Politics and Principles

I'm not always kind to the political figures who have walk-on appearances in my novels.  If you've read either the welfare rights lit stories or the 4mph thrillers (or even both - hello, greatest fan!) you'll know what a venal, conniving, disloyal and unscrupulous bunch of villains scuttle through the corridors of power in my fictional councils.  There are a few valiant exceptions - after all, did not the redoubtable Daphne Randall hold a seat on Stoke City Council in the parallel universe of Grand Union?  However, in the aftermath of the Local Government elections - and some very local in particular - perhaps the grounds for my cynicism have become more apparent.

In the village where I grew up, the first borough councillor I recall seeing elected was a LibDem, right up to the point where the Tories seemed to be in the ascendancy, when he swapped his gold rosette for a blue one and retained his seat.  A few years later, as the tables turned, he threw the blue rosette away, blew the dust off of the old gold one and regained his seat in the council chamber.  If you were being charitable, you might argue that he found common ground with the Tories in the John Major years only to return to the liberal fold when the likes of Michael Howard and IDS were Conservative leaders.  Alternatively, you might think he was merely an unprincipled opportunist. 


I find myself uncharitably disposed towards those who jump straight from holding elected office with one party to campaigning to be elected for another without a decent period of transition and reflection in between.  Perhaps that's because my own political journey moved at positively narrowboat pace, from leaning towards Labour before I could vote (late 1970s), becoming interested in the case for nuclear disarmament (early 1980s), voting Labour the first time I could vote (1983), joining the Labour Party and meeting my husband at a Labour Party event (1987), campaigning for the Labour Party (late 1980s to mid 1990s) and being a local candidate for an unwinnable borough council seat (1988), giving up my party membership (mid 1990s), voting Labour in a General Election for the last time (2010), voting Green for the first time (2015), joining the Green Party (2015). 


With a lot of overlap between the values of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour and the policies that have drawn me to the Green Party, I find myself with a foot in both camps, hoping that the Greens will prevail where Labour are historically unlikely to do well (and against avowed Blairites), while hoping Labour will hold firm and make gains too.  In the short-to-medium-term, the only vaguely realistic hope of preventing further NHS privatisation, further social security cuts and the immoral waste of precious resources on Trident is a left-leaning Labour Government requiring SNP, Plaid and Green votes for a Commons majority.  To me, being triumphalist about Labour's poor showing this week would be like engaging in an exuberant goal celebration after scoring against your old side in front of their fans, even if their losses had come at the expense of progressive - rather than regressive - opposition. 


So I really don't get how any politician of integrity can, overnight, defect straight from holding office for Labour to doing the same for the Conservatives (or, for that matter, vice versa).  I find it extraordinary that anyone can switch right to the Tories in the light of their assault on the NHS, public services generally and the most disadvantaged citizens of this country - including children.  If you are desperately unhappy with Jeremy Corbyn as your party leader, maybe you might step aside and consider whether to change your voting allegiance.  But surely, if you are so much more comfortable with Theresa More-UKIP-Than-UKIP May as your party leader that you're now willing to represent her party, you should never have claimed to be a Labour councillor - unless, of course, Labour and the Tories really got so close in outlook and policies in the Blair years that their policies and candidates were interchangeable and natural Tories were comfortable flashing red rosettes to steal working-class communities. 

What the big picture hides are all the small local disputes that muddy the waters of local politics.  Apparently, Labour losses in the Welsh valleys are attributed locally to issues with bin collection, a strictly local issue of the 'tough on dog poo, tough on the causes of dog poo,' variety favoured by that chameleon former councillor from my youth.  The Tories may crow about winning one local seat around here and Labour right-wingers mutter darkly about their national Party leadership, but there isn't a great deal poor old JC can do if two former Labour councillors - now running as a Tory and an Independent respectively - face off against the new official Labour councillor on the basis of local, not national, feuding.  When drawing conclusions from Local Government results, absurd situations like this get lost in the bigger narrative although, where they arise from personal rather than policy differences, they bring politics as a whole into disrepute and stoke the general mood of cynicism. 

The fictional Gerry Matthews would fit in nicely; he'd just have to swap the purple rosette on his shiny suit for a blue one.  I'm sure plenty of real Kipper councillors will be quick to do just that.