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London mayor and local election results – live coverage
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Labour has also won in Swansea, Steven Morris reports.
Nick Clegg has said he is “really sad that so many” of his Liberal Democrat councillors have lost their seats.
The government is reducing immigration, is changing the law on the EU to institute referendums where there is a major transfer of power to Europe, Hague says – pointing out to rightwingers that the Tories are still pursuing some of their pet projects.
Should the Tories turn right or head towards the centre?
Neither, says Hague. We carry on turning around this country’s economy and “repairing the damage from the last government”, plus reforming welfare and education.
Hague says the election results are not about gay marriage or Lords reform.
Of course the Tories would do things differently if they were governing alone, he says – but they aren’t. “It’s a coalition government and I think the country understands that.”
“These are not phenomenally good results for the Labour party”, says Hague – they can’t even get 40% of the vote.
Hague says what Labour wants is for the government to spend more and borrow more and that is what got us into this mess in the first place.
William Hague says the weather had no influence and he is not blaming anything on the rain.
Asked about the low turnout (estimated at 32%), Harman says those not voting were also sending that negative message to the government.
She says there is a sense of “can anybody really deal with this?” – referring to the economy.
She also said the weather dampened turnout – “not drizzle, but driving rain, with the leaflets almost dematerialising in your hands”.
Harman says she is “not crowing” about the results.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, and Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader, are being interviewed on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.
Harman says these are very encouraging results, and Labour won councils it wasn’t expecting to win, and councils where the party had lost MPs in 2010.
The message is that the government has to change course on the economy, and “it still appears to be not listening”.
William Hague has hinted that the Tories cannot do everything they would like to in government because they are in coalition with the Lib Dems, perhaps responding to Tory voices calling for a swing to the right.
Of course the Conservatives can’t do everything that we would like to do in government because we are in coalition within the Liberal Democrats. Of course it is what we will be fighting for in the next general election in 2015.
Tory backbencher Gary Streeter has added his voice to calls for a swing to the right in response to the Conservatives’ council losses. He said Tory supporters are “gagging” for more traditional rightwing policies in areas such as law and order.
If the tail has been wagging the dog a little bit too much, we have got to be a little more small “c” and big “C” conservative on crime, law and order, some of our traditional policies. That’s what our supporters are waiting, indeed gagging, to see.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, has attempted to play down the Tory losses on BBC1′s Breakfast.
These results – while it is never a good feeling to lose councillors – are well within the normal range of mid-term results for governments and I think not so good for the opposition who are not getting 40% of the vote. You wouldn’t look at this and say Labour was on track to win a general election at all.
As Andrew Sparrow reported last night, the BBC has calculated that if people had voted in a general election in the way that they voted in the local elections, Labour would now be in power. The Commons would look like this:
Labour: 368 MPs
Conservatives: 218 MPs
Lib Dems: 39 MPs
That would mean a Labour government with a majority of 86.
Hague also appears to have given a bit of a hostage to fortune. We still don’t know the actual voting figures from yesterday. It could easily transpire that Labour got 40% of the vote.
Bradford has voted against having an elected mayor. The vote was 44.87% for and 55.13% against.
Earlier defence minister Gerald Howarth pinned some of the blame for the Tories’ poor performance on support for policies such as gay marriage and Bernard Jenkin, a backbencher, said David Cameron should resist Lib Dem obsessions like Lords reform.
Tim Farron (left), the Lib Dem president, has responded, saying swinging to the right would be a “bonkers” strategy for the Tories. Farron said:
It was almost amazing that the Tories managed to not win the 2010 general election but the thought that they would somehow build themselves up to a majority by lurching to the right to try and bring back people they think they’ve lost to Ukip – in so far as anyone in the Tory party should take political and strategic advice from me, can I just advise them that would be bonkers.
The thought that people who are struggling, worried for their jobs, concerned about the prices of things going up and generally feeling the pinch … have their votes swayed by Lords reform is just madness.
He then defended the planned democratisation of the upper house, saying:
All three parties went into the last election saying we should reform and we were 100 years overdue for doing that. It should be a straightforward consensual job.
Back to George Galloway for a second. You can always rely on him for a good quote. Here he is on Respect’s victories in Bradford:
We took the head off the rotten fish that is the Bradford city council. We defeated a council leader who sat there, apparently impregnable and utterly complacent, for a decade and a half or more.
He said Respect offered voters a “viable alternative to the Tweedledee, Tweedledum, Tweedledee-and-a-half politics that the three mainstream leaderships are offering them”.
Labour has gained control of Caerphilly council in South Wales in a landslide election victory, and has also captured Newport. The latest figures show Labour will be in outright control of six of Wales’s 22 councils – two more than its total four years ago. Welsh Labour leader Carwyn Jones said: “We have reconnected with people and our community campaigning has resonated with voters right across Wales.”
My colleague Helen Pidd has just come back from the Respect after-party in Bradford, where George Galloway was waiting, arms outstretched, to welcome his party’s five new councillors into the world of municipal politics.
Horns were blaring outside the Respect HQ in Grattan Road to herald the city’s newly elected politicians. One car was playing the Bradford Spring rap, an ode to Galloway and his disciples sung in a broad West Yorkshire accent (“There is this guy who came into town, walked into Bradford, took a look around, realised we were sinking in a hole – Odeon, Westfield … “).
Around 50 supporters crammed into the back room of Chambers solicitors, which has been the Respect temporary nerve centre since Galloway decided to contest the Bradford West byelection in March. He then gave a speech christening the councillors the “Magnificent Five”, saying: “In five weeks we have won five seats. Wait till we’ve been here for 52 weeks.”
Never a man to underplay an achievement, Galloway said: “The story of the night is Respect in Bradford. Because Labour in the country did really well. And Labour in Bradford, where we were not standing, did really well. Where we were standing, they did catastrophically badly. The lesson there is that if we were standing everywhere, we would give them a run for their money. And the result would be that they would be forced to become more like us.”
Steven Morris emails to tell me that BBC Radio Wales is reporting definitively that Labour has taken control of Cardiff from a Lib Dem-Plaid Cymru adminstration.
The Lib Dems have sent out a briefing note. They say that “in MPs’ seats, we are doing well … Portsmouth, Cheltenham, Eastleigh, Southport, Cheadle and Colchester”. In northern councils, “there simply aren’t any Conservatives. If you want to give the Government a kicking, we’re the only ones around to kick.”
They add: “We’re taking seats from the Tories: Brentwood, Southport, Cheadle and Colchester.”
But to be honest good news is a bit thin on the ground for them.
Mark Romsbottom, the leader of the Lib Dem group on Manchester council, gave this rather stilted statement: “I’m still committed to the Liberal Democratic party and I’m certainly not angry with Nick Clegg or the national party. I’ll make sure I’ll keep campaigning for the Lib Dems.”
