For British Conservatives, a Bright Spot
By SARAH LYALL
In bellwether local elections, Britons seem to have turned against their
national leaders — though Boris Johnson, the nimble-tongued mayor of
London, won a new term.
London’s Mayor Aside, Conservatives Fare Poorly in British Races
By SARAH LYALL
Published: May 4, 2012
LONDON — Boris Johnson, the towheaded, nimble-tongued mayor of London,
provided a modest lift for the British Conservative Party on Friday
after winning re-election amid a deluge of defeats for the party in
local races around the country.
Facundo Arrizabalaga/European Pressphoto Agency
Boris Johnson won a new term as mayor of London.
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Britons Vote in Bellwether Midterm Ballot (May 4, 2012)
Mr. Johnson’s slender victory over his nearest challenger, the former
Labour mayor Ken Livingstone, was all the more significant because
London is a natural Labour stronghold. Indeed, the Conservative deputy
mayor, Richard Barnes, lost his own re-election bid to a Labour
candidate.
But Mr. Johnson’s cheeky charisma, celebrity-wattage visibility and
brand of sui generis conservatism helped him convince a disillusioned
electorate that he is a different creature altogether from Prime
Minister David Cameron and his fraying Tory-led coalition government. In
the final vote, Mr. Johnson received 1,054,811 first- and
second-preference votes, to Mr. Livingstone’s 992,273.
According to BBC projections with most of the votes counted, Labour
gained 38 percent of the national vote in elections to 181 local
councils, up three percentage points from its showing in comparable
elections last year.
The Conservatives’ share of the vote fell by 4 percent points, to 31
percent, and the Liberal Democrats — the junior partners in the
governing coalition — maintained a 16 percent share.
But somehow Mr. Johnson eked out a victory.
“He has established an appeal far broader than that of David Cameron’s
party,” Fraser Nelson, editor of the pro-Johnson Spectator magazine,
wrote on Friday in The Daily Telegraph.
Referring to the perception that Mr. Johnson, who has a habit of getting
into embarrassing scrapes and then blustering his way out of them, is
not a serious politician, Mr. Nelson added, “Even his detractors are
beginning to wonder if the clown prince might just be on to something.”
The result establishes Mr. Johnson as a potentially serious nuisance, if
not a credible threat, to Mr. Cameron. In his concession speech after
the result, Mr. Livingstone mischievously addressed the matter head-on,
accusing Mr. Cameron of “dragging the Tory Party down to defeat,” and
predicted that Mr. Johnson’s victory “has settled the question of the
next Tory leadership election.”
The prime minister has come under attack from both the left, angry at
his austerity policies, and the right, which says he has made too many
concessions to his Liberal Democrat partners while veering from
traditional Conservatism in issues like same-sex marriage, which he supports, and Europe, which some believe he has not denounced vociferously enough.
The Conservatives’ poor showing was seen as both a repudiation of Mr.
Cameron’s painful economic program and a reflection of the political
toll that poorly handled policy initiatives (like a tax on cooked
takeout food) and embarrassing episodes (like the phone hacking scandal) have taken on his party.
After the votes were counted for all the council seats contested in
England, Scotland and Wales, Labour had gained 823 seats, the
Conservatives had lost 405 seats and the Liberal Democrats lost 336
seats. Voter apathy was expressed in voter turnout in England of just 32
percent, the lowest in local elections since 2000, the BBC said.
Ed Miliband, the Labour leader — who gamely carried on campaigning even
after someone cracked a raw egg onto his shoulder, leaving his jacket
dripping with its detritus — said that his party was no longer in the
doldrums.
“Labour is back,” he said.
Mr. Cameron said that he felt sorry that so many Conservatives had lost
their seats, but that he would not veer from his tough economic program.
“These are difficult times,” he said, “and there aren’t easy answers.”
In London, the race devolved into a nasty mano a mano battle between Mr.
Johnson and Mr. Livingstone. They tussled over their personal tax
arrangements, their rival pledges to cut transit fares and local taxes,
and their plans to solve the low-cost housing crisis in the city, but
much of the race really boiled down to personality.
A pre-election poll in The Evening Standard showed that Mr. Johnson, 47,
was more popular than his party and more recognizable than anyone else
in British politics, including Mr. Cameron. But though Mr. Cameron is
seen these days as vulnerable because of his privileged, Eton-educated
background, Mr. Johnson, who also went to Eton, has succeeded somehow in
transcending class in the eyes of many voters.
After he won, Mr. Johnson ran through a list of achievements and said he
looked forward to running London with “sensible” conservatism. He also
announced that he planned to treat himself to a “non-taxpayer-funded
libation.”
Labour leaders tried to lower expectations for the next national
election, which will most likely be held in 2015. “We are a party
winning back people’s trust, regaining ground, but there is more work to
do,” Mr. Miliband said.
Mr. Cameron’s Conservatives lost seats on councils in the prime
minister’s own parliamentary constituency near Oxford as the Labour
Party made inroads into conservative strongholds in southern England.
Nine cities that had been urged by Mr. Cameron to vote yes in
referendums on whether to have locally elected mayors simply said no.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said he
was “really sad” about his party’s poor result, a casualty of its
decision to attach itself to the Conservatives. It could not have helped
that in Edinburgh, the party lost a council seat to an independent
candidate dressed in a penguin outfit.
2 May 2012-
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