them, almost knocking them from the pavement. The driver warned them to "stay away"...

But while the action has ostensibly been modelled on a similar campaign in Birmingham's Balsall Heath, where prostitution was beaten by peaceful picketing, the scenes here are more menacing. Punters have been stoned and prostitutes have been picked up and physically carried from the area. Some "vigilantes" have been threatened by pimps waving sawn-off shotguns.

The self-appointed guardians retaliated by hospitalising a prostitute's boyfriend who had spoken out on local TV. ("Let's just say he was a bit lippy, so a few of us did him over," grins an Asian youth.) Last week there was a firebomb attack on a cafe used by local prostitutes. Police are struggling to control all sides, but pleasing none...

From 8pm each evening, up to 100 local vigilantes from a pool of 500 are out in force and stay into the early hours. Most noticeable are the youths. They patrol in boisterous packs, clad in baggy jeans, big trainers and bomber jackets, often wearing bandanas as masks.

Typical of these is Abdul - not his real name - a bright-eyed, highly charged A-level student. "We've had guns, baseball bats and knives put to our heads by pimps," he says. "Our mums can't sleep at night - mums have that sort of mentality, they're weaker-hearted - but someone has to do it. The vice squad won't ever stop prostitution because they'd do themselves out of a job. In six weeks we've turned Lumb Lane from the M1 into a minor road. Now we're guarding our territory. We'll stay out until everyone knows this is no red-light district any more."...

So far, only one vigilante has been arrested for breach of the peace. "We're desperately trying not to make martyrs out of this. The last thing we need is a folk hero."

According to Corkindale, Lumb Lane could end up paving the way for other red-light communities. "If they succeed in clearing it, they want to go to the media and call on residents from other cities to come up, have a chat, look around, and who can blame them?"

The police were afraid of a riot in Balsall Heath. They didn't want to make martyrs in Bradford. As a correspondent to the T&A noted six years later, "the unchecked vigilantism of the Lumb Lane era was re-visited ... in subsequent Manningham Riots when Asian youth realised the power they had to control the streets."

While the urge of the Muslims to clean up their streets (although, as one prostitute remarked, 'we were here first') was understandable, there can be no doubt that a similar campaign by white Christians would have encountered both the full weight of the law and the full weight of liberal opinion, amplified in the liberal media feedback loop to one long howl of outrage. The Stroppy's and the Harpies of this world would have been apoplectic. There'd have been nightly reports on the news, and doubtless students would have been on the streets in sympathy. "We are all Tartacus!"

I don't know whether Gove is making a nod to Muslim voters or whether he's just ill-informed. But his heroic Balsall Heath Irregulars are exemplars to one (faith) community only. The chance of any such effective action by Christians passed thirty years or more ago, around the time of the Festival of Light marches (we picketed the one in Manningham Park as 'the Festival of Life', mea maxima culpa). They learned much too late that reasoned arguments (all to be proved correct) weren't the way to respect from their ideological enemies. As Duff Cooper would have said, they believed in addressing them through the language of sweet reasonableness, when they were more open to the language of the mailed fist.