He added: “I think the anger has definitely dimmed down in the last two years, people are now prepared to talk and listen to us whereas last year was very, very tough there was a lot of anger on the doorstep.”
The Lib Dems lost all the seats they fought in Manchester. All of them went to Labour.
Of Ed Miliband’s party, the Lib Dems concede:
They have indeed made great gains tonight, but it isn’t a whole-hearted, convincing win. They are losing a few seats to fringe parties such as Respect, this is nothing out of the ordinary for a midterm opposition party, and there are strong doubts over whether Labour can do well in their London and Scottish heartlands.
It was expected that the coalition would attempt to obscure large Labour council gains across the board by emphasising their probable loss in the London mayoral contest and possible loss of control of Glasgow council.
The Lib Dems also play down Labour gains by saying that the Daily Mirror said yesterday Labour might win 1,000 seats.
“David Miliband’s party could gain more than 700 seats, while the Tories look set to lose a third of their councillors,” reports the Daily Mail. Technically correct. (Thanks to Ruth Barnett.)
Jenny Jones, the Green candidate for London mayor, has just posted two rather forlorn tweets. She asked her supporters to give their second-preference votes to Ken Livingstone, the Labour candidate, who looks likely to lose to Tory Boris Johnson. Jones tweeted:
If Boris has won, my next four years will be much less interesting & very frustrating at so much turning back of the environmental agenda.
— Jenny Jones (@GreenJennyJones) May 4, 2012
If Ken has won, my next four years will be exhausting, challenging & v exciting. Plus a bright future for walking & #cycling in London.
— Jenny Jones (@GreenJennyJones) May 4, 2012
Sorry to be self obsessed on an issue that will affect 7.5m Londoners, but all politics is personal in some way. So, did Labour do it?
— Jenny Jones (@GreenJennyJones) May 4, 2012
John Prescott has got wind of the fact the Lib Dems’ number of councillors has fallen to a historic low.
The Lib Dems have less than 3000 councillors for the first time ever. Welcome to #ArmaCleggon
— John Prescott (@johnprescott) May 4, 2012
I’m not sure if #ArmaCleggon is going to catch on as a description of tonight’s results, but Prescott knows a lot more about Twitter than me …
The BBC is reporting that the number of Liberal Democrat councillors has fallen below 3,000 for the first time since the party was formed in 1988.
Good morning and welcome to today’s live coverage of the local election results in England, Wales and Scotland and the London mayoral contest. Many thanks to Andrew Sparrow, who has been covering events live overnight.
Here’s an early morning summary.
• Labour has soundly beaten the Conservatives in the local elections in a result that has been welcomed by the opposition as evidence that it is mounting a strong fightback.Many of the results are not yet in, but the BBC say the results are equivalent to Labour having 39% of the national vote, with the Conservatives on 31% and the Lib Dems on 16%. A Labour source said these were “strong results” for the party, and their best in local elections since 1997. In a general election, this would give Labour a large majority. Labour’s performance was good rather than brilliant, but the party has taken heart from the fact that it is winning in some of the marginal constituencies in the Midlands and the south of England that it needs to win if it wants to form a government in 2015. Here’s a full list of the English results that are in.
• Tory MPs, including a minister, have openly urged David Cameron to adopt more traditional Conservative policies in response to his party’s drubbing at the polls. Gerald Howarth, a defence minister, said that Cameron should accept that Tory voters do not approve of gay marriage. Bernard Jenkin, a backbencher, said Cameron should resist Lib Dem obsessions like Lords reform. And Gary Streeter, another backbencher, said the party had to restore its reputation for competence.
The interesting thing for me was that, doing a lot of visits on the doorstep, that people were unhappy, obviously about the last two months of our government, and many of them said we can accept many things from the Conservative party, but we expect them to be competent. And that was one of the messages coming across … We have to regain our sure-footedness if we are going to recapture lost trust and confidence.
These are the opening shots in a blame game that it likely to continue over the coming days.
• Cameron’s plan to develop a network of high-profile, directly-elected mayors outside London has suffered a severe setback. Manchester, Nottingham and Coventry have all voted against having a mayor. Birmingham, which was expected to vote yes, also seems set to vote no. Another six cities are also voting, but most of those are also expected to reject the proposal. Other cities have rejected the directly-elected mayor model in the past, but to have so many big cities rejecting the model at one time could kill this as a priority local government reform for many years to come.
• Turnout seems to be 32% – the lowest figure since 2000.
• George Galloway’s Respect party has continued to disrupt the mainstream political establishment by winning five seats on Bradford council, including one from its Labour leader. The Tories are depicting it as a serious blow to Labour (which it is), but it also underlines how vulnerable all the main parties are to insurgent outsiders.
• The Lib Dems have sought to brush aside their losses as an inevitable result of being in government. Ed Davey, the energy secretary, said the Liberals had been waiting 90 years to suffer mid-term blues. As my colleague Patrick Wintour reports, Nick Clegg intends to respond to the results by trying to persuade Lib Dems that the results do not spell inevitable electoral wipeout in 2015.
• Labour has been celebrating particularly good results in Wales. Carwyn Jones, the Labour Welsh first minister, said: “The momentum is clearly with Welsh Labour. We are taking seats from every party across the country – with impressive gains in Wrexham, Caerphilly, Newport and a total Lib Dem wipe out in Merthyr. We have reconnected with people and our community campaigning has resonated with voters right across Wales.” Here are the results from Wales that are in.
• Labour’s Joe Anderson has been elected as Liverpool’s first mayor with almost 60% of the vote. The two other cities electing mayors yesterday, Salford and London, will start their counts this morning. Salford’s result is expected between 3pm and 5pm, and London’s some time between 6pm and midnight. A YouGov poll yesterday showed Boris Johnson, the Tory candidate and current mayor, on 53% to 47% for Ken Livingstone, his Labour rival and predecessor.
• The Conservatives have already lost almost 300 seats. Counting in Scotland has not started yet, but, with results available from 97 councils, here is the state of play.
Councils
Conservatives: 26 – down 11
Labour: 49 – up 21
Lib Dems: 3 – down 1
Councillors
Conservatives: 549 – down 272
Labour: 1,087 – up 456
Lib Dems: 211 – down 128
Plaid Cymru: 32 – down 11
Green: 16 – up 3
BNP: 0 – down 3
Respect: 5 – up 5
Ukip: 7 – up 1
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Local elections 2012: Labour enjoys ‘stunning’ night in Wales
Posted by: | CommentsLabour has enjoyed what it called a “stunning” night in Wales, claiming impressive wins in Cardiff, Swansea and Newport at the expense of the Liberal Democrats.
The party had been expected to take back former strongholds, including Newport and Swansea, but it had not been so confident of winning in the capital, where the Liberal Democrats have ruled for eight years.
Re-counts were taking place in two Cardiff wards but Labour was satisfied it had won enough seats to seize control of the council and expected the Liberal Democrat leader, Rodney Berman, to be ousted from his seat.
