Britain Decides.

To stay at home or possibly go to the pub.

Today (3/5/12) 128 local councils across England, Scotland and Wales will hold elections. In London, Liverpool and Salford in Greater Manchester Mayoral and Local Assembly elections will be held. I'm not saying that these elections are totally unimportant but with the Greek Parliamentary and the French Presidential elections both taking place on Sunday (6/5/12) and the Egyptian Presidential election taking place on May 24th they are most certainly the least important elections this month.

The situation is slightly different though in Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield because these 10 areas will be holding referendum on changing their system of local government from the Council system to the Mayoral system. Unfortunately for the last month or so Britain's news media has been feeding us a constant diet of the Murdochs at the Leveson Inquiry and the Gareth Williams spy in the bag Inquest. As a result the vast majority of people - myself included - have no idea what the differences between the Council and Mayoral systems are. So it looks like this important shift in the way large parts of England are governed will be decided by a small minority of people voting in accordance with party orders.

As for the local elections central government has recently increased the amount of autonomy available to local councils through the Localism Act and is in the middle of a very tough package of austerity measures. Therefore logic would dictate that at the local level it would be best to vote for a party that doesn't make up central government in order to best insulate your local area from central government policy. Sadly in most parts of the UK that means voting for the Labour Party.

Personally I'm not sure I'll even bother vote. After all much like Egypt under Mubarak voting just seems to be indulging the fantasy that this country is a democracy.


Edited at around 16:50GMT on 3/5/12 to add:

Where I said above that Britain was introducing a very tough package of austerity measures what I should have said is Britain is introducing a far tougher package of austerity measures then the rest of the EU. For example Britain wants to totally eliminate it's structural deficit by 2015. The EU fiscal compact only wants nations to keep their deficit within 3% of GDP. So Britain's desire for the Eurozone to focus on growth seems to be about getting Britain's largest export market to buy more of it's exports to strengthen it's economy at the expense of the Eurozone.

Also while I was cleaning the bathroom I was reading an interesting analysis of the Mayoral referendums. It argued that the Conservative Party is desperate to introduce Mayors in northern cities like Birmingham, Bradford, Coventry, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield in order to have Conservative Mayors elected. Those Conservative Mayors will then be showered with money from central government in order to make the Conservative Party look good and boost their almost non-existent support in the north.

Finally I should point out that the reason why the British TV news media isn't really reporting on the elections today is because election rules prevent them from doing so between the polls opening at 07:00 and closing at 22:00 (local) in case it unduly influences the election result. This rule does not apply to the written word because when the rule was introduced the assumption was that newspapers would be able to publish during those times anyway. In the Internet age that rule is provoking a lot of debate. So I guess what you choose to do with this information is your business.