A smokey kipper

Nigel Farage’s regal progress was yesterday checked on the Royal Mile. Tee hee! It came down to both sides — Farage versus the “Campaign for Radical Independence” — declaring the other was “fascist” and “racist”. Pot-ism meet kettle-ism.

Let’s not get involved in the semiotics of racism and UKIP. Suffice it to quote a nice throw-away that’s been doing the rounds of late: the English Defence League backs UKIP, presumably because of their shared views on sustainable farming.

However, Farage is quoted in the Guardian‘s story:

“We’ve proved we can get votes in Wales, England and Northern Ireland. We’re still untested in Scotland,” he said. “We’ve not had an opportunity to test Ukip policies with the Scottish people for a very long time.” Asked about Ukip’s chances, he was optimistic. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we did quite creditably.”

At last! a germ of testable UKIP “truth”

UKIP’s “elected” presence in Northern Ireland amounts to one local councillor and one Assembly Member:

• David McNarry was elected the UUP AM for Strangford. There was a rancorous bust-up in the UUP. McNarry was  unstoolled as Vice-Chair of the Assembly Education Committee. He got huffy; and was disciplined by the UUP. It was made clear by Mike Nesbitt that McNarry was unlikely to have the UUP whip restored. McNarry went rogue; and last October announced he had joined UKIP.
• Henry Reilly was also UUP, but is now the duly-elected UKIP Councillor for The Mournes. His address seems to be also that for UKIP NI — which could imply a one-man band. Councillor Reilly is currently involved in a spat with his local press:

A high-profile councillor has been criticised after claims he described regional newspaper journalists as “Provos”.

Cllr Henry Reilly, who is chairman of the UK Independence Party in Northern Ireland, has been urged to withdraw his comments which came at a meeting of Newry and Mourne District Council.

The National Union of Journalists has condemned his comments, saying they were “entirely unacceptable”…

Journalists at the meeting represented the Newry Reporter, Mourne Observer, Newry Democrat, County Down Outlook and the Armargh Down Observer.

NUJ president Barry McCall said the journalists concerned had no right of reply at the meeting and should not have been subjected to verbal abuse.

For the record, at the last Assembly election UKIP stood six candidates and garnered the grand total of 4,152 votes — six-tenths of one per cent of the goal first preference poll. The Kippers didn’t manage quite so well at Council level.

A public service announcement!

Week by week the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors rallies the (ever-more-despondent) yellow peril with rousing news of by-election … err … successes.

Curiously not this week.

There may be reasons:

1. Harwich West Ward of Tendring District Council

This what the ALDC reckoned in advance:

We have a good chance of winning this seat. We are fighting this election and we will have many leaflets to go out.  We shall be canvassing and phone canvassing.  If you can help in the by election, then this will be great.  There are four candidates, Lib Dem, Conservative, Labour and Community Reps standing.  This is a two member ward on the edge of Harwich, easy access to the A120 and A12, 25 minutes from Colchester.

And this is what came out:

Labour: 282 (elected)
Tory: 220
Community Representatives Party: 163
LibDem: 143.

2.  Evelyn Ward, Lewisham London Borough Council

Labour: 978 (elected)
Lewisham People before Profit: 404
LibDem: 131
Tory: 119
UKIP: 119

3. Parson Drove and Wisbech St Mary. Fenland District Council

Tory: 384 (elected)
LibDem: 240
UKIP: 214
English Democrats: 33

OK, OK … trivial stuff

Undoubtedly so in this world of woe.

And yet, in the shrubberies, something rustles.

The party positions in London deserve some real attention. Last week Labour stuffed everyone in sight with two run-away canters in two Islington wards. In one, St George’s Labour was up 38½%, LibDems down 28%, Tories scraping the barrel, down 6% to a risible 3.7%. Similarly, in Junction ward Labour was up 21½%, LibDems down 25%, where the previous councillor was a lapsed LibDem, — with a fair showing from a Green candidate second placed on 17½%. What makes Islington all the more intriguing is that LibDems controlled the council until 2006 _ and were the largest party until the latest Borough-wide election. LibDems now have just a dozen seats to Labour’s three dozen.