Ahead of the count, Labour had claimed that voters who deserted the party at the height of Gordon Brown’s unpopular premiership were returning. As the night went on it began to look as if new voters had also turned to the party.
The Welsh Labour leader and first minister, Carwyn Jones, said: “The momentum is clearly with Welsh Labour. We are taking seats from every party across the country. We have reconnected with people and our community campaigning has resonated with voters right across Wales.”
Welsh Labour’s campaign was a two-pronged affair. It called on the electorate to make the vote a referendum on the Tory/Lib Dem coalition at Westminster. And it encouraged activists to prepare manifestos tailored to local needs, rather than publishing a national one.
Kirsty Williams, the Liberal Democrat leader, said the party had tried to fight the election on local issues and the record of its councillors. But she said Labour and the media had concentrated on what was happening at Westminster.
The Conservatives had a poor night, losing the majority in two of their strongest areas, the Vale of Glamorgan, west of Cardiff, and Monmouthshire. Peter Hain, the shadow Welsh secretary, said the Tory vote was softening and claimed Labour was persuading Conservative voters to switch to it. Such a move was key if Labour was to win the next general election, he said.
Andrew RT Davies, the Tory leader in Wales, said the night had been a setback. Like Williams, he said Labour had succeeded in focusing on the Westminster agenda.
Plaid Cymru, under its new leader, Leanne Wood, suffered disappointments, particularly in Caerphilly, where the nationalists lost control of the council to Labour. A familiar figure, the former Welsh secretary Ron Davies who is now a member of Plaid, lost his seat. Plaid activists argued they were the victims of a UK-wide move towards Labour.
But as elsewhere in the UK, it may be Liberal Democrat losses that create the biggest headlines. They lost power — of various kinds — in the cities of Swansea and Newport in the south and in Wales’ largest town in the north, Wrexham. In Cardiff, the Lib Dems went into the election holding 34 seats to the Tories’ 16 and Labour’s 14, but saw their vote collapse.
Interestingly, council leaders lost their seats in Wrexham, Caerphilly, Ceredigion and the Vale of Glamorgan, possibly because they are so closely identified with service cuts.
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George Galloway’s Respect party wins Bradford council seats
Posted by: | CommentsGeorge Galloway’s electoral winning streak has continued in Bradford with five rookie politicians from his Respect party winning city council seats – including one swiped from the Labour leader of the administration.
Ian Greenwood, who has run the council since 2010 and has been a councillor in Bradford for 17 years, loses his £50,000 a year job. He was defeated by Alyas Karmani, onetime head of race relations for the Welsh Assembly and these days a youth worker and expert on sexual violence.
In a bruising campaign that resulted in the police being called to address complaints of violence, Respect won three other seats from Labour in the city and another from the Conservatives. The resurgent party contested 12 out of the 30 seats up for grabs in the Yorkshire town, hoping to capitalise on Galloway’s tumultuous victory in the Bradford West byelection in March.
The only woman to win a seat for Respect was Ruqayyah Collector, already a veteran campaigner at 28, having led the successful campaign to have the controversial Leeds University lecturer, Professor Frank Ellis, suspended as the university investigated whether he was in breach of the Race Relations Act. She won the student-heavy City Ward, beating Labour by around 700 votes.
Before Thursday’s election Bradford city council was run by a minority Labour-led administration. Three votes short of a majority, Labour required help from the trio of Greens on the council to pass key motions.
Despite making a few gains from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, Labour was denied an overall majority when Greenwood lost Little Horton to Respect. They now hold 45 seats – exactly half of the 90 in the whole administration.
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Local elections: great expectations as Labour ends ‘southern discomfort’
Posted by: | CommentsLabour has won back control of councils across the country, boosting the position of Ed Miliband and prompting soul searching among Conservative MPs.
John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde university, declared that Labour was now a serious opposition party after performing better than last year and securing seats across England.
In a symbolic gain Labour wrested control of Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city, from a Conservative-Liberal Democrat administration early on Friday. Labour also regained control of Great Yarmouth and Harlow from the Tories.
In Great Yarmouth Labour gained five seats to take its share to 21 seats. The Tories lost four seats as its number dropped to 18. In Harlow Labour gained five seats to take its share to 20. The Tories lost four to take their figure to 13. The Lib Dems lost their only seat.
Labour also won back control of Thurrock, Exeter, Wirral, Chorley and Nuneaton and Bedworth. There were signs that the party was on course to gain control of Southampton, allowing the party to say it is tackling the “southern discomfort” that helped keep Labour out of power nationally between 1979 and 1997.
The Liberal Democrats experienced a difficult night on a par with last year’s elections when the party lost 760 seats. In an early result, the Lib Dems lost all four of their councillors in Knowsley to Labour, which now has all 63 seats on the council.
The BBC reported that the Lib Dems had lost four councillors in Grimsby. One Lib Dem councillor told the BBC that the party was facing “meltdown mark two”.
Simon Hughes, the party’s deputy leader, told the BBC: “We will not do as badly as last year because people are getting used to the idea of us being in government. For me, it will be a slow climb.”
One of the few bright spots for the Lib Dems was in Eastleigh, held by Chris Huhne at Westminster, where the party made gains. The party won back seats from former Lib Dems who had become independents.
Miliband will hail the Labour results as a sign that Labour is returning in areas it has to win back if is to form a government. The Tories won Harlow with a majority of 4,925 at the 2010 general election. It gained Great Yarmouth with a majority of 4,276.
Curtice told the BBC: “Labour will take heart. It is not the kind of performance Labour was putting in before the 1997 election. But Labour now looks like a serious opposition to an incumbent government.”
A Labour source said: “Early results show we are exceeding expectations – Great Yarmouth, Plymouth, Dudley. We are making real progress in areas where we need to win in 2015 – Harlow, Nuneaton and Bedworth. The big story seems to be a disaster for the Tories who are losing twice as many seats as Lib Dems.”
The Tories showed nerves in the early hours as it became clear Labour had performed well. Lady Warsi, the Tory co-chair who had started the evening trotting out the party’s official claim that Labour had to gain 700 seats to show that it was performing well, suddenly changed her projections. After consulting her iPad during the BBC election night programme, Warsi said that Labour had to gain 1,000 seats.
Tom Watson, the Labour deputy chairman, said: “We will not gain 1,000 seats. That is a ridiculously over-optimistic figure. There are only 3,600 seats.”
The Tories said there were some bright spots. In Castle Point in Essex the Tories held all their seats, ensuring that Labour still has no seats on the council. In Preston Labour lost a seat.
Labour entered the elections facing an acute challenge because it scored just 24% of the vote when the same set of seats were contested in England in 2008. The party is now on 40% in national polls, which prompted psephologists to say that Labour should gain at least 700 seats in this year’s elections.
The party said it hoped to make gains of between 300 and 350 in England and 100 in Wales. It expected to make net losses in Scotland because the SNP is still performing strongly after its emphatic victory in last year’s parliamentary elections.
