The truth that dared not speak its name on a day I enjoyed

From just before 7am yesterday (election day) until 7.45pm Susan and me collected numbers for the Labour Party at the Beeston North ward Beeston Fields polling station. We took in turns to enjoy the company of the two Liberal candidates, Steve and Barbara Carr for every minute of that time.

The view from the bowling green pavilion is lovely and the polling station workers were friendly and supportive, as was everyone who turned up to vote. Only a few voters declined to share their polling card numbers or address with us, but no one was rude or aggressive. It really was a most enjoyable day, especially since we had shelter from the heavy rain which rolled in from the west for fifteen minutes every hour or so.

The only surprise came at 7.45pm,when I was told I could finish, because the Labour Party was going to stop collecting polling numbers. I had expected to be there until 9.30pm at least, later if the election appeared too close to call. I have never ever known number collecting to stop so early. The person who came to tell me was just the messenger. He did not know why. I toyed with the idea of staying on, but it would have been dishonest to take numbers when they were not going to be used, especially when the post-election marked register would provide the same information in more detail.

I have always rated number taking at polling stations as being important for a number of reasons. Information gathering, welcoming potential voters and just being at every polling station to show that you care. Steve and Barbara Carr clearly know this and if the number of voters who stopped to have a chat was anything to go by, then they were already winners, whatever the result. I also liked Steve's campaign badge, which simply said 'Carr x 2'. His posters around Beeston Fields just read 'Carr' printed in black on orange paper. My own poster for the two Labour candidates in Beeston North (see my post dated 25 April) also just had their names. All too often candidates and councillors allow themselves become ciphers and forget they are individuals, able to have their own opinions and to be independent.

Back home I received a telephone call and was told that the Labour Party had been knocking up since the morning and didn't seem to need the numbers. I think one could assume from this that the person in charge was confident of the outcome and expected to win (why else would you pull volunteers off number collection at polling stations). All the Labour workers we saw on the day were upbeat, but I wasn't so sure. There were no Conservatives or Greens to be seen anywhere in my part of Beeston Fields and UKIP made a brief appearance, then disappeared again. There was just the Carrs, Susan and me.

Last December in my second ever post, I drew attention to the Toton and Chilwell Meadow by-election result and said 'I am sure that Labour will have noted that whilst both the Conservative (+2.6%) and UKIP (+15.9%) share of the vote went up, Labour's went down (-5.9%). You ignore any election at your peril'. I added that I wanted Labour to win.

On Tuesday this week I drew attention to this and added:

Based on the last Toton & Chilwell Meadow by-election (My second ever post last December referred to the Toton & Chilwell Meadows by-election result, which you can find on the Broxtowe Borough Council website athttp://www.broxtowe.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=14189), I suspect the Liberal vote in Broxtowe is more centre-right than centre-left, which should be to the advantage of the Conservatives. Then there is the UKIP factor and, somewhere on the edge, the Greens. I want Nick Palmer to win, but I suspect that I will wake up on Friday morning to a number of surprise results.

The unspeakable, which I feared, happened. This incomplete summary below shows voting numbers for the Broxtowe parliamentary elections in 2010 and 2015:

I am of the view that numbers tell you more than percentages ever do. I think the above summary proves my point. I have not been able to find the no. of spoilt/rejected ballot papers for 2010, but the no. of votes voted in 2010 was 51,305 and 53,640 in 2015. In other words, more people actually voted in 2015.

In terms of actual votes cast, Labour and the Liberals were the only losers. The Greens, Conservatives and UKIP all increased their vote.

The Toton & Chilwell Meadows by-election last December has turned out to be a good projection of what happened in the parliamentary election yesterday.

This time there can be no blaming the Greens. I suspect a good few folk like me voted Labour and helped them by delivering and taking numbers as I did, to try and bring about a Conservative defeat. We did not succeed.

Historically, when general and local elections have happened on the same day, the winning party tends to do well in the local election. Later today we will know. I am fearful. As I have blogged in a recent post, Labour's local election campaign has been pitiful, with all the effort going into getting Nick Palmer elected, assuming that Labour councillors would be elected as a consequence.

The Greens argued that we should follow our beliefs. Next time I will.

Susan was gutted when we woke up to the results this morning. Her actual words were: 'I warn you now Robert. I am going to spend the next five years in a state of underlying depression'.

