A month to go - The State of play in the Barnet Council Elections

 In exactly one months time, we will know the new shape of Barnet Council. This will be the third time I've stood as a candidate for the Lib Dems in Mill Hill at a council election. I stood in 2010, 2018 and now. In 2010, the Lib Dems believed they had an excellent chance in Mill Hill, having had councillors in the ward since 1994. In 2018, it felt like the charge of the light brigade. Privately we said that if we got more than 1,000 votes each we'd done well. We'd got less than 500 in 2014 (I didn't stand). We worked extremely hard and I got over 1,200. Mill Hill ward had the best result for the Lib Dems of any ward in Barnet. However the big issue locally was Jeremy Corbyn. Despite the fact that it was a local election and the local Labour party are all Blairites, that was all anyone in Mill Hill seemed to want to talk about. The Tories exploited this to the hilt and made a big play on the fact that if you wanted to show your dislike of  Corbyn you'd vote for them. Our message that "If you don't want Corbyn and you think the Barnet Tories have done a pretty rubbish job vote for us" was a hard sell. 

Move on four years. Jeremy Corbyn is a distant memory. Labour have morphed back into a sort of Blair light party, which stands for very little, seeks to upset no one and is seemingly far more electable. As for the Tories, whereas in 2018, they used the toxic leadership of Corbyn as a weapon of mass media destruction, now they have #Partygate and their own toxic leader, Boris Johnson to deal with. 

Over the last few weeks, we've started our campaign. This week, we have begun leafletting. Not having access to the vast financial resources of the Tories (some of the local Tory MP's have taken big bungs from Russian Oligarchs) we can't pay to have our leaflets delivered, so we do them ourselves. I've also been knocking on doors. To say things have changed is a mild understatement. So how will Barnet Council change in May?

Arriving on a doorstep near you!
Make sure you keep an eye out for it! pic.twitter.com/Nr7Uof5foG

— A Better Mill Hill 🔸🌈🇬🇧🇪🇺 (@ABetterMillHill) April 4, 2022

A month is a long time in politics. Much can happen, but the Tories mantra that we need Boris as there is a crisis in the Ukraine has failed miserably to ring home. Even local Conservatives I've spoken to have privately admitted that he's not the right Prime Minister for a crisis. No one in Mill I've spoken to seems at all enthused for either Labour or the Tories. On Boris, there is pretty universal disdain. People see him for exactly what he is. All of the partys at No 10 have left a sour taste. The impression I get is that Tories would rather he just quietly disappeared. The ordinary Tory voters, who are not politically motivated and just want decent, sensible government are horrified. The British are too polite to tell people canvassing for their party what they don't want to hear, but a couple of lifelong Tory friends I know, who have only ever voted Conservative told me "I don't know if I'll even bother to vote in the Council elections, if I do I might vote for you this time, just to send them a message". In 2010, these friends pretended they'd vote for me and later admitted they hadn't, in 2018, they said there's no way they'd risk voting anything but Tory. Now they are saying this without asking a hundred reasons why they should vote for me (wasting my valuable canvassing time in the process). 

As to local Labour. Hard Corbynite Labour supporters hate the Lib Dems. They seem to hate the Lib Dems now even more than they did before. I get the "How can you possibly stand for THAT PARTY" from quite a few. There is a train of thought in Labour circles that the Lib Dems should simply stand down and let them win everywhere. They fail to recognise that people like me do not actually believe that Labour is the answer to every ill in the world. I passionately beleive that Barnet Council would work far better if it wasn't dominated by one party, who are whipped to death to pass unpopular schemes and are disconnected from local people. The local Labour party is almost as bad as the Tories in many ways. They never opposed the One Barnet outsourcing programme, they never said they'd reverse it. They actually created the monster that has become "Barnet Homes". I don't actually know what they stand for in Barnet. When you chat to people on the doorstep, they don't know either.

People ask me what the Lib Dems will do, which the others wouldn't. Well should we hold the balance of power, the first thing I'd push for is to remove the ridiculous rules on public questions at meetings that the Tories brought in after the last election, which mean that public scrutiny of decisions is almost impossible. I'd push for a return to the old format of the local area forums, where people could just turn up and ask any question they liked. The Tories hated this because the questions were difficult. I'd return to the old convention that the chair of the Audit Committee was from an opposition party, as this meant better scrutiny. I'd also seek to unwind the One Barnet outsourcing, except where transparently published figures proved it delivered better services and better value for money. The Tories refuse to publish such info and Labour has made no such commitment.

