Election reflections

So, it's all over, after a lot of shouting. Politics certainly gets rough and dirty sometimes, but the UK-wide referendum campaign certainly plummeted to new depths of scaremongering, insults, half-truths and just downright lies. And that was just the Prime Minister.

For the Liberal Democrats, both the local, Scottish and Welsh elections proved that you can't just go from being a party of protest to being a party of government overnight without there being any consequences. The impact will be certainly be felt because it begins to soften the buffer between Labour and the Tories. A weaker Lib Dem party could limit Labour's options for coalition or co-operation, come the next General Election. It is a challenge for the left of British politics because Thursday's elections were undoubtedly a victory for David Cameron. The Prime Minister's authority will become stronger – as it has begun to do so already in recent months – while undermining the junior partner in the Coalition further. Nick Clegg will hang on because there is still no real appetite for decapitating yet another leader – the risks of a bloodbath are just too high in government. And it's hardly in Cameron's interest either.

As for the referendum, it was disappointing that the public took against the Alternative Vote in such numbers. I live in Lambeth, one of only eight areas which voted yes – no surprises there given the support my own MP has given to the Yes campaign and the generally progressive nature of the politics around these parts. Others too have pointed out that Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh were all areas that voted for change – all reasonably affluent, liberal bastions of democracy where it's probably fair to say that a higher than average number of people understand and support the alternatives to our current voting system. The dilemma now will be whether to come back with another question as Chris Huhne has mooted, or whether it becomes part of Labour or Liberal Democrat manifestos in the future – maybe the closely related AV Plus, or the Single Transferable Vote. But while the public voting overwhelmingly against change, our political institutions are still tired and dysfunctional and the issues around plurality and accessibility to smaller parties in our democracy will only become more apparent.

Nick Clegg didn't help matters, of course, but it was fundamentally a matter of timing and utter naivety on the part of the Liberal Democrat leadership that we had this referendum when we did. The idea that the Tories – and more conservative Labour stalwarts - would just play nicely and allow the referendum to pass by as a harmless sideshow. Given a year or so, and the opportunity to heal significant wounds caused by the Lib Dem u-turn on tuition fees and the outcome may have been different. It may also have influenced the thinking behind the campaign itself, which seemed to rely on stoking up anti-political feeling and gushing support from liberal celebrities such as Eddie Izzard, Stephen Fry and Helena Bonham-Carter. They're fine entertainers and personalities, but they don't do hard politics. Sometimes you need seasoned politicians to come out and fight a vigorous campaign, and not have to resort to the pathetic campaign tactics that the Yes campaign used at times. The failure of the Yes campaign made ample space for the likes of Labour big beasts John Prescott and John Reid at the No campaign, whose messages resonated with ordinary voters that were ultimately confused by the multitude of essentially academically derived arguments pushed by AV's 'supporters'. (And it might have helped if the Yes campaign had stopped saying 'it's not perfect and not what we really want, but...').

With people distracted by high unemployment, and the simultaneous destruction of public services, sticking with the status quo was just the simplest choice requiring less thinking at the ballot box. Any large-scale progressive campaign in future should remember that.

The fuss over AV might have also overshadowed the campaigns in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Suddenly, the political establishment has woken up to the reality of the Scottish National Party governing with a not insubstantial majority, and the clearest mandate yet for any party in the Scottish Parliament. Without anyone noticing, the break-up of the United Kingdom within 10-15 years has suddenly become more of a possibility. The political consequences of that can only begin to be imagined. Certainly, there is no reason to believe that Labour could ever make a comeback in Scotland without a serious reappraisal of what their role could be in a changed environment, and it's positive to hear that Ed Mililband has ordered a root-and-branch review of Scottish Labour.

On the whole, Labour didn't fare too badly but Ed Miliband was no runaway winner. The journey on the road to recovering the party's electoral fortunes has begun but negotiating the obstacles placed in front of it by the Coalition has added an extra dimension. Re-drawn boundaries, a deficit reduction plan that may or may not work and new thinking around public services will challenge Labour's strategists for months to come. Now these elections and the referendum are out of the way, it's time for some serious, credible and meaningful opposition from Ed.

Constituency profile: Ipswich

A little look at the politics and the people of my home town, which had a Tory-Liberal Democrat administration before it became fashionable.

The historic Wet Dock - one of Ipswich's more sought-after areas

As the administrative capital of Suffolk, and one of the few English counties with no motorways, it's hardly surprising that the town of Ipswich has tried for city status in recent years. Despite first impressions, an 'everyone knows everyone' vibe radiates from the main shopping streets to its football ground. The earliest continuous settlement in England, dating back to the seventh century, Ipswich was, and still is a major East Anglian shipping port. The town's name comes from the medieval Gippeswyk, meaning 'town on the Gipping' (the river Gipping a tributary of the picturesque river Orwell – inspiring the pen name of the author of 1984 and Animal Farm).

Deceptively close to the capital – London is but an hour away on the Great Eastern main line – Ipswich has many parallels with towns such as Reading or Northampton, but none of the advantages of Norwich, its historic rival.