I have no views on what the Labour Party nationally should do. They lost my support in 2013 because I believed then, and still do, that they were wedded to a right-wing agenda. I am sorry for Nick Palmer, but if he has taken local council candidates with him, then they have will have been the authors of their own demise by allowing the Broxtowe Borough Council elections to be buried — something else I have blogged about recently.

I will write about the local elections next week.

SATURDAY FOOTNOTE.

The Conservatives have taken control of Broxtowe Borough Council and Kimberley ward is so close that there will be a recount on Monday evening. You could argue that Anna Soubry and her colleagues snuck up on Labour and have given them a nasty bite on the bum. She looked genuinely shocked to have won. I don't like Conservative politics, but experience has taught me you have to come to some kind of accommodation if you don't want to drown in a sea of negativity.

Local elections — the message is in the medium

Over the past couple of months there has been a steady stream of election material through our letter boxes and I have to admit to the fact that I did some delivering for the Labour Party in Beeston North and West wards until my left knee gave out (x-ray next Friday and physio a week later).

You may have noticed that most of the stuff coming through your doors has related to the general election and, somehow, all the parliamentary candidates have given local issues a lot of attention and when that happens, you know the political parties standing do not believe they can win on national issues alone.

It is the same with the European elections. The focus is always on national issues and I believe the parties use it as a kind of test bed for ideas relating to parliamentary elections.

Normally, local elections are not hi-jacked because general elections and local elections do not happen at the same time, but when the dates are the same, local elections get relegated to a distant second place and this tells you, quite clearly, that the main purpose of all political parties is to elect MPs.

In these circumstance I think the local council has a responsibility to step in and actively remind voters that there is a local election taking place and in this respect Nottingham City Council has issued this poster. I received this copy by e-mail, as I have not removed my name from the City Council's mailing list.

By way of contrast, Broxtowe Borough Council's website says little about the borough elections on 7 May and does nothing graphically on its home page to draw attention to the fact.

In my ward, Beeston North, only the Greens has so far failed to push a specifically local leaflet through my door and the Conservative's one leaflet has been one for Beeston as a whole. UKIP has managed one and it has been the most punchy to date. The Liberals have managed two, as have Labour.

I hope the Greens do manage to push a leaflet through my letterbox before Thursday. I would like to have their take on Beeston North, Beeston and Broxtowe Borough Council.

If Parliament sticks with fixed five year Parliaments, the local and general elections will not occur on the same day again until 2025 (also Nottinghamshire County Council elections, assuming it still exists) and then in 2035 when local elections and a general election will again happen on the same day.

One thing is sure and that that is the world of local politics and government is going to change. Nick Palmer is of the view that local government voting reform  may lead to some kind of proportional representation and, if he is right (and I hope he is), then the next Broxtowe Borough Council elections in 2019 will very different to what is happening now.

We shall have to wait and hope, and in the meantime try to keep local democracy alive and well in Broxtowe.

Broxtowe Borough Council elections: what not putting up candidates tells us

I have compiled the table below from information you can find on the Broxtowe Borough Council elections webpage, where there is a notice for each ward listing all the candidates properly nominated (all of them).

This year there will be a Broxtowe* Parliamentary election on the same day (*Ashfield if you live in the north of Broxtowe), so the ability of political parties to field candidates in the ward elections  tells us about their chances of electing our next MP.

Straight away it becomes clear that the Liberals, Greens, UKIP and the other candidate are, at best, spoilers. If they had any real commitment to the communities which make up Broxtowe, they would be fielding Borough Council election candidates in every ward. Even the Conservatives have no candidates in one ward (Eastwood St. Mary) and are one candidate short in Kimberley. Only the Labour Party has a full slate of candidates.

At the end of the day local elections are little better in the minds of many Westminster MPs (and national party HQs) than dress rehersals for the main event - a General Election. If you doubt my assertion, how do you justify or explain the erosion of local power and democracy in the years since 1974? It is no accident that constituency parties organise and oversee branches and not the other way round.

Because I am a liberation socialist I am also a localist and fall into the camp that every election should be contested with a full slate of candidates and that local power matters. The failure in Broxtowe of the Liberals, Greens and UKIP to field candidates in a good few wards tell you that they are organisationally weak, either unable to find candidates or find just twelve people in the ward who will support the nomination of a candidate in the ward. What other explanation can there be which is not even more damning (and one I have already referred to)?

