The 2014 British Elections

The Results

In the UK, we have now seen the results of the recent Euro and Council elections, and they do not make for pretty reading if you, like me, lie to the left of the major political parties (or Atilla the Hun for that matter). UKIP were the undoubted winners in the European elections, followed distantly by Labour and the Greens. The picture from the Council elections is more nuanced, and probably a more accurate reflection of where the parties stand ahead of the General Election next year.

Labour can claim modest success nationwide from the Council elections, winning the popular vote, gaining several councils and over three hundred councillors and also receiving resounding support and seeing rejection of UKIP in many of the country’s major urban areas, especially London. In addition to this, polling by Lord Ashcroft’s organisation shows Labour ahead in 83 key marginal constituencies, enough to provide a clear majority were a general election to happen today. On the other hand, a slim lead over an unpopular incumbent party is hardly a resounding endorsement.

However, a year is a long time in politics, and the fragile shoots of economic recovery, whilst perhaps not felt by both parties’ favoured “hard-working people,” are likely to work in favour of the Conservatives over the coming year. In addition to this, the party of government generally begins to increase its rating in the lead-up to a general election, suggesting that the result next year is still in considerable doubt, a theory also reinforced by Labour’s slim lead of one to two points in both elections, considerably worse than the Conservatives managed preceding the last election in which they failed to gain a majority (and thus a real mandate for their ideological attack on the state, but that’s a matter for another day, about two years ago).

A New Force in British Politics?

All of which, finally, brings me to UKIP (the Liberal Democrat results don’t require much analysis). As mentioned previously, UKIP were modest winners (arguably less successful than Labour) in the Council Elections and clear winners in the Euros. In the council elections, UKIP saw substantial gains, but a decrease in projected national vote share, from 23% to 17%, compared with the local elections in 2013. In contrast, gaining the greatest vote share in the European Elections is kind of a big deal.

The reason for its significance is that no party other than the big two has gained the majority of the popular vote in a national election since before the war, and the Conservatives have never finished third in a national election. However, I stop short of calling it an earthquake, as it has been hailed by Farage and the media. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, these were local and European elections, where people commonly vote differently to how they do at general elections, making extrapolating results notoriously unreliable. Secondly, the turnout of around 34% is about half of the turnout one would expect at a general election, and I make the (wholly unscientific) assumption that the smaller parties make relative gains due to this.

In the past, UKIP have always had strong showings in the European elections, but this support has always evaporated coming in to general elections, with their greatest level of support being 3.1% at the last election. However, polling of UKIP voters in the Euro elections suggests 58% of them will also vote UKIP come May 2015. This would put their minimum UKIP share of the vote at 8%, assuming that turnout doubled at the general election.

A strong showing would make UKIP a serious proposition at the General Election, with a serious chance of winning a seat, especially if they can build upon strong support in the East of the country and put Farage himself up for election in a winnable seat to which they devote a significant proportion of their resources.

Conclusions

I originally intended for this post to be a closer look at UKIP and my criticism of what the party stand for, but I got caught up in looking more closely at the results themselves. That post should follow shortly, now that I have got my take on the results out of the way. Hopefully, this change of focus has resulted balanced examination of the results, although I am probably less qualified to deliver this than most political commentators. However, I like to feel that I am slightly less sensationalist than them, as I have no real incentive to sell advertising or papers.

Perhaps the real story of these elections is one of voter apathy towards both European and local elections, a trend which has been present for many years. No party can claim to have a resounding endorsement from the electorate when over 60% of the electorate declined to vote.

The May 25^th YouGov poll puts UKIP voting intentions at 13%, which, according to the model used by Electoral Calculus, still leaves them unlikely to gain any seats. It is, however, apparent that UKIP have emerged as a fifth (don’t forget that the Greens have an MP) force in national politics which makes drawing predictions for the general election from the recent votes particularly hazardous. This is a new situation in UK politics without reliable past data on which to base accurate statistical models of the upcoming elections. Perhaps this step into the unknown is the real earthquake of these recent results.

