Vassall Ward byelection

[Bob]

Doesn't look to me like there was much of a swing going on; more that the Lib dem vote held steady (up a little) but the Labour vote collapsed. That could still give the GLA seat to the Lib-dems of course, but it also looks to me like Labour didn't put anything like as much energy into Vassell as the LDs - I wouldn't have thought that'd be the case for the GLA?




Not sure how the "green vote fell in Vassell" - they didn't stand last time and effectively put up a paper candidate this time.

Labour did put quite a lot of effort into it - obviously hard to tell how much but they had clearly canvassed a lot of people. I can't prove they put a lot of effort into it - but my strong impression is that they did.

Green vote - good point - you're right that they didn't stand in 2006 - I must have been thinking about when they last stood there. It was slightly more than a paper candidate though - they did make an effort to go round and deliver leaflets / talk to people a fair amount.

GLA - I suppose both parties will be putting effort fairly evenly across Southwark & Lambeth - what we're looking at here is what evidence there is from Vassall for L&S as a whole. I'd say that it shows that Labour might be in some trouble.

 

[BRANNIGAN]

There are about 40 wards across Lambeth & Southwark, and the Labour majority in the GLA seat last time was about 5,000.

So if 63 or so voters in each ward switch from Labour to Lib Dem (ie making 125 or so difference to the majority) then Shawcross loses her seat to Caroline Pidgeon (Lib Dem).

Or (given that the green & conservative vote fell in Vassall) 125 Conservative / Green voters could vote Lib Dem in each ward for this to happen.

So perfectly possible.

Incidentally in Southwark in the Riverside ward just before Christmas the trend was similar for all the parties.

Yep, that was my understanding of it. I think it is under 5,000, from what I recall.

It simply gets confusing because I would expect strong Labour areas to bail out Lambeth, e.g: Peckham.

But if Labour can't hold L/S, you'd be looking at total wipeout across GLA,surely?If the localised trends were repeated anyway..

 

[sexton]

It will be strange in a way, in 2004, Southwark had Hughes, in 2008, Lambeth has Paddick.

I hope the closeness pushes the turnout up. I'm sure all that are reading are aware of the threat of the BNP gaining a seat..

Whoever becomes mayor, we must wish that they don't have to deal with anyone from THAT party!

I hope that this is not a post in support of the Stop the Great Conspiracy Party (You know the Mullahs, Gays, Masons, Catholics, Blacks, Communists, Jews, Domino-players are out to get us! Stop them!)

There is no possibility of us getting a BNP Mayor of London, or of a BNP candidate being elected for our South London area, and not much chance elsewhere. Hysterical publicity that suggests otherwise merely give those vile people encouragement by making them believe that they have a serious following.

 

[netbob]

There is no possibility of us getting a BNP Mayor of London, or of a BNP candidate being elected for our South London area, and not much chance elsewhere.

All they need is 5% to grab one of the PR based seats (I think). They werent a million miles off last time iirc.

Hysterical publicity that suggests otherwise merely give those vile people encouragement by making them believe that they have a serious following.

very true.

 

[Bob]

But if Labour can't hold L/S, you'd be looking at total wipeout across GLA,surely?If the localised trends were repeated anyway..

Not really for two reasons.

Firstly there are plenty of areas where the opposition to Labour is split fairly evenly - e.g. Barnet & Camden GLA seat where Barnet is mainly Conservatives in second place and Camden's mainly Lib Dems in second place. That will help Labour keep a fair number of consituency GLA seats.

Secondly Labour only get 2 top up seats at present, so if they lose constituency seats they'll pick up top up seats. So if Labour fell to 20% of the vote they'd only fall from 7 seats to 5 or so (probably 6).

 

[co-op]

I hope that this is not a post in support of the Stop the Great Conspiracy Party (You know the Mullahs, Gays, Masons, Catholics, Blacks, Communists, Jews, Domino-players are out to get us! Stop them!)

There is no possibility of us getting a BNP Mayor of London, or of a BNP candidate being elected for our South London area, and not much chance elsewhere. Hysterical publicity that suggests otherwise merely give those vile people encouragement by making them believe that they have a serious following.

I take your point about not giving too much significance to the BNP. But my guess is that they ARE going to win a GLA seat this time round. To do so, they need 5% of the London-wide vote. Last time out, they got 4.71%, it's a tiny increase to nab a seat, and it must give their activists a sense of energy and purpose. With a seat comes (a) tons of publicity and (b) some pretty good money (by BNP standards). If they're smart they'll make good use of that. Luckily the evidence tends to indicate non-smartness on their part, but all the same we are looking like having a minor BNP resurgence to deal with.