Labour expects to lose control of Glasgow city council, though it believes the SNP will fail to gain control of Scotland’s largest city.
In the first result, declared just before midnight, Labour gained eight seats on Sunderland city council to secure 64 seats. The Tories lost six seats to take their total to eight. The Lib Dems lost their only seat. Independents have three seats.
Justine Greening, the transport secretary, indicated that the Tories will assess the results across the country with care. “We need to be a government that represents the whole country and not just the fringes of it,” she told the BBC.
Greening’s comments came after Gary Streeter, the moderate Tory MP for South West Devon, launched a stinging attack on the government for having “clobbered” natural party supporters in the budget. “We have to put right the misdeeds of the last month,” Streeter told the BBC.
Labour hopes to repeat its overnight successes in London – in at least one area – when the results are declared this afternoon. It believes it is on course to squeeze the Tories into second place in the London assembly elections.
But Labour is bracing itself for a setback amid a growing belief that Boris Johnson will secure a second term as mayor. In a sign of nerves at the highest levels of the Labour party, the deputy leader, Harriet Harman, criticised Watson for saying that voters should hold their noses and vote for Livingstone.
“It was wrong of Tom Watson to say, ‘Hold your nose’,” Harman said on Question Time on BBC1. “Ken Livingstone has great policies for London.”
Harman made clear that Labour will focus on the difficulty of unseating such a huge personality as Boris Johnson.
“It is a pity that there has not been a focus on the issues that matter,” she told Question Time.
“I hope that Londoners will have seen through the [focus on personalities] and will not have been distracted by the mudslinging from Boris.”
Harman declined to say whether it was right that Livingstone was selected as the Labour candidate. Senior Labour figures blame Harman for agreeing that the contest to choose the Labour candidate should take place at the same time as the party’s overall leadership contest in 2010. This denied David Miliband the chance of throwing his hat into the ring in London.
Harman quibbled with David Dimbleby, the Question Time presenter, when he asked whether it was right of Watson to question Livingstone’s candidacy.
But Watson told LBC last month: “I’m being totally candid with you. I’m saying to you, those Labour voters who are thinking of going to vote for Boris Johnson, ‘Hold your nose, vote for Ken,’ because that’s the way that you will help Labour.”
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London mayoral elections: how people voted – in pictures
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London mayor and local elections 2012 – live polling day coverage
Posted by: | CommentsMy colleague Laura Oliver has put together this Storify showing the London mayoral candidates getting out the vote today.
She’ll be updating it throughout the day.
Boris Johnson has put up another short low-budget video exhorting Londoners to vote for him.
He urges Londoners not to “lurch back to the waste and arrogance and divisiveness of the Ken Livingstone years”.
In a message on Facebook, Ukip leader Nigel Farage asks his party’s supporters in London to give their second preference votes to Mr Johnson. In a post which starts off in a deceptively mild tone and then goes straight off the deep end, Farage writes:
Londoners – please vote Ukip first and Boris second to keep the Socialists out of City Hall – that includes all the others. Let’s get Ayatollah Livingstone out of London politics once and for all.
Here are some pictures from polling stations around the country.
Adam1d asks:
Paul, you wrote that “in London, the count for the mayor and the assembly will not start until tomorrow morning”.
Does that mean that we will have to wait till tomorrow to get even partial results??
Or will there be some EXIT POLL results tonight so that we can go to sleep with a rough idea on who’s going to rule the city??
I have just spoken to the Electoral Commission, the BBC, and Sky News and none of them are aware of or are commissioning any exit polls tonight – so I’m afraid you will have to go to sleep with the results still up in the air. We won’t know for sure who is the next London mayor until between 7pm and midnight on Friday evening.
In the comments, some of our readers have been telling us about their experience of voting this morning:
From Sparebulb:
My local council elections in Newport (that south Wales place, you know, near Ireland) is of interest since it is a traditionally strong Labour area but the council is at the moment run under Conservative/Liberal coalition- in a sense the local politics reflects the national (as in UK) politics.
The comparisons are tenuous but are still there. Labour have been relatively low key in their canvassing while the Conservatives have barely bothered in my ward. Driving around I’ve seen more Liberal electioneering – this makes sense since Wales in general has been traditionally quite Liberal although in recent years Plaid have eaten into that support.
While I won’t be waiting up all night it will be interesting to see the results. For Newport I predict a shoe-in for Labour but on a wider scale I’m pondering the results for independents in many parts of Wales, I think there might be a few surprises. Equally one might speculate that Plaid should make gains from the Liberals in predominantly Welsh speaking regions.
From JamesCracknell:
I have already voted “Dems vote early” and all that. Did not take a picture unfortunately but a quite nice polling station in Hammersmith.
Not much to report. Other than in the run up absolutely not a peep from the Lib Dems (my area is usually a contest between Labour and Lib Dems) but Tories eventually popped a leaflet through last night. Not that you could tell it was the Tories until you got to the very minute print. A lot of red and orange in the leaflet too. Anyway no picture of Boris, just all stuff about Ken’s taxes and Alan Sugar quotes.
Tony Blair is keen to “re-engage” with UK politics, according to the Independent. He has apparently hired a spin doctor as part of an attempt to raise his domestic profile. Comment is free is running a poll isking if you would welcome his return to British politics.
Severin Carrell sends more from Scotland. He says that with the stakes so high for both the SNP and Labour in today’s council elections, one key question troubling the parties is turn-out.
There are fears, shared somewhat by the Tories too, that the turn-out could be low. Some predict it may fall even as far as 25%; the SNP and Labour are predicting somewhere around the 33% mark while Tory sources point to 40%. So across Scotland, with Glasgow in particular, the parties are working their core vote very hard: all the party leaders are “getting the vote out”.
Labour is putting particular stress on the high number of postal ballots: there are about 550,000 issued this year, for an electorate of 4m, and postal voters do so early and often. The postal voting rate hit 77% in 2011. Many are pensioners, a key audience for Labour in Glasgow.
The key issue here is that for the first time since 1995, this is the first stand-alone Scottish council vote. There was some chaos in 2007 when voters struggled with two different proportional voting systems for Holyrood and councils; 140,000 ballot papers were spoilt. So council and Holyrood polls were “decoupled” to avoid confusion.
Even for Holyrood in 2011, when voters were faced with arguably the most successful and charismatic Scottish leader in a generation, Alex Salmond, the turn-out was just over 50%.
Even so, the weather today is unlikely to influence matters and John Curtice, the elections expert at Strathclyde university, is extremely dismissive of predictions of a low turn-out.
With council voting levels in England and Wales now back up around 45%, he cannot see any reason why Scotland should be different, particularly given Salmond’s push on independence. “Given the degree to which there has been political excitement in Scotland in the last few months, it’s not obvious me why this [low turn-out] should be,” he said.