Yet for all its market-town spirit, there's still a somewhat urban feel about the town centre, which in parts retains a weathered 1960s grittiness. The local football team, Ipswich Town, much maligned since its Premier League days is a constant reminder of this contradiction – a large stadium on Portman Road surrounded by tall modern office developments.

Ipswich has actively sought new economic fortunes in the last 20 years or so, with the decline in big industry biased towards agriculture and the growth of the DINKY - 'double income, no kids' - class. Under Labour, the local authority aspired to attract young professionals to new and converted apartments on the Wet Dock, providing desirable homes for the workforce of Ipswich's insurance giants which have clustered there over the past 40 years or so, as well as those who choose to commute further.

Apart from short interludes in the seventies and late eighties, the town's industrial past has unsurprisingly lent itself to long periods of Labour rule. Surrounded by Conservative MPs (Tim Yeo to the south, and Dan Poulter to the north) as well as a Tory Suffolk county administration, it was hardly surprising that the MP for the majority of the town would slip out of Labour's hands in 2010. Benedict Gummer, son of former Suffolk Coastal MP John, keeps the family torch burning in this corner of East Anglia, beating the Labour incumbent Chris Mole by just 2,000 votes.

Yet some locals feel that the sort of growth in evidence in the town just a few years ago has already begun to reverse:

“Ipswich has had a somewhat depressed feel in the last, say, two years compared to the buoyancy of four or five years ago” says Rob Adams, a local financial adviser.

Adding weight to this view was the announcement by French insurance giant Axa, who in recent weeks have announced that up to 56 jobs are under threat. “The greatest indicator of this is the rapid development and expansion of the building around the docks. As well as the new apartments, a lot of bars, restaurants and hotels also opened, making for a very desirable residential area” adds Rob.

“But with the economic 'pulling in of horns' brought about by the banking collapse of 2008, that expansion has ceased."

This new type of development contrasts with the high-end properties around Christchurch Park in the centre of the town, the traditional retreat for those who 'made it' and chose to live within the borough's boundary.

The town has benefited from a higher proportion of students, making for a night-time 'buzz', and as Rob observes, “it's no coincidence that one of Ipswich's most thriving bars is just a stone's throw from the main University College Suffolk building!”. New facilities house clinical skills, sports and exercise laboratories which are giving local young people new opportunities.

It wasn't always like this however. The gap between the old, industrialised town and the new centre of aspiration was hard for some. Like many provincial towns, Ipswich suffered its own brain drain and despite a number of good or outstanding schools, many young people have fled the area.

“I counted down the days to leave, got as far away as possible and won't go back!” said another native, Anna Browning, now resident on the south coast. “I didn't feel it had any character or anything going for it – it was just another place at the end of the A12”.

Some locals are more optimistic about the town's fortunes. The choice of MP for the area will more likely reflect national opinion, but the make-up of the council has pointed towards the 'new politics' for some years. And, if the Westminster coalition government was an unholy alliance in 2010, this was nothing new in Ipswich. The borough council was run by Labour for a solid quarter-century until 2004 when a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition took over. Frequent borough elections have not altered this arrangement and although Labour is currently the largest party - with 23 councillors - it remains in opposition. The controlling majority is composed of 18 Conservatives and 7 Lib Dems and there are few signs that this may change any time soon.

On a county level, Labour support continues to be concentrated in the tough Priory Heath and Gainsborough, and despite the general collapse in support for the party in the Suffolk county elections in 2009, it continues to hang on to two seats in the centre of the town.

This core support, coupled with tendency of this urban concentration to turn red, means that Labour could well regain the parliamentary seat at the next general election.

To AV, or to AV not?

I'm not sure how many times the Prime Minister has been stopped in a busy shopping street by one of those ever-so-nice market research people to explain his views on the sort of washing powder he prefers, or his preferred brand of mayonnaise. I suspect it hasn't happened very often. But most people will have experienced such an encounter at one time or another, being asked to rank their preferences with a 1,2, 3 and 4 and so on. This 'complicated' task is mathematically very similar to voting for contestants on the X-Factor, or the Eurovision Song Contest.

Choosing a brand of mayonnaise, a preferred washing powder or Simon Cowell's next signing are just three of the sorts of tasks the British public are expected to grapple with on a daily basis. It's also a bit like selecting an MP under a new-fangled voting system – the Alternative Vote (AV). But does David Cameron place such faith in the intelligence of his fellow citizens?

Like the opponents of decimalisation in the late sixties and early seventies, the No to AV campaign, led by Cameron himself, has decreed that AV is complicated and could be costly to explain and run. The evidence would, however, suggest that the electorate are rather more comfortable with changing the way we do elections than the vested interests of the Conservative party – and the more tribalist elements of the Labour party - might like to think. One poll in the last week showed the Yes campaign was 10 points in the lead, although this has not quite been matched by other polls.

