Britain’s got talons

30 May 2009

The Spectator looks ahead to the local and European elections

Next Thursday, voters in the UK’s 12 European constituencies, 27 shire counties and seven unitary authorities will go to the polls in the most extraordinary circumstances. There is, as Martin Vander Weyer argues on page 25, no shortage of local issues to exercise us in the county council elections, just as the unratified Lisbon Treaty ought, in theory, to loom large in the European elections on 4 June. In practice, of course, this so-called ‘Super Thursday’ will be something altogether different: the first true snapshot of public fury at the MPs’ expenses scandal, and a measure of how deep that crisis really is.

Labour is bracing itself for a punishment beating that will make last year’s drubbing — in which it suffered its worst local election results in 40 years, was forced into third place and lost London to Boris Johnson — look like a light swipe with a feather duster. Even those close to Gordon Brown fear an electoral meltdown that will, quite simply, make his continued occupation of Number 10 untenable.

The Prime Minister is notoriously stubborn and prone to believe that bad opinion polls and local election results are merely evidence of popular ‘false consciousness’: the public, Brown insists, will come round eventually to his supposedly masterly command of the ‘issues’. But a sufficiently bad result for Labour on Thursday will render such convictions irrelevant.

Although a formal challenge to the incumbent party leader would require an alternative candidate to secure the backing of 20 per cent of Labour MPs (that is, 70 signatures), the dual pressure of round-robin letters and private representations to the PM by senior Cabinet colleagues could quickly force Mr Brown’s hand. It seems, faute de mieux, that Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, has emerged as the Pearly Dauphin and there is a growing consensus in Labour’s ranks that his cheery countenance and plain-speaking manner might spell the difference in the next general election between mere humiliation and outright catastrophe.

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Robert Sebag-Montefiore

May 29th, 2009 11:09am Report this comment

"Parliament, usually regarded by the public as a dusty institution, is now seen universally as a fortress of spivs and thieves." Isn't the truth that Parliament is seen as both? While we remain in the EU and 75% of our laws are imposed from Brussels how much remains of the importance and vitality of our ancient l
Legislature ? Shuffle the chairs around your moribund and moribound Titanic as you wish! Westminster is a stage show to divert us from the truth: that we are no longer a Sovereign Nation.

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