The gilt is definitely off, and the guilt all over the gingerbread. Even the troops are restless: witness Stephen Tall’s J’accuse on LibDemVoice:

Nick Clegg’s illiberal hat-trick: now immigration joins ‘secret courts’ and media regulation on the pyre

Not without reason, across the Borough boundary from Islington, Labour in Hornsey are taking seriously the all-woman shortlist for what looks increasingly like the next MP for the constituency. And Mrs Featherstone is equally frisky — the output of the ever-busy LibDem press-mill continues apace.

National Sisterhood Week continues …

For poison in your sabbath morning porridge, there’s no better source/sauce than the Murdochian Sunday Times [£]. With added brimstone.

What seems to be a straightforward partisan piece, from only the first paragraph and the second sentence, turns into precisely the opposite:

Tory victim of by-election ‘dirty tricks’

The Eastleigh by-election battle turned personal yesterday after Labour and the Liberal Democrats were accused of dirty tricks over the Conservative candidate and her family. Opponents of Maria Hutchings, who is running for the Tories, questioned why her house still had a lit-up Christmas tree in its window long after Christmas.

Which decodes as either ‘absentee’ or ‘nutter’.

Then we get the recital of William Hutchings (age 11) and his ambition to be a cardio-respiratory surgeon, which can only be satiated outside the state system of education. Now back to the Great Christmas Tree riddle:

Supporters of Hutchings pointed out, however, that both the Christmas tree and her comments about education should be seen in the context that she has autistic children with special educational needs.

Conservative campaign HQ said Hutchings kept the tree up until it died for the benefit of one of her children, although neighbours said it was there all-year round.

Immediately from there, into a very odd semi-sequitur:

Diane James, the UKIP candidate, said she felt she had to justify publicly why she did not have children in the face of a Tory campaign focusing on the fact that Hutchings is an accomplished mother of four.

James said: “I couldn’t have children. It’s a big regret of my life, but I can’t do anything about that. I presume the Conservatives are mentioning that their candidate is a mother because they want to focus on family values.

If that seems odd, it is because it is — to the extent of weirdness. Even more so, when Mike Thornton, the front-runner Liberal Democrat (who, like O’Farrell for Labour, is never mentioned by name) features himself as a parent whose daughter went through the local schools to become a medical student. One might feel such a contrast is more relevant than Ms James’s aside.

After a side-track (three paragraphs on the betting odds — LibDems 8-13, Tories 7-4 and Labour on 8-1), we are back to the complex private life of Mrs Hutchings:

Some Tory activists have privately expressed concerns over the selection of Hutchings as their candidate.

In the run-up to the last general election in 2010, in which she was battling to unseat Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem MP whose resignation sparked the by-election, Conservative headquarters was warned that she faced “severe financial problems” and desperately needed more support for her campaign. A confidential file submitted to Tory central office described her as being “at breaking point”.

The party eventually agreed to help Hutchings with mobile phone, petrol and other costs. A source said: “There was a serious worry about Maria last time. She was under a huge amount of strain and the party had to be strong-armed into supporting her.”

The source said Sir George Young, the chief whip, would have been alerted to concerns held on file.

Curiouser and curiouser. Why Sir George? It’s not immediately in his remit; and wouldn’t be unless Mrs Hutchings wins the seat. Why is he dragged in, rather than — say— Greg Shapps, who is currently responsible? Obviously the mobile phone, petrol and other costs are to do with private life: otherwise they would be part of the statutory electoral expenses. And as far a candidate in a highly-marginal seat, up against a star-player from the other side, not being under a huge amount of strain … words fail.

The Sunday Times piece concludes with a paragraph of ritual praise from Eric Pickles (why him?) and another ticking off Mrs Hutchings’ merits as an opponent of gay marriage, her Euroscepticism and that she is “not a Tory toff” but a local mother who has “campaigned tirelessly for special needs children”. Which neatly overlooks that she was parachuted in, from Essex, for the 2010 election, as a ‘Cameron cutie’.

One other mystery persists about this Sunday Times piece. On-line it is counterpointed by two graphics. One is the latest YouGov opinion poll (Labour 43%, Conservatives 32%, Lib Dems 12%, UKIP 9%). The other is a grimacing Nigel Farage with his candidate, both with rosettes and against UKIP posters. In the print edition there is an extra: a singularly unflattering upward-shot portrait of Mrs Hutchings’ treble chins.

