Lib Dems – Winning here?

By Sarah Hayward / @sarah_hayward

Labour won a by-election in Camden last night. Forgive me while I savour that moment because it’s not something we’ve done in a while.

Then looking at the result we didn’t so much win as storm across the finishing line. Labour candidate Jenny Headlam-Wells polled 53% of the vote. The Lib Dem vote collapsed to less than 27%, in a ward where they had held 3 councillors going to this year’s elections. They’d also won 2 by-elections (don’t ask) in the ward between 2006 & 2010.

There are many people in Camden who still think Labour’s loss of the council in 2006 was solely down to Iraq and certainly that was a factor but there were clear signs there in the 2002 election results (a year before Iraq), that the Liberal Democrats were gathering pace in many of the wards they went on to take in 2006. As a party we didn’t react quickly or strongly enough to these indications.

Between 2006 & 2010 a small number of people overhauled our campaigning, raised expectations for councillors and candidates and then everyone worked bloody hard to regain seats this May. We regained control of the council. But the Libs were still horribly close in many of the wards we won. Our victory in May was no trouncing of the Liberal Democrats in Camden (although Frank Dobson’s result was somewhat healthier).

In May a candidate died so the election of three councillors in one of our key target wards, Haverstock, was countermanded until 25th May. Although we came very close, in a ward we surely would’ve won on 6th May, our three excellent candidates were just pipped by the Lib Dems. This was after the formation of the coalition but the full implications hadn’t really been understood. This ward, on paper at least, should be more likely to vote Labour than Kentish Town. So when the by-election was called I was very nervous.

Our record against the Libs in by-elections is abysmal. The feeling on the doorstep was positive, but it has been before and we’ve lost. The postal vote was positive, but it has been before and we’ve lost. The numbers coming back from the polling station yesterday were amazing – and I knew our data was solid. But I refused to believe we’d won until we had. So we’ve broken our by-election voodoo in Camden and done it in some style.

But Kentish Town is more than a Camden Labour victory. The ward has social housing but not loads compared to others both in and beyond Camden. It has a large transient population of students and young professionals in halls and house shares. It also has a large middle class population who tend to be left leaning. This population is discerning and politically literate.

In short it is like a very large number of urban wards where over the last 8-10 years the Libs have gathered support and been successful against Labour. Playing the fatigue that came with Labour being in power nationally exceptionally well against us, and campaigning and winning in their own right (often with dodgy tactics but I won’t rehearse that here). Most of their urban seats depend on wards like Kentish Town.

In Camden, it took from 1997 until 2006 for the Libs to properly capitalise on the opportunities of being in opposition against the party of power in National Government. They did it largely by campaigning against us from the left. They won votes on issues like tuition fees, trident, post office privatisation and the NHS. And of course interminable use of pictures of Blair or Brown with George Bush.

It’s taken just 5 months for all that work to unwind. The scale of our victory is testament to our well organised, well supported campaign. There were people from across London Labour and beyond who relished the opportunity to stick it to the Libs so we had many many volunteers. So some of the 1400 were definitely our work. But you look at the scale of the victory and you have to think that we would’ve won if we’d put our feet up for 4 weeks. This must be deeply deeply worrying for Lynne Featherstone, Simon Hughes and Sarah Teather.

Teather and Featherstone in particular owe their seats to very recent former Labour voters. A double digit swing to Labour and they’re both toast – as is Simon Hughes (just). Labour can’t take anything for granted. We’re likely to have to wait another 4 1/2 years for the election. But if we use that time to make sure the full horror of the coalition decisions is laid bare for voters in these seats we have some very strong reasons to be positive.