POST MORTEM ON THE 2005 UK ELECTION
Posted: 25 Apr 2026, 01:11
POST MORTEM ON THE 2005 UK ELECTION
7 May 2005
Politics is a funny old game and throws up some wonderful quotations and characters. My favourite quotation is Harold Macmillan’s response when asked what was the chief problem a Prime Minister had to contend with and replied “Events dear boy, events”. I note that in the 24 hours after our general Election at least one politician trotted out one of Boss Tweed’s most famous comments. He was the archetypical Tammany Hall ‘pork barrel politician’ in New York in the mid-nineteenth century and finished a speech about an election he had lost with the words “The people have spoken!” but added sotto voce as he turned to leave the podium, “the bastards”. He is also credited with “It ain't who votes, it's who counts 'em.” And “I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.”
So, on May 5th 2005 the people spoke. The question that needs sorting out now is what did they say? The problem is that many votes are cast without thought, some in ignorance and the aggregate result is always an average of opinion and principle. Occasionally though there is one result that the observer can latch onto that encapsulates precisely his or her point of view.
Such was the case in Blaenau Gwent, a Welsh constituency in the mining valleys that was rock solid old Labour and formerly the seat of Nye Bevan and Michael Foot. The sitting MP, Llew Smith announced he would not be standing and New Labour HQ in London forced an all woman panel on the local party. The selection panel and most of the executive resigned and Maggie Jones, a Unison Trade Union candidate, was imposed. Peter Law, a local politician, announced that he would stand as an Independent, thus automatically expelling himself from the Labour Party but then found he had a brain tumour. He had an operation at the beginning of April and in London the party chiefs heaved a huge sigh of relief. This turned to panic when, ten days later Mr Law emerged from hospital and said he would stand.
On Thursday he beat Maggie Jones with 20,505 votes against her poll of 11,384 and in his acceptance speech made it quite clear that what his supporters were saying was a clear message to London that they were quite capable of selecting their own candidate and would not be bullied from the centre. Old Labour 1, New Labour 0.
I believe that in essence, this is the message the Labour voters have sent to Downing Street but yesterday morning I saw Tony Blair stood in front of Downing Street doing his ‘catch in the throat’ pause-ridden act of contrition swearing he had got the message and would be a good boy before turning round and smartly disappearing through the front door for what I believe he hopes will be more of the same. His spin doctors are certainly giving that message this morning when denying that any plans were being made to hand over power to a successor.
Meanwhile, over in Putney, Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, was announcing that as soon as a satisfactory election process could be devised by his party he would retire and allow a younger person to take his party through to the next election. I hold no brief for Howard or his beliefs but believe that he did exactly the right thing for his party, he relieved them of his personal baggage and gave them a clear run. How refreshing it would have been if Blair had done the same thing.
The reason the Labour vote fell in the election was largely due to people protesting against the style and policies of the last five years and essentially this is down to Blair. He is the baggage and his arrogance in by-passing cabinet governance and the supremacy of Parliament is what has caused most of the haemorrhage. The honourable and sensible thing to do would be to manage a smooth change of leadership inside the next six months so that a new leader could stamp his authority on the party. This is of course what he should have done twelve months ago but didn’t. The big question for Labour is whether this happens now.
On the wider front, the overall election result is what I was praying for. Labour’s majority cut to the point where the back-benchers cannot be overridden, the Tories effectively held back and a small swing of seats and power to the Liberals. They now have the chance to continue the slow build towards the point where they can first become the main opposition party and eventually have hopes of government. Much depends on how they perform in the next four years. Normally I believe that a party shouldn’t start campaigning immediately after the election but in this case the Liberals should start today while they have a head start over the Tories who will be far to busy arranging a succession for the next twelve months.
Another striking feature of the voting patterns country-wide in this election was the variation of swing inside the individual constituencies. There were some very surprising results that seemingly bore no relation to the national trends. I may be wrong but I see this as an indication that an increasingly sophisticated electorate is thinking for itself and responding to good solid local campaigning. Blaenau was certainly an example of this and there were others as well. If I am right, this is a very encouraging sign and holds out hope for the future. If there is power in the constituencies again there will be a lessening of power at the centre. The message might get through that the party sets the policies having listened to the grass roots and then leaves the management to those actually doing the job only intervening to alter course or apply direction if mis-management is occurring.
So, the future looks brighter than it did last week at this time. We have been given a chance to move forward into genuine three party politics with the checks and balances that this implies. Why do I think this is important? Because if this principle had held during the last parliament there is a good chance we would not have joined the aggression against Iraq, would have taken a different course on tuition fees and perhaps could have avoided the monstrosity of depriving every citizen of this country of the right of habeas corpus. Of course I could be completely wrong, perhaps I’ve read too much history and am living in the past but I’ll bet Nye Bevan would have approved!