When local and Parliamentary elections occur on the same day, local council results often favour the party which wins the local constituency Parliamentary election - which should mean the Labour Party in Broxtowe. I hope so.

It is also very short-sighted of a party not to field candidates in every ward. They will be unable to measure their support accurately or to use what scant resources they have in terms of money and volunteers to best advantage.

The outcome of both the local and Parliamentary elections in Broxtow could be determined by what ballot paper a voter chooses to mark first. It is going to be that kind of election. Very different to any other I have known in my fifty years as a voter.

I want Nick Palmer to win and for Labour to have a clear majority on the Borough Council.

We shall have to wait until the early hours of 8 May to see if it happens.

And so it begins… the general election

The coming local and general elections on Thursday 7 May will be my first in Broxtowe and Beeston. I am not new to voting, having voted for the first time in 1966. In every general election I have voted Labour and will do so again. The same goes for local elections, except for one occasion in Harrow when, in the absence of a Labour candidate in a Greater London Council by-election, I joined some 5,000 others and voted Communist.

I have heard enough already to know that cynicism is rife and if this persists until election day, then UKIP, the cynics party, could garner enough votes to muddle the outcome both in Broxtowe and nationally. The Greens might even have a part to play as well, especially if ex-Liberal voters by-pass Labour. One thing is sure, at the end of it all there are going to be millions of dissatisfied voters, who will see their preferred party gain a decent percentage of the vote without the elected MPs they deserve.

This scenario could be turned on its head by a single event during the election campaign. I have no idea what, but just as Gordon Brown lost 2010 for Labour with a few choice words about one voter, it could happen again, or some last minute 'scandal' could toss millions of votes into the air.

Once general elections were much more clear cut, just two or three names on the ballot paper with no political description attached. Then you voted for the person, not the party (occasionally the former was true), and there were no official polling cards, just those delivered by the parties to their own supporters and collected in as voters left the polling stations. Now, the whole experience is marred. It is not just voters not trusting politicians, now many don't trust the system.

I will go on delivering for the Labour Party and helping on election day until the polling stations close at 10pm because I want Nick Palmer to win. My only other wish is that the Green Party candidate does not lose his deposit.

This is the first election in which I will be a deliberate tactical voter. Why? Simply, I want to see the Tory Party defeated and Nick Palmer promises not to be a party hack once he gets to Westminster and I want to believe him.

I suspect Nick will vote for continued austerity and yet more cuts, but I have never expected everything from any candidate I have voted for. I want Nick to be his own person first, as willing to confront voters in Broxtowe as well as Party whips in London.

I know one thing for sure, if enough non-Labour/Tory voters hold their nerve and vote for their first choice candidate, then they could distort a hundred outcomes across England in ways not even the cleverest pollsters will be able to predict.

My one message to Labour is hammer on about the damage two years of waiting for a European Union 'in-out' referendum in 2017 could do jobs across the country. Europe and immigration per se are not the enemy. It is the political elite and their corporate capitalist masters who seek to accrue as much power and wealth as they can at our expense, and we collude with them by voting for their political candidates and parties (which includes UKIP).

Without doubt this is toughest election to call since I first voted in 1966 and I suspect the result will change political attitudes forever. Mine included. England post-7 May will be a different country. The future is too important to be left to a bankrupt political class. The Greeks, the Spanish and the Scots understand this. So can the English.

Today's 'Guardian' has a article about the Spanish movement 'Podemos' (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/31/podemos-revolution-radical-academics-changed-european-politics). Read it. I have long held the view that scratch a Tory and a fascist bleeds; that Liberals are amoral and opportunists and that Labour has been betrayed by its leadership time and again and this has fed the cynicism which fuels UKIP. The Left badly needs a populist movement able to challenge the political elite and their corporate capitalist allies. Maybe the Green Party will become the catalyst for change we so badly need.

For now I wish Nick Palmer well and look forward to Labour getting an outright majority on Broxtowe Borough Council. Perhaps they will become part of the revolution we so badly need. I hope so.

I don't intend to say any more about the general election until it is over. I will come home at 10pm on 7 May and collapse in front of the television, where I am likely to stay until breakfast. This time it may be all day, as even the last two or three seats declaring on the Friday afternoon could decide which party gets to lead the next government.