There's Something About Norwich

In another of his occasional series on local seats, bunnco – your man on the spot, focuses on an exciting fight in Norwich South, made all the more interesting by the link with local MP Charles Clarke. In the Labour rout to come, Clarke has the best chance of leading the party out of the wilderness. But he can’t do that if he loses his seat. Who is he up against and what are their chances in a 4-way marginal? It’s a ‘battleground’ seat in more ways than one. In the Battle of Ideas within in the Labour Party, the result of Norwich South will determine Labour’s direction one-way or another for the next two Parliaments.



With the expenses row reignited, it's easy to forget that the most exciting political event of this year, the Norwich North by-election was called as a result of Dr Ian Gibson's decision to resign when it was suggested that his daughter profited from the sale of his flat, partly purchased with 'expenses' money. Of course, now the offence seems relatively minor compared to others but honourable Dr Gibson stood down and the rest is history. Chloe Smith won and took her seat in the commons this week.

But there's another seat in Norwich where there's more at stake. Not only for the individual candidates concerned, but for the future direction of politics in the UK for the next decade. It's Norwich South, home of the pugnacious former home secretary and bruiser Charles Clarke, who’s defending a slim 3,653 majority.

Back in 2005 the votes were cast as follows

Candidate Party 2005Poll
Charles Clarke Labour 15,904 37.7%
Andrew Aalders-Dunthorne Liberal Democrat 12,251 29.0
Anthony Little Conservative 9,567 22.7
Adrian Ramsay Green 3,101 7.4
Plus 4 others
Majority 3,653 Turnout 65.0%

Norwich South is a typical urban constituency in southern England with a broad mix of housing & industry. There’s the leafy Cringleford suburb [Tory-leaning] with the not-quite-so-posh Costessey area to the West [Lib-Dem leaning]. The urban centre is dominated by traditional Council estates where 40% of residents are said to be living on means-tested benefits [Labour]. And then there’s the University of East Anglia, which has made a name for itself with the world’s leading multi-disciplinary environmental faculty [Greens]

So, Norwich South is that rare beast, the genuine four-way marginal with Clarke defending the seat against Simon Wright for the LibDems, Anthony Little for the Tories and Adrian Ramsay for the Greens. And each of them really is in with a chance. Let’s look at each of them in turn.

For several months now the hyper-active Wright has been telling anyone who’ll listen that he only needs a 3.9% swing to unseat the incumbent. And it’s true. But the problem for him is that the 2005 election was fought at a high-water mark for the LibDems locally. At the time they were riding high on the City council and had the benefit of their party workers in neighbouring South Norfolk to help out. But their South Norfolk colleagues were decimated in the 2007 council elections that followed and the LibDems have since haemorrhaged council seats within Norwich and only now have six Councillors out of 39. Wright will bang-on about how it’s a 2-horse race but out of the four candidates, he’s the one who’s going to need the most ‘encouragement’.

Next we have Adrian Ramsay, standing for the Greens. He’s a busy man. Fresh-faced Adrian is also Deputy Leader of the Green Party nationally and is pretty media-savvy and a darling of local radio and press outlets. He also leads the Greens on Norwich City Council, where they are the second largest party [after Labour] in a hung-council. Although trailing in second place across the whole city, in the NorwichSouth part of the constituency, the Greens are the largest party on the Council. In the 2008 Local Elections, the Greens polled 33% of the popular vote with Labour, Tories & LibDems scrabbling about on 21-24% each. This year’s County elections returned Green County Councillors to the exclusion of Labour so they’d argue that the local momentum is with them.

But Ramsay has a dilemma. Not only is he standing for Norwich South in one of the two seats the Greens are targeting [the other being Brighton Pavillions], he’s also fighting Council seats on the same day in Norwich North. The smart money would see the Greens sleep-walking to victory on Norwich City Council [where a financial disaster is unfolding], partly on the back of the canvassing returns they were able to garner in the Norwich North by-election. They’d be the UK’s first Green Council.

Labour’s on-the-rack in Norwich but, for Ramsay, with his local candidature in Norwich South, national responsibilities for the Greens, and strong-possibility of winning the City Council on May 6th, he’s at risk of spreading himself too thinly and ending-up with nothing. He’s going to have to rely heavily on his local supporters at the University to mind the shop for him whilst he’s away and hope they don’t fade away as polling day approaches as they did in the Norwich North campaign.

Next up we have local teacher and leader of the Norwich Council Tories, Anthony Little, also known as poster ‘Anthony’ on the main PB.com site. He’s not been such a confident performer in recent years and hasn’t benefitted from local media coverage, partly because the press doesn’t seem to bother with the fourth-party on a hung-council. But he’s made up for it as an early adopter of technology – his Little’s Log blog has been essential reading for a few years now. His City seat is up for re-election next May to he’s going to have to split himself in two for the campaign as well.


