The latest British poll results suggest, on http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/index.html a uniform-swingometer, that Conservatives will win 293 seats, Labour 238 and Liberal Democrats 87, with 326 needed for a majority. That leaves Conservatives 36 seats short of the 326-seat majority in the House of Commons, but it also leaves Labour and Lib Dems, combined, short by exactly 1 seat, of having a majority by themselves—a critical number, as I have argued. And, as others who reject the uniform-swing model have argued persuasively, the poll results actually project more Conservative (and perhaps Liberal Democrat) seats and fewer Labour seats than uniform-swing models suggest.
One interesting test will come in Westminster North, a district that includes posh areas like St. John’s Woods and Bayswater and also very much less than posh areas like Queens Park and Edgware Road; demographically it is 10% Asian and 10% black. Within different (and slightly more favorable) boundaries it has been a Labour seat since 1997.
The Conservative candidate is Joanne Cash, a barrister who grew up in a Protestant family in Northern Ireland and was educated at Oxford. Cash lives in the (affluent parts of the) district and has been working for three and a half years as the Conservaticve candidate to capture this district. This is part of the project that Conservative leader David Cameron, chosesn to head the party in December 2005, has been pursuing for a very long time—and why Conservatives may come out ahead of the uniform-swing projections in terms of numbers of seats in the next House of Commons. Joanne Cash has become involved in civic and community groups
She has become involved not with “the Muslim community,” but with Morrocans, South Asians and others individually; “they have different cultures, and people realize you’re respecting them.” She has worked to get people in these communities in direct touch with the police, to get rid of prostitution and drug dealing in the more deprived communities—even as people in St. Johns Woods and Maida Vale hire their own neighborhood private police guards. She argues that under the Labour government the gap between the rich and poor in the district—as in much of Manhattan and Mexico City—has grown wider, and has supported charities like Boxing Gym and Butterfly Literacy in the state schools. She has tried to put flesh on Conservative leader David Cameron’s “Big Society” policies by supporting such endeavors.
Political coverage always emphasizes the effects of the last advertisements and spin doctor lines of the last campaign cycle. But one secret of why David Cameron’s Conservatives may do better than the uniform-swing poll analyses suggest is that they have encouraged and subsidized candidates like Joanne Cash to engage actively with the civil society of the people they seek to represent for a long period of time. Cash, with striking blond hair and blue eyes, six months pregnant, would make an attractive candidate in any television commercial. But in British parliamentary seats, with only 120,000 or so constituents (as compared to about 700,000 in an American congressional district), engagement with actual voters and with local civic charities and community organizations, may count for much more than a few TV ads would in the U.S. Whether this mode of long-term campaigning will prove efficacious in Britain, much less transportable (Icelandic ash permitting) across the Atlantic, is not clear. But it’s an interesting development, and an indication that David Cameron’s “new Conservatism” is not just about campaign advertising, but also about a different way of Conservative governance.