 

[sexton]

There is some evidence of scaremongering, but happily none of a neo-fascist resurgence.

Anyway, the world would not come to an end if the BNP win a single seat on the GLA. We have one Green councillor in Lambeth, a pleasant, hard working intelligent woman, but outside her Herne Hill constituency one hears little of her, and unfortunately she has little effect on council policy.

However, alarmist nonsense about "the BNP threat" is likely to attract more deluded individuals to that unpleasant group of racists and misfits.

 

[BRANNIGAN]

There is some evidence of scaremongering, but happily none of a neo-fascist resurgence.

Anyway, the world would not come to an end if the BNP win a single seat on the GLA. We have one Green councillor in Lambeth, a pleasant, hard working intelligent woman, but outside her Herne Hill constituency one hears little of her, and unfortunately she has little effect on council policy.

However, alarmist nonsense about "the BNP threat" is likely to attract more deluded individuals to that unpleasant group of racists and misfits.

I wouldn't call it alarmist nonense. I don't think it will happen in L/S, I was thinking simply within the top up system, because the maths of UKIP withering away and only 0.2 moving onto BNP would give them a seat.

I guess I just don't like the inevitable rubbish the right wing redtops will come out with. They will be "disappointed" but claim it poses serious questions about the viability of multicultural Britain. Well, I wouldn't put it past them..

And I think provocative newspaper articles have more power to stir things up than a sole AM member for the BNP, but the AM member would therefore give them the ammo to write stuff.

 

[Bob]

South London Press report

Lib Dem cruises to shock victory

Mar 26 2008

By Chief Reporter Greg Truscott


A BOROUGH'S political leadership has been dealt a bloody nose in a by-election.

The Labour administration in Lambeth has been left reeling after a surprise defeat in the Vassall ward voting.

The Liberal Democrats won what had previously been considered a safe Labour seat with an 11 per cent swing in the vote.

Winning candidate Steve Bradley cruised to victory with 1,209 votes, hammering Labour's candidate Dr Andy Flannagan, who polled just 859 votes.

The Lib Dem win is a serious upset for Labour - just two years after it won control of the town hall from the former Lib Dem and Conservative coalition in May 2006.

 

[William of Walworth]

Bob, I reckon Labour would do better (or less bad) in Southwark and worse in Lambeth -- local incumbency factor in both cases. The Lib Dems around here (SE17) aren't massively popular ...

 

[sexton]

Final Comment

One clear lesson can be learnt from Labour's defeat in Vassall: when you are in power the one thing that matters is the service that you deliver to residents: and this administration's service is crap.

Look at

• The Mostyn Road Children's Centre - standing empty and unused after two years;
• The CCTV system - for which residents are being forced to pay, but which is useless because it has never been made to work properly; and
• The appalling mess that passes for a housing service - Wasting maybe £3,000,000 on pursuing an ALMO (no one believes the £1,000,000 figure), while urgent maintenance remains undone, and without dealing with its horrifyingly incompetent staff is Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

The reason why Labour continues to be under pressure in Lambeth is quite simple: few of its Members have a real connection with the people that they represent. Voters in Vassall had never seen or heard of Dr. Flanagan before teams of earnest middle class councillors from Streatham and Dulwich came down to tell us that they needed our vote. They will surely be back again at the next election, but will we ever see him again in our ward?

The reason that Vassall voters turned out in such numbers to vote for the Lib. Dem. candidate, Steve Bradley, is his clear commitment to dealing with the problems which concern the residents of our ward. For the past three or four years he has seldom been absent from any important public meeting.

Until the Labour Party reconnects with residents, and its candidates show dedication to solving serious problems affecting voters daily lives, they are unlikely to turn out to vote for them and Labour will continue to lose seats.

I don't suppose that its local leaders will take this on board. They will probably decide that not enough time or money has been spent on filling our dustbins with their meaningless leaflets!

 

[knatchbull]

One clear lesson can be learnt from Labour's defeat in Vassall: when you are in power the one thing that matters is the service that you deliver to residents: and this administration's service is crap.