Locally, I would make sure that any council work done in Mill Hill was done properly and I'd use my access to officers to get things done when they should be, not eighteen months later. A Tory candidate sneered and said "what makes you think they'd do that for you, when they don't do it for us?". The answer is threefold. The first part is that I've run a business for 43 years. I know that if I want something done, I don't fire off an email and think that's the end of the matter until someone else moans. I speak to people face to face and take the time to explain why they need to get on with it. The second reason, and anyone who has read this blog will know this. I do not let people fob me off with excuses. The third reason is that I have an excellent relationship with the Barnet workforce and unions. They know I will be fair so they will talk frankly and honestly with me. When I explained this to the Tory candidate, he said "You are deluded, you have no idea". That was exactly what I was told when I applied for a bank loan in 1979 to start my studio.

So what do I think will happen next month? Labour is not toxic, the Tories have a major issue with their leadership. I expect a swathe of seats to flip from Tory to Labour, not all in places you'd immediately expect. I also expect the Lib Dems to pick up a few. There are several seats where the Lib Dems are privately polling very strongly. In Mill Hill, it is notoriously hard to read the runes. I may change this prediction, but I suspect that the Lib Dems could poll between 1,500-2,000. If we got 1,200 last time, I think we should be expecting at least a 50% increase without the bogeyman factor. As to the Tories, if what I'm hearing is correct, they could well drop by 30-40% my gut feeling is they'll poll somewhere between 1,700 and 2,200. That means it is in play for the Lib Dems. As for Labour, if their voters vote tactically for the Lib Dems, they will see a drop and see the back of the Tories. If they don't they will probably do as wella s last time and get 1,400-1,800 votes and a Tory Councillor. I can't see any way that they will get over the wire. I actually think that last time, they polled better than previously as the hard left bothered to vote. They won't vote for Sir Keir Starmer's Labour party, they hate him even more than they hate the Lib Dems and the Torys. 

The key question is whether the Tories will lose their majority in Barnet. I think the boundary changes favour them. They have a decent majority in number of seats. The biggest problem for local Labour is that they simply don't live in the year 2022. Check their Hendon Labour website. I was gobsmacked that the front page doesn't even mention the fact that there is a council election. 

Compare that with the Barnet LibDems site, which has lots of local campaign news.  I can't believe that Labour haven't twigged that a website is an important local resource. Speaking to their local campaigners, it seems that the campaign strategy is pretty much the same as the one which didn't work in 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018. Lots of leaflets and lots of canvassing core votes, with little or no effort to reach out and make new friends.

If I was a Tory Strategist, I'd be worried. It almost seems to me that their strategy is to rely on Labour running a rubbish campaign. Whilst it seems, from the evidence I can see, that this is a given, I am not sure that with Boris running the show, it will work. In 2018, I spoke privately to BBC Radio London's Susana Mendonca three weeks before the election. She asked whether I thought the Tories would lose Barnet. To her amazement, I said "No, they will increase their majority". She was stunned and said "What do you know that every other political commentator is missing?". I replied "I've actually knocked on doors and I am not telling porkies about it". I advised her to have a walk around Hale, a key ward and speak to people. I was spot on. I may change my prediction, but I think we may well have a hung council, with three or four Lib Dems holding the balance of power. I intend working my socks off to ensure one of those people is me, but it is very much in the balance. In the sidebar of the desktop version of the blog, you can check the history. I made no such prediction in 2018.

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The 2014 Council Elections - the final word

Tomorrow a new council will be sworn in, there will be 18 new faces and 18 councillors who we won't be seeing again. The new council will be a big departure from the previous setup. One of the reasons that this blog has tempered much of its criticism of Richard Cornelius is due to his support of a change back to the old "committee system". The cabinet has been dispensed with and individual councillors will have far more say in decisions. This also means that they have to take responsibility for those decisions now. They can't say "The Cabinet passed it, we were not party to the decision".

With a much reduced majority, it now only needs one Conservative Councillor to say "No!" to any decision and the decision falls. Wheras there was the sanction of dismissal to the oblivion of opposition, now any councillor dismissed from the Tory group will hold the balance of power. This means that any Conservative with an axe to grind becomes a very dangerous individual for the administration.

It is interesting to note that two of the outgoing cabinet lost their seats. East Barnet Councillors Rams and Mrs Tambourides have created  a space at the top table. In the brave new world this means committee chair positions. There is also the rather juicy plum role of chair of the licensing committee, vacated by outgoing Andreas Tambourides. So that means three lots of hefty allowances to be had.

