Heavy Labour Losses at Local Elections
LABOUR HAS LOST Oxford City Council for the first time in over twenty years. After a third of the seats were contested last Thursday, Labour lost six seats, with the Liberal Democrats gaining four, and the Greens and the Conservatives only one each.
This means that the council has no overall majority, with the Liberal Democrats now the dominant party, and likely to form a "shared administration" with the Greens.
The new council leader, Liberal Democrat Corinna Redman, was naturally very pleased with the results, saying: "we knew we would do well in East Oxford, but worried we would lose Cherwell to the Tories."
Her first priority was to form an alliance with the Greens, parcelling out the committees between themselves. After this she planned to "proceed on an issue by issue basis." Redman ruled out a formal coalition though, saying that the Liberal Democrats would be unwilling to commit themselves to the Green manifesto pledges. However, both parties were described as "willing" and leaving things as "a matter of sorting out the details."
The local elections dealt a double whammy to John Tanner, former Labour leader of Oxford Council. As well as losing the City Council leadership, he also lost his own seat in the South Ward to the Green candidate Deborah Glass. He described the defeat as a "slap in the face" and blamed it on Labour's long incumbency: "when a party's in power, if it rains on someone's birthday, you'll get blamed."
Tactical voting Tanner thought there was also a difficulty in his constituency, suggesting that local Tories voted Green in order to oust him. He denied that Labour had done a poor job over the past twenty years, despite a report in The Independent that singled out Oxford as one as the worst-run councils in England. Though this was based on Audit Commission statistics, Tanner described it as "very naughty" for leaving out indicators, such as air pollution, which he claimed would have shown Oxford in a better light.
Before the elections, Tanner had described Oxford in The Times as "the home of lost causes." Accounting for the success of the Greens, he said that the Labour vote suffered from "a lot of idealists and a lot of intellectuals who are out of touch with reality." These comments caused offence to a number of students, one of whom slammed them as "very derogatory - he's killed off his votes for next year." Faced with this, Tanner has now qualified his remarks: "most people at university are very sensible and vote sensibly," adding "only some people are on another planet."
The student-dominated Central Ward was the closest fought of the election. Green incumbent Paul Ingram kept his seat by a margin of just 32 votes. He expressed that he was "relieved" but added: "I was unhappy for Ed's sake. He put in a very well organised campaign." Behind Ingram was the Liberal Democrat Tony Brett, who was followed closely by the Balliol student and ex-Labour Club chair, Ed Turner.
Only a quarter of students turned out to vote. A quick survey of a college bar suggested that lack of information about the candidates and the significance of the election itself were the main reasons why students chose not to vote. Typical complaints were of "no information to make an informed decision" and "I don't feel the council has anything to do with me - the college affects my life so much more."
The new Council Leader, Corinna Redman, recognises that "students have a stake" and that they need to feel more involved in local government. She hopes that new "area committees with devolved budgets and powers" will make students feel they have more of a part to play. However, the real challenge must be to make sure that they make every effort to reach out to the ordinary student, like a first year lawyer who proudly stated: "I voted Conservative because there is a sign in my house saying 'Vote Conservative.' My house is blue too."
4th May 2000