You don’t need a semiologist to detect a strong sub-text in all this.

National Brotherhood Week … not!

All the other versions are blocked on copyright. But there it is:

It’s fun to eulogise
The people you despise,
As long as you don’t let ‘em in your school.

Which would sound well from a certain Anglo-Maltese Tory lady:

On the first day of her campaign, Maria Hutchings was asked about one interview in which she was quoted as saying she did not care about refugees and another in which she allegedly claimed that Labour had done more for “the immigrants, the gays, the bloody foxes” than for children with special needs. She claimed she had been misquoted.

Who flung dung?

Sure, enough, the cow pats are flying in Eastleigh. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, so uplifting as a LibDem (“a yellow bastard“) wafting a ripe splatter at an opposite number of the ConDem coalition. Unless, of course, it’s vice versa.

Fortunately for the future of political mud-wresting-in-a-recently-vacated-cattle-pen, it’s already getting down-and-dirty:

Whereupon the Tories — specifically the unspeakable Harry Phibbs (by name and nature) — at ConHome, swiftly shuffle sideways:

However is the Lib Dem attack so smart? Their leader Nick Clegg says he may send his eldest son to an indepedent [sic] school. Why should he be able to exercise the choice and not Maria Hutchings?

Iain Dale points out that the child in question may well be autistic.

If so the view that existing state provision is inadequate is shared by the National Austic [sic, again] Society. That is why they are involved in helping to start specialist free schools for children with autism. That will provide a choice for parents who can’t afford fees.

Whatever truth or not there is in that remains unclear. What is clear is that some Tory-run local authorities have absolutely no intention of willingly providing proper facilities in state schools for autistic children.

Which is why North Yorkshire recruited the self-proclaimed “ABA-killer” for the appeals procedure.

Airbrushed for change

There is, by the way, a bit of the old Cameroon Photoshopping going on.

Compare and contrast the image of Mrs Hutchings above (on the leaflet, from in action at the B&Q presser) with the ‘official’ version (as just above).

With luck, the air will remain blue (though not, perhaps, politically) — in Westminster and Eastleigh, alike —  for at least the next twelve days.

Nick, Nick!

Sir Nick Harvey MP can have few reasons to be wholly in sympathy with the ConDem coalition. Actually, his relationship with his own LibDem party might be considered to be … semi-detached.

Let’s tick off a few reasons:

• Newly elected in 1992, he was the unique LibDem to vote against Maastricht;
• He was less than effusive about the “leadership qualities” of Charles Kennedy;
• He opted out of being the LibDem front-man on Culture, Media and Sport to spend more time with his family (now there‘s a new one!);
• He was LibDem Minister of State at Defence from the start of the ConDem coalition to last September’s re-shuffle. He distinguished himself at the outset of the Libyan adventure by shrugging off questions of exit-strategy: “How long is a piece of string? We don’t know how long this is going to go on for.”
• For that, or other infringements, he was returned empty (except for the knighthood) to the back-benches.

Still, you can’t keep a good man down.

Today, according to Paul Waugh at politicshome, Harvey is all of a-tweet:

Dontcha just lurve that hashtag!

Or, as today’s Daily Telegraph has it:

Maria Hutchings (Conservative)

— She’s a mum-of-four. This is the mantra that Mrs Hutchings and others keep repeating in their campaign to present the Tory candidate as ordinary, straight-talking and down-to-earth…

— She doesn’t come from Eastleigh but appears to have earned some local stripes by staying here with her family after a defeat at the 2010 general election. Back then, she promised to live in the town and commute to Westminster each day.- Her local credentials were somewhat undermined when she was accused of cutting and pasting a description of Eastleigh’s history from its Wikipedia page

— She is a former Labour supporter who once confronted Tony Blair on television over the lack of schools and services for her disabled son.

— Despite her outspoken nature, she rejects the idea she is a feminist as she “doesn’t like labels”. She was one of a band of ambitious female wannabe MPs who use[d] to be described as “Cameron’s cuties”.

By some partial accounts, Mrs Hutchings is being very closely-minded.

Good choice, Eastleigh!

As Owen Paterson stews in his own Bisto (see the Slugger O’Toole exchanges for how it is seen outside the Westminster enclosure — and how Malcolm elucidates thereof), the good news of the evening is that John O’Farrell waves the scarlet banner high in the by-election.