If it does drop to 30% or less that will be a failure by Scotland’s parties: “there would have to be questions collectively to the Scottish political classes to persuade voters of the importance of what they’re doing … It would constitute a significant snub to Scottish political classes.”
Curtice is deeply sceptical too about the notion that high postal votes makes any difference to turn-out, or any particular party’s performance: “It’s true that those who vote by post are more likely to vote, however, it’s also true that those who vote by post are also more likely to vote anyway. There’s very little evidence that the growth of postal voting has actually increased overall turn-out.”
A possibly premature inquest is already under way among supporters of city mayors over the lacklustre campaign run by central government and its refusal to set out mayoral powers, reports Patrick Wintour.
Referendums are being held in 10 cities in England, and Birmingham, once seen as a certainty to follow London and back its own mayor, is said to be a much closer contest than expected despite strong yes champions, including business leaders, Labour and Tory parties, and the local media. There has been a patchy no campaign, and Labour has said little at national level.
Those who support the idea of city mayors are upset with a lack of clarity over the role’s powers and a general anti-politics mood.
Senior politicians had their wives at the ready for the traditional polling station photo-opportunities this morning.
Here are Mr and Mrs Cameron (great outfit – not you Dave).
Here is Ed Miliband and his wife Justine.
Here is Ken Livingstone and his wife Emma Beal.
And here is Boris Johnson and his wife Marina.
Ignoring all convention and precedent, Nick Clegg failed to bring his wife along to vote with him this morning – but he did have some photos taken in front of this lovely tree.
Ken Livingstone has responded to today’s YouGov poll, which gives Boris Johnson a health six-point lead in the London mayoral race. Livingstone said:
Today, Londoners can vote Labour to cut their fares and save themselves on average £1,000, and in doing so ensure that the Conservative party is not rewarded. Every Labour voter must turn out today or the Tories will get away with it – they will carry on with policies that have led to recession, fare rises and police cuts.
The £1,000 figure is a reference to his plans to cut the capital’s transport fares by 7%, which he says will save the average Londoner £1,000.
He has also written a blogpost on the LabourList website. He writes:
Of course, we are the underdogs. The Tories were always going to benefit financially, in terms of media backing, and in terms of support from the most powerful. Though it doesn’t carry the imprint of the Tory party, London’s only daily paper [the Evening Standard] has now become a true blue freesheet.
The piece returns by returning to the theme of financial self-interest:
By spending just a few minutes at the polling station the average fare-payer can make themselves £1,000 better off. There are not many ways you can make £1,000 in less than half an hour. But that is what the average London fare-payer can do from 7am to 10pm today … Polling day poses the clearest possible choice – four years of Tory fare rises, or a Labour fares cut that will save the average fare-payer £1,000.
There is lots of good coverage of the elections in today’s Guardian.
• Hélène Mulholland looks back at the London mayoral race, quoting this analysis of Ken Livingstone’s campaign from Tony Travers, director of the Greater London group at the London School of Economics:
It looks as if the Labour party has asserted some authority over what has been a below-par Livingstone campaign. It is a powerful traditional political intervention and it was the right thing to do because it was clear it was Livingstone who has been badly underperforming under a resurgent Labour party, while Boris was outperforming a seriously wounded Conservative party, so they had to turn it into a straight Labour versus Conservative fight.
• Michael White looks at the English cities where voters are taking part in referendums today on whether or not to have elected mayors. He finds that in city after city “the yes campaign seems to have failed to generate enough momentum to overthrow scepticism, apathy and the status quo”. Meanwhile, voters in Doncaster are being asked today to abandon their mayoral experiment: there is a deadlock between councillors and their elected English Democrat mayor.
With one or two exceptions people seemed to look at politics as a talent show with really boring contestants. You could follow it, or you could ignore it – a lifestyle choice. Either way, it would make no difference to your life. “Without wanting to sound ageist,” a girl in Newcastle told me, “I suggest you go find some older people if you want to talk about the elections. That generation still cares about these things.”
• Helen Pidd returns to Bradford, the scene of George Galloway’s recent byelection triumph, and finds a political race dominated by the firebrand leftwinger – even though he isn’t standing. He might run for mayor if Bradford votes yes in its referendum, though, Pidd reports.
• Andrew Sparrow has been in Liverpool meeting Joe Anderson, the Labour candidate for elected mayor.
Voters … who were backing Anderson often cited his achievement in bringing a cruise liner facility to the Mersey as their reason for supporting him. But the terminal is just one item in an Anderson manifesto that is remarkably upbeat, given that he runs a council badly hit by the coalition’s cuts, and also pro-business to a degree that would make Peter Mandelson proud. It starts with the declaration: “This is an exciting time for Liverpool” and promises 20,000 new jobs, partly generated by a mayoral development corporation. Anderson refuses to be pigeon-holed as New Labour or Old Labour, but he’s passionate about investment, and quite happy to say he would like the private sector to account for a larger slice of the Liverpool economy.
• And Martin Kettle writes that England needs to decide whether it cares about the rest of the UK.
The London press must get out more. It needs to make a much more conscious and deliberate effort to report Scotland and Wales to England, as well to discharge a British responsibility to report to and for Scotland and Wales themselves.England needs to decide whether it cares. Watch the way the local election results are debated over the coming days. For the metropolitan political class, left and right, it will all be about two things: the London mayor and the overall impact on Westminster politics. But local elections are actually about local government everywhere. A better way to assess the 2012 local elections might be to measure what they say about the slow disintegration of British politics and political institutions.
The Scottish council elections have far greater significance than usual this year, Severin Carrell, the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent, writes: with the Scottish National party pushing on towards the independence referendum due in 2014, its performance today will be a key test of public opinion and its wider vitality.
This is the first major test of popularity for Alex Salmond, the first minister, and the SNP since their landslide election victory in last May’s Holyrood elections. He is expected to launch his independence referendum campaign in a matter of weeks. Also, he is expected to win today too, on numbers of votes and councillors at least.
Winning control of Glasgow is the biggest single prize – and most expect a very tight race with Labour there, but Salmond insists the main goal is to be Scotland’s largest party by number of councillors and share of the vote.
Given Scotland’s use of the single transferable voting system in large multi-member wards for council elections, the SNP slogan has rhythm and simplicity: Vote SNP, 1, 2, 3.
The SNP is defending 368 seats against Labour’s 337, but was marginally behind Labour on first preference votes in 2007. This time – even the Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont predicts this – the SNP are expected to increase that number comfortably. If the opinion polls are reflected today, it will win most first preference votes too.
It is standing 612 candidates – well up on 2007, against 497 for Labour, 362 Tories and 247 Lib Dems. The Scottish Greens have 86 candidates while 691 independents and others, such as UKIP and Tommy Sheridan’s party Solidarity, are standing too.
