UK politics: South Shields by-election

As expected, the South Shields parliamentary election gives the seat to Labour's Emma Lewell-Buck, with 12,493 votes. That represents 50.5 percent of those who cast a vote. 

Understandably, the political classes and the media claque want to focus on the percentage of the vote. But the a turnout tells a different tale. The 24,736 votes cast from a 63,765-strong constituency (38.8 percent based on 2010 figures) give Lewell-Buck a pathetically small mandate of 19.6 percent – less than one in five of the electorate.

Thus does the "none of the above" party win again, although this does not stop the newly-elected MP from being "absolutely ecstatic". And, in a graphic illustration of the disconnect afflicting the political classes, she burbles that the result showed Labour was connecting with voters and the coalition government was taking the country in the "wrong direction".

Aside from the winner, much hype attends the performance of UKIP, with candidate Richard Elvin picking up 5,988 votes to come a poor second. He gained 24 percent of the votes cast, displacing the Conservatives, who took second place in the general. 

Although this is a stellar performance for a party which did not field a candidate in the general election, the low turnout flatters all party performances. UKIP actually takes a 9.4 percent share of the electorate, compared with a 14.8 percent share at Eastleigh, and 7.3 percent of the available vote at Rotherham.

For the Conservatives, though, there was no relief. Candidate Karen Allen took 2,857 votes, compared with 7,886 polled by the party in the general. That put the Tories in a humiliating third place, behind UKIP, with a mere 4.5 percent of the electorate turning out to vote for them.

Ostensibly, this replicated the Eastleigh experience, where the Conservatives were also pushed into second place by UKIP. But there, the Tories lost 13.9 percent of their vote. In South Shields, they lost 10.1 percent of their general election vote. Marginally, this was a less worse performance, as is UKIP's performance not quite as good as it achieved in Eastleigh.

An independent Asian candidate, Ahmed Khan, came fourth, with 1,331 votes. This was 5.38 percent of the votes cast, which was enough for him to keep his deposit – a sign of the times perhaps.

At Eastleigh, there were ten other parties in the field, including the Monster Raving Loony Party, which collectively polled 2,056 votes. This time round, we only saw five contestants, outside the Lib-Lab-Con plus UKIP matrix. But, with the BNP (which did not stand at Eastleigh), they took a sizeable 3,046 votes, representing 12 percent of the votes cast. This fracturing of the vote is becoming a significant factor in electoral contests.

Within this, there was a collapse of the BNP vote, down from 2,382 in the general election, to a mere 711. This is the spectre at the feast. There is much talk about the source of the UKIP votes but – as with Rotherham where the BNP vote dropped from 3,906 at the general election to 1,804 in the 2012 by-election. As before – it looks as if Farage's party could be the beneficiary of the BNP collapse.

The other major story from South Shields was the misery of the Lib-Dems, the party crashing into seventh place to lose its deposit with a mere 352 votes, less than half the BNP level and not so very much more than the Loony party. This compared with third place in the general, when the candidate came third, polling 5,189 votes. 

Not all is doom and gloom though. The New Statesman sees green shoots of a Lib-Dem recovery appearing. Hope springs eternal.

COMMENT: COMBINED ELECTION THREAD

UK politics: elections 2013

We were filming in Harrogate yesterday, assembling material for the foundation video on The Harrogate Agenda – and took the opportunity to capture some election scenes. We were due to end up at South Shields, filming the count, but our press passes were withdrawn by South Tyneside Council, so we are excluded from the scene.

That brings me back home, with the result from South Shields not due until 2 am, or later – with the local authority results trickling in over the next two days. Hence, I have set up this post, which I will keep active and add to, from time to time, linking to a forum thread, to which we can all add information. 

In the meantime, Peter Kellner is telling us that, if you're looking for simple winners and losers, stick to soccer. The world of politics is more difficult to gauge. You can't argue with the sense of that, other than to observe that the real losers are always the voters. 

Already, though, Kellner is perpetrating his own brand of spin. As far as the national picture is concerned, he says, "vote share matters more than seats gained and lost". But that is not true. What really matters is turnout – the real measure of public engagement in the political process. 

My own personal soundings, on the basis of a very limited sample, suggest that there is nothing to write home about. Despite UKIP injecting some life into the campaign, the turnout was "about normal" – i.e., low. Details of the seats up for grabs are here.

Whether my prediction holds, we will have to wait and see. As Mr Cameron is braced for a "bloody nose", we'll post more as and when we have it. 

COMMENT THREAD

EU referendum: an absolutely decisive consideration

Facing the growing media hype over the local government elections, David Cameron has acted in his usual decisive fashion.

Mr Cameron, it appears, has indicated that he is preparing to hint that he is ready to give serious consideration to thinking about conceding, maybe, that there might be a possibility, sometime, of his schedule permitting him to explore the feasibility of drafting a proposal that might have a chance of going forward, the effect of which will raise hopes that there will be an elevated likelihood of a genuine debate on whether to table a motion suggesting that EU referendum legislation could be placed on the statute book before the next election, or even the one after that. 

This dangerous "drift to the right" has been picked up by the loss-making Guardian as clear evidence of something, while the Telegraph reverts to its traditional, tribal role and bigs up this very poor thing. 

Cue the duty sycophant, Peter Oborne, to tell us that voting UKIP will wreck the chances of having this referendum on "Europe".

"Stealing votes from the Tories", he whimpers, "guarantees the election of a pro-European Labour Party in thrall to the unions, which would waste no time in destroying Mr Cameron's remarkable public service reforms". 

