Election Results: Round-up and a little bit of Analysis

Where to begin....

Well I think the thing that has stuck in the mind of most on the left in Britain has been the election of 2 BNP MEP's in the North West (Nick Griffin) and Yorkshire and the Humberside (some bloke I can't remember the name of but he had been chair of the National Front). Yet they did this on the back of a lower vote in those regions than they received in 2004.
And this points us to the startling feature of these elections - the collapse in the vote for Labour - nationally they were down 7% to 15.7% behind both the Tories and UKIP. Indeed the Tories actually topped the poll in Wales!
But the collapse in Labour's vote wasn't to do with Labour voters switching to other major parties like the Tories and the Liberals - they simply weren't coming out to vote and many of them won't come out to vote Labour again - such is the stink over the last few weeks, particularly from the expenses scandal, but the economic model they presided over has collapsed and in a similar way to what appears to have happened in Germany and France, they don't really have an alternative to it.
What this result has done, I think, is exposed that the strategy of relying on turnout, of saying don't vote BNP doesn't work. What we must do is put forward a positive alternative - and give workers a political voice that represents their interests and seeks to rectify their grievances.
And this is where I feel No2EU - Yes to Democracy comes in. Okay so the name was a bit crap, the platform was vague and limited and it achieved a small (but marginally better than what I personally expected) 1.01% of the vote nationally coming behind the SLP, but I still stand by the decision of the Socialist Party congress to take part in the coalition.
For one thing it meant that the RMT union has stood candidates in an election against the Labour Party and signs are that it will do the same in a general election, which I think will help hasten other unions to do the same. Also it meant that Socialist Party members were taking part in elections everywhere in the country - not just targetting a few specific wards or constituencies - which I believe meant people were more willing to take our material and read it. Which is especially good considering we published our own material, of course supporting No2EU but also, emphasising the points we felt were most important and allowing us to go beyond the limited No2EU platform. In North Wales this has meant we have been able to gain contacts in the last two months outside areas we are currently organised in (and in North Wales organised can be a little loosely applied due to the shear geography of the area). Take a look at the report that Socialist Party members and sympathisers in Wrexham have written http://www.socialistpartywales.org.uk/news/2009-06/8-wrexham-stall-report.html and this is an area where we didn't have any members til very, very recently.
I am reliably informed that the total left vote (that is of No2EU, SLP, SSP & SPGB) was 340,805 which is 2.25% which apparently is the highest left vote in European elections on a UK wide scale. This needs to be built upon with a challenge in the general election when it gets called and the organising of that challenge needs to be done now.
Which brings me onto the Greens. Their vote was the most increased in the election up some 2% or so, despite them not getting any new MEPs elected (they retain their current 2). Given they came close to beating the BNP in the North West should No2EU not have stood?
I don't think so - for a start I would argue that there are many working class people who probably wouldn't have voted Greens who did vote No2EU. More fundamentally however, is that simply backing the Greens would have put off the task for another election of trying to build an independent political voice for workers - and much as socialists and the Green Left within it may want the Green Party to become that, I don't think it can or will. However, I would welcome collaboration between the Greens and a new workers party (certainly when neither can contest all the seats in an area), but the key point is that that party needs building immediately otherwise working class votes will keep going to the far right as a protest and potentially worse.

Rest of Europe

By far the best result of the elections for me was the news that the Socialist Party's (CWI Irleand) Joe Higgins had been elected as an MEP in Ireland as well as winning 6 council seats in the elections.
But also SYRIZA in Greece got 4.7% and one MEP and the Bloco de Esquerda (Left Block) got 10% of the vote (not sure how many MEPs this translates to). I have to say though I'm finding it hard to find out the results for various groups in Europe so any comments people can leave to help would be appreciated. But the general gist is that in Europe the left (and I mean the actual left) has gained slightly.

UNISON

Also released today were the election results for the UNISON NEC with 6 Socialist Party members elected onto the UNISON NEC - Roger Bannister (North West), Glenn Kelly (Local Government) and Jean Thorpe (East Midlands) retained their seats. They have been joined by April Ashley (Black Members), Vicky Perrin (Yorkshire and Humberside), and Hannah Walter (Northern) - however several other on the left have lost their seats.