The trick then is for the SNP to convert that lead into council control: it is in coalition or minority control of 13 of Scotland’s 32 councils, while Labour is control or coalition at 11. All Scottish votes are being counted on Friday, with the final results due during the afternoon and into the early evening for larger councils such as Glasgow. So the first thing to watch for on Friday is: could the SNP win enough to run Scottish cities on its own?
In Dundee, Edinburgh, Perth, Aberdeen or Stirling for instance? In Glasgow, most observers believe the SNP could just form a ruling coalition, unless Labour’s intense efforts there pull off the victory Lamont and Ed Miliband crave. In these cities, turn-out is key.
YouGov have published two new polls.
Their national voting intention figures are:
Lab: 43%
Con: 33%
Lib Dem: 8%
Ukip: 8%
SNP/Plaid Cymru: 3%
Green: 3%
BNP: 1%
Others: 1%
That’s a 10-point Labour lead, with a very strong showing for Ukip.
YouGov’s final London elections poll for the London Evening Standard shows Boris Johnson on 53% and Ken Livingstone on 47% with the other candidates removed.
In the first-choice vote, Johnson is on 43%, Livingstone on 38%, Brian Paddick (Lib Dem) on 7%, Lawrence Webb (Ukip) on 4%, Siobhan Benita (independent) on 4%, Jenny Jones (Green) on 3%, and Carlos Cortiglia (BNP) on 1%.
In the 2008 London mayoral election, Johnson won 42.48% of first-preference votes to Livingstone’s 36.38%. In the second round, Johnson won 53.17% and Livingstone 46.73%. The results of today’s poll are strikingly similar.
The YouGov poll found that where Londoners were asked to vote for a party, rather than a person, their views were very different:
Lab: 47
Con: 34
Lib Dem: 7
Others: 12
That means Johnson’s personal popularity and Livingstone’s unpopularity have the effect of outweighing a 13-point Labour lead.
YouGov’s prediction for the 25-seat London assembly is:
Lab: 11 (up 3 from 2008)
Con: 8 (down 3)
Lib Dem: 2 (down 1)
Ukip: 2 (up 2)
Green: 2 (no change)
BNP: 0 (down 1)
I just checked with the Electoral Commission when all the results are expected.
In London, the count for the mayor and the assembly will not start until tomorrow morning.
It will take place at three centres across London: Olympia, Alexandra Palace and the Excel centre in the Docklands.
We will gradually get a sense of who is winning over the course of the day. As soon as results from four constituencies are in, those results – including mayoral results for those areas – will be announced. When the next four are in, these will be announced, and the same with the next four, and then the final two. It could be quite an exciting process. The final result is expected at some point between 7pm and midnight on Friday night.
The London Elects website is going to produce live bar charts showing who is winning throughout the day.
Some councils across the country are beginning their counts straight after the polls close, in the traditional way, and those results will be in at some point in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Other councils are going to wait until tomorrow morning to begin counting, meaning those results will be in at some point tomorrow afternoon.
The London voting system is different from that used at general elections, and seems to be causing a fair bit of confusion on Twitter.
Here is an article explaining it in full, but the key points in voting for the mayor are below.
For this contest, you can cast two votes: one vote in the first column for your first choice, the second vote in the second column for your second choice. Vote with a cross not a number.
If a candidate receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, he or she is elected.
If not, the two candidates with the most first-choice votes – almost certainly Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone – go to a run-off, with all the other candidates eliminated.
All the ballot papers where eliminated candidates are down as first choice are looked at again, and any second-preference votes for the top two candidates are added to the totals for those candidates.
The candidate with the most first- and second-choice votes combined wins.
Tactical tips
1. If you are voting for Livingstone or Johnson as your first preference, your second preference will almost certainly not count. Second preferences are only redistributed when a ballot paper has as its first preference someone who was eliminated in the first round – and neither Livingstone nor Johnson are likely to be eliminated in the first round.
2. If you are in favour of Lib Dem Brian Paddick, Green Jenny Jones, independent Siobhan Benita, Ukip’s Lawrence Webb, or the BNP’s Carlos Cortiglia, put them as your first preference rather than your second. This is the only way they stand a chance of making it into the second round. If you give them a second-preference vote, this will only count if they get enough first-preference votes from other people to get into the second round.
3. Because the second round is likely to be between Ken and Boris, if you have voted for any other candidate as your first choice, it might be a good idea to choose between Labour and the Conservatives for your second – as then you will still get some say in who will run London even if your real favourite is eliminated.
Some people have asked me (and I’m afraid this question may betray some anti-Boris bias) whether giving their first preference vote to Brian Paddick, Jenny Jones, or one of the other minor candidates, rather than to Livingstone, makes it more likely that Johnson will get above 50% of the vote in the first round, and thus win outright. The answer is no. Whoever you vote for, it does not make any difference to Johnson’s vote or his share of the vote (as long as you vote for someone).
To give a clear example, let’s say 8 people vote for Johnson, and there are 10 other voters.
If 5 of those others vote for Livingstone and 5 for Jones, there are still 8 votes for Johnson and 10 for other candidates, meaning Johnson does not get 50% of the vote.
If 7 of the non-Johnson votes go to Jones and 3 to Livingstone, there are still 8 votes for Johnson and 10 for other candidates, meaning Johnson does not get 50% of the vote.
Please post any other questions below the line and I’ll try to answer them too. They can even be about how to keep Ken Livingstone out.
Hello and welcome to today’s election day live coverage. Andrew Sparrow and I will be live-blogging around the clock from today, when voters start going to the polls in local elections in England, Scotland and Wales, until late on Friday night, when we expect to find out whether Boris Johnson or Ken Livingstone will be the next mayor of London.
As well as the battle for London mayor and elections to the London assembly, which acts as a check on the mayor, there are also elections to 130 councils in England (of a total of 353), all 32 councils in Scotland, and 21 of 22 Welsh councils (elections to Anglesey Council postponed to next May).
Meanwhile two other cities are voting for an elected mayor: Salford and Liverpool.
And 10 cities will hold referendums to decide whether they should have an elected mayor: Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield.
My colleagues on the Datablog have put together this map that shows which councils are voting and who controls them now.
And here are details of every candidate standing in the London assembly and London mayoral elections.
I cast my vote this morning at a polling station in the surprisingly pretty Laycock Centre, a conference venue, in Islington, London.
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Abu Qatada arrested ahead of fresh deportation attempt
Posted by: | CommentsThe radical Islamist preacher Abu Qatada has been arrested at his London address and told that a fresh attempt is to be made to deport him.
He is expected to appear before Britain’s anti-terrorism court, the special immigration appeals commission, in London this afternoon to face new deportation proceedings and Home Office demands that he be returned to Long Lartin maximum security prison in the meantime.
UK Border Agency officers arrived on Tuesday morning at the north London home where Qatada has been living under highly restrictive bail conditions, including a 22-hour curfew. The move came just hours before the home secretary, Theresa May, was due to report to MPs on progress in securing a “no torture evidence” deal with the Jordanian authorities to enable him to be sent back there. May was also set to confirm that she would not appeal against the European court of human rights ruling that blocked Qatada’s deportation.