This bizarre assertion that votes somehow "belong" to the Tories is heavily embedded in the Tory psyche, and is one of the reasons why voters are so keen to smack them in the teeth (figuratively speaking). This "entitlement culture" must be firmly dealt-with before it gets out of hand. 

Nevertheless, if Oborne got to vote today (he doesn't) he would make his mark for the Conservatives with enthusiasm. If possible, he would do so twice. As someone once remarked – her name escapes him – there is no alternative. 

There, and only there, he is right. There is no alternative to electoral fraud if the Tories are going to salvage something from this mess – unless they change their ways and begin to communicate with the electorate. Sadly for them, though, they seem to have lost the knack. 

COMMENT THREAD

UK politics: why we vote UKIP

On the same day that William Hague was on the BBC urging Tory supporters not to "waste" their vote on UKIP, the Surrey Herald & News breaks the news of a "secret" deal brokered between Conservative Surrey County Council leader, David Hodge, and his chief executive, David McNulty, to pay a £100,000 bonus.

McNulty is already paid an over-generous salary of around £210,000, and his "retention package" also includes an additional £31,000 per year over the next five years - the equivalent of the employers' contribution for the CEO as a member of the Local Government Pension Scheme. Thus, this pampered public official will have an equally pampered and prosperous retirement – all at the Council Tax payers' expense. 

There can be nothing is more calculated to infuriate than the overpayment of local council management, and we are told that critics have been left "gobsmacked" that the county council agreed the bumper bonus at a time when services are being cut and taxes increased. 

Yet Cllr Hodge is entirely unrepentant. "Surrey's chief executive manages a budget of £1.8 billion and 26,000 staff", he says. "Due to the scale of this task there are few people who are able to successfully handle this while also guiding the organisation as it uncovered savings of £280 million … blah, blah, blah, blah".

Outside the bubble, there cannot be a single taxpayer who buys Cllr Hodge's message, yet this is the member of a party which has as its leader David Cameron. And it is the very same Mr Cameronwho vowed to eradicate council "waste and propaganda" during the launch of his party's local authority election campaign. 

This is precisely the "disconnect" which drives voters into the arms of UKIP – not for any intrinsic merits of Farage's creaking one-man band, but simply as a reflection of the loathing the average mortal has for the cant and hypocrisy of the political classes. 

As long as public service is now seen by its practitioners as a license to fill their boots at the public's expense, voting for UKIP will always seem attractive. It is currently seen as the only way – short of violent revolution - to bring the political classes to heel. And, whatever Mr Hague may think, that is never a waste of a vote. 

COMMENT THREAD

Afghanistan: betrayed by the Afghan police?

After the news broke yesterday of the first fatalities in a Mastiff protected patrol vehicle, prime minister David Cameron spoke on BBC Radio 4's World at One, promising to look "carefully" at the Mastiff.

"I'm sure we want to look at that carefully and put in place everything we can to make sure our brave men and women have the best protective equipment," he said, words interpreted by the Telegraph as a promise to re-assess the safety of the vehicles. 

Whether intentional or not, though, by focusing in the performance of the Mastiff, Mr Cameron is diverting attention from the greater threat. As we pointed out in our earlier piece safety during road travel is not achieved by protected vehicles alone, but by a package of measures, foremost of which are persistent and systematic route clearance, combined with good intelligence and observation. 

Under the collective title of "route security", British forces have had some success, with no serious incidents since the loss of six soldier travelling in a Warrior MICV in March last year - which was not the first.

Even then, it was widely recognised that, if a large enough bomb us used, no vehicle of any type will protect its crew – hence the need for the raft of measures, making the protected vehicle the last line of defence. 

Why then this incident happened now has been the subject of some speculation, including by The Week in a glorious example of media inaccuracy, taken apart by Autonomous Mind.

We ourselves suggested that factors contributing to the incident could have been complacency, or simply that not enough resources were being devoted to force protection. But the media is not even on the same page, taking the same line as the prime minister, in focusing on the protection afforded by the vehicle. 

In fact, there is nothing substantially wrong with the vehicle. It is about as good a design as can be provided for the money, and its record is superb. But there is a lot wrong with a security situation where the Taliban can place a huge bomb on a major transport route, detonate it and escape detection. 

It is thus to the standard of route security that we must look, and to ask what might have changed to make journeys more perilous. 

And here, there may be an answer. Hitherto, route security has been the responsibility of British forces. But, on 28 February, 70 soldiers from the Scots Guards Battle Group returned home early from Afghanistan, having handed route security on Route 611 to the Afghan National Civil Order Police (pictured above). And it is on this road that the Mastiff was hit. 

Now, it may be a coincidence that, a mere two months after the Afghan police took over security, the Taliban managed to place a huge bomb, so large that it was able to flip a 27-ton armoured vehicle. 

There again, given the known inadequacies of the Afghan police, the fact that many of them are Taliban sympathisers, and the fact that so many are open to bribery, if one was seeking to discover how the Taliban were able to mount this attack, the Afghan police are the first place to look. It is by no means beyond the realms of possibility that our troops betrayed by them. 

Worryingly, as we go through the charade of handing over more and more responsibilities to the Afghans, preparatory to our troop withdrawals next year, our soldiers will become more and more dependent on them for their safety. If there was a betrayal, it may not be the last. 

COMMENT: COMBINED MASTIFF THREAD