Analysis: Henley by-election

Friday, 27 June 2008 12:00 AM

There were three factors to look out for last night. Would the Tories maintain their majority? Has Nick Clegg's leadership shown any signs of success yet? And just how badly would Labour do?

The first is important to gauge the maintenance of Tory momentum. David Cameron is keeping a borderline-unsustainable lead in the polls, one that probably won't last when he starts really specifying policies, some of which will invariably upset some people. He chose local man John Howell as candidate, running with the success he enjoyed employing a similar option in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

In Henley it was a more dangerous strategy. Constituents have basked in their high profile MP for a quarter of a century, Boris Johnson's predecessor being the flamboyant Thatcher challenger Michael Hesaltine. Mr Howell's success, a four per cent increase on the general election vote share, can be divorced from any celebrity effect and stand as a fairly decent indicator of Conservative support, albeit in a thoroughly Tory area.

The news is not so good for Nick Clegg. The traditional political narrative is always about the battle between Mr Cameron and Gordon Brown, but the Liberal Democrat leader has not been able to get one up on his Tory counterpart either. Mr Clegg's so far highly unremarkable run has seen a halt in Liberal Democrat decline, but no gains in either opinion polls or by-election showing. They are in stasis.

Last night showed a 1.84 per cent increase in their share of the vote. Nothing remarkable, especially given the optimism of Lib Dem insiders at the start of the week. It's by-elections like this which the party specialise in, running aggressive locally based campaigns. Perhaps they made a mistake picking a non-local candidate, or maybe they're in bigger trouble than that.

Without their principled opposition to the Iraq war as an electoral asset, the party are failing to pick up the haemorrhage of Labour votes. Some must be going to the Tories, as anecdotal evidence from voter interviews in Crewe and Nantwich demonstrates. Others are drifting to smaller parties, some to the Greens - in all likelihood liberal middle-class Labour voters - or, as politicians have noted with a mixture of fascination and horror, to far-right parties like the BNP. Many of them are simply not turning up to vote, so disappointed are they with Labour's performance. Whatever is happening, it doesn't look like they are going to the Lib Dems.

Nick Clegg is struggling to carve out a space for himself in the new political landscape. There is no central Liberal Democrat message attracting those voters who are fed up with the two main parties. On the bright side - and in the privacy of their offices Lib Dem strategists are probably more relieved about this than they care to admit - there has been no loss of Lib Dem support to the Tories. There was a chance this would happen at the beginning in Mr Cameron's tenure, when he made an open pitch to draw them to the 'progressive Tory' cause, and while many commentators scoffed, the old Etonian has made some pretty surprising achievements over the last couple of years. It wasn't impossible, and for some in the Lib Dems, stasis might not seem such a bad thing.

As for Labour, well, it got worse again. There just doesn't seem an end to the pit they are falling into. Every result is worse than the last, but coming behind the BNP is pure darkness. Losing a deposit is an embarrassment. And, even as the third party in a constituency of Henley's size, 1,066 votes is a disaster.

Last night didn't tell us anything we didn't already know: The Tories are doing remarkably well, the Lib Dems don't seem to be going anywhere, and Labour keeping on coming up with new words for 'bad'. But it has consolidated the impressions we already had and confirmed the impression a Tory government is now inevitable.

Ian Dunt

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