The Tribune

In this week’s column, I should like to comment on politics in Britain where last week local council and mayoral elections were held. These were the last test of public opinion before the next general election. They are, of course, an important part of the working of democracy and require some coverage today, not least because some of the extensive press reporting has been misleading. Some clarification might anyway be useful.

The outcome of these elections has been shocking in its severity but not altogether surprising. Put simply, the Conservatives were trounced by the main opposition Labour party, which made large gains across the country. The Green party also made a strong showing and the right-wing Reform party did better than expected.

Given Britain’s significant role in the world, this apparent move to the left while the rest of Europe is trending politically in the opposite direction will be interesting to study. But the key question now is whether Labour’s success can be translated into victory for the party in the forthcoming general election that is likely to be in the autumn. The timing of the poll is up to the prime minister but it must be within five years of the last election which was in December, 2019.

Last week, Labour advanced both in the so-called “red wall” – traditionally Labour areas in the north of the country that were won by the Tories in the 2019 election under Boris Johnson -- and in the time-honoured southern Conservative heartlands. However, their candidates suffered in some areas with large Muslim populations in the north-west owing to the party leadership’s stance on the Israeli-Gaza war.

It is the case, of course, that in by-elections and local elections people tend to vote in order to send a short-term message of approval or of dissatisfaction – all too often a protest vote -- to political incumbents or candidates, without necessarily incurring the risk of dislodging a government at the national level which they may not want to do. But, this time, the support for the opposition was so great that the Conservatives have, quite simply, crashed in the worst local elections for them in years.

Moreover, as a serious dose of reality for prime minister Rishi Sunak and his colleagues, the polls show that Labour is now on 34 per cent of the vote, the Conservatives 25 per cent and the Lib Dems 17 per cent. If last week’s results were translated to a general election, it is estimated it would result in one of the Conservatives’ biggest ever defeats and on a par with Tony Blair’s huge victory over John Major in 1997.

The UK press is competing to express the most vivid hyperbole about the damage to Mr Sunak’s government - ‘Tories were braced for a brutal defeat but what they’ve suffered is a massacre’, or ‘For Tories this is carnage’, are a couple of examples. But, doubtless, many people will have sought independent confirmation of the seriousness of what has happened by listening to the voice of sanity in the shape of acknowledged political expert, Sir John Curtice, Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde. He has described the events of last week as one of the worst “Conservative performances in local government elections for the last 40 years”.

All this suggests that Labour ought to be home and dry in the coming general election. But despite it all, their supporters still worry that, when it comes to the crunch in such an election, there is a danger that much of the success at local level could be discounted. They ask whether Labour, even under the new leadership of Sir Keir Starmer, is really electable after what turned out to be a failed attempt by his predecessor to take the party to the hard left. Reportedly, many people believe Starmer has now put the left of his party into retreat, but they want reassurance that the public is fully aware of that.

Labour has been out of power since 2010 and was beaten heavily by Boris Johnson’s Tories in 2019. And some of the party’s younger supporters may not be fully aware – or may have just forgotten - that Blair won in 1997 because Labour had moved to the centre ground of British politics, as orchestrated by party grandee Peter Mandelson. Or they may not know that Blair himself has said that the party must return to the New Labour agenda in order to secure another general election victory.

The Washington Post once famously called Boris Johnson a vote-getting juggernaut who carried his party to a seemingly unassailable 80-seat majority in parliament in 2019. Now, after 14 years overall of Conservative rule, a pandemic and recession, five prime ministers in six years and a string of wholly unnecessary scandals involving bad behaviour and squabbling amongst Conservative lawmakers, it appears that the public is simply fed up with the party in power and wants a change.

In his own 18 months in office as premier, Rishi Sunak has brought back good order to governance but has not managed to improve his party’s popularity and to reduce the gap with Labour. Many say that the real problem for the Tories is that they have not stuck to their 2019 manifesto and have moved away from traditional Conservative policies. Trailing Labour in the polls, the PM will want to try to recover that gap – at least to some extent - before calling an election.

Whatever the significance of local elections, perhaps Labour’s stunning victory in the recent Blackpool South by-election, with a huge swing in its favour, best reflects the real situation. Rishi Sunak now has little time to try to turn this around and Labour looks to many commentators to be on the brink of power.

British athletes visit Nassau for World Relays

How interesting it was to learn of last week’s visit of the Great Britain & Northern Ireland team to Nassau for the World Athletics Relays.

These took place over the weekend at the Thomas A Robinson National Stadium with its fine facilities and friendly, welcoming atmosphere. The 32 athletes of the GB&NI team joined the world’s top-performing ones from more than 40 countries to compete with hopes of qualifying for the Paris Olympics this summer.

Great Britain secured medals in four of the five relay disciplines at last year’s World Championships in Budapest and the UK Athletics Olympic Head Coach, Paula Dunn, said she was aiming to secure places in all five Paris Olympics events.

She is quoted as saying “The GB&NI team selected is incredibly strong and we are heading to Nassau to secure those vital Paris Olympics slots. The performances in Budapest last summer were fantastic but we know each year that the other nations are working harder on their relay programmes. We can’t take anything for granted and are going to The Bahamas with the clear aim of putting us on the road to Paris.”

The British High Commission hosted a dinner for the visitors to meet former Bahamian athletes and others connected with the sport. The Minister of Youth, Sports & Culture, Mario Bowleg, was present and welcomed the British athletes, wishing them luck at the weekend relays. The Director of Sports at the ministry also attended. The Bahamian athletes included Tonique Williams-Darling who won the gold medal in the women’s 400 meters at the Athens Olympics in 2004 - and now, of course, has a local highway named after her - together with Chris Brown who won gold in the men’s 4 x 400 meters relay at the London Olympics in 2012.

At press time, the detailed results for late on Sunday were not available but I have been told that the GB&NI team qualified for all five races.

The visiting British athletes also went to some local schools and talked to the students about their careers and achievements as international competitors, with the aim of creating interest and inspiring the next generation of runners.

It seems to me that taking the opportunity of the World Athletics Relays in this way to ensure the visiting British athletes met people locally – and, in particular, young people -- was an excellent example of bringing Bahamian and British people together through sport. This fine initiative was surely a great success.

Law enforcement on right track

Writers are well known for spending too much time on research on the internet instead of taking much-needed exercise. But there are always gems of information to be sought out. One of these for me recently was to discover the views of the relatively recently elected Mayor of New York, Eric Adams, in connection with the current demonstrations by students – but, reportedly, also infiltrated by agitators - on US campuses condemning Israel over its actions in the war with Gaza. In this case, Mr Adams was talking, in particular, about the occupation and setting-up of makeshift camps at Columbia University.

At a recent press conference, he was reported to have said that “our college campuses cannot be used to call for extermination of any group. You can’t call for peace by using violence”. He commented that it was important to balance the right to protest with an effort to reduce hate speech. He added that public safety is a priority: “This is a democracy. We have a right to protest. But we don’t have a right to destroy property and harm individuals.” The NYPD eventually broke up the encampment and, reportedly, arrested some 300 people but without injury. Accusations of police brutality are never far off, but it struck me that, with people like Eric Adams in a position of authority in New York, there is a better chance than not of achieving that balance he mentions.