If Richard Cornelius only has three members who want juicy cheques every month, all should be well. If however a few more want noses in troughs, then he will find himself in a sticky situation. There have been persistent rumours that Richard Cornelius would face a leadership challenge after the election, whatever the result. Given the tight margin at the top and the demise of some of the more accomplished weilders of the knife weilders, we think it unlikely. Any round of blood letting could have all sorts of unfortunate side effects. In short the majority of one has changed the game.

One rather interesting appointment will be the chair of the Audit committee. By convention this goes to an opposition member. Lord Palmer was the previous incumbent. In some ways Jack Cohen would make and ideal choice as he is one councillor who officers will not give the run around to. Jack finds himself in a strange situation. He's been "shot by both sides". Despite years of cordial relations between Barnet Labour and Barnet Lib Dems, Labour went tooth and nail to unseat Jack and hos fellow Childs Hill Lib Dems. The net result was the Tories took two seats in the ward. Labours teenage scribblers see this as some odd sort of victory, but for the rest of the progressive part of Barnet, it is a complete catastrophe. We can only speculate what the fallout from that particular own goal will be.

Which brings us to Labour. The election has given Labour a platform to possibly take all three London Borough of Barnet seats at the General Election. The big shock was the collapse of the Tory vote in Chipping Barnet, traditionally "Toryville". There is a theory doing the rounds amongst the Barnet Tories that the Labour party "threw" Hale Ward deliberately. The logic goes that whoever takes over the Council will have some awfully difficult decisions to make and Andrew Dismore did not want an unpopular Council to shaft his general election campaign next year. They believe that the campaigning decisions, such as the Childs Hill push were more about getting the message out for Labour 2015 than anything to do with running the Council.This is perhaps the only sensible explanation that I've heard for the failure to take Hale. The conspiracy theory also says that Labour HQ spiked the stories that were being leaked to the press about certain Hale ward Councillors.

I suppose we'll be able to see whether there is any truth in this when the Labour Group have their meeting on Tuesday. I suppose that if the current leadership remains, we can assume that the view is that whatever job was supposed to have been done, has been done. If there is a big shake up, then we know that they've recognised that there was a massive campaign failure. I guess that we'll have the full story after the meeting on Tuesday.

And on to the "minor" parties. Today we publish a rebuttal of the election coverage of the Greens in the Barnet Eye, by A.M. Poppy, who was local green candidate in High Barnet. As ever, when the emotions are high, we say silly things. Poppy states

"Don't let that personal animus warp your accuracy. You've stood for the Lib Dems. Does it pain you that we Greens are now firmly established as the third party in Barnet, displacing the LibDems in all the 2012 ballots in Barnet and in all but two of Barnet's wards declared last week? I could more credibly argue that those who get in the way of the Greens are scuppering the progressive cause."

Casual readers of this blog, who may not know the full context, will perhaps think that I am some sort of "Lib Dem fifth Columnist", writing blogs to warp the electoral process to benefit the Lib Dems. I suppose I should set the record straight. I had been a member of the Labour party for 22 years until September 2009, when I quit in disgust at the treatment of refugees. At the time the Lib Dems were the only parlaimentary party not engilfed in Xenophobic bile. I also supported their stance on tuition fees. As they had councillors in Mill Hill ward and there was a chance of keeping the Tories out, I joined. I never anticipated the coalition.

Initially when the Lib Dems joined the coalition, I was undecided as to what to do. The country was in a mess and needed stable government. The referendum on the voting system was also something I supported. Then every single one of the Lib Dem MP's broke their pledge to not raise tuiton fees. I resigned as a Lib Dem in disgust. I was considering rejoining Labour, when I got a completely unexpected letter stating that I had been expelled for five years from the Party because I stood as a Lib Dem whilst being a Labour member. This was factually incorrect. I had copies of the email resigning and a response from Andrew Dismore. I sent this back, but was told it didn't matter and that I wasn't welcome. I realised that I didn't really want to be a member of a party and being an independent voice suited me and the blog better. I consider myself to be a "progressive" and I will support any candidate that I consider to be "the best for the people of Barnet".