With such a high proportion of households on benefits, it’s going to be interesting to see how the vote splits for the Tory. Normally you’d think there’d be tactical voting against the Tory and the Greens or LibDems would benefit. But although seemingly coming from behind, his campaign has received a boost from last week’s PoliticsHome survey of the marginals, which predicted a Tory victory seeing Norwich South tumble to the Conservatives along with Brandon Lewis in Gt Yarmouth joining Chloe Smith and dead-cert George Freeman fighting the brand-new Mid Norfolk seat. With a spring in his step, he might now be a strong-finisher in the final furlongs. Don’t write him off.

And now, in the red corner, the big beast himself. Charles Clarke. I met him this week and he’s lost none of his enthusiasm for politics and zeal for reform. We joked that You could almost call him a right-winger. And these Centrist views have been manifested this week on the launch of the website http://www.labourfuture.net/, where the list of conspirators is headed by the NorwichSouth MP, whose name is [uniquely] in bold also includes our own Nick Palmer MP. Of course, being on manoeuvres like this has done nothing for his support in the party nationally and I don’t suspect that he’ll be receiving help from supporters bussed-in to help his campaign in the months ahead.

Clarke knows he’s in for a difficult fight but he hopes that the delicate interplay between his three opponents could see him come up the middle and snatch victory. He’s going to have to rely on his incumbency to a great extent but in truth I can see his core vote lending support to the Greens, just as Labour supporters lent votes to Greens & UKIP in Norwich North. It’s difficult to see him holding on. And I think he knows it.

But my analysis is that, whilst every seat is a battle, the result in Norwich South is going have wider repercussions in the war over the next two Parliaments. If the polls are right, Labour will be wiped-out next May with their main ‘thinkers’ eliminated. It’s inconceivable that Clarke will be acceptable to the rump party as leader but as a creator of ideas, his influence will be critical if the party is to dust itself down quickly and I’d even go as far as to say that Clarke’s ‘LabourFuture’ movement could speed-up Labour intellectual recovery by as much as 4-5 years – a whole Parliament.

But in a four-way marginal, it’s all down to chance and the ‘delicate interplay’. The importance of Norwich South is greater than Peter Snow’s swingometer. It’s a ‘battleground’ seat in the battle for ideas. And I’ve got a ringside seat.

Bunnco – Your Man on the Spot

Reflections on Norwich North by Your Man On The Spot

So now the dust has settled I thought I’d reflect on the local factors that shaped Norwich North from the start. As Bunnco – Your man on the spot, it was clear to me from the outset that this was a poll in two parts.

In the red corner we had the northern half of the Labour-run Norwich City Council area.

Local people were scandalised when it was revealed that last year that old-dears were evicted from their sheltered housing complex where they paid about £70 per week and Council employees, including the head of Housing, moved in at £50. As the ‘Greyhound Opening’ scandal was reported in excruciating detail, tenants passed a motion of no confidence in their Council landlord as a string of other damaging stories followed including the need for £8m cuts to balance the books – a real achievement for a council with a net budget of £16m. Labour were beaten locally before they started.

In the blue corner there was Tory-controlled Broadland Council looking after the leafy northern suburbs.

District council tax is about half what the City pays. Last year they won The Times ‘Best Council’ award and are consistenyly in the top-3 nationally for recycling. In the ipsosMORI ‘place survey’ in Norfolk published 2 weeks ago, satisfaction with the district was a staggering 94% and yet the Government had plans to abolish Broadland and absorb it into the City. There isn’t a single Labour councillor in Broadland.

So, the Tories simply had to turn-out their vote in the Broadland part whilst they knew Labour voters would stay at home or lend their votes elsewhere. It was always going to be a Con-gain…. But by how much?

Let’s turn to the candidates….

Chloe Smith had been chosen for 18 months and Conservatives had delivered three leaflets before the others even selected candidates. And when they did, both Labour and LibDems botched it badly.

Labour chose a former leading light in the local university Young Conservatives, who Labour activists knew was the weakest candidate on their shortlist. Insodoing, they punished the national party for the shoddy way in which Dr Ian Gibson was treated. Revenge was the motivator there.

The LibDems thrashed around and eventually chose April Pond as 3rd choice after the retiring editor of the EDP told them to get stuffed. Then it became clear she didn’t live locally like her leaflets said. She lived in some style in a mansion on the Suffolk border. With a moat. Oh dear.

UKIP’s man blotted his copybook with the local media on Day One with a clumsy press release that tried to capitalise on an armed siege with the predictable ‘send all the foreigners home’ line. The BNP had a “vicar” standing and Craig Murray lost credibility by nailing posters to lamp-posts and telegraph poles [frowned-on round here] then refused to take them down when told to do so by the Returning Officer. You can’t get elected on the platform of ‘put a honest man in Parliament’ when you’re caught breaking the rules.

