Ukip wounds Tories and mauls Labour

The local government and electoral map that the 2013 local elections have created is a peculiar-looking one. One could have got long odds on the combination of the Conservatives losing Lincolnshire and holding Staffordshire and Somerset.

Labour’s performance in the marginal seats the party needs to win to gain a majority was very patchy – strong in Hastings, for example, but unimpressive in Bristol North West and Worcester.

In most areas where one can compare directly with 2012, the votes for Labour and the Conservatives have fallen. Labour did very well in 2012 – a set of elections mostly in urban areas – but have failed to build on it in 2013.

It is pretty disappointing for Labour, given what the party achieved last year.

Winning Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, plus the North Tyneside mayoralty, was the minimum that dignity required. The probability that the party will govern as a minority in Lancashire and Northumberland is additional opportunity for the party to implement its policies, but it is pretty disappointing for Labour, given what the party achieved last year.

The Liberal Democrats can draw some comfort from doing reasonably well in some of their strongholds like Cheltenham and the recently gained seat of Eastbourne. But, in a bit of a contrast with 2011 and 2012, they also had some reverses in some previously strong areas.

They ran behind the Conservatives in three of their four Somerset seats, and were run uncomfortably close by Ukip in the Eastleigh parliamentary seat they successfully defended in the February by-election.

Higher than expected

Ukip’s vote was higher than many (including me) expected, and it was also better distributed in terms of winning seats. They now have substantial groups on several county councils, and were in the lead in at least two Westminster constituencies (Boston & Skegness and Great Yarmouth).

They have an opportunity to build a permanent political presence. But there are several examples of new parties that have swept in and promptly swept out again, having disappointed expectations, like the first SNP wave of 1967-68.

Ukip now have a weight of expectations for representing people and delivering things that they have not experienced before.

Local government and politics in general may not have changed much, but Ukip have – they now have a weight of expectations for representing people and delivering things that they have not experienced before.

A lot of the analysis before the election assumed that Ukip would do most damage to the Conservative party because it is a party of the populist right wing.

Wide appeal

Their core support may fit that profile, but in the 2013 elections their appeal reached more widely and was based on rejection of politics as usual. Some voters will have wanted to give the coalition government a bloody nose, and given Ukip their vote.

Had the option not been available they might have lined up behind Labour (as they tended to in 2012). It is possible – although the work still needs to be done with the numbers – that as well as harming the Tories in hitherto “safe” counties like Lincolnshire and Norfolk, they might have impeded Labour in Lancashire and the Lib Dems in Somerset.

The Conservatives may have the most obvious wounds, but the opposition has also been given a bit of a mauling.

Lewis Baston is senior research fellow at Democratic Audit