Abstract
Boris Johnson has often been described as a lucky general. His supporters point to his various election victories, from seizing London’s City Hall from Labour to the ‘stonking’ 80-seat majority he won in the 2019 General Election. Even detractors have long said that Johnson has a habit of surviving political blows that would prove fatal to others.
Some British political commentators predicted that Johnson’s luck would finally run out in May’s local elections. Against a backdrop of ‘partygate’ in Westminster, sleaze allegations and a rising cost of living, surely the Prime Minister would suffer badly at the ballot box?
The results, however, were less conclusive. The Conservatives lost seats – and iconic councils such as Wandsworth and Westminster – but Johnson seemed to emerge unscathed. However, behind the headline figures the results showed some serious cause for Conservative concern.
Writing in this issue’s cover feature, John Curtice finds that the 485 seats that the party lost in May, represented as many as one in four of all the seats that the Tories were trying to defend. Possibly even more worrying for CCHQ, it was often the Liberal Democrats who picked up disillusioned Tory voters.
May’s elections also revealed, once again, the fragile nature of the United Kingdom itself. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party – in power in Edinburgh for 15 years – chalked up its 11th election win in a row and its best ever local election. Polls suggest that independence is now backed by two-thirds of Scotland’s under-55s.
Arguably, the most notable result was in Northern Ireland, where Sinn Fein won most Assembly seats and the right to nominate a First Minister. The largest party in the Assembly is now one committed to Ireland’s reunification. The cross-community Alliance Party had its best result ever with the Democratic Unionist Party losing ground.
Analysing the Northern Ireland election, Jon Tonge finds that the vote brought a reordering of the biggest parties in Northern Ireland but little indication that the electorate’s verdict would be followed by political stability within functioning institutions.
Writing for Political Insight, former SNP MP and now Professor of International Relations Stephen Gethins, contends that the UK is drifting apart with limited serious debate or discussion. Behind Boris Johnson’s strident unionist rhetoric, Gethins argues, lies a lack of engagement with the reality of devolution while many voters outside England increasingly turn away from Westminster.
Perhaps one part of the problem is Westminster itself – and not just its political culture. In the regular Last Word slot, Hannah White argues that the Palace of Westminster is both in need of reform and restoration.
For more than 40 years, a series of official reports have documented serious risks of fire, flood, crumbling masonry, asbestos and outdated mechanical and electrical machinery which plague the building. But despite all these warnings, almost no progress has been made on restoring the Palace. This year, MPs even voted to dismantle the ‘sponsor body’ which their predecessors had established to reduce political interference in the restoration programme.
One thing that has changed in Westminster is the amount of data that voters can access about what goes on there. Since 2005, a whole armoury of transparency tools has been developed, from Freedom of Information laws and Registers of Financial Interests to third-party websites and automated Twitter bots that scrape government transparency releases. Is all this data good for democracy? Ben Worthy, Cat Morgan and Stefani Langehennig investigate.
Away from the UK, Indrajit Roy reports from India, where Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has overseen a rapid erosion of democratic norms and human rights, particularly for Muslims. As Roy writes, the world’s largest democracy is sliding towards ‘electoral ethnocracy.’
In many respects, Russia has been an electoral autocracy for a number of years. Alexander Titov analyses the impact of the war in Ukraine on Russia and finds that while Vladimir Putin has been roundly condemned for the invasion, at home in Russia the President remains firmly in control.
Meanwhile, in Turkey, ‘strongman’ Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dominated politics for two decades. As Erdogan ramps up repression at home and tensions abroad ahead of next year’s elections, Alexander Clarkson warns that the EU and its allies need to do much more if Turkey’s anti-Western turn is to be reversed.
In the regular In Focus slot this issue, Benjamin D. Hennig maps the recent French election. Emmanuel Macron retained power but there are growing signs of discontent and disillusionment among France’s electorate. The far right has been defeated for now but the warning signs about the future are flashing.
Elsewhere, Paula Keaveney reports on a growing part of election integrity around the world: election observation. A veteran of election observer teams in Uzbekistan, North Macedonia, Serbia, Moldova and Ukraine, Keaveney explores how election observation works and how observers can help oil the wheels of democracy.
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