26% - 1% = 25% = less than 2007
Perhaps I’ve under-estimated Clegg’s political skills. The media swallowed his line on the results with barely a murmur of dissent. “Thursday night was a success for the Lib Dems,” comes the chorus. “They gained 31 seats nationally, and beat Labour to 2nd place.”
That’s not a success. The Lib Dems dropped from 26% of the national vote in the 2007 local elections to 25% this year. They did not rise to second place. Labour fell to third. If an election were to be carried out now under their beloved PR, the Liberal Democrats would lose out.
Yet the narrative is one of moderate success. And perhaps the reality is too - for Clegg’s spin.
That the party’s poor performance can, in part, be attributed to him, is not. It’s easy to see how the death in the water of his overblown plans to rebrand the Lib Dems, his awkward positioning over Europe and unfortunate personal admissions could have affected performance. Add to this the structural weaknesses of a party neither sure whether it is one thing, the other, or somewhere in between, and I do wonder how they ever hope to move beyond third-party politics…
Ali is absolutely right to say that the Lib Dems need a complete rebrand if they’re to get anywhere. If not, they’ll simply remain Westminster’s resident repository for protest votes - or worse.
Right, so in the real world the LibDems have enhanced their position but in their preferred hypothetical world they’ve taken a minor step backwards.
I really don’t know what to make of that, but the PR is muddled for council seats anyway so perhaps trying to work out how well they would have done in the local elections is doomed to failure anyway.
Spot on here. The LibDems have pitched themselves so they gain from protests against Labour while people hate the Tories. Now people have taken to voting Tory, they are being squeezed. Stupid positioning has pushed them out.