Well, so much for David Cameron’s assurances to the Yorkshire Post that he was taking personal charge of the Barnsley Central by-election and would be campaigning in the constituency. He never showed.
Nor did any of the Con-Dem big hitters, not even Little Nicky Clegg, the Cabinet mascot who gets wheeled into the House of Commons like those kids taken on to the pitch by professional footballers. An odious practice, by the way.
Nor was there any sign of Darren Gough, the Tory cricketer whose presence had been promised. They knew from the start that Major Dan Jarvis would walk it, despite all the talk of a backlash against Labour over the jailing of ex-MP Eric Illsley for fiddling his expenses. In the event, it was a not just a walkover but a juggernaut trampling
under-foot, and fun to watch.
Dominic Carman, the luckless Liberal Democrat candidate who came in sixth after the UK Independence Party, the Tories, the British National Party and a completely unknown independent with a pathetic 4 per cent of the vote, went on television to accept a “good kicking”.
But on later consideration, he wrote an article whingeing about Tyke dislike of “foreigners” (he’s from Manchester) and the way local people kept harking back to the miners’ strike.
What does this comfortably-upholstered lawyer expect? Memories of 1984-85 are as raw as yesterday, because the main industry that sustained the entire Barnsley region has disappeared, taking with it tens of thousands of well-paid jobs.
He should have done his homework better. And if memory serves me right (and it does), Carman’s rather more famous father, the late George Carman QC was quick enough to take on the defence of Barnsley’s most famous son, Arthur Scargill, in a court case after the pit strike. Of course, there was money in that.
There’s certainly no money in the till at Barnsley town hall. The Labour-led council has had to find cuts of £26 million this year, rising to £44 million by 2015. Job losses over the period will total 1,200, although that is equivalent only to one medium-sized colliery. Three libraries will close, youth services and care for the vulnerable will be cut, parks will go unstaffed and pavements unswept.
If Carman junior thinks the town is a mean place now, he should try going back in a couple of years’ time. A nugatory expectation, I imagine. Barnsley is by no means the hardest hit by the excessive zeal of Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to meet the Chancellor’s appetite for reducing spending. A cool £1 billion has been wiped off the budgets of councils in the region of Yorkshire and Humberside, which takes in north Lincolnshire. Overall, 14,500 jobs are going, with more to come.
Just down the road in Sheffield, where the Lib Dems are gathering on March 11-13 for their spring conference (unwittingly scheduled before local MP Nick Clegg became political enemy number one), the cuts are the highest in the region: £80 million this year, rising to £200 million in four years’ time. Eight hundred jobs are being axed. Up go social care charges, down goes funding for galleries and museums.
The Con-Dem budget was forced through by the Tories and Lib Dems in the teeth of Labour hostility at a rancorous four-hour meeting. Forty-two Con-Dem councillors approved the measures, while 40 Labour and two Greens abstained.
My suggested League of Militant Abstentionists is clearly taking shape in the steel city. Sheffield City Council is under no overall control, a situation I confidently expect to be remedied in Labour’s favour on May 5 when voters go to the polls in England’s local government elections. The party has promised to reinstate £2.4 million worth of the cuts.
All the evidence – polling, council by-elections, the Barnsley vote and anecdotes from the street – suggests a strong surge that will benefit Ed Miliband. If he can’t ride this wave, he will disappoint his many supporters up ’ere.
If there were any doubts that Con-Dem legislation to “equalise” the size of parliamentary constituencies at 70,000-80,000 voters was a gerrymander, publication of the Boundary Commission report will dispel them.
Yorkshire, which sends an overwhelming majority of Labour MPs to Westminster, is to lose four seats. The north-west, never quite so politically homogenous but also a powerful Labour base, loses the most in England – seven seats. Wales, stalwart for the party over generations, drops from 40 to 30, while Scotland goes down from 59 to 52.
This exercise in electoral chicanery, which cuts the size of Parliament from 650 to 600, has nothing to do with saving money or “modernising our democracy”.
It is a dagger deliberately aimed at the heart of Labour efforts to win back power. Plain and simple.
That’s why the party’s peers were quite right to use every means at their disposal to prevent the Con-Dem crookery bill (I think its formal title is parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill) from becoming law last month.
Lord Charlie Falconer may have been ultra-Blairite, but he did well on this issue, along with former MPs and retired union leaders who rallied to the cause. They can teach the Parliamentary Labour Party a thing or two.
