London Election Stats

I am indebted to Croydonian for alerting me earlier this week to the release of the London election results broken down by ward*. Enjoy!

(Health warning for LibDems: You won’t enjoy this. As you’ll see further below, if these results were repeated in the 2010 council elections, you would end up with fewer councillors than the BNP.)

Firstly, the main contest …

Biggest Boris Vote
1. Stanley Ward (R.B. Kensington & Chelsea) 79.96%
2. Royal Hospital Ward (Kensington & Chelsea) 79.68%
3. Knightsbridge & Belgravia Ward (Westminster) 78.59%
Inner London average 36.24%
Outer London average 48.35%

Biggest Livingstone Vote
1. East Ham North (Newham) 73.42%
2. Green Street West (Newham) 70.92%
3. Southall Broadway (Ealing) 69.77%
Inner London average 43.80%
Outer London average 31.97%

Biggest Paddick Vote
1. The Wrythe (Sutton) 20.02% (Even here, Livingstone polled around 2.5% higher, and Boris over 26% more)
2. Wandle Valley (Sutton) 19.43%
3. St. Marks (K.C.) 19.28%
Inner London average 10.21%
Outer London average 9.49%

Now as any fule kno, it was Outer London that won it for Boris, with a 12 point lead in the outer boroughs, against Ken’s 12 point lead in the inners. Only with the ward results, and the resultant borough breakdowns, is this even clearer than when just comparing GLA constituencies, some of which straddle inner and outer London.

Although the gap was roughly equal and reversed between inner and outer London, it is clear that outer London, with approximately 800,000 more voters, was going to have the edge. Also, the inner London wards may have registered the very highest vote shares, but with the average ward size in outer London being approximately 500 voters larger, the Conservatives’ doughnut strategy was thoroughly vindicated.

“But but but..” cry the Lib Dems, “you’re only counting first preferences. That’s not fair.” Yes I am, and yes it is.

Moving on, with such a presidential style contest some focus has been given to the extra boost that that the mayoral candidates give to the “normal” party vote. Let’s compare the mayoral vote share (yes, first preferences again) to the party list “London Member” vote and look at the “premium” that the mayoral candidates gave to their parties.

Boris Premium
Highest in Mayesbrook (Barking & Dagenham) 24.64%
Lowest in Southall Broadway (Ealing) 2.88%
Overall 8.57%

Ken Premium
Highest in Spitalfields & Banglatown (Tower Hamlets): 31.50 %
Lowest in Eastbrook (Barking & Dagenham): 0.37%
Overall 9.42%

Paddick “Premium”
Highest in Thames (Barking & Dagenham): 3.27%
Lowest in Teddington (Richmond): -17.51%
Overall -1.61%

Not brilliant news for poor old Brian, then – he actually generated a negative premium – a “Brian discount” if you will. Well, as he has effectively said, the Lib Dems are rubbish at campaigning in London now. (Bad workmen and all that, Brian?)

So looking ahead to 2010, which could be the safest wards in London? Here are the final redoubts, based on the party list votes (as opposed to the mayoral votes – see above) for each party which scored a majority in any ward, which therefore includes the BNP and Greens:

Safest Conservative Ward
… by majority: Royal Hospital (Kensington & Chelsea) 65.41%
… by vote share: Knightsbridge & Belgravia (Westminster) 77.25%

Safest Labour Ward
… by majority: Southall Broadway (Ealing) 49.59%
… by vote share: Southall Broadway (Ealing) 64.94%

Safest LD Ward
… by majority: Muswell Hill (Haringey) 3.62%
… by vote share: Teddington (Richmond): 33.93% (but still beaten by the Conservatives)

In fact, based on these party list votes, the Lib Dems would take only two other wards in the whole of London: Alexandra (also Haringey) and Cathedrals (Southwark). The BNP would have more councillors, with eight wards.

