I am sickened and scared.

[kaberett]

Here are the results of yesterday's election for my region.

For those of you playing along from abroad:

• Labour (Lab) are a traditionally socialist party, who were ousted at the last General Election; recent prime ministers were Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.
  
• the Tories/Conservatives (Con) are the long-standing right-wing party to which Margaret Thatcher belonged; they are currently in coalition government with...
  
• the Lib(eral) Dem(ocrat)s, a traditionally left to left-of-centre party (very left-wing on social issues, slightly more central on fiscal stuff, ~party of my heaaaart~, hence my being so disappointed in them, etc).
  
• UKIP, the UK Independence Party, are theoretically a single-issue party pushing for exit from the European Union. They are also racist, heterosexist, and probably cissexist. They are vile. They are more vile about people like me than the Conservatives manage to be, which I consider frankly impressive.
  
• the BNP (British National Party) are neo-Nazi scum. UKIP is not quite as obviously virulent and unpleasant as them.

In almost every single district locally where UKIP fielded a candidate, they polled better than at least one Big Three (Lib/Lab/Con) candidate, in most cases better than Green+one Big Three, and in some cases better than two Big Three candidates combined.

My cynical gut feel says that the increase in UKIP votes is broadly a result of people who think the Tories have gone too soft, but tell themselves too many pleasant lies about their values to actually vote BNP.

"We are speaking for ordinary voters across the county who know we will go the extra mile to represent them. We have put our communities first not party politics." -- says UKIP.

Obviously, obviously I know that in my capacity as a queer trans disabled third-generation somewhat-Jewish immigrant, I'm the kind of person who gets sneered about as the preposterous stereotype of political correctness gone mad, as the benefit scrounger who doesn't deserve it. I know this, and mostly I am insulated from it, but tonight I am not.

I know that I'm still protected by my whiteness, by my class, by my accent, and by the fact that I pass (much as I hate it) as straight and cis and English-as-a-first-language.

And still I am frightened.

Comments

[kaberett]

I'm kind of horrified and impressed by how very much they other me in that quotation, how very much they position me as alien, as outside the community, as less than.

One small silver lining: my mother's douchewad ex, who was one of the UKIP candidates in the area, didn't fucking win.

[kaberett]

Oh, wait, that's the other silver lining - I'm no longer dating anyone who ever thought it was okay or even defensible to vote for UKIP for any reason in any election.

[pipisafoat]

:( ♥

... and I'm pretty sure my state just voted to make illegal the following of a federal law. (I don't understand government etc. Anywhere.)

[ewx]

Historically (e.g. Chris Lightfoot's 2005 survey) there was some evidence that UKIP voters were indeed mostly disaffected Conservative voters, and that had been my mental model for UKIP until very recently - but if you look at more recent data (e.g.) then it looks like they're drawing chunks of the past vote of all three of the 'major' parties.

What that means for the future is hard to say. The LDs surely benefited from protest voting against Labour and the Conservatives, but that's not likely to continue. UKIP might experience the same trajectory (not necessarily at the same scale). Alternatively they might turn out to have elected one too many racist/sexist/homophobic/usw nuts and burn out quickly, collapsing back to a much smaller core vote who like or tolerate the nutters.

One thing I feel safe predicting is that they're going to come under a lot more scrutiny at the next general election (which I still think will be Ed Miliband's to lose).

[hairyears]

Are there no green councillors?

[kaberett]

Cambridge County? No. Traditionally Conservative hold, with a tiny island of mostly-orange or mostly-red corresponding to Cambridge City.

City is LD control, has been since about 2000. Prior to that it was Labour. For many years there weren't any Tories in council; I think there are now one or two of them again? We sometimes have a Green councillor, but not consistently. (Lots of the Green candidates in Cambridge are very much homeopathy-on-the-NHS thirty-years-of-complementary-medicine types.)

[ilanin.livejournal.com]

Allow me to explain this one, then: federal law pre-empts state law (US Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2, "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding"). Your state is posturing because it makes them feel better.

[emperor]

http://philrodgers.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/cambridge-results-now-in/ says that only LD/Labour/Ind (a formed LD) one this time round. Not sure about the City council as a whole.
[I gather Labour are now the biggest party on the City Council, with exactly half the seats]

[naath]

Not on the County Council this year, there have been in the past. Allegedly the Cambridge Greens had some falling out with each other recently.

I can only hope that experiencing actual UKIP councillors makes people realise that UKIP aren't just a "I HATE ALL THE REST" option but a party with a whole lot of really nasty ideas.

[pipisafoat]

So they spent their time arguing over and making a law that is essentially not worth the paper it may or may not be written on, much less worth the time aka taxpayer dollars? All in an effort to prove that they won't waste taxpayer dollars on Obamacare? What the hell, government. I guess internal consistency is too much to ask for.

(thanks for the explanation! government still doesn't make any sense, but now i'm convinced it's their fault and not mine.)

[swaldman]

Sometimes (increasingly frequently, it seems, in UK) laws are made so that they are seen to be made. The fact that they are left on the statute books after the act is a messy side-effect.

[swaldman]

I'm not sure I'd describe Labour as socialist, since 1997. Which may be why you said "traditionally"... but anyway, I'm trying not to be too concerned by this, because,

(a) Despite what the national politicians and the journalists might like us to believe, these were local elections - NOT opinion polls for the national parties. I can't point to them right now, but I'm fairly sure I've seen evidence-based studies showing that it's not justified to draw conclusions about one based on the other.

(b) If some UKIP councillors get in and are actually active, they will be seen for the vile idiots[1] they mostly are. Most of them don't have the guile and charisma to hide it like Farage does. Exposing that before the next general election can only be a good thing. If they get in and just sit on councils without doing anything, then, so what.


What worries me most at this point is not UKIP, but the potential Tory panic-reaction to UKIP. The most horrifying thing I heard yesterday was Cameron saying "We will work really hard to win them back", referring to UKIP voters. Of course, that would worry me more if I believed a word that Cameron said ;-)

[1] Well, maybe not idiots. They are either idiots, or amoral and manipulative. I'm guessing some fall into each category...

[sorrillia]

That is concerning. Hopefully the UKIP will implode once their voters realize what they're actually getting?

(I hadn't actually realized that Counties had elected governments: for some reason I thought they were appointed by Westminster somehow. I should actually try to learn how the British government works one of these days. Speaking of confused-American things, it is still weird to realize that you lot have a major political party claiming to be socialist, rather than having "socialist" be a random slur that conservatives apply to anything they don't like, and everyone else denies being.)