The Recent Election - "Back Home"

I think the best way to start this is to thank the 127,037 voters in the Borough who managed to stir themselves sufficiently to cast ballots in the local elections. Even more thanks need to go to the 176 candidates from all parties which put their lives on hold sufficiently to stand for election. Final thanks should go to those people who worked on polling day to work in the polling stations and on the counts. The reality is that these groups of people are the only things we have to be proud of in this election. The fact that slightly under 65% of the electorate could not be bothered to vote at all is shameful.

In the post-election article, The Bournemouth Evening Echo reported a stament by Peter Charon that “It’s been an outstanding night for the Conservative group in Bournemouth…It seems our message resonated with the residents of Bournemouth. It wasn’t a close result.”

Certainly if you look, the Conservatives won 50.74% of all the votes cast (64,454 out of 127,037) across the wards in the Borough which is a commanding win. Yet it is plain that if the turnout had not been so low, the result might have been quite different. The reality is that the Tory win was achieved with 18.11% of the entire electorate – (64,454 out of 355,807 eligible voters.) Put another way the Tories represent less than one in five of the people of the Borough, they might try to spin this as a mandate, but it is nowhere near that.

In fact there are many of the aspects of this election which should cause the Conservative party some real worries and these start right at the top. Councillor Charon will remain as leader of the Conservative group on the Bournemouth Borough Council. Whilst he personally captured 17.88% of the votes in his ward, he was voted in to office by only 7.59% of the electorate in his ward.

Even more worrying for the Tories is that this was no mean feat, he attracted 1,363 votes which was more than those of fellow Tory Councillors Johann Edward and Theo Stratton combined. Even Councillor Philip Stanley-Watts only managed to capture 4.9% of the electorate in his ward with 686 votes which is hardly a ringing endorsement. In fact ten of the “winning” Tory Councillors will have secured less than 1,000 votes each, combined their vote tally is only 2.07% of the entire eligible electorate.

Labour has worries of its own though, with 40 candidates standing for election, they secured three seats, or a success rate of only 7.5%. Even worse they managed only one third of the total votes that the Tories did, this is not a brilliant result. As a party expected to be making major inroads against the Tories and Lib-Dems, the result can only be viewed as a massive failure. On key issues they failed to make their case and bring out the electorate.

The only party that did worse was the Lib-Dems, who in the eight years since the 2003 election have lost 91% of their seats on the Bournemouth Borough Council. Both Labour and the Lib-Dems need to reconsider their approach and strategy in the Borough.

Ultimately the biggest losers in this election will be the electorate; especially the 65% of you who couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. To live in a democracy is a privilege and there is only one payment to be made for that benefit; to spend an hour or so every now and then voting; but that seems to be too much for many. You cannot say that your vote will change nothing, especially when 65% of you do not exercise that vote. You cannot say that your vote will change nothing when you had the chance to change everything with the AV Referendum.

You cannot even use the excuse that you were fed up of the candidates as you have the right, the ability and privilege to stand for election yourself. As it is 228,770 voters in the Borough of Bournemouth disenfranchised themselves and handed control of the Council over to 64,454 Tory voters.

And for those who are fond of the statement, that they have the right, the freedom to their opinions; when it comes to the performance of the new Conservative led Council; unless you did vote, you don’t have the right to make any comment at all. You surrendered that right when you decided your right to vote was unimportant enough to be surrendered to vague platitudes and an absence of thought.