Safest BNP Ward
… by majority: Mayesbrook (Barking & Dagenham) 15.67%
… by vote share: Mayesbrook (Barking & Dagenham) 38.47%

Safest Green ward
… by majority: Highgate (Camden): 0.18%
… by vote share: Brockley (Lewisham): 29.94%

And if you’ll indulge me, we’ll look at the absolute number of votes…

Largest number of votes (1st pref. mayoral)
Conservative: Hayes & Coney Hall (Bromley) 4,025 (What, my own ward? Mais oui! Why do you think I included this particular list?)
Labour: St Dunstan`s & Stepney Green (Tower Hamlets) 2,547
Lib Dem: Southfields (Wandsworth) 678

Now let’s wrap up the turnout records. I must admit I haven’t got the up to date electorate figures for every borough, most being brought forward from 2006, so take these with a pinch of salt …

Highest Turnouts
1. St. Katharine`s & Wapping (Tower Hamlets) 62.09%
2. Eastbrook (Barking and Dagenham) 59.86%
3. Stoke Newington Central (Hackney) 59.34%

Lowest Turnouts
1. Thames (Barking and Dagenham) 22.68%
2. Stratford And New Town (Newham) 22.77%
3. Cranford (Hounslow) 22.86%

Now for the booby prizes - we find out who will have to stand in the corner with the dunce’s hat on.

The most spoilt votes (1st prefs, of all votes cast) were 7.08% of ballots in Alperton (Brent)

And for the fewest spoilt papers, the gold star goes to …, the postal voters of the City, with the good burghers of the square mile only messing up two ballot papers. Otherwise, the electors in Royal Hospital ward (Kensington & Chelsea) can be smug, having only failed twelve times, or on 0.569% of ballots.

When we come to second preferences, a significant number of voters didn’t cast a vote, and this makes up the bulk (over 400,000) of spoilt 2nd preference votes. The ward whose voters were most sure that their choice would make it to the second round (or maybe they were just in a hurry) was Northumberland Park (Haringey) with 35.78% blank second preferences.

One particular category of spoilt ballot is “voting too many times”, and so we can reveal that the ward where Robert Mugabe would find himself most at home is … Plaistow South (Newham): 3.28% (95 such spoilt papers).

I think that’ll do for now. My anorak awaits its owner.

* Well, all except the postal votes, for which I only have the borough totals so far, and which I have had to ignore for the purposes of most of this election stat-fest.

Miliband’s Worst Nightmare .. A Conservative Win in Crewe & Nantwich

Of course David Miliband doesn’t want Labour to lose the by-election. He’s loyal to the Leader, as a serious leadership challenger hard-working Minister with his party’s and the country’s interests at heart.

Yet he probably has more reason than most for wanting to see Gwenyth’s daughter keep the seat - for seeing Gordon’s display of deck-chair rearranging yesterday actually helping to scrape a win in C&W. If Labour lose, then the pressure will be on him, either from the hotheads to go for broke, from fellow challengers wanting to flush him out early to do the initial dirty work, or simply a temptation to be seriously (and in an inevitably semi-visible kind of way) preparing for a bid when the time is right. The last thing he wants is to have even more of a spotlight on him right now – after all, in politics how many times do the front-runners at the start of the race actually win? Who wants to be the Heseltine or Portillo – the one who is out in the open for so long that he gives a clear shot for anyone who wishes to take it?

No, any serious challenger will want to see Gordon carry on and lose at the General Election. After all, what future leader wants to be at the helm of the ship just as it’s been left too late to avoid the iceberg? Better to revel in the luxury of opposition, with four years to regroup, lose the baggage and work on your prime-minister-in-waiting image.

And the best thing is, it’s easy to do - he can genuinely put all his efforts into backing Gordon to the hilt during the next two years, assuring the PM that he is behind him at all times, while omitting to mention that it’s because Gordon is acting as his human shield.

Rush Job? Darling Gets His Sums Wrong

Is there a possibility that Alistair Darling may have got his sums wrong?

Bear with me on this.