A Home Office spokesman said: “UK Border Agency officers have today arrested Abu Qatada and told him that we intend to resume deportation proceedings against him. The home secretary will make a statement to parliament later.”
The expiry of the three-month deadline for the Home Office to lodge an appeal with Strasbourg means the legal block on a new deportation attempt has been lifted. Qatada is expected to fight the move in the courts – a battle that could last months.
More details soon …
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‘Forceful’ Nick Clegg falls into referendum trap – again
Posted by: | CommentsAndrew Lansley is in political hot water again this morning, accused of headline-grabbing efforts to divert public attention from his health reform bill by orderly a costly, time-consuming inspection of abortion clinics. Diversionary tactics! Whatever next. You wouldn’t catch a wholesome chap like Nick Clegg doing that, would you?
Oh dear, perhaps you would. In the wake of his distinctly mixed attempt to take credit for the kinder bits of George Osborne’s Tory budget, Clegg is noisily engaged with the coalition partners on several fronts. They include a row over Lords reform and two rows over civil liberties, one with Ken Clarke over the justice secretary’s plans for “secret courts,” the other with Teresa May for wanting to give the security services access to all our internet traffic, albeit not their contents.
What can this mean ? Probably that local elections – and the London mayor vote, not to mention mayoral referendums in 10 major English cities – are looming on 3 May and the Liberal Democrats are braced for another pasting. Why shouldn’t Clegg do his best to rally the activists and woo those voters who have drifted or dashed away from his party? Respect’s Galloway-led revival in Bradford West simply extends the options for disaffected voters and raises the stakes.
At such times Mike Smythson’s Political Betting website is always worth a look. In his latest post he thinks Ken Livingstone is looking tired in debates. Not surprising, he’s nearly 67, though two days younger than Burma’s newest MP, Aung Sun Suu Kyi. Others tell me Labour should gain 300 seats overall, in a ratio of 3:2 from Tories over Lib Dems. So Boris Johnson winning in London will matter to David Cameron, whatever private mixed feelings he may have about his self-appointed heir all too apparent.
There’s a lot of smallprint to absorb about both Clarke and May’s plans, but I should report right away that Martin Kettle gives it a hard time – here – and that Thursday’s Daily Mail praises Clegg for trying to curb the jovial justice secretary’s green paper. As for Labour’s demand that Clarke should be forced to drop it completely, the Mail’s editorial states: “These are words you have not read often in this column: Ed Miliband is right.” I’m still not sure we’re heading for the Gulag yet. But Ed will be cracking open his Easter egg on Sunday with rare gusto!
But what of Clegg? Nick Watt’s report of his Guardian interview describes the DPM as “burying the Rose Garden era” of matey intimacy with Cameron, replacing it with a more “forceful and remorseless” trumpeting of Lib Dem successes. These include the pupil premium, the budget’s rise in personal tax allowances, an expansion of apprenticeships and the “earn or learn” youth contract. ” I want us to stop apologising for being in government, stop apologising for the difficult things we are having to do,” Clegg says.
OK. I still can’t see why or how the Lib Dems expected to benefit in the longer term from joining a formal coalition with the Tories after outflanking New Labour from the left for years. In the shaky circumstances of May 2010 I think it was the most stable option for the country after the voters had decided not to give any one party a majority: you all lost, they said. But I can sympathise with Clegg’s dilemma – and perhaps you can too.
That sympathy evaporates quite quickly, to be followed by cruel laughter, when I turn to another page of Thursday’s Guardian and find Clegg still determined to use much of the coming session of parliament – unusually after a two-year session, the Queen’s Speech is on 9 May 9, not on or around 5 November– trying to force through a flagship reform of the House of Lords, unfinished business for his party since the budget crisis of 1910.
We can all have different but perfectly respectable views on how to proceed here. The government’s 2011 draft bill (pdf)proposes a second chamber of 300 members, 240 elected by the single transferable vote (STV) system, 60 appointed from among the Great and Good, the elected members to sit for a single 15-year term (to make them independent of the party whips) and their powers to remain unchanged. For those who fret about these things, 12 Anglican bishops, a residue of medieval forms of governance, will retain seats.
As Wiki’s brief history of Lords reform – read it here – reminds us, almost every word of the above paragraph could be the subject of fierce controversy between assorted experts and constitutional geeks like the Electoral Reform Society (ERS). A 15-year term, for example, makes peers (they will actually be called senators) independent of voters too, won’t it? And won’t becoming democratically legitimised by virtue of election – the only form of political legitimacy currently recognised, though not the only form – guarantee that the Lords/Senate will claim more power against the Commons?
Of course it will. So it is to the credit of the joint committee of MPs and peers whose findings Clegg and co have promised to study before finalising their bill that it has asserted that the issue of relative and rival powers cannot be ignored: it must be codified over time.
Its report is not due to be officially published until after Easter, but clearly some ground-clearing is underway because the bombshell it contains is that the committee is proposing that Lords reform be subject to a referendum. Oh dear. Again. Clegg and Cameron don’t want all that trouble. Their 2011 referendum on AV voting – the one in which Dave hammered Nick (and Ed) – caused so much bad will they are only now recovering (and not very well).
But Labour and Tory critics of the draft bill will insist that if AV voting for the Commons was worth the refo which Clegg demanded then surely STV voting for an elected Lords/Senate should be worth one too? They’re part of the legislature too, aren’t they? As for STV, which also arouses passion, the joint committee’s preference for something called an “open preferential voting system” (don’t ask) has annoyed the ERS which believes in STV like the pope believes in the Trinity.
Most people don’t worry about such things, the details of constitutional theory and reform trouble them less than a sense that things are working – or not. The coalition’s plans for elected mayors (subject to referendums) and elected police chiefs (not subject to referendums) still leave most voters so far as I have been able to tell. More elected officials? Is the talent pool big enough? Will it cost more? Will voters shrug and say no to it all?
To my innocent eye the unpublished joint report smacks of cunning sabotage by hostile peers or MPs, poisoning the wells, mining a few bridges, to sustain the perfectly workable status quo by other means. But when I inspected the membership list (I now recall sitting in on one or two evidence sessions) I could spot only a couple of crafty operators whom I will not name here. The majority from all parties and none looks positively high-minded and wholesome.
So they may simply have stumbled into a minefield and dragged poor Cleggster with them. It is always enjoyable to see high-minded politicians hoist on their own high-minded petards. Referendums, a device despised as demagogic and deplorable by our parents and grandparents, have been a rich source of trouble on this score.
In opposition modern politicians quite like them, but in government they turn out to want them in the past and want them in the future, but not to want them now. David Cameron and Europe? Yes, I mean you. And crafty Alex Salmond, I haven’t overlooked you either.