The Greens flapped-about and eventually dumped their existing candidate in favour of the photogenic but bonkers Dr Rupert Read. I thought the Greens would do rather well but they faded fast, outgunned in the leaflet and money stakes and Read blew it in the TV debate when he made too much of the northern-bypass issue designed to relieve gridlock [and pollution] in the northern suburbs.

Now, to the campaign….

All the Tories needed to do was avoid the banana skins but when it came to Labour, with friends like these who needs enemies?

The National Party did everything they could to make it difficult for Labour to succeed in NN. They actually went out of their way to make things worse. Announcing an EcoTown on the edge of the constituency with one week to go could be described as ‘courageous’ but then to tell locals the next day that the money to pay for the infrastructure would be reduced just smacks of incompetence. Local Govt minister John Denham had a chance to call time on the unpopular Local Government reorganisation issue in Norfolk when Mr Justice Foskett quashed the process in Suffolk with ten days to go. But he blew that chance too. And then the Labour Candidate got “suspected” swine flu in the final days. Not many locals are buying that story.

The Greens and LibDems just attacked each other as they fought for the places and it seemed to me on the ground that UKIP were filling the vacuum. And so it turned out to be to a certain extent with Labour supporters disproportionately backing the party.

The Greens are the largest party in the Norwich South constituency but the Greens were shrewd in targeting their canvassing in the Norwich City part of the NN in preparation for the local elections May 6th next year. They’re only 3 seats behind on the City Council and now have full pledge details for the wards they need to win to take control.

And the leaflets, the bloody leaflets. In fact the low turnout is partly due to the forest of leaflets backfiring on all parties. You’ve never seen so many. It just turned people off. And the LibDems must wonder whether delivering 5 different leaflets to some houses on the polling day alone backfired contributing to the depressing result.

I think the leaflet that did make the most difference though was the one distributed by the Tories in the Broadland area two days before polling day highlighting the threat to their council as a result of Labour’s Council Reorganisation plans. It didn’t change minds but it motivated the Tories in the suburbs to come out. And that’s all that was needed.

The Result….

As the polls closed I posted my prediction “My gut feel is that we’re talking about 40 16 16 16 16 [Con Grn LD Lab UKIP] + others. Or 38 17 15 14 13…. it’s a lottery for the places. And in these scenarios 40-16 is better for Chloe than 38-17.”

I got the percentages almost exactly right on my second suggestion. In truth I expected Labour to be overhauled by the LibDems and UKIP but it’s now emerged that Labour had a quite sophisticated postal vote campaign going on so, whilst intelligence from the polling stations was that the Labour vote had /really/ collapsed, in fact they had already built themselves a 2000-vote cushion which saved them from 4th place embarrassment.

The Lessons….

1. The Tories gambled on putting Cameron at the front. But it was a calculated bet and he’s emerged a stronger leader for it. The Tories ran a sophisticated campaign and experimented and innovated in ways which will only become clear on polling day. The dawn raid delivered by 7am with each leaflet personally addressed to every house was just one example of this.

2. Postal Votes are an important tool for Labour. They are harangued on the doorstep and they’re short of masochist activists. It’s the only weapon they have left. Charles Clarke in Norwich South must now be looking over his shoulder in a genuine 4-way marginal and, for all the talk of winning back the seat from Chloe [a task made easier by boundary changes], local Labour will be better used defending Charles in May than trying to beat Chloe. NN shows that Labour is finished whilst Brown is still in place.

3. The LibDems must be gutted. They’ve truly wasted £100,000, which could have been spent more effectively elsewhere and now Clegg, who mishandled the candidate selection from the start, must be looking vulnerable. This angle hasn’t been picked-up by the media. They’ve lost their way.

4. Labour have more to fear from UKIP than the Tories.

5. Keep an eye on the Greens to take Norwich City Council in May. Back in the 1990’s there was a Legalise Cannabis party, who put up candidates in the County Council elections in Norwich. So there’s been quite a rebellious streak in the City. Expect that to be expressed at the polls in the spring.

6. The BBC will have to learn lessons. They excluded UKIP from the televised debates, a decision made away from Norwich in Birmingham or even London. It’s not the BBC’s job to ‘pick winners’. They should report the news, not make it. And there is some soul-searching to be done here about how much airtime they give the minor parties in the General. UKIP are the media-winners out of this campaign for they will be able to demand more airtime on the back of this result.

7. In the General Election to come local issues like the ones I have described will play a much greater role in determining the final outcome than the simplistic Uniform National Swing. We need to be careful about extrapolating the NN result to the national stage.

Bunnco – Your man on the spot in Norwich North