Look at

• The Mostyn Road Children's Centre - standing empty and unused after two years;
• The CCTV system - for which residents are being forced to pay, but which is useless because it has never been made to work properly; and
• The appalling mess that passes for a housing service - Wasting maybe £3,000,000 on pursuing an ALMO (no one believes the £1,000,000 figure), while urgent maintenance remains undone, and without dealing with its horrifyingly incompetent staff is Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

The reason why Labour continues to be under pressure in Lambeth is quite simple: few of its Members have a real connection with the people that they represent. Voters in Vassall had never seen or heard of Dr. Flanagan before teams of earnest middle class councillors from Streatham and Dulwich came down to tell us that they needed our vote. They will surely be back again at the next election, but will we ever see him again in our ward?

The reason that Vassall voters turned out in such numbers to vote for the Lib. Dem. candidate, Steve Bradley, is his clear commitment to dealing with the problems which concern the residents of our ward. For the past three or four years he has seldom been absent from any important public meeting.

Until the Labour Party reconnects with residents, and its candidates show dedication to solving serious problems affecting voters daily lives, they are unlikely to turn out to vote for them and Labour will continue to lose seats.

I don't suppose that its local leaders will take this on board. They will probably decide that not enough time or money has been spent on filling our dustbins with their meaningless leaflets!

I dont think you can only blame Labour for the many trees that were cut down to provide us with information in the recent byelection!

In my experience the Lib Dems put out many more leaflets -at a rate of one a day or so it seemed. The leaflets clearly play a part in the democratic process and presumably helped Steve Bradley to be elected. Look at the parties that didnt put out leaflets - single figure levels of votes

No-one could argue that voters came out in force for Steve Bradley - merely that the Liberal Democrat vote held up but the Labour vote fell by a third. It is always easier to rally people to vote against something than to vote for more of the same as Ken Livingstone and Gordon Brown are finding. To use a cliche: its all swings and roundabouts - Labour was in this position at the last council elections when they were campaigning against the incumbent LibDem/Con council.

I hope our new councillor will be able to tackle the problems you mention - I fear though he will be less able to get answers/ get the officers to do the work than the Labour councillors who have direct links to the portfolio holders/ cabinet members whatever they're called these days in the council. Good luck to him.

On the ALMO it is/ was not a Lambeth Labour Council decision: it would be needed by the council whichever party was in control. Owing to central government rules the ALMO has to be created in order for the council to access the £120million+ that it needs to bring all homes in the borough up to standard by 2010. This is a result of long running underfunding of housing services in the borough over the past 20+ years which the current council is having to deal with. And I think that the ALMO will be beneficial as it will be just focussed on managing the borough's housing rather than being part of the council. Lambeth's housing department hasnt exactly covered itself in glory in its running of the housing recently (if ever)!

Maybe the ALMO will take housing out of the political equation in the future which surely should be beneficial as the quality of housing services should not be dependent on which party has control of the council but should be based on the housing needs of residents.

I know what you mean about the councillors cold calling - we did rather suffer a descent and whilst all good at offering the party line werent able to answer detailed questions relating to the ward. I also had the pleasure of meeting Steven Twigg (ex lab MP for Enfield, future Lab MP for one of the seats in Liverpool, I think he lives in Clapham) when he was out campaigning for Labour.

I think that the councillors came from all over lambeth not just Streatham (and there is certainly no labour in Dulwich!) -certainly I spoke to several from the North of the borough- I guess its the special circumstances of a byelection where all the party are called to concentrate on one area; all parties including the Liberal Democrats would do exactly the same.

One sad thing that I saw this time was one of the Labour campaigners on the day proudly boasting to his colleagues (whilst walking up Knatchbull Road) about how he had helped out at local council byelections for the past four weeks each in a different borough. I guess the local Labour Party sends out calls for outside help if it can get it.

I hope that Labour will learn from this byelection loss and refocus on the needs of local residents as you say. I hope also that Steve Bradley is able to bring results for the ward.

 

[stevebradley]

Just a quick note to say hello and thank you all for your interest in the recent Vassall by-election.

I've been a member of Urban 75 for a few years now, and pop in here every now and again to keep abreast of issues/the general mood. Although I think this is the first time I've ever posted (?).

As the newly elected Councillor for Vasssall Ward I will be happy to answer any questions or deal with any issues etc you or other forum members raise with me. I will only be able to pop my head in every so often, though, so please be patient with me if I don't get back to you instantly.

Alternatively, if there are any issues you want addressed urgently - please contact me on sbradley@lambeth.gov.uk

Thanks again,

Steve Bradley
Liberal Democrat Councillor - Vassall Ward