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Shetland Islands to host ‘world’s most productive’ windfarm
Posted by: | CommentsA major windfarm on Shetland, which could be the most productive in the world, has been approved by ministers despite a bitterly fought campaign against the scheme by local residents.
The Viking windfarm will straddle the hills and moors of Shetland’s main island, where the onshore wind speeds are frequently the highest in Europe, and lead to earnings of £30m a year for islanders and Shetland’s wealthy charitable trust.
The project has been cut in size by Fergus Ewing, the Scottish energy minister, from 127 turbines to 103, to protect safety for Scatsta airport near Sullom Voe oil terminal.
The joint venture between energy giant SSE and Viking Energy Ltd, owned by the trust, will have 370MW capacity and is expected to generate enough energy for 175,000 homes – sixteen times the number of homes on Shetland.
One small turbine on a hill north of Lerwick, called Betsy, already holds a world record for its efficiency, reaching 59% of its potential output, thanks to the consistently powerful winds which sweep Shetland.
The developers said that meant the Viking scheme had the potential to be the most productive in the world. Councillor Bill Manson, chairman of Viking Energy Partnership, said: “This is good news for Shetland, good news for Scotland and good news for the fight against climate change.”
The Viking scheme has been vigorously opposed by many Shetland residents, who have complained about its dominant position through the centre of the main island, and its impact on the scenery and recreation value of the moors and hills.
The project received 2,772 objections, more than 10% of Shetland’s 22,000 total population, but was supported by 1,115 people. Protestors at Sustainable Shetland said any scheme should be much smaller and designed to supply local energy needs.
Conservationists at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which had originally supported the project, were also highly critical. The scheme will damage peat and blanket bog, and nesting grounds for rare birds.
Reacting to its approval on Wednesday, the RSPB said the scheme still damaged crucial breeding sites for rare birds such as red-throated divers and whimbrel, since 90% of the UK’s whimbrel population nest on Shetland.
Aedán Smith, RSPB Scotland’s head of planning, said it was “absolutely critical” that the developers made substantial efforts to protect the affected environment.
“The developers and Scottish ministers should have gone much further to try and ensure that any negative consequences would be minimised, and it is disappointing that they have decided to risk the Shetland environment, as well as birds like whimbrel, with such a large scale proposal in their heartland.”
It was originally due to have up to 200 turbines, creating what was then Scotland’s largest onshore windfarm and helping Shetland become a major net exporter of renewable energy, and in turn kickstarting a much larger marine energy industry.
The scheme, which is expected to cost about £566m and create 140 jobs during construction, is due to become operational in 2017. An expensive new subsea interconnector cable between Shetland and north-east Scotland, to help feed Viking’s electricity to the national grid, has already been approved but has not yet been laid.
Viking Energy is still waiting for the energy regulator Ofgem to cut its extremely high transmission charges, which are based on the distance between the power source and south-east England, to improve the project’s profitability.
Currently, the island’s electricity is generated by a highly inefficient diesel-fuelled combined heat and power plant on the outskirts of Lerwick, which uses fuel shipped in by tankers. Quality of life on Shetland has been significantly improved by an annual levy on every barrel of oil landed at Sullom Voe, paid into the Shetland charitable trust.
Ewing said the project would bring “enormous benefits” to the islanders, by creating further green energy jobs in future and helping develop community energy schemes. He said a 12,500-acre rehabilitation project paid for by the Viking scheme would help protect vulnerable peatlands.
“Last week, figures showed Scotland exceeded our ambitious renewable electricity targets for 2011, with more than a third of our electricity demand coming from renewables,” Ewing said.
“Developments like Viking will help us meet our 2020 target, and will make a huge contribution to our target of 500MW from community and locally owned renewable energy by 2020, while benefiting communities, cutting emissions, and helping to keep energy bills lower.”
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The London mayoral election is now about personality rather than policy
Posted by: Editor | Comments (0)The decision by the London mayoral candidates to publish details of their earnings and tax will have caused some anxiety among other British politicians. An established practice in America, it has yet to catch on in the UK, where even the idea of televised election debates was seen as a radical departure.
But, if at the next general election candidates feel bound to release their own tax returns, they will have Green party mayoral candidate Jenny Jones to thank. Her call on Newsnight for everyone to reveal all, cleared the air around a story that has lingered smog-like over this election.
The claim that Ken Livingstone used a limited company in order to avoid paying tax has continued to dog the Labour candidate, largely because he has allowed it to. Had Ken been totally open about his tax affairs a month ago, we could now be talking about the issues Londoners really care about.
Instead he has let the story drag out, even choosing to sling similar allegations back at Boris Johnson during a live radio debate. The resulting row in a lift in which Boris repeatedly called Ken a “fucking liar” only prolonged Ken’s problems, while convincing many Londoners that neither candidate really has our best interests at heart.
After this low point, the agreement on Newsnight was a chance for Ken to finally put it all behind him. But in yet another unforced error, he seemed to wriggle out of his commitment, saying he would only reveal all if the other candidates also released details of their partners’ incomes to an independent body.
This was not what had been agreed. So when the other candidates simply released their own tax returns to the press, Ken was left looking like he had something to hide. When he finally did release some information, key details were missing, ensuring that the story simply rumbles on for another week.
In Boris’s case, we now know that his hard-fought campaign to get his personal rate of tax reduced from 50p will save him about £16,000 a year if he is re-elected. A Tory mayor reducing his own tax bill by £16,000 while cutting everyone else’s tax by just £3 would have been a powerful line of attack for a Labour candidate – especially as Boris continues to raise fares well above inflation. Unfortunately for Ken, he now has little hope of successfully making this attack.
But what this week has really shown is that modern elections are becoming increasingly dominated by issues of personality rather than policy.
On policy alone, Ken should be well ahead of his rival. One recent poll showed that Ken’s policy of cutting fares was the most popular with voters, while Boris’s policy of a small cut to council tax was the least popular. Ken’s other pledges on a “living rent”, lower energy bills, childcare costs, and student finance also cover issues most Londoners say they care about.
Boris’s pledges, on the other hand, are a confusing mixture of things he falsely claims to have already done and unexciting promises for more “street trees” and an “Olympic legacy”. If the election is about policy then Boris knows he might lose. If the election is about personalities then he knows he will probably win.
For this reason the mayor’s allies have relentlessly pursued the tax story to the point of outright fatigue. Like those in the US who spent years demanding that Barack Obama release his birth certificate, their real goal has not been to see the documents themselves, but to distract the public from the real issues.
And the truth is it is working. Ken has allowed himself to be distracted from his campaign, Boris has been allowed to get away with achieving very little and promising even less, and the big issues that London faces over the next four years have barely had a look in.
Ken only has himself to blame for his difficulties. But the success of the campaign against him is just one more step in the gradual Americanisation of British politics. And with public tax returns and televised debates imported, it surely can’t be long before the requests for politicians’ medical records begin.
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