Some weeks ago, via Bob, I found that someone’s taken the time to produce an interesting review of this blog on politics.co.uk (even if they did give it 5/10!):
From the photo of the Helvellyn range which sweeps across his blog, Duncan clearly likes to get away from it all, which is rather apt.
For the politics of Duncan’s world is a socialist vs BNP battle for supremacy, with the middle ground rather cut out.
This is opinionated, gritty politics with a northern perspective.
Good on strikes, very good on fighting fascism.
I think the above is a fair comment and I’m impressed that the reviewer, whoever they are, recognised the Helvellyn range in the picture above.
I never set out to provide a comprehensive political blog, mainly because I find what passes for mainstream politics terminally tedious, endless bickering over soundbites, outrage over non-events (who is Damien McBride anyway?) frantically consumed by denizens of the Westminster bubble and little in the way of substantive policy disagreements.
Events like the greatest financial and economic crisis since the 1930′s hasn’t substantially altered this. Input data that the global financial system has gone into meltdown and the outcomes from New Labour, Tories and the Lib Dems are policy proposals that basically boil down to winding it up and letting it go again with the public footing the bill.
It’s not simply a matter of personal preference though. I think that what passes for mainstream politics is gradually becoming less important.
Of course, next year’s General Election can only be won by the Tories or Labour, with the possibility of the Lib Dems appearing as a side-kick, and the overwhelmingly majority of voters will back one of these three parties. That’s not the point though.
My argument is simple. In Britain, support for all three mainstream parties is in long-term decline. This means that these votes are up for grabs. Engagement with the formal political process, as indicated by acts such as voting or joining a political party, is declining and among those who still indulge in these activities they are more likely to back alternative parties such as the Greens or UKIP.
A look at a couple of recent anecdotal examples from the last two parliamentary by-elections illustrates these trends.
The main stories about the Norwich North and Glasgow North East by-elections were that the Tories and Labour won respectively not that these predictable victories masked what could be worrying trends for the victors.
In 1997 in Norwich North, on a turnout of 75.9%, 94.8% of voters backed one of the three main parties. In the by-election earlier this year 45.9% of eligible voters turned out and, of these, only 71.1% voted for either Labour, Tories of the Lib Dems. Turnout is generally lower at by-elections but turnout dropped by a similar figure between 1997 and 2001 as between 2005 and 2009.
A comfortable win in Glasgow North East cheered up Labour partisans fearing a total electoral wipeout next year yet their total vote, 12,231 votes, is the lowest total scored by the party in this constituency, and Glasgow Springburn which had largely the same boundaries, since a Coalition Conservative candidate won the seat in 1918. It’s also roughly 10,000 votes lower than Labour used to score in this seat in the 1980′s and 90′s.
Isolated examples? Voters unmotivated by by-elections or using it as a chance to cast a protest vote? Unfortunately, that is if you work for the Labour Party or in Conservative Central Office, there’s more to this than the odd piece of anecdotal evidence.
During the course of my degree I spent some particularly dull time looking through the electoral statistics of established European democracies since the mid-1960′s. The evidence is tedious but the conclusions make for interesting reading. The evidence suggests that social-democracy in Western Europe is in long-term secular decline and that there is little that can be done to halt or reverse this. I don’t have the figures to hand and anyone (anyone?) interested would do well to consult the invaluable book The European Voter. The authors make a compelling case.
The results of the last European elections more or less confirmed this suspicion in my mind. Whether in government or in opposition, social democratic parties were punished by voters across the continent.
Traditionally, social democratic parties, such as Labour Party in Britain and the SPD in Germany, have drawn their support predominately from working-class voters. Therefore, it is disproportionately these voters being disenfranchised and opening up political opportunities for other parties, even if they, such as the multitude of groups on the socialist left, are seemingly unwilling to take them.
Whatever happens next year I doubt whether these long-term trends will be halted and I confidently predict that parties without the words ‘Labour’, ‘Conservative’ and ‘Liberal Democrat’ in their names will score some of their best results yet. The mainstream political parties will continue to decay and the most interesting political developments will be which political forces, if any, from the right or the left manage to harness this support.