7 May 2005
7 May 2005
Politics is a funny old game and throws up some wonderful quotations and characters. My favourite quotation is Harold Macmillan’s response when asked what was the chief problem a Prime Minister had to contend with and replied “Events dear boy, events”. I note that in the 24 hours after our general Election at least one politician trotted out one of Boss Tweed’s most famous comments. He was the archetypical Tammany Hall ‘pork barrel politician’ in New York in the mid-nineteenth century and finished a speech about an election he had lost with the words “The people have spoken!” but added sotto voce as he turned to leave the podium, “the bastards”. He is also credited with “It ain't who votes, it's who counts 'em.” And “I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.”
So, on May 5th 2005 the people spoke. The question that needs sorting out now is what did they say? The problem is that many votes are cast without thought, some in ignorance and the aggregate result is always an average of opinion and principle. Occasionally though there is one result that the observer can latch onto that encapsulates precisely his or her point of view.
Such was the case in Blaenau Gwent, a Welsh constituency in the mining valleys that was rock solid old Labour and formerly the seat of Nye Bevan and Michael Foot. The sitting MP, Llew Smith announced he would not be standing and New Labour HQ in London forced an all woman panel on the local party. The selection panel and most of the executive resigned and Maggie Jones, a Unison Trade Union candidate, was imposed. Peter Law, a local politician, announced that he would stand as an Independent, thus automatically expelling himself from the Labour Party but then found he had a brain tumour. He had an operation at the beginning of April and in London the party chiefs heaved a huge sigh of relief. This turned to panic when, ten days later Mr Law emerged from hospital and said he would stand.
On Thursday he beat Maggie Jones with 20,505 votes against her poll of 11,384 and in his acceptance speech made it quite clear that what his supporters were saying was a clear message to London that they were quite capable of selecting their own candidate and would not be bullied from the centre. Old Labour 1, New Labour 0.
I believe that in essence, this is the message the Labour voters have sent to Downing Street but yesterday morning I saw Tony Blair stood in front of Downing Street doing his ‘catch in the throat’ pause-ridden act of contrition swearing he had got the message and would be a good boy before turning round and smartly disappearing through the front door for what I believe he hopes will be more of the same. His spin doctors are certainly giving that message this morning when denying that any plans were being made to hand over power to a successor.
Meanwhile, over in Putney, Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, was announcing that as soon as a satisfactory election process could be devised by his party he would retire and allow a younger person to take his party through to the next election. I hold no brief for Howard or his beliefs but believe that he did exactly the right thing for his party, he relieved them of his personal baggage and gave them a clear run. How refreshing it would have been if Blair had done the same thing.
The reason the Labour vote fell in the election was largely due to people protesting against the style and policies of the last five years and essentially this is down to Blair. He is the baggage and his arrogance in by-passing cabinet governance and the supremacy of Parliament is what has caused most of the haemorrhage. The honourable and sensible thing to do would be to manage a smooth change of leadership inside the next six months so that a new leader could stamp his authority on the party. This is of course what he should have done twelve months ago but didn’t. The big question for Labour is whether this happens now.
On the wider front, the overall election result is what I was praying for. Labour’s majority cut to the point where the back-benchers cannot be overridden, the Tories effectively held back and a small swing of seats and power to the Liberals. They now have the chance to continue the slow build towards the point where they can first become the main opposition party and eventually have hopes of government. Much depends on how they perform in the next four years. Normally I believe that a party shouldn’t start campaigning immediately after the election but in this case the Liberals should start today while they have a head start over the Tories who will be far to busy arranging a succession for the next twelve months.
Another striking feature of the voting patterns country-wide in this election was the variation of swing inside the individual constituencies. There were some very surprising results that seemingly bore no relation to the national trends. I may be wrong but I see this as an indication that an increasingly sophisticated electorate is thinking for itself and responding to good solid local campaigning. Blaenau was certainly an example of this and there were others as well. If I am right, this is a very encouraging sign and holds out hope for the future. If there is power in the constituencies again there will be a lessening of power at the centre. The message might get through that the party sets the policies having listened to the grass roots and then leaves the management to those actually doing the job only intervening to alter course or apply direction if mis-management is occurring.
So, the future looks brighter than it did last week at this time. We have been given a chance to move forward into genuine three party politics with the checks and balances that this implies. Why do I think this is important? Because if this principle had held during the last parliament there is a good chance we would not have joined the aggression against Iraq, would have taken a different course on tuition fees and perhaps could have avoided the monstrosity of depriving every citizen of this country of the right of habeas corpus. Of course I could be completely wrong, perhaps I’ve read too much history and am living in the past but I’ll bet Nye Bevan would have approved!
7 May 2005