Losing out at polls

Published: 28 May, 2010

• ORIEL Hutchinson’s claim that the Conservatives are the main opposition to Labour in Islington is, to say the least, a little surprising (Letters, May 21).
In the parliamentary elections they came a poor third to the Lib Dems and Labour in both seats. Islington South and Finsbury remains a close Lib Dem-Labour marginal.

In the council elections, Labour polled 39 per cent of the vote and the Lib Dems 32 per cent. The Conservatives got 16 per cent, only a little way ahead of the Greens on 13 per cent. 

Not only did the Tories fail to get a single councillor elected, they didn’t even take the fourth, runner-up place in any of Islington’s 16 council wards.
Ms Hutchinson came eighth in Canonbury, polling barely half as many votes as the Lib Dem who topped the poll in that ward.

I do understand the Tories’ frustration; they had high hopes in this election campaign, as did the Lib Dems. Our votes were a few percentage points behind Labour but we got only a third as many councillors.

Looking at it another way, Labour has a huge majority on the council despite polling much less than the combined Lib Dem-Tory vote. All this points to an unfair electoral system, which the Lib Dems have long been campaigning to reform. 

We are delighted that one of the concessions the Lib Dems have won in the coalition government is a referendum on reforming the voting system. Our challenge to Ms Hutchinson and her colleagues is this: will they campaign for change alongside us?
CLLR JOHN GILBERT
Lib Dem, Highbury East

• ORIEL Hutchinson asks where all the Liberal Democrats have gone and, by implication, what had they been doing for their constituents.
My wife, Barbara Smith, former Liberal Democrat councillor in Canonbury, has spent part of the last week deleting the texts of more than 1,000 letters written on behalf of Canonbury residents, both individuals and residents of whole streets or blocks of flats. 

These letters represented only a part of her written output on behalf of the people of Canonbury as the earliest letters had already been deleted and in the past four years correspondence has been mainly by email. Barbara is not unique; her hard-working colleagues, in Canonbury and in other wards, could testify similarly.

Sadly, the coincidence of the general with the local elections, together with the concentration on the national campaign in the south of the borough, meant that Liberal Democrat councillors there had no opportunity to tell constituents just what they had done for them.

All the days and evenings devoted to Canonbury ward, and by extension to this wonderful borough, have been the cliché elephant in the room of my marriage for 12 years. I would not change a thing.
PAUL M SMITH
Avenell Road, N5

• BRITISH general elections are decided by a small number of voters in key marginal seats.
Voters in safe seats, such as the two Islington constituencies, are powerless to affect anything at national level. Furthermore, in safe seats those who do not support the incumbent party are entirely disenfranchised, their votes vanishing into a political black hole.

In the 2010 election, had 60,000 voters in some 20 key marginals voted Tory, rather than Labour, then David Cameron would have got an overall majority of four – outnumbering Labour and the Lib Dems by more than 30 seats.
It is these 60,000 or so voters in key marginals who have prevented us from having a full-blown Tory government.
DR HARRY G MOSS
Manor Road, N16