How big will the "voting with their hearts" problem be?

Listening to some interviews with Old & Sad voters following the recent by-election I was struck by some comments from one woman who was very annoyed about the tuition fees issue.

She explained how for various reasons she could not vote for Labour but that also she could not bring herself to vote for the Lib Dems because of the fact that the party had helped triple tuition fees. And instead she voted Conservative.

Yes, you might just need me to repeat that. She voted Conservative.

I think what this demonstrates is that voters do not always vote rationally. If tuition fees is really such a touchstone issue for this woman, how could she possibly bring herself to vote for the party whose fault it largely was that tuition fees went up? If the Lib Dems had formed a majority then the fees would already be on the way to being abolished. As it was they had to compromise with a party who was implacably opposed to anything other than raising tuition fees. The Lib Dems took some of the harsher edges off the policy and made it fairer than it would have been. The Conservatives on their own would I am sure not have approached it in that way.

I just wonder how many people out there over the next few years with the various elections and referenda will follow a similar path to that and vote with their hearts rather than looking objectively at the decisions the parties in government have taken and weighing up the good against the bad.

I do fear that many will not do this and that may be why the Lib Dem polls are so low. I can only hope that over the next few years the party gets its fair share of the credit as well as the blame.

Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election result - something for everyone

The final results are:

Labour 14,718 42.1%

Lib Dem 11,160 31.9%

Conservative 4,481 12.8%

UKIP 2,029 5.8%

BNP 1,560 4.5%

Others 958 2.8%

So Labour has a majority of 3,558 and just over 10%.

First of all, congratulations to Debbie Abrahams who will be delighted to be the latest addition to the House of Commons. She fought a good campaign (certainly compared to her predecessor) and deserves credit for it.

There is something for everyone in this result.

Labour will (rightly) claim that it is a decent victory for them increasing their vote share by over 10% on the May 2010 general election result. Debbie Abrahams even gained 534 more votes than Phil Woolas did last year (14,718 vs 14,186) despite the fact that the turnout was only 48% (vs 61.2% last May).

The Lib Dems will (rightly) claim that their vote held up well under the circumstances. They even ended up 0.3% higher than their general election performance. Given the national situation and some national opinion polls having them down in single figure percentage points this is a creditable result and will give Nick Clegg some comfort that the Lib Dem vote has not collapsed as many commentators predicted and Lib Dem activists feared.

Despite a poor result the Conservatives will (rightly) point out that having come third at the general election, their vote was always going to be squeezed mercilessly and there was doubtless some tactical voting going on. Secretly David Cameron will be pleased that the Lib Dems managed to hold their own even if it was at the expense of his own party. The last thing he wanted was for his government to be threatened by a Lib Dem wobble triggered by this result. As things stand that is now unlikely.

And even UKIP can (rightly) point to a decent increase in its votes.

All in all it there are positives for just about everyone. Oh, except the BNP who (rightly) lost votes and vote share.

Are Labour incapable of being in a coalition?

This post today on Labour Uncut is very critical of Lib Dem Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election candidate Elwyn Watkins and some comments he made on Newsnight about tuition fees. LU seem to find it hilarious that he could have a view on tuition fees (that they should be ideally abolished) and yet still would have voted in accordance with the coalition agreement had he been an MP.

How can you campaign one way but vote another? How would he have campaigned against himself? Picketing his own office? Shouting at himself? Sending himself furious letters? Distributing leaflets saying “Do not vote for Elwyn Watkins – only the Lib Dems can win here”?

And all the while having to do all this campaigning without trying too hard, in case he convinced himself, and ended up not voting the way he intended.

Now I know this is not a world that we are particularly used to but the reality is that the Lib Dems are in a coalition with another party. So it is perfectly reasonable for Elwyn Watkins to have his views on tuition fees but at the same time to make it clear that he would have supported the government and the coalition agreement. If all Tory and Lib Dem backbenchers went against the agreement all the time the government would collapse. All he is doing is making it clear that he is a supporter of the coalition and the Lib Dem policies (and there are lots of them) that this brings. That doesn't mean he abandons all his views and he is still free to campaign for what he believes, after all the more Lib Dem MPs there are, the bigger the influence. It does however mean that he is willing to compromise to get the politically possible Lib Dem policies to be enacted.

Labour Uncut seem to have real trouble understanding this and it is not just them. I have seen lots of comments, mainly from Labour acvitists which if taken to their logical conclusion effectively rule out Labour from ever being in a coalition. Because many of these comments clearly have a problem with the fundamental principle of compromise. Either you absolutely stick to every pre-election position even when you are in a coalition (and hence it would not last 5 minutes) or you have "betrayed your principles" and "sold out" and made yourself a laughing stock.

If this is the case, and this view seems to be widely held by Labour activists from what I can tell then how could Labour ever be in a coalition?