Money can't buy love . . . or Joe either

I've republished this here beacues I though ti was fairly interesting, hope you readers agree. This is taken from the Irish Times website - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0602/1224247881156.html

On the canvass with Joe Higgins :The candidate is no grip ‘n’ grinner, in fact he prefers his presence to speak for itself, writes KATHY SHERIDAN

FOR ANYONE who has suffered near asphyxiation in the galloping grip ’n’ grin of a Bertie-style canvass, Joe Higgins is a worrying spectacle.
He answers his own phone and has no lackeys to do his bidding or set up media opportunities. He does it all himself. He decides where to locate, helps set up a trestle table with a couple of activists and then he sort of loiters around the St Stephen’s Green entrance with a pile of “Punish Fianna Fáil and the Greens” leaflets.
Most of the passersby in their shorts and singlets are firmly focused on the women’s marathon and have nowhere to stuff a leaflet anyway. All in all, it has the makings of a calamity of a canvass.
Joe Higgins is no grip ‘n’ grinner. The notion appears to repel him. “Politicians go round grabbing people’s hands and imposing themselves on reluctant bystanders,” he says with droll distaste. Furthermore, “babies also have a civil right not to be kissed by every passing politician”.
He likes to let his presence speak for itself. “You let people who wish to engage with you come and talk to you.” All very live and let live, until you spot the slogan – “The best fighter money can’t buy” – on the huge Higgins poster being shifted close to a trader’s cowboy hat and shades stall. “Lads, lads, don’t, you’ll alienate those people there,” he implores, demonstrating precisely where his sympathies lie.
It’s obvious that no fat-cat slush funds have gone into producing the flat, dated black and white posters. The party has budgeted €28,000 for the entire local (with 11 candidates) and European election campaign. Since he lost his Dáil seat, the 60-year-old former school teacher has been surviving on the “small pension” from his 10 year Dáil tenure, supplemented by the fee for his Daily Mail column.
He lives on less than the average industrial wage, he says, and his mortgage – taken out in 1995 – has another six years to run. MEP pay should be something akin to the average industrial wage, he reckons, and if elected, he vows to be a “workers’ MEP on a worker’s wage”.
The fact that the last Irish Times /TNSmrbi poll puts him on “level pegging with the main right-wing candidate in the country” for the last MEP seat in Dublin, doesn’t appear to have induced any lather of excitement, possibly because where he really wants to be is in the Dáil. “I’m committed to going back to the Dáil in three years time . . . ” he says, offering no apology for it.
“Fianna Fáil has three TDs who are standing for Europe . . . I don’t see a Chinese wall between those positions. They’re all a platform to fight for the ordinary people. Different venue, one mission.”
Anyway, he regards the newspapers who commission the polls as “establishment mouthpieces”. “We rely on going directly to the people . . . But the poll is an indication of how things are changing,” he concedes.
“Insofar as it’s an indication of a mood in society at a particular time, it certainly blends in with the mood on the streets and housing estates . . . People are disgusted that a cabal of speculators, big developers and big bankers were given such power . . . A child socialist would have told them that it would crash but they didn’t see it because they were blinded by greed.”
Meanwhile, the loitering-not-looking strategy is working, well-wishers approach the candidate in a steady trickle.
A Tyrellstown woman actually asks for a leaflet (is this a record?). “Please spread the word among your family and friends . . . ”, says Higgins to them all. Frank, a taxi driver, says afterwards that Higgins “has principle – he’s more action than words and he’s not afraid to speak out. But tell me, what do MEPs actually DO?”.
Nick Robinson, a 35-year-old school teacher with plans to emigrate in the absence of a full-time job sums up the views of several : “I’m middle-class with two third-level qualifications and though I wouldn’t necessarily support his policies in full . . . it really comes down to integrity. And he has it”.
Between times, Higgins tries to work up some outrage at Mary Harney’s public intervention on behalf of FF’s Eoin Ryan – “the cheek of her . . . the arrogance of her really” – before producing his own press statement.
Calling Harney’s endorsement the “kiss of death” for Ryan, he reads on with obvious enjoyment: “The hapless Eoin must have felt his political lifeblood chill . . . She also says Dublin voters must ‘not shoot themselves in the foot’ . . . Can she not see that virtually the whole of Dublin have their ‘political guns’ pointed in the same direction and it is not at their feet!”
Has anyone hurled abuse at him so far today? “I rarely get abuse and where I do, it’s from a right-winger”, says the man who has never knowingly passed up the chance of a lash himself.
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times