Ideally, citizens should cast their vote on 7 May for the candidates they think are most likely to run their devolved government or local council best. There is undoubtedly an element of rough justice, at the very least, in the imminent ejection from office of hundreds of local councillors, mostly representing the Labour and Conservative parties, for the sins of their national leaders rather than for anything they may have done.
As we report on Saturday, three Labour mayors have expressed alarm at the way that Sir Keir Starmer’s missteps have distracted from local issues and undermined the party’s record in local government.
Steve Rotheram, the mayor of Liverpool City Region, has warned that “own goals” at Westminster are “overshadowing the good stuff”. Sir Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, and Richard Parker, the mayor of the West Midlands, have said similar things, while Sir John Curtice, the elections analyst, tells The Independent that Labour is “heading for a horrendous set of results”, with the prime minister’s unpopularity a major factor.
“In some people’s minds it’s almost a referendum on what’s happened nationally, and it’s really not,” says Mr Rotheram. Unfortunately for many Labour elected representatives, it really is. Politicians cannot dictate to people the basis on which they should cast their vote. If citizens want to use local elections to “send a message” to the prime minister, that is their democratic privilege.
The same applies to elections to the Scottish parliament and the Welsh Senedd. Mr Rotheram may think that Scottish and Welsh voters should pass a verdict solely on the record of the devolved governments and the promises of the opposition parties. But in practice, Labour is likely to do badly in both sets of elections because of the record of the United Kingdom government. That is why Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, called for Sir Keir to resign in February – to try to limit the contagion from the prime minister’s unpopularity.
Scottish Labour politicians may think it unfair that Scots are more motivated to vote against what is happening in Westminster than to pass judgement on the unimpressive record of the Scottish National Party government in Edinburgh, but they have to accept it.
Most voters will be aware of the speculation that Sir Keir’s hold on office will be weakened if Labour does particularly badly on 7 May – and they are entitled to take that into account in deciding how to vote, either for or against. Just as they are entitled to vote tactically: democracy is a blunt instrument, and the first-past-the-post system is particularly so. Citizens must use it as best they can to get closer to the results they want, or further away from those that they do not want.
In that respect, the Welsh Senedd elections will be an interesting experiment. They will be the first to be held in the UK under a multi-member constituency system of proportional representation, which should minimise the need for tactical voting. Unfortunately, the UK government failed to restore second-preference votes in time for this set of mayoral elections in England, so they will still use first-past-the-post, which may throw up some perverse results.
But no matter how people choose to use their votes, we should remember that democracy is precious. What is important is that people vote at all, not that we judge them for voting for the “right” reasons.
If the Labour Party suffers on 7 May for the failings of its national leadership, that means the people are trying to tell it something.