It’s quite amazing how Louise Mensch (Desperate, New York City) and John Prescott (good old Labour, Hull) can both find something positive to say about the nomination. Prescott wins, by capturing the O’Farrell wit and wisdom — Malcolm always preened more party feathers in pubs and with cheap sherry than in GMCs or Labour Group meetings (which must be why the Corbynistas of Haringey and Malcolm never saw eye-to-eye).

With all due respect to the other two worthy candidates, it had to be O’Farrell and the modicum of national recognition he drags with him. For crying out loud, neither of the two front-runners, Tory and LibDem, look anything more than old nag in-a-fancy-lasagne-packet.

An end to Dicking about

After a week or so, the all-purpose political metaphor that is Richard III ought to have breathed its last.

Sadly, it hasn’t.

Chris Riddell’s editorial cartoon for today’s Observer is one more death-rattle:

Paul Goodman, who should also know better, entertains the stupid party through today’s Sunday Times [£], with a similar meme in his assonant Blue on yellow: it will be beastly in Eastleigh:

Even Conservative MPs who are sympathetic to Cameron are viewing Downing Street’s dysfunctionality with bewilderment. And any voter benefit that the prime minister may have won from the first budget cut in the European Union’s history will have evaporated by polling day.

I don’t believe Eastleigh will prove to be another Eastbourne [the October 1990 by-election, won by the Lib Dems, which contributed to Thatcher's unseating]. For while a core of irreconcilables would like to see Cameron buried beneath a car-park for several hundred years, like some latter-day Richard III, he has no obvious successor — in the Commons, at least (although Boris Johnson lurks outside). However, poor results in the local elections in May could put the prospect of a leadership challenge back on the table.

Rather laboured, don’t you feel?

Except, in that article, Goodman knocks off Labour in two sentences, and that in a bracketed aside:

(Ed Miliband’s interest will surely be focused on inflicting maximum damage on Cameron. It follows that he will want his party, a distant third three years ago, to lie low and not filch support from left-leaning former Lib Dem voters.)

The other side of the hedge, back at the Observer, that’s exactly what Andrew Rawnsley reckons, devoting his whole article to:

It is too early for Labour to write off its chances in Eastleigh

Ed Miliband’s party shouldn’t just jeer from the byelection ringside as the Tories and the Lib Dems slug it out

Where Malcolm sits, Rawnsley is by far the more observant, and has a better grasp of the history:

At first glance, Labour has no chance. On the party’s list of target seats, Eastleigh is number 258. Yet Labour cannot afford to sit it out and just jeer from the ringside as the coalition parties slug it out. Ed Miliband now likes to style himself as the leader of the “One Nation” party. He declares that Labour is recovering support in southern England. So he must be seen to be trying to win here. And is it quite such a hopeless prospect for Labour as most people, including the bookies, are assuming? At the general elections of 1955 and 1966, Labour came within fewer than 1,000 votes of winning Eastleigh. Admittedly, the shape of the seat and its demographics have changed considerably since then, but more recent elections also suggest that Labour should not entirely write off its chances. The last time there was a byelection in the seat, in 1994, Labour came second, ahead of the Tories, with more than 27% of the vote. At the 1997 general election, Labour achieved a similar score.

In 2010 it didn’t make sense for Labour to throw resources against Huhne. A 10% return on minimal investment was acceptable — and it was a seat denied the Tories. Not this time. All previous outings suggest there is a natural 25% Labour vote here. With a few more LibDems switching against the ConDem coalition (and Lib Dems happily split allegiances between local and national polls), with a few more plaguing both houses and staying at home, with a bit of natural disgust at ConDem in-fighting, with UKIP picking up disaffected Tories, and with a few more Labour feet on the streets, the 25% Labour vote is rock-bottom. The blue sky of a three-way marginal is the limit.

Rawnsley, unlike Goodman, has done the demographics:

This is not posh Hampshire. Benny Hill is Eastleigh’s most famous product. While it is hardly one of the most impoverished parts of Britain, nor is this former railway town a place that oozes privilege and easy wealth. The typical Eastleigh voter will be first- or second-generation home-owners feeling a painful decline in their living standards and worrying what the future holds for their children. These are the classic “squeezed middle” voters whom all the parties identify as crucial. These are voters whom Labour must aspire to represent if it is serious about forming the next government.