Increasing the personal allowance by £600 is worth £240 to higher rate taxpayers (marginal rate 40% x £600 = £240). Reducing the higher rate threshold just means that £600 of income is then taxed at an extra 20% (40% - 20%) = £120. Higher rate taxpayers are therefore £120 better off.

The point is that increasing the personal allowance reduces the total of taxable income - which for a higher rate taxpayer is £600 at 40%, not just 20%. Cheers, Alistair!

He should have reduced the 40% threshold by £1,200, not £600.

But hey, I’m just an accountant. Clearly the Chancellor knows better. I mean, he’s in charge of the national treasury.

The Panic Button’s Getting Worn Out, Alistair

So we had the Inheritance Tax changes, a panic measure in response to George Osborne’s proposals at Conference last October. Then it was the overcomplicated Entrepreneurs’ Relief to head off criticism over the changes to Capital Gains Tax, now it’s an increase in personal allowances to try to fix the damage done by the (partial) abolition of the 10p tax rate. All these were perfectly avoidable messes. What is notable is that the time between the situation being created and the sudden scrambling around for a response is getting longer – in the case of the 10p debacle, some 14 months.

What Alistair Darling definitely cannot undo is the clear evidence that Labour, once a carefully run politically savvy organisation, is now lurching from one political miscalculation to the next, via the inevitable u-turn.

Of course, only days away from a by-election drubbing, Darling hasn’t had time to deal with the niggling details, such as where to find the £2.7bn, so its going on the plastic. Who says the government is affected by the credit crunch? However, a tax cut funded by borrowing is merely a deferral of the inevitable cut in public spending … using the logic that Labour have to attack Conservative desires to see tax reduced, that would be a £2.7m cut in public services, then – all for the sake of trying to avoid a few days of bad headlines next week.

The Ken Livingstone Memoirs: Publish And Be Damned Awkward

So it’s memoir season for the Blairites, which on the face of it shouldn’t unduly bother Ken Livingstone, but his own departure will still be fresh in the mind and publishers’ advances must seem somewhat more enticing when the ink is only just dry on the P45 and the mortgage is still to be paid.

So here’s an interesting question: when will Red Ken publish his own record of the ups and downs of life on the left in the last thirty years? Let’s look at some of his options:

He could publish this year. It’s not as if he hasn’t a little time on his hands, and what better way to spend the summer? For a little while, the chapters on the Blair years, of smashing the New Labour machine before running for a second term with its backing, will still have some relevancy. That is, while Gordon is still keeping the seat in the Number 10 study warm for David Cameron. Perhaps more relevant will be the usefulness of an autobiography in the context of whatever job offer(s) Ken might be mulling over – or fishing for – later this year.

However, any publication near the Labour party conference in September may be less than helpful for the party – the party which Ken, so far, has not appeared to want to hurt. Publication around that time would remind everyone of that Black Thursday in May and draw attention away from Gordon’s umpteenth fightback (though that might be doing GB a favour), and help, perhaps unwittingly or otherwise, to stir the political pot. Publication after September, then, might be less problematic, and in good time for some parliamentary selections.

Option two would be publication after this year, but before the General Election. The relevance of the recent history will be decaying at a rapid rate, but it will be coming out after Boris’ expected honeymoon period, when Ken might hope to remind people how good things were under his own, errrm, benevolent reign. However, as James Forsyth notes, the City Hall audit may uncover some inconvenient facts during this time. However, leave it too close to May 2010 and not only would it again be unhelpful to Labour’s election campaign, but possibly too late to have any impact on his chances for selection for a cosy parliamentary seat (assuming there will still be any Labour safe seats)*.

Clearly if he waits until after 2010, then it will be a true political anorak’s almanac. He can forget serialisation rights. It will be the memoirs of a political giant of the Left, a la Tony Benn. In which case, he might as well wait ten years, though that’s an awfully long time to be filling your time looking forward to your next session sitting gloomily in the London Assembly’s public gallery, hoping that some future Labour Mayoral candidate might remember to offer you a job.

