Europe Decides

There are only a handful of elections happening in London on 3 May all as the result of sitting councillors standing down. Considering the sheer campaigning powerhouse potential of the capital’s population it is surprising that these few seats are not being more highly contested. One seat to watch, if only for the celebrity value, is that of Marylebone High Street in the blue-as-they-come City of Westminster right in the heart of the capital. The by-election will seek a replacement for the Tory incumbent who stood down just over a month before polling day. Having triumphed in last year’s local elections with some 70% of the vote this ultra-safe Conservative seat may just be about to fall to Labour in what could be one of the most incredible swings in the capital’s history.

Instead of fielding a largely unknown local activist to stand in the seat Labour have put forward Dave Rowntree, a local resident but better known as the drummer from Blur, the iconic Britpop band. Fighting a creative online campaign against a frankly mistified local Consevative Party, also famous for his pro-file-sharing views, is leading the way with a series of online videos using YouTube not leaflets as his medium for communicating his message to the electorate. Check them out here and here. And it seems to be working. National and international media coverage has followed and the feeling is ‘good’ on the streets. He’ll have quite a mountain to climb to overturn the Tory majority but if his celebrity and his activism produces a Labour Gain on Thursday it could well be the only one in the capital, and only one of a handful across the country in what is universally expected to be a watershed poll for Labour nationally.

Cross-posted at Despatchblog.

The very popular British website politicalbetting.com (I highly recommend it for those interested in UK politics) contains an article by Sean Fear of the likely results of the local elections taking place in England in under a fortnight. I’d agree with much of his analysis in terms of councils likely to change hands.

For those unfamiliar with the English electoral landscape this adds up to the Conservatives doing very well in the South of England and the Midlands; the Lib Dems doing reasonably badly in the South but better in the North and Labour basically having a bad night of it everywhere. Like Sean I too believe that Tony Blair’s party will come third in the popular vote on election night behind both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Where I disagree with him (unfortunately from my perspective) is on his view that the Lib Dems will retain broadly the same number of council seats.

Given where we are in the electoral cycle, I can see the Lib Dems losing 200+ councillors on 03 May. This is not actually surprising - the party has made net gains of hundreds of seats in recent years and out of a total of almost 5000 councillors losing a couple of hundred is not so awful.

Mind you - no-one likes to lose, do they?!