The Day Democracy Died.

OK that might be a bit of an exaggeration but local council elections in the UK are that dull you need to do something to liven them up.

The headline story of the UK's local elections that were held on Thursday (22/5/14) was the success of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) who increased their number of seats from 0 to 161 and took 17% of the vote. However UKIP did not win control of any councils and still finished third behind the Labour Party and the Conservative Party.

In terms of the difficult task of trying to extrapolate these results to give an indication of what will happen at the 2015 Parliamentary/General Election though I think the big story is actually the Labour Party's dismal performance. As the official opposition and less then a year away from the Parliamentary election Labour were hoping to use these local elections as a way to show their strength as they try to regain power by winning between 400 and 500 council seats with 300 being the bare minimum. Despite the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats (LibDems) losing 538 seats between them Labour only managed to win 338 seats falling well short of their target and actually saw their share of the vote fall by between 10 and 12%. This seems to be a direct result of Labour's very negative and almost thuggish campaign.

The overt part of Labour's campaign focused almost exclusively on protecting public services and opposing cuts to housing/welfare benefits such as the so-called 'Bedroom Tax.' However rather then being driven by some moral sense of social justice this campaign was intended to motivate Labour's tithed voters who are employed in the public service sector and rely on housing benefit to pay rent on their Labour owned housing association properties.

For example in Croydon where I live the centrepiece of Labour's campaign was a pledge to increase the number of street sweepers. For what is essentially unskilled labour street sweeping and refuse collection are incredibly highly paid jobs. So rather then wanting to keep the borough clean and tidy Labour's campaign was actually saying; "We're going to create a couple of cushy jobs but if you want to be considered for one of them you'll have to vote for us." In fact if I had the time and the inclination I could probably trace that campaign pledge back to a specific Church congregation where a prominent member has an unemployable relative.

The main part of Labour's campaign though was a covert one that set out to smear UKIP. The idea being to portray UKIP as some sort of Bogeyman that only the Labour Party could protect the people of Britain from. This actually backfired pretty spectacularly because most people quickly saw through the attempts to label UKIP as racists or fascists and those who failed to see through it were left making jokes on Twitter because they're too young to be allowed to vote. The naivety of young voters of course is likely to be a factor in the upcoming Scottish Independence referendum where the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) traded the option of a substantial devolution in favour of lowering the voting age from 18 to 16 in a straight yes/no vote.

Labour's attacks of UKIP actually backfired so spectacularly that it swung so far around that it ended up helping Labour in a strange way. With every unwarranted and unsubstantiated attack on them UKIP actually became more popular with people who otherwise wouldn't have voted coming out to vote for UKIP and people who would normally have voted Conservative switching to UKIP in order to stand up to Labour's bullying. As a result in many wards there was substantial opposition to Labour but that opposition was split between the Conservatives and UKIP allowing Labour to win almost by default. I'll need to check but I'm pretty sure this is what helped Labour win control of Croydon council.

All this does not bode well for Labour's chances in 2015. Although their replacement was very much chosen in advance by the Monarchy there was a general consensus in 2010 that Labour needed to be given some time off from government because after 13 years they had become tired and that caused them to drift into a type of megalomania where they considered themselves the experts at everything so everybody had better do as they were told. The financial crash obviously proved that to be completely untrue.

So what I would have liked to have seen happen in 2010 was for the Conservative Party to win just enough seats to govern as a minority party. This would have left the LibDems free to float between the Conservatives and Labour forcing the Conservatives to act with a social conscience in order to get though legislation while at the same time forcing Labour to rediscover their liberal/libertarian side in order to get LibDem help to block legislation. That's why I actually voted Conservative in 2010.

Unfortunately it seems as though LibDem leader Nick Clegg would be much happier as a member of the Conservative Party so locked them into a formal coalition. In the meantime Labour swung even further in the wrong direction becoming even more authoritarian pursuing an aggressive Marxist ideology centred on nationalising and controlling markets while increasing welfare programs in order to make voters dependent on the party ensuring a stranglehold on power. As a result I would have great difficulty endorsing them as the next party of government.

The other major problem Labour are going to have in 2015 is that UKIP are going to be much less of a factor. UKIP are primarily a European Union (EU) party so while they need to have a presence within the UK's councils and ideally Parliament they are not going to campaign anywhere near as aggressively as they did in this campaign that was also for the EU Parliament. Also rather then campaigning nationally UKIP are likely to focus their efforts on a handful of key areas in order to maximise their chances of winning a single MP meaning that many of their supporters won't actually have the option of voting for a UKIP candidate.

As a result and along with a higher voter turn out the Conservatives are likely to do much better in 2015 then they did at this local election meaning that we seem on course for yet another hung Parliament with both the Conservatives and Labour falling just short of an overall majority. This means that despite having slumped to the point where pretty much only their mother's vote for them now the LibDems will once again find themselves holding the balance of power. Hopefully they won't screw it up again by forming a formal coalition with the Labour Party.

15:40 on 24/5/14 (UK date).