Now we know how much the candidates spent in each constituency in last year’s general election, the lineaments of the Liberal Democrats’ crushing defeat in the Barnsley Central by-election become clear. Nick Clegg’s crusaders invested precisely £0 to support their candidate, one C Wiggin, in 2010. No wonder they came sixth behind the UK Independence Party, the British National Party and an independent nine months later. They should have taken the advice of King Lear, who warned that nothing can come of nothing.
It’s one thing to target resources in potentially winnable seats – the Lib Dems spent £34,720 unsuccessfully trying to hold on to Harrogate and Knaresborough – and another simply to leave some constituencies out of account. Literally. They spent not a penny in Rother Valley, nor Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough. The princely sum of £98 was invested in trying to topple Ed Miliband in Doncaster North. And one wonders why they bothered to fork out £383 in Denis MacShane’s Rotherham.
I am greatly indebted to Jonathan Reed, political editor of the Yorkshire Post, for this information, gleaned from official returns of election spending by the parties. He established that the Tories used their financial muscle to win key seats in the county, spending £300,000 on campaigns in 11 crucial marginal constituencies, winning six of them. Proper journalism like this is all too rare in regional newspapers these days. Titles as important as the Manchester Evening News don’t have a full-time staff correspondent at Westminster any more.
But enough of flattery. The figures show that the Tories spent £751,299 in Yorkshire and Humberside, compared with £577,718 by Labour and £392,944 by the Lib Dems. The Tory big push followed a complete revamp of their operation in the north of England, spearheaded by William Hague soon after Cameron took over and reported in this column. They took the view that heavy investment in the key marginals – presumably funded by Lord Ashcroft’s millions, in part at least – would pay off.
It did. Alec Shelbrooke, a project manager with Leeds University who ousted Labour in Elmet and Rothwell, was the region’s biggest spender, throwing £39,829 into the fray to snatch the seat with a majority of more than 4,500 on a swing of nearly ten per cent to Conservative. Shelbrooke gloated: “People always complain that some parties have more to spend than others, and that’s the electoral cycle. In 1997, we couldn’t raise significant funds to fight an election – nor in 2001 – and Labour could. Now it’s switched around.”
It was the same story in Brigg and Goole, where Ian Cawsey was hit with a similar swing by Andrew Percy, who more than doubled Labour spending with a purse of £36,547. In Calder Valley, retail manager Craig Whittaker outspent Stephanie Booth (Cherie’s step-mother-in-law) by £3,500 and took the seat with an outlay of £16,189. The swing there was nearly 8 per cent. A very similar swing evicted Shona McIsaac from Cleethorpes, where churchwarden Martin Vickers shelled out £18,000, £3,600 more than Labour. Selby and Ainsty, a redrawn seat never likely to return to the fold, nevertheless saw a massive £31,000 Tory input against Labour’s £1,600, and a swing of 9.7 per cent to David Cameron.
Finally, as we have seen, Harrogate and Knaresborough fell back into Tory hands, despite a massive Lib Dem outlay that almost matched the Conservatives’ £38,345 spend. Dewsbury tumbled to the Tories, despite Shahid Malik spending £25,500 to Simon Reevell’s £18,000, although the swing here was less than 6 per cent. Shahid Malik points out that the Tories probably spent 10 times more than him, because these are only the individual candidates’ returns. National spending by the parties – billboards, direct mailshots and suchlike – isn’t broken down by constituency.
But money doesn’t buy you everything, not even in politics. Clegg’s people threw away more than £38,000 trying to turn Colne Valley back into a three-cornered marginal. The Tory candidate, Jason McCartney, a former television sports reporter and sometime big wheel in the Witham Third District Internal Drainage Board, underspent the Lib Dems by £7,000 and still won by almost 5,000 votes. The Lib Dems also outspent Labour in Hull North (by £20,000) and Sheffield Central (by £2,000) but failed to take either. In Sheffield, they must have been helped by tactical parsimony on the part of the Tories, who parted with a risible £24.50. Lib Dem spending of £34,400 – £10,000 more than Labour or the Tories – clearly helped Greg Mulholland retain Leeds North West, but he was well dug into the student vote. “Was” being the operative word. Other forces will bear down on his vote in 2015, including student disillusion, if the coalition lasts the course.
Tory investment in the marginals paid big dividends in 2005 and even bigger in 2010. But did the money do more than accelerate an overall national swing that was already taking place? Some of the new intake won with larger majorities than expected, with swings higher than the national average. More money unquestionably helped, buying posters, leaflets and publicising the candidate, but it wasn’t a sine qua non for victory. Labour’s Jamie Hanley spent £38,000 seeking to retain Pudsey for Labour, £13,000 more than rival Stuart Andrew who won on a 7.5 per cent swing to the Conservatives.
Nonetheless, there may well be a case for the Electoral Commission to look into the whole issue of how much candidates are allowed to spend. They can spend as much as they like until the run-up to polling day, when there is a limit. Shelbrooke was among those who spent more than 90 per cent of his allowance. The difference between £0 and almost £40,000 may not be the determining factor in winning or losing an election, but it’s as near as dammit is to swearing, as the saying goes up ’ere.
