Wouldn’t it be nice if local voters cast their votes in local government elections basing their choice on the local candidates and local issues, it is afterall supposed to be local. With the “League of Gentlemen” catch-phrase “Are you local?” ringing in my ears, I read media predictions of this week’s coming poll dominated almost entirely by concerns that are both national not local, and party political not individual.
It is only a recent addition to the ballot paper to show the party name. I can recall voting without this information supplied, because at that time the thinking was that votes should be cast for the person and not the party. By qualification to stand, candidates must be local residents, so in effect they are our neighbours. In urban areas it is less likely that we will know them or have even seen them before, but in many small and particularly rural electoral divisions they may well be familiar faces. There are always “paper” candidates of course, those put forward to make up numbers, but not campaigning and thought to have no chance of winning. But even these candidates may surprise (even themselves) sometimes. I stood as a paper candidate in a by-election just to help out standing against an incumbent Labour mayor back in 1979, and narrowly missed winning by 15 votes after two recounts. So you never know!
Without the party label, as is still the case in Parish Council elections, we would be forced to make a more personal choice and candidates would have to communicate their case and cause more effectively, unable to hide under a party flag. Then maybe local issues would be more important to people, and be more significant than the current state of national politics. Historically votes are more often cast in local elections as a glorified but less sophisticated opinion test, than they are determined by local matters which the candidates in question can hope to influence.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s when local government rates charged varied massively from one local authority to another, and sometimes from one side of the road to another, it was possible for voters to look at services received and rates charged and assess value for money and efficiency. Conservative government centralisation of powers and the neutering of local government in the later 1980s, and then Council Tax introduction levelled the playing field more and more recent central government capping of council tax have compounded the levelling process, making it much more difficult to detect the differentiating factors on service, delivery and value. That said, the centrally imposed budget cuts now working their way through local councils may be a new way to contrast and compare.
I would like to see real local issues come to the fore in local campaigns and for us all to move away from thinking of local elections as a barometer of national politics. However with less than a week to go before polling day many voters, including me, are seriously thinking of casting a vote for UKIP as a protest against the Conservative Party, making a decision to be based on national and not local political criteria. should I go in that direction this week, I apologise in advance to my hard-working and dedicated local Conservative County Council candidate. Maybe if he just didn’t have that party label?
