Cllr Robert Alden is the Leader of the Conservative Group on Birmingham City Council.
Even on a night as bad for the Conservative Party as July 4th, there are lessons that people can learn when looking ahead to the next set of local elections and indeed the next General Election. Many of them are not rocket science but often the best lessons aren’t…
“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately” – Benjamin Franklin
United parties may not always win elections, but divided parties always lose them. The first thing to remember is we are all part of one Conservative family. Airing disputes between people that residents expect to be on the same side, simply increases the chances of losing seats.
If councillors and candidates standing in next year’s election take nothing else from this article, take this lesson.
“There are few things more dangerous than a mixture of power, arrogance and incompetence” – Bob Herbert
Polling by YouGov showed on the 17th of June 65 per cent of the public considered the Conservative Government to be incompetent. For a net incompetency rating of 52 per cent. For comparison, they showed at the time of the 2019 General Election a net five per cent competency rating.
Quite simply if voters think you are incompetent and don’t deliver what you say you will then you will have significant issues in getting re-elected.
“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand” – Vince Lombardi
I always tell our candidates don’t wake up the day after the election and regret the weekend you took off during the campaign, or the additional leaflet you turned down. Instead do everything you possible can to win, then even if you lose you will have no regrets.
Even among the results of this General Election there are some notable results that tell us a lot. Take Harrow East, won by Labour by almost 10,000 votes in 1997, part of London, and yet at this General Election, Bob Blackman was re-elected with an almost 12,000 vote majority. Yes, part of that is down to favourable demographic changes, but an awful lot of his result is down to the work Bob Blackman has done locally in his area for the last 14 years. Consistently involved himself in key local issues, and crucially showing that he is genuinely doing something about residents’ concerns. This gives Bob Blackman a profile in his constituency that has proven to transcend the weathervane of national politics.
At every round of elections, there are always seats that surprise if you look for them, and those surprises are normally always connected to highly active local campaigns.
“Q. Are we delivering too many leaflets? A. No” – Mark Pack
This rather connects to the previous quote and is actually about the Liberal Democrats, not Conservatives, but it makes the point. Convincing voters to vote for you is not just about doing things for residents but also about letting them know you are doing things. That is why leaflets are so important. Indeed, it is very, very rare indeed for a campaign to be successful in a close election if they don’t deliver leaflets.
“The Labour Party lost millions of voters because they failed to listen” – James Cleverly MP
Do not forget your core vote. In the General Election, we polled 6,827,112 votes, less than half of the 2019 vote. Around 2.7 million fewer votes than in 1997. Approximately 2 million fewer than in 1945. In fact you have to go back 101 years to 1923 to have the party polling fewer votes at a General Election.
That means millions of people who had only ever voted Conservative decided to either change how voted this time or not bother voting at all. This has been a clear risk visible in local elections and by-elections since late 2021.
The BBC elections analyst team highlighted that the higher the Conservative vote was in the 2019 General Election, the bigger the average reduction in the Conservative vote ended up being.
The impact of this change in voting habits at the General Election, combined with the Labour Party losing huge chunks of votes in their traditional safe seats, was an astonishing collapse in the number of what would be called traditional ‘safe seats’ for all parties.
Analysis of the results of the General Election shows that half of Labour’s MP’s now have majorities of less than 20 per cent. While only one Conservative polled over 50 per cent in the Country. Interestingly despite Labour’s huge majority the Guardian reported it will take a swing of under six per cent for Labour to lose their majority at the next election.
Tom Calver, Data Editor for the Times and Sunday Times meanwhile produced an astonishing chart showing the majorities of all MPs over the last three elections. He highlighted the ‘average’ seat has a majority of approximately just 6,700. Down from 11,200 in 2019. In a world where voters have become increasingly willing to change how they vote, no one should take winning a seat for granted.
Anyone seeking election next year would do well to ensure that people they have recorded as solid Conservatives who always vote get just as much literature this time as waverers would. After all, if you ignore someone, you never know when they will stop voting for you…
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” – Winston Churchill
Labour’s loss of traditional support can leave opportunities in unexpected wards going forward, or the chance to gain a seat on lower than usual vote share given the rise in minor parties.
For example, again analysis by the BBC found large swings from Labour to the Greens in seats with 18 per cent or more of the population aged 16 to 29 years old. Some Council wards with this breakdown, with the right campaign, could become tight 3 or 4-way marginals in the next few years.
No matter how bad things feel now, just a few weeks after the General Election, don’t let that feeling stand in the way of a deeper analysis of the votes in your area and if there are some changing trends that either means a previously safe seat is now at risk or a previously unlikely seat is suddenly an opportunity.
In conclusion, I’ll leave you with one more quote to never forget:
“Memo to the White House: Calling voters stupid is not a winning strategy” – Karl Rove.