Precisely. To which could be appended: these are voters with no great reason to feel gratitude to either faction in the government. It is also suburban Southampton: not, one might feel, the place where contact with the Continent is most scorned — and the Tory lady does seem a dodgy prospect under close scrutiny for the next three weeks. We can bet on one thing: she will be closely minded.

No, you read it here first

Rawnsley’s closing is this:

A Labour win in Eastleigh seems hugely unlikely to most people today. Because it would be so unexpected, it would be a spectacular result for Ed Miliband and a shocking humiliation for both the coalition parties. If it happens, remember you read it here first. If it doesn’t, forget I ever mentioned it.

For Labour, it is anyway better to fight and lose than not to fight at all. For the Tories and the Lib Dems, only victory will do.

Which is what Malcolm has been suggesting, here and elsewhere, for some time.

So they’re not totally useless!

Headline in The Guardian, page 4:

Tories furious as Lib Dems delay boundary review.

Saying “different things”, South Antrim

There was a brief note on ConHome:

Boundary changes blow

“David Cameron’s slim hopes of pushing through boundary changes that would deliver the Tories 20 extra safe seats have been dealt a blow by the Ulster Unionists.” - The Times (£)

 Malcolm hadn’t seen this elsewhere, apart from below the fold on page 17. So he thinks The Times pay-wall should give way:

Unionists deal blow to Tory boundary plan

Roland Watson Political Editor

David Cameron’s slim hopes of pushing through boundary changes that would deliver the Tories 20 extra safe seats have been dealt a blow by the Ulster Unionists.

The Tories need support from across the minor parties if they are to see through the changes after Nick Clegg said he would no longer support them following the defeat last summer of his plans to reform the House of Lords.

But William McCrea, the DUP MP for South Antrim, said he would not back the changes, which would cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600, and in Northern Ireland from 18 to 16.

Mr McCrea also told The Times that the boundary review process should be halted quickly to prevent public money being wasted.

Government sources who have tried to canvass support from the DUP said that “different Unionists say different things”.

The Tories would need all of the eight DUP MPs and six SNP MPs to have the chance of overhauling the 312 combined tally of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs.

Mr Cameron had been pressed by the 1922 Committee to force boundary changes through before the election, thus boosting Tory hopes. But Labour and Liberal Democrat peers are expected to win a vote today that would delay any changes until 2018.

Dr McCrea may have the dogma, even if the hair has AWOLed over the years. Explaining the abstruse connection must await the end of this post.

The devil is in the numerical detail

Anyone with half a wit knew that, once Clegg had pulled the plug, the baby was out with the bath-water. Subsequently Paul Goodman came up on ConHome to regurgitate his calculations, which amount to 320 for the Tory gerrymander and 321 against. His punch-line acknowledges potentially-defaulting Nadines:

On the darker side, the biggest Commons obstacle to the new boundaries could be Conservative MPs themselves.  More gain than lose from the changes, but not all losers can be guaranteed to vote for their likely or certain removal from the next Parliament.

Doing the maths while minding mice at the crossroads? [See The Hair of the Dogma, page 171, and all is apparent.]

My enemy’s enemy is — not necessarily — my friend

When David Blackburn at the Speccie recommends a piece by George Eaton at the Staggers, in the bushes something stirs.

Both sides, in short, are evaluating what happens now the Lib Dem vote has collapsed. And whether the UKIP surge can continue. Either way, it is for Labour to exploit and the Tories to repulse  and repel (actually, they do that, en masse, quite well).