Recognising its weaker position, the No campaign has scrambled to rely on an incoherent ragbag of arguments, which can hardly be said to be responding to a general public disenchantment with politics and politicians. It is also trying desperately to ignore the statistical evidence – that every government since 1945 has been elected with less than 50% of the vote. Even with its landslide victory in 1997, Labour only secured 43.2% of the vote. And in some seats at the last election, seven out of every 10 voters wanted other candidates.

The No campaign tells us that hung parliaments are more likely with AV, as if this is in itself an undesirable outcome. Playing on the supposed British preference for strong, single party majority, they've completely forgotten the democratically questionable results thrown up by hung parliaments of the 1920s, 1970s and in 2010 – all under First Past the Post. Each resulted in a single party being unable to effectively govern alone.

Yet the No campaign, as personified by local organiser and 2010 Tory candidate Chris Philp at a talk given to City University students in January, Philp criticised Clegg for 'making deals in dark rooms' – despite the essential presence of the third party in supporting Cameron's government. He then made an extraordinary personal attack on Clegg in his role as 'kingmaker'. But it's clearly news to Philps that the Conservatives can no longer rely on the support of a healthy chunk of the electorate to form a majority government. Those who oppose AV in the Labour camp are similarly misguided. And, where I slightly depart from the Yes campaign's official line, I believe coalitions will remain just as likely, if not more likely in the future as a result of the slow ebbing away of support for the major parties, including the Lib Dems. Negotiating a programme for government with other parties will become a part of the course to Downing Street.

We've easily established there's nothing difficult about AV. The hard work is left to returning officers and people who count the votes – and they're paid to do that. It will mean that election results come in much later in the day. That's a price worth paying for a move to fairer representation. What's more, the Yes campaign knows that there is still a clamour for change, despite general public disenchantment with the Lib Dems. And although introducing AV didn't feature in any of the manifestos in 2010, neither was 'business as usual' acceptable to the electorate in the cold light of day after the MPs expenses' scandal.

As Serge Lourie, AV proponent and a long-serving Richmond councillor also said at City, it's time for 'grown-up politics'. Lourie conceded that no electoral system was perfect, but the 2010 General Election was a rejection of the old politics, and the absurdities of tactical voting and MPs with 'jobs for life'. For me, if the Liberal Democrat side of the Coalition is worth anything, it's worth a push for change.

The crushing brutality of the new state

Crowds of people 'celebrate' the coming of the Big Society

 Yesterday afternoon George Osborne announced the biggest cuts in public spending in 80 years. In a systematically crude and overtly political move, Osborne sought to rewrite the chapter of history book which covered the banking crisis, which forced governments all around the world back into a classic Keynesian model of injecting capital into the economy, telling the British people upfront that they had to pay the price for a decade of free market gambling.

Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers who rely on government contracts face the misery of unemployment, knocking their self-confidence and forcing them into Iain Duncan-Smith's new, 'progressive' welfare system.

People already dependent on state handouts, who know what it's like to simply live hand-to-mouth, will face an even more crushing disadvantage as local authorities cut back the services which they rely upon to enjoy any sort of quality of life. Citizens of rural areas will quickly find their wings clipped and face disconnection and isolation on an enormous scale when their bus services are axed - because the Department for Transport will no longer support the subsidy for their local routes - making it far more difficult to find an already scarce job, or enrol on a college course. And, for those who can't afford £500 iPads or home PCs, small community libraries will wither when local authorities find there's actually quite a high market value in a solid Victorian building ripe for redevelopment.

But, hold on! Like an omnipresent supernatural force, the Big Society is here to step in and fill the gaps left by dedicated public sector workers! They who once ran high-quality local services will run your library for free and happily shuttle across the Shire counties in minibuses, ferrying pensioners, aspiring students and single mothers between centres of prosperity, because, after all, they've nothing better to do anymore. Who needs a salary?

Sarcasm aside, the broader political question obstinately remains. Does George Osborne really have the credibility to redefine fairness, a man who, as Johann Hari pointed out today, is the beneficiary of a £4m trust fund he did nothing whatsoever to earn? Does he really get what it means to live in a town dependent on the public sector for employment and endemic post-industrial health problems? The state as we know it, as a provider of public services and an enabler of prosperity, is being redefined so fundamentally and so rapidly, that the howls of protest over one cutback are being noisily drowned out when another is announced.

Worse still, when the government decides it's simply going to stop doing something, the persistent apathy which pervades our parliamentary system means that our democratic institutions won't be strong enough to resist, as Paul Richards' excellent book points out:

"On the housing estates and in the inner cities, democracy is ending not with a bang, but with a whimper. If democracy fails, it won't be because of a coup d'etat. There'll be no revolutionary soviets or troops in the streets, no capture of the radio stations and martial law. It will die because we couldn't be bothered to save it".*

We might agree with some of the decisions being made by the coalition, particularly when they genuinely enhance individual liberty and protect the public services we value most, but struggle to understand or support public policy initiatives which the coalition idly leave to the Big Society - an initiative which the Tory party have struggled to comprehend, let alone the public at large.

It's Government, Jim, but not as we know it.