What Value to Place on Life?

Earlier this week, I was reading the Metro on my way into university when I came across the story of Charlene Pickering, a 23-year-old mother, who was hit by a train whilst attempting to retrieve her mobile phone from the train tracks at Wimbledon Station. Usually when I read of a tragic death, which this undoubtedly was, I am moved, at least for a minute or so, before I resume my day and forget all about it. The death of Ms. Pickering was different for two reasons: firstly, it left me almost entirely unmoved; secondly, I have thought about it a fair amount over the past few days and it has inspired me to write this, my inaugural blog post. My initial reaction, I am ashamed to admit, was to think that humanity was probably better off without someone who brought about their own death by such reckless stupidity. Darwinism in action, if you like.

However, after a some introspection, I realised that I too, and I presume a sizeable proportion of the rest of the population, was guilty of endagering my life over inconsequential things. I cannot count how many times I have pushed my luck at a level crossing or jogged across a road during a small gap in traffic in order to save myself a couple of minutes of precious time. It is not inconceivable that one day I might misjudge one of these actions and end up being a side story in the Metro for commuters to read before continuing with their lives and forgetting about my personal tragedy. Perhaps one would stop to consider it long enough to base a blog on it.

One way at looking at such an accident is to dismiss it as an unavoidable health risk of the human condition. As humans, we never believe that it will happen to when taking such a risk. Tragedy is always something that happens to other people. In essence, we are unable to comprehend our own mortality, and as such we are unable to assess the risks of our actions properly. We will always underestimate the danger of our actions. Such a conclusion implies that such tragedies are unavoidable and will continue to occur. In essence, society can shrug its shoulders and continue with the commute.

A wholly darker perspective is to consider the value that we, as a society, place on human life. It is not uncommon to read of people being murdered over a mobile phone. Often I read such a story and wonder how a person can place so little value on the life of another. It is wholly inconceivable to me that someone can value their own life less than a mobile phone. Yet I would not be writing this had someone not put their life at significant and obvious risk over one. The picture becomes even more depressing once one factors in the fact that Ms. Pickering was the mother of a four-year-old son.

The US Government place the value of life at around $50,000 (£32,650) per quality year of life. To many the concept of placing a monetary value on human life may seem callous or unethical. However, it would appear that the economists responsible for producing such figures can at least be praised for placing a more reasonable value on life than the US Department of Defence, which values the life if an American soldier at $600,000 (£400,000). Even this pitifully low figure seems reasonable in comparison £500 of a basic iPhone 4S. The tragedy is even greater if Ms. Pickering were one one of the seemingly tiny proportion of the population which does not own an iPhone.

How about the ideological value of life? Was the deposition of Saddam Hussein worth the deaths of 5,000 soldiers? In addition, why has so much more value been placed upon the lives of 179 British servicemen than the over 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties of the war? Morally, one cannot help but feel that each Iraqi civilian was more worthy of sympathy. After all, at least the soldiers chose to sign up for the army. The Iraqi civilians had no such luxury. One cannot help but feel that Western society is seriously dysfunctional in terms of the value that it places on the life of a human being.

Perhaps if we valued life more highly, this and other tragedies would be less common. Perhaps my initial reaction would no longer be that of a misanthrope who has long since given up on the collective intelligence of humanity, and instead I would judge the story for what it is: the tragic death of a young woman and the story of a young child who will never see his mother again.

Welcome

Recently, I decided I needed a creative outlet. After trying to learn the guitar didn’t work out (stupid lack of co-ordination), I decided that writing a blog was a better plan. After all, I’m much better with words than music, and have always secretly wanted to be a writer.

In this blog I plan to write about anything that interests me sufficiently to write about. I imagine that this will predominantly involve anything in the news which promotes me to have coherent thoughts. There will also more frivolous posts, many of which will probably be about my addiction to video games. Apologies in advance for those posts.