UK voters hammer the centre

British voters have followed Canadians this week in rejecting centrist policies in favour of ruling conservative parties.

The losers have been the Liberals in Canada – reduced to their smallest ever number of seats in Parliament – and the Liberal-Democrats (LibDems) in the UK.

Last night (NZ time), they heavily lost a referendum on introducing AV (alternative voting) in place of first-past-the-post, which Canadians agreed to stick with in a similar referendum several years ago.

The UK referendum was a key component of the deal that created the coalition government a year ago. The No vote was 68% to 32% for Yes.

The LibDems also fell to their lowest representative in local government in 30 years, mainly due (they say) to their role in the Conservative-led coalition government.

The LibDems were particularly hard hit in the north of England, where they lost control of councils in Hull and Stockport, and lost ground in Liverpool and Manchester. In all they lost 700 council seats, a third of what they were defending.

By contrast, the Tories won control of four councils in England despite unpopular austerity policies and public spending cuts to reduce the fiscal deficit.

Clearly, Conservative voters largely agree with the cuts and there appear to be a growing number of them. But opposition to them is also strong and many of those probably voted for the LibDems instead of Labour at last year’s general election.

Naturally, Labour has bounced back in the local polls, winning more than 500 seats in England and control of 26 councils. It also polled strongly in Wales, prompting leader Ed Miliband to talk of a comeback only a year after its humiliating defeat at central government level. In Wales, Labour was just one seat short of a majority in the Welsh assembly.

Meanwhile, Scotland, a one-time Labour stronghold, has given the separatist Scottish National Party the first majority of any party in the Scottish parliament since it was established in 1999.

Leader Alex Salmond is pledged to holding a referendum on Scottish independence and now he has the votes to implement it.
 
Full BBC coverage of UK council elections is here.