The people
spoke in Enfield on 4th May, but what did they say?
The headline
story is that a Conservative council was re-elected. Against the national (and London) tide, Labour
gained three seats, while a one-issue campaign to prevent the closure of a local
hospital A&E department (Save Chase Farm, or SCF) broke the mould and
gained two seats on the 63 member council. The Conservatives (34 seats) now have a majority over Labour
(27) and SCF (2) of 5 seats: comfortable, but not overwhelming.
That however
is not the whole story. Suppose we ask
how well the electoral system expressed the preferences of local people. To do that we can first compare the
Conservative and Labour performances directly, since each contested all three
seats in every ward. The Conservatives polled
97,162 votes against Labour’s 69,413. On
that basis the Conservatives should have received 1.4 times as many council
seats as Labour; in fact they received only 1.26 times as many. The electoral arrangements favoured Labour, giving
them three or four seats more than their support justified.
But other
parties stood as well. Are we to
conclude that those who won no seats enjoyed no significant support? None of the smaller parties contested all
wards, so we cannot compare their aggregate votes with those of the major
parties. We can however compare their
performance with the major parties and with each other in terms of votes per
candidate. These were as follows –
Conservatives,
1542
Labour,
1102
Liberal
Democrats, 507
Green, 560
SCF, 1386
Others, 217
These
figures may overstate support for the major parties, since many voters in
wards where their preferred minor party had fewer than three candidates would
have opted for the least-worst major party alternative. On the other hand it is possible that some normally major party electors deliberately decided to vote for one minor party candidate in their ward, and would not have voted for a second, had there been one. However, if seats in the council chamber were
distributed according to the actual support obtained per candidate it
would look as follows –
Conservatives, 18
Labour, 13
Liberal
Democrats, 6
Green, 7
SCF, 16
Others, 3
We must be
cautious. No doubt the smaller parties
fought wards where they thought they would do better, and avoided those where
they expected little response, while ward sizes vary somewhat. Moreover,
if the electoral system allocated seats on a strictly proportional basis the
behaviour of voters and parties would change. Perhaps the system we have reflects an unspoken preference for strong
single party local government, even at the cost of stifling wider debate.
But can
anyone be confident that the outcome of the 4th May elections in Enfield well represents the range of views of its electors?
Go to the full Enfield council election results
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