So am I letting "personal animus" getting in the way with support for Greens. I find it rather strange that Poppy makes this claim. I believe that we are the only blog in Barnet to actually go out of our way and record an interview with her. I stated that she'd make and excellent councillor and that I hoped she'd do well in High Barnet. Does that sound like personal animus? The truth is that despite Poppies rant, the Lib Dems have one councillor and the Greens never got anywhere near gettimg elected anywhere. I believe this election was their best ever chance, especially in High Barnet and yet they didn't even poll 1,000 votes.

I am not upset at the Lib Dems poor showing. The party deserves a kicking for the coalition. I do however believe in the long run, they offer the best chance of a third party taking seats. These seats will be in Childs Hill, Mill Hill and High Barnet. This will not happen until after the end of the coalition. The best hope for the Greens is to get a by-election win in a ward where there is a major Green issue. I'd like to see a carve up. Wards like East Barnet, Hale and Brunswick Park giving Labour a free run. In Mill Hill, Childs Hill and High Barnet, give the  Lib Dems a run.

I'd then say the Greens could have the free run of any other ward that comes up. If they find the right local issues and the right candidate and they focus their resources on one or two wards, I believe that long term they will do far better. I am amazed that in rural wards like Totteridge, they haven't done better. Green belt and overdevelopment is a big issue in such places. Poppy also berates me

"I think I find my answer in the post of 18 May where you say: “I don't support the Green manifesto or agenda.” I suspect you never read them, but no matter you're entitled to feel hostile."

I find this comment a little insulting. As a blogger I've read all of the local and national agendas. As I thought Poppy would do a good job on the council and is a very decent person, I chose not to forensically dissect just how stupid some of their proposals are. Let me give you just a couple of examples. Checkout this leaflet http://www.barnetgreenparty.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/High-Greens2.pdf  - One area that the Greens surely would have high public confidence is protecting the green belt and stopping overdevelopment, yet not a word. They seem obsessed with showing they can come third ahead of the Lib Dems. The leaflet says "The Lib Dems have sold out. No one votes for them now". This is the most silly statement I've ever seen on a leaflet. High Barnet has many voters who quite like the Lib Dems. The job of the Greens was surely to persuade them to "lend a vote". Were the 859 people who voted for Duncan MacDonald in High Barnet nobodies? They also say that Labour know it's not worth wasing their energys in High Barnet. Well actually they finished second. One final word on this leaflet. I was a bit perturbed by the UKIP esque reference to"the 100 or so Polish pickers" in the article about recycling. What has the nationality of the workforce got to do with the efficiency of recylcing? A very poor leaflet indeed. It put my back up when I first read it and it hasn't improved with age. I suspect that what happened at the Mill Hill Residents Association Hustings summed up the sheer ineptitude of the Greens. All of the parties had a local candidate on the panel, discussing local issues. That is, except for the Greens. Therefore the meeting knew they weren't serious.

And that brings us on nicely to UKIP. I don't really know what to say about UKIP in Barnet apart from to comment on the complete cock up of a campaign that they ran. I have spoken to their candidates and they admitted as much.

I suspect that only the Lib Dems really get what being a third party is about at local elections. They have always done well when they've identified hyper local issues and made these into the campaign. Mill Hill was awash with local issues, yet none of the parties bothered to talk to these. I suspect that the Lib Dems lost their focus due to the departure of Wayne Casey who was an excellent local politician. UKIP perhaps could have filled this void, but were simply too shambolic.

We must say a  quick word about the smattering of independent candidates. It seems to me that Barnet is not really ready for independent candidates and the independent candidates are certainly not ready for Barnet. To win a seat in Barnet  you need to attract somewhere between 1,800 and 3,000 votes. So if you are going to seriously engage, you have to work out how you change the minds of this number of people, many of whom are set in their ways. It seems that the independents think "having a few good ideas" will suffice. The laws of mathematics and probability say otherwise. So if you are planning to stand, you'll probably have to start knocking on doors a year before the election and get around every house 2 or 3 times.


Unless anymore guest blogs show up, this will be it for local election 2014 coverage. Unlike a few other bloggers, I've no interest in writing anything about any of the candidates consigned to room 101 (unless they have a pop). All scores have now been settled.

Is even Nick Walkley sick of the Barnet Tories?

A rather interesting press release on the Barnet Council website. Barnet Council is hosting a seminar on "How to become a Councillor". The Barnet CEO, Nick Walkley is introducing it. If you are interested in standing as a Councillor, come along and find out. So is Nick Walkley sick of the Barnet Tories and does he want some new Councillors better suited to the job? I Is that why he's set up this seminar? Maybe I'll mosey along and ask him on Monday in the Q&A session.