A dire night for Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems
David Cameron just congratulated Alex Salmond on his “emphatic victory” in Scotland. Perhaps without having thought that much about the subject, he implied that it was a matter for Holyrood if and when it calls a referendum.
Elsewhere it’s been suggested that’s a moot constitutional point. But David Cameron sounded like a man who thought it was Scotland’s call and not, incidentally, like a man who would think of pushing for a pre-emptive Scottish referendum to bounce Alex Salmond into a test of strength at a time of London’s choosing, not the SNP’s.
Read more: Alex Salmond’s SNP makes big gains in Scottish elections
Back on the English councils contest, just where this ends up in terms of tally of councillors is hotting up. This tally of past Labour councillor gains gives you some comparators, but it looks like, as one Tory whip just called to tell me, we could be in for a 1980-type outcome.
In 1980 Labour gained 601 councillors – one year into Margaret Thatcher’s government, as he quickly pointed out, in dodgy economic times and a curtain-raiser to 17 years of Tory rule.
By the way, a passing pleasure for anyone watching election coverage today might be to play “Gravesham bingo” and see how many times Labour spokespeople mention this so far solitary council gain in the south east.
In Lib Dem land, some interesting successes (you couldn’t even call it a silver lining on a day like today but I pass it on anyway). In those seats where there are established Lib Dem MPs, they often look like they’d have kept their seats in a repeat contest.
Chris Huhne’s election-winning machine in Eastleigh looks to be in good nick. I’m told the distribution system is so effective that they manage to sell advertising space in their Focus leaflets. Extrapolating from the council results, the figures for the area covered by Nick Clegg’s seat, Sheffield Hallam (long a Tory seat before the Lib Dems took it), suggest that he would hold onto it (he did get a 15,000 majority in 2010).
Nick Clegg aides were saying before the elections that a 15 per cent + share of the vote would be a decent base camp for future growth because it would prove the party could win more than the 10 per cent share of the vote it was getting in opinion polls.
Problem is the Lib Dems traditionally get 5 per cent more in local elections share of the vote than they do in general elections because of their strong local presence and activism. So there is a strong case for arguing that the 15 per cent share of the vote last night for the Lib Dems supports the opinion polls’ persistent 10 per cent rating for the question “how would you vote in a general election?” And that is dire for the Lib Dems.
Looking into some of the detail of the council results, you repeatedly see signs of Lib Dem votes transferring to the Tories. You also see votes from the Lib Dems going to a third-placed Labour, the unravelling of what remained of the anti-Tory tactical vote. The votes going across to the Labour Party were enough in some wards you look at to allow the Tories to hold on to, or in some cases to win, a seat from the Lib Dems.
No sign of the Greens yet becoming the repository of disgruntled left of centre opponents of the main parties – though you can’t rule that out in the coming years. The BNP appears to have lost almost all its past council gains.