* Ah, which constituency to woo – Bethnal Green & Bow perhaps?

Out of the Closet, There’s No Turning Back for Disillusioned Paddick

One could almost feel sorry for Brian Paddick, who has published his London Mayoral campaign diary in (believe it or not) the Mail on Sunday. He was a candidate with little media experience, running for a party which has only ever had to drop a few leaflets, with some dodgy bar charts and attacking the incumbent, to get votes.

Now, though, the LibDems are becoming increasingly irrelevant, with their single trump card of Iraq now spent and their only hope left being to fiddle the electoral system and scrape a cabinet post in a coalition.

Yet where else can Paddick go? Brian, of course, has come out of the closet … as a socialist dinosaur, voting for the Left List. So now, complaining about being squeezed between the two main parties, lack of media attention, his true sympathies being with the far left … Paddick is a rare thing: a Lib Dem through and through. Next he’ll be calling for proprtional representation … oh yes, that’s right, they had it in London, and look what good it did them!

Hat tip: Iain Dale

Vow to Fight

Sometimes one might find an MP, particularly in a marginal seat, “vowing to fight” (it’s always a vow isn’t it?) something his or her own government or Prime Minister is doing. If done properly, it is usually tolerated by their colleagues, who will sympathise with the MP’s position and tend to see it as for the greater good of the party - keeping that constituency in the fold.

Not so often do we see the reverse - a Prime Minister vowing to fight something his own underlings are doing. Then again, it is just keeping the tradition going - after all, his seat in number 10 is hardly safe.

Of course, in truth he is fighting something that he did (at least with Tony) some years back when they created the half-baked mess that is the current constitutional set-up of the United Kingdom. At this rate we could well end up with a fully federated UK … would that be so much worse than where we are at the moment?

BBC Bias Rant no. 42

Sorry - another whinge from me about the BBC. (Well, why shouldn’t I? I pay my compulsory BBC subscription licence fee.)

Radio 4’s six o’clock news last night (listen again, about 29 mins in) was covering Gordon Ramsey’s comments about seasonal and locally sourced food. BBC environment correspondent Roger Harrabin was explaining the issues - because clearly we couldn’t work them out for ourselves. In his view, there were some problems:

1. Any ban would quite possibly be unworkable, e.g. seasonal where? and how local?

2. The “moral issue”, which encompassed the ubiquitous nod to climate change (though pointing out that only a tiny proportion of greenhouse gas emissions are generated by food transported from Africa) and also the point that such a restriction of trade would hurt producers in poorer parts of the world (a fair point, actually).

And that was it, other than the statement that the economists’ answer would be to tax carbon. Which economists exactly? Just the ones the BBC tends to use, I suspect.

See what was missing? Of course, there was no mention of consumers making their own choices over where their food comes from. Individual freedom and all that. Hard to believe that the BBC, an organisation funded by a mechanism that gives its consumers no choice, could miss that one *cough*.

Update: Welcome to friends and others from Biased BBC.

Unseasonal Rant

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay says British restaurants should be fined if they serve fruit and vegetables which are not in season.

He told the BBC that fruit and vegetables should be locally-sourced and only on menus when in season.

Mr Ramsay said he had already spoken to Prime Minister Gordon Brown about outlawing out-of-season produce.

I’ve come to regard Gordon Ramsey as something like a car crash. You just can’t help watching, even though I wouldn’t want anything to do with him if I found my vocation in a commercial kitchen. In fact, a past boss of mine was something like the accountancy world’s answer to Ramsey, even down to the language – yet he wasn’t a bad teacher, and I have no doubt that if that style of instruction suits you, then you’ll do well under him.

Yet Ramsey has made a second career out of barking orders and profanities at anyone who doesn’t match his standards or views, but like most Lefties (for clearly that is what he is), he doesn’t appreciate the quantum leap that is translating what he does in his own life into an imposition on everyone else’s.

