A London Post-Mortem
Posted by jonathanfryer on Saturday, 3rd May, 2008
With so much attention focused on Boris Johnson’s win in the London mayoral election, what happened in the parallal GLA contests has been overshadowed. But for Liberal Democrats, those are the results that need to be studied closely. to try to work out what went wrong. First, the facts.
On the constituency seats, just one changed hands: a Labour gain in Brent and Harrow, in sharp contrast to what happened in the local elections in most of the rest of the country. The LibDems had targeted London South West and Lambeth & Southwark heavily, but got nowhere near winning either, despite having excellent candidates, as well as vigorous campaigns and putting out tons of literature. This is particularly hard on Stephen Knight, who hadn’t invested in the safety net of a position on the top-up list, unlike Caroline Pidgeon.
On the top-up list, the Tories gained three seats because their share of the vote was so high, Labour saw no change, the LibDems lost two as did UKIP (who were therefore wiped out, which is good news in the run-up to the 2009 Euro-elections). The Greens stayed where they were, but the BNP for the first time managed to climb over the 5 per cent threshold and thus have a seat in the Assembly for the first time.
In toto, this is an awful result for the LibDems and must prompt a radical rethink about how we fight London-wide elections. The tried-and-tested methods (including ruthless targeting) which reap rewards in local council wards just aren’t working on the larger playing field. There’ll be a post-mortem next week to try to analyse what went wrong. Doubtless some people will blame things on the media, which portrayed the London elections as a straight choice between the Conservatives and Labour. But if that was the case, why did the Greens do so well? The LibDems have to get a new strategy in place quickly and start using it as soon as possible if the party is to perform better next year in the Euros.
David said
The Greens did comparatively well because they have a simple message. Our message was confused and sometimes too negative.
In the end, the media emphasis on Ken and Boris did it for us.
Plus the fact that we didn’t seem to be saying to people that they could vote differently in the different elections
Neil said
We certanly need to review what happened and why, but we also need to ensure any future strategy is based on the realities of the party’s organisational strengths and weaknesses. I would be very cautious about putting this result down to the fact that we targeted our areas of strength. I think we do need to look at both the clarity of our message and at what that message is in the context of the Mayoral being a fight between the other two main parties.
Overall it is clear to me that we suffered due to both being squeezed and to a big increase in turnout of both Tory and Labour supporters.
Interestingly both Stephen Knight and Caroline Pigeon won more votes this time than it would have taken to win their constituencies four years ago.
Jonathan Fryer said
I agree absolutely that the key issue is the message: being clear what it is, putting it in understandable simple terms, and getting it across to the electorate all over London. This is going to be crucial in the run-up to the Euros. The voters know we are essentially pro-European, but we need to explain why being at the heart of the EU is good for Britain (while promoting reform), rather than trying to hide our European light under a bushel, as has sometimes happened in the past.