Local elections: patchwork politics

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/01/local-elections-uk-vote-editorial

Version 0 of 1.

There is no general election tomorrow. Instead there are thousands of local elections in most of Britain, ranging from the large, like the London mayoral contest, to the tiny. Not all the national parties will contest all the seats. Not all the voting systems are the same, so not all the tactical voting options are the same either. In the mayoral referendums in England, the same parties take opposite views in different cities. As ever, the issues in different parts of the country reflect local concerns and cultures as well as shared national ones. The parties' stances are formed by local factors and calculations. And candidates matter too.

All this is as it should be. Local elections should be, er, local elections. To try to cram all tomorrow's contests into a single Westminster frame is wrong. It insults the voters, who regularly split their tickets in different electoral contexts. It also insults the idea of localism. And localism is too important for that.

Yet local elections always take place in a national context. That national context matters – and it is a dire one this year, with the country in its second recession in three years, public money scarce, benefits being cut, and big, unwelcome changes to the health service looming. All local government faces grim, Whitehall-imposed times. The national parties will judge tomorrow's elections as a midterm opinion poll on the coalition and the opposition. So will most of the London media. This is inevitable and, to an extent, right.

Except that it also depends what you mean by national context. In Scotland, the national context tomorrow is both Scottish and British. Are Scots supposed to be passing a verdict on their local councils, or on the Scottish government or on the Westminster coalition? They can't easily do all three at once. A similar triple challenge applies in devolved Wales. Only in England is it possible to pretend that the local elections are merely a second-order general election – and not always there. Look at the London mayoral contest. If Boris Johnson wins tomorrow, is that a vote for the Tories or against Labour, for David Cameron or against Ed Miliband, for Mr Johnson or against Ken Livingstone? Not an easy question to answer. Smaller variations on the same question abound across the shires and cities.

Yes, as the dust settles on Friday and Saturday, it matters very much that the Conservatives have taken an overall hit and that Labour should have made substantial gains. Britain needs a change, not more of the same. But this is not a single undifferentiated country any more. Its political contours are altering. Most voters are well able to think for themselves in a variety of circumstances. Look before leaping to make blanket endorsements in such kaleidoscopic political conditions. What really matters tomorrow is to vote.