If Ramsey wants his own restaurants only to serve local seasonal food then that’s fine. For everyone else, it’s their choice. As for fining chefs for not agreeing with Gordon, it fails the acid test: if this is to be a crime, where’s the victim?

(Actually, even his own restaurants don’t serve local, seasonal food, as Nick Ferrari this morning pointed out on LBC, when he examined the menu for one of Ramsey’s places: pineapples, unseasonal pears, raspberries and the like. Oh dear, Gordon, bit of a kitchen nightmare there, eh?)

And to bring the debate onto the free trade = fair trade meme, if all the guilt-ridden western liberals stop buying Kenyan green beans and coffee, how long before the Independent carries front pages decrying the poverty in African economies caused by this Western quasi-protectionism?

Kentish Men for Scotland

(Health warning to Scottish readers: This article may will contain stereotypical English views of Scotland. I live in Kent – what can I say?)

As an Englishman, I am guilty of apathy when it comes to the issue of Scottish Independence: my baseline is much as it is on Welsh issues – it’s their business as long as I am not paying for it. The logical progression of that view would seem to be that if the Scots want independence, then let’s leave them to it – at least we won’t be subsidising them anymore.

Yet I like Scotland. I happily admit to having some Scottish blood, even if that means also acknowledging that (I think) the McFaddens (my lot) sided with the Jacobites, but nobody’s perfect.

Yet in political terms I feel there are two broad reasons why my apathy could be wrong. First is the opportunities presented by a small-government, low regulating, low taxing Scotland, as well as perhaps a moral duty to save them from the Socialist abyss. Then there is the more selfish motivation that even if independent, we will still be subsidising the place. (“Bloody English and their subsidising-Scotland myth” – yeah, whatever.)

As I see it, an independent Scotland could go two ways: either a high spending bloated state, which at the worst could draw some pressure off of English public services as those most likely to benefit move northwards, or a small-state free-market area following closer to the economic ideals of one of its greatest sons, Adam Smith. Who knows, perhaps a bit more tax competition could still produce benefits for those of us who won’t by then have done the sensible thing and headed up the A1 past the Tweed. Yet for the time being, the Socialist paradise seems the more likely outcome – with or without the oil revenues. (Actually, I haven’t checked, but I suspect that the supporters of independence, in their grand plans, have already spent the dwindling oil revenues several times over, particularly if they are using LibDem arithmetic).

I guess the reason I have held a nonchalant view of Scottish politics until now is that I have always assumed that the place is destined to be run by statist Lefties. From this far corner of England, there hardly seems much to choose between Labour, SNP and LibDem – all are liberal only in the way they like to spend the taxpayer’s hard earned cash. Annabel Goldie and her hardy band may do what they can, but a Conservative Holyrood seems a long way off. Yet should we, morally, be leaving Scotland to the mercy of the socialists?

As with green issues, Scottish Independence has been left for too long to the Left. The image of an independent Scotland has a decidedly red hue. So perhaps the English Right should take more of an interest, as a free-market, small government Scotland could be a significant catalyst in bringing and maintaining those same ideals to south of the border. Even if they only succeed the making the difference in Holyrood, then I’m going to be taking a far closer interest in Scottish Estate Agents’ websites.

But there is a second reason to turn our political attentions northwards. Back to my baseline: I’m not bothered as long as I’m not subsidising them. Whether Scotland is independent or not, the good taxpayers of the “rich” parts of England, ditto many other European regions, will be subsidising them nonetheless. If we have a choice between (a) a Scotland that will continue to plead poverty to grab our Euro millions, and (b) one which is proud to stand on its own economically successful, low-regulation, low-taxing two feet, then of course that choice should be for the second option. So it’s a libertarian Scotland (whether independent or no) that we should all be working for – even this Kentish Man.

(And so our cousins west of Offa’s Dyke don’t feel left out - I suppose I see no reason why this couldn’t also apply to Wales.)