32 Politics
THE HERALD FRIDAY FEBRUARY 10 2017
Follow us on Twitter @pembsherald
Breathing space needed
Debt oſten strikes when people
experience sudden changes in circumstances such as job loss or ill health. Aggressive action from creditors and pressure to repay debts at an unaffordable rate can lead families to cut back on everyday essentials like food, take out other, expensive loans or fall further behind on essential bills. Te rise in personal borrowing
has led to mounting concern that households who get into debt need safer ways to manage financial difficulties. Jonathan Edwards MP, a former
Head of Policy for Citizens Advice Cymru, has joined calls in parliament to introduce a 'Breathing Space' scheme that would offer people seeking debt advice a 12-month legal protection from mounting interest, charges and enforcement action. It would build on protections offered under the Debt Arrangement Scheme in Scotland, which has made sure that families sticking to an affordable repayment plan agreed with their creditors are not harried or hassled for the duration of that plan. Jonathan Edwards MP said: "It
can't be right that children's mental health and happiness is suffering as a result of creditors unfairly escalating people's debt problems. "Families in problem debt need time and space to get back on their
Jonathan Edwards MP: Families in problem debt need time and space to get back on their feet
feet. By providing a period free from additional interest, charges and enforcement action, a new Breathing Space scheme would help families recover their financial situation and put in place a plan to affordably repay their debts. "I'm pleased that the Breathing
Space proposal has widespread cross- party support, including from the Work and Pensions Select Committee and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Debt and Personal Finance. Te UK Government now needs to act by putting a comprehensive Breathing Space scheme in place."
were also working hard. Strongly in Labour’s favour was the national mood. There is a very long-standing pattern that national politics shapes the local election performance of all the major parties. Why should this be? Local councils
have their own responsibilities, and we elect their members ourselves. Surely the behaviour of UK- or Welsh- level politicians and the popularity of national parties should have no more relevance to the electoral prospects of local councillors than does the behaviour of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian? Well, this might seem so. But there
By Professor Roger Scully THE MAJOR electoral event
scheduled for 2017 in Wales is the local elections. On May 4, all of Wales’ twenty-two local authorities are up for full re-election. Most of these last had elections
in 2012; because of some ‘local difficulties’, the election in Ynys Môn was suspended until 2013. But proposals made before the
2016 Assembly election for the re- structuring of the local government map in Wales, it is the same authorities that will be elected once again this year.
In 2012 (except for viewers in
Ynys Môn) the elections were a considerable triumph for the Labour party, following on from their best- ever Assembly election performance the previous year. The following table summarises the overall pattern of results in the twenty-one authorities that held elections (with changes on the 2008 results in brackets)
Party Labour
Plaid Cymru Conservative Lib-Dems
Independents Others
(Nine of the twenty-one authorities
elected ended up under ‘No Overall Control’ of a single party, a decline of five from the situation after the 2008 elections. A more detailed write-up of the results is available here).
Clearly in 2012 Labour did
extremely well, rebounding very strongly after disappointing local elections in 2004 and 2008. Such was the strength of the Labour tide that all other forces suffered a set-back. The Liberal Democrats did horribly, as they did in all sets of local elections during the life of the Westminster coalition government. But the Conservatives also had a
significant set-back; Plaid Cymru held their ground slightly better, but still made a net loss equivalent to around one fifth of the seats they had been defending. UKIP were not a significant force in the elections at all. Why did Labour do so well? Much
of it was doubtless down to hard work by their candidates and local parties. But I daresay many of their opponents
Councillors Won 577 (+237) 158 (-39) 105 (-67) 72 (-92) 323 (-30) 18 (-10)
Authorities won 10 (+8) 0
0 (-2) 0
2 (-1) 0
is undoubtedly often some spill-over from one electoral arena to another. In the United States, for example, the President’s party normally does poorly in the mid-term elections. Local elections in the UK are similarly a good example of ‘second order election’ theory in practice: whereby, in elections perceive by much of the public as less important than ‘first order’ ones (such as U.S Presidential elections, or UK general elections), we tend to witness a number of consistent phenomena:
• Fewer people both to turnout to vote
• Governing parties in the ‘first order’ arena tend to do poorly
• Political unpopular parties in the ‘first order’ arena also tend to do poorly
Combining the latter two points,
unpopular governing parties tend to do particularly badly: see the Conservatives in the mid-1990s, Labour a decade later, and the Lib- Dems from 2010-15. These national effects are not
absolute and all-encompassing. The national trends can sometimes be bucked by very good or indeed bad local councils and candidates, and by active and effective local campaigning. But the overall effects are strong and consistent. So what expectations should we
therefore have for this year’s elections? I hesitate to discuss this, given that normal political rules seem to have been suspended across much of the democratic world in the last eighteen months. But, without making any outright predictions, I would make the following observations: Labour: At the time of the
2012 local elections, Labour was polling around 50% in Wales for both Westminster and the Assembly (constituency vote). In short, the 2012 local elections came at pretty much the
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80
