Found in my drafts from a couple of weeks ago….

Peter Kellner speculates on the Progress blog about what might happen if there is a hung parliament after the next GE. Rather than the usual stuff about jumping into bed with the Fib Dems it sets out a couple of scenarios and what might happen in each.

It’s a much more thoughtful article than I’ve seen in the past which might indicate that we need to be realistically planning for these eventualities.

Rather than delete it, I’m posting it now because I notice that Rob Alcock mentioned it here and acknowledges it as a useful article – even if I would disagree with the description of Progress as a “New Labour think-tank-cum-ginger-group”!!

I thought things had gone very quiet for local journalists blogging since David Sudworth shuffled off his journalistic coil, but I’m pleased to see that Robert Alcock has stepped into his shoes with his take on the local political scene. Of course, I’m seven months late noticing this – so everyone will have come across this already.

It’s mostly about Southport politics, but I’ve recently noticed his name in the advertiser, so perhaps we’ll see some postings about the political life in West Lancs. Regardless, it’s a good read – keep up the good work Rob :-)

The party in Crewe and Nantwich have set up a website for the by-election campaign. I’m showing my support with a copy of their website button, but more importantly the site is going to have updates of campaigning events. Click on the button to the left and it’ll take you there.

Came across this clip with the goals from last weeks play-off final. Tried to convince the family that we should go, but Lily’s operation meant that it wasn’t a go-er. To be honest it was one of those games where I’d prefer both teams to be promoted, but I was disappointed to see Skem beaten by such a margin. They did a fantastic job last season, so promotion next year, perhaps?

Am planning to take Joel to see Skem FC once he’s a bit older.

Interesting blog being maintained by Leyland Labour. Might be a useful template for West Lancs to follow. I like the broader non-labour items: local people and the notice board.

My only criticism is that there isn’t the ability to post comments, which might turn some people off. A site like this would surely benefit if there was a visible dialogue with the electorate.

I’ve been looking back over the results over the past eight elections (excluding the by-election in Up Holland a couple of years ago). I’ve plotted two sets of results below – first the share of the vote across the District and secondly the share of the vote across the constituency.

Firstly across the District:

For 2001 and 2005 when there weren’t District elections, I’ve put in the County election results instead. The differences in the trends are most likely due to the General Election being held on the same day.

For the West Lancs constituency area:

These show the total votes cast for each party in the District elections. For 2001 and 2005 the Parliamentary election results are shown.

Across the district there is a higher Conservative vote compared to the West Lancs constituency – that’s because the district includes the “Northern Parishes” which are in South Ribble constituency. The Tory vote in that area is proportionally much higher than in the rest of the District and consequently skew the figures.

For me, the interesting figures are within the constituency. Between 2001 and 2005 the two parties were virtually neck and neck. However, since 2005 there has been a much larger gap between Labour and Conservative – 10% in 2008.

The gap between the two parties isn’t enough to turn around the 14% lead from the last General Election, but if a strong third party candidate stood, then it could push things further away from Labour. As we saw this year – there were double digit swings in some wards to UKIP, Independent and in the case of Tanhouse, to the Conservatives.

The danger is twofold. If people want to protest and vote for a third party, then it makes a Tory victory a lot more likely. However, if they just switch directly from Labour to the Conservatives, as in Tanhouse, then Labour is in real trouble.

Sadly, last Thursday was a bad day for Labour in West Lancs. We lost two excellent Labour councillors in Cynthia Dereli and Maggie Skilling. I’ve worked with Maggie for a few years – she was our local councillor when we lived in Up Holland and she was brilliant. Both Cynthia and Maggie worked tirelessly for their wards. They were well known and amongst those I’ve spoken to, there is genuine surprise in both Up Holland and Burscough that they lost.

No doubt, the local papers will just report the headline changes of the Labour losses, but the headlines hide some of the more interesting results. For me, the headlines were:

• The result in Tanhouse ward was the worst ever for Labour in Skelmersdale. Going to a recount, Labour won the ward by just 34 votes in the end. A swing of 21% to the Tories – right in the heart of Skelmersdale’s new town.

• The swings against us in Burscough and Up Holland were small but enought to count, around 2% compared to swings of 17% against us in Ashurst and 14% in Skem North. The collapse in support was in other areas, not necessarily where we lost the seats.

• Labour’s share of the vote dropped in all wards except Burcough East and Tarleton. In Burscough East the vote increased by 0.5% while in Tarleton there was an increase of 3.09%.

• Local Greens failed to capitalise on the drop in Labour support.

There is good news for Labour. Where there was a large swing away from Labour it generally didn’t go to the Tories. Instead it went to the local independent or to UKIP. If this is a protest vote, then Labour needs to listen and learn and rebuild trust with this electorate.

However, someone needs to take a long hard look at the result in Tanhouse. The last bad result was in Skem North when the independent lost by 58 votes against the then leader of the Labour Group. This year’s result is worse by an order of magnitude. The Labour vote held up, but the fact that a reinvigorated Tory vote made the result so close has to be a concern for all of us who want Labour to be winning in West Lancs.

Paul Cotterill, the Labour councillor for Bickerstaffe, has a clear view of what can be done to improve things, and I think he is right.