Eaton’s piece is the terser, but makes three points (which Malcolm glosses here) on the back of the Corby by-election:

• The Labour vote increased proportionately by nearly 10%. Were that to be the norm at a future General Election — which, we must assume is still slated for 7th May 2015 — Labour would romp it. As it happens, Malcolm would not be surprised if — given the faintest glimmer of an economic silver lining in 2014 — the Coalition didn’t somehow collapse this ‘fixed’ (in any sense you choose) parliament. Indeed, Cameron may be able to achieve just that by his long-trailered, long-over-due ‘big’ speech on Europe — and some kind of pledge/promise/wishful thinking on a referendum (cue Tom Newton Dunn at The Sun — this is one topic where the Murdoch press are a ‘must read’).
• If the Lib Dem decline persists, Labour stands to pick up those Tory/Labour marginals where the Lib Dem vote exceeds the present Tory majority (Eaton counts 37 of these). Several of those are seats (such as Clegg’s) with a large university student vote. The previous generation of those students (who will have passed on by 2015) were blinkered by the Lib Dem hypocrisy on fees, and by natural resentment at Labour’s involvement in US wars: go figure.
• If the Lib Dems do a Lazarus, and/or if the incumbency factor works in the Lib Dem MP’s favour, the Tories also lose out — because, again on Eaton’s arithmetic, there are 38 Lib Dem seats where the Tories run second. What Eaton doesn’t include is the West Country factor, where the Lib Dems (in fact, unreconstructed Liberals) have deep roots, and should continue to blossom.

Blackburn attempts to put a good face on what was an appalling day for the Tories:

• the rise of independents;
• that it was all a profoundly anti-politics election, and low turnout is a long-term trend. Err … is it? —

What is agreed by all-comers, is that Cameron is:

• damned if he does — any concessions to the rabid Right and the UKIPpers alienates the centre, leaving that ground open to the Labour ‘One Nation’ ploy.

and

• double-damned if he doesn’t — the Tory Right and the Right Outside are ‘on manoeuvres’, as Norman Tebbit cogently explains:

… there is plenty for the Conservative strategists to worry about. Whilst the BNP did rather poorly, particularly in Corby, UKIP on the whole did rather well. In the very low poll at Manchester, UKIP came within half a dozen votes of overtaking the Conservatives. At Corby, where the Conservative vote collapsed, UKIP scored a respectable 5,000-plus votes, triple that of the Lib Dems, and at Cardiff they marginally increased their vote.

In short, while Labour seems to have stemmed the loss of votes to BNP, the Tories are still losing support to UKIP; and even worse for Mr Cameron, UKIP is strengthening in advance of the 2014 European elections. The Tory cry that a vote for UKIP is a wasted vote may be wearing a bit thin.

All that is the prime focus on today’s editorial in The Independent:

Mr Cameron is caught in a difficult bind. He is facing a Labour Party showing tentative signs of recovery from its 2010 defeat, while to his right there is an anti-EU party attracting votes at a point when Europe soars up the political agenda. But if the Tory leader hardens his stance on the EU to appease Eurosceptics, he risks giving up an even greater share of the more moderate centre ground he once sought to occupy. And his departure from this electorally fertile terrain in other policy areas is one of the reasons his party struggled in the by-elections.

That’s without tangling too closely with the tar-baby (a dangerous metaphor, Malcolm fully appreciates, but one which he can happily defend on non-racist terms) of ‘localism’. ‘Localism’ may have been a good notion in happier times, but the centralisers of Tory policy (Gove, Shapps, Pickles …) have done for it, good and proper.

And another thing …

The North impinges further south each year.

The Tories are rapidly heading towards extinction north of the Trent and outside of the leafiest of shires. David Blackburn, in that piece noted above, cheerfully quotes himself from the previous day:

… the Tories’ woeful showing in South Yorkshire (beaten into 3rd by the English Democrats) and in Durham (finished a miserable 4th), to say nothing of the debacle in the Manchester Central by-election (where the party lost its deposit), should concern the party.

That is, not necessarily, even for socialist bigot like Malcolm, a good outcome.

‘Should concern the party’? Should concern the nation! For all its faults the Tory Party (indeed the two-party system) is essential to British democracy as we know it. Much as the Lib Dems might wish for a “three-party system”, that — as we have painfully discovered through this benighted ConDem coalition — arrives at sterility and even extremism (Gove, Shapps, Pickles … Duncan Smith, secret courts). Of course the whole system could — and arguably should — be given a whole new architecture, by devolution of real power to regions and localities and/or by proportional representation. For the time being, pending that day of universal liberation, we have to work within the parameters we have got.

Now we have the weekend commentariat to expect in the Sundays. That should be instructive, particularly if one or other of the ‘usuals’ comes up with a different, original interpretation. And, as Malcolm’s Dear Old Dad frequently opined: ‘It must be true: it’s in the papers’.