Manchester Labour: No Crisis Here

Despite results elsewhere in the country being less than healthy the Labour vote has held up remarkably well across Manchester. The two main seats where the Labour Club campaigned hard were Chorlton (which Mike will talk about in a separate post) and Old Moat, both of which were comfortably held in the face of hard campaigns put in by the Liberal Democrats. These two seats are key for the general election campaign, where the Labour club I’m sure will be spending a lot of time campaigning as they form two key battlegrounds for the city’s most marginal seat, Lib-Dem held Manchester Withington.

The latter ward, Old Moat, is a seat which acts as a bit of a microcosm of the wider constituency: there may be large swathes of social housing but the changing nature of the area has seen more owner/occupiers move in plus an increasing amount of young professionals and students living in the area for a limited period (between one and five years). As a result it was fantastic to see Andrew Fender, a councillor here for 25 years now, hold the ward by 444 votes. Particularly encouraging is the fact the Labour vote actually increased across the ward compared to last year. On a night where traditional Labour voters didn’t vote in quite the solid numbers we are used to, Cllr Fender can be very happy with his result.

The 259 majority victory in Chorlton is also of important note for students of Manchester politics. The ward is perhaps unlike any other ward I have ever campaigned in: it holds the greatest number of Guardian readers per capita anywhere in Britain (somewhere approaching 1.0 I would imagine!). The bohemian nature of the Beech Road area coupled with the urban-intelligentsia which reside in the private community of Chorltonville deserted Labour in the wake of Iraq, foundation hospitals and the introduction of tuition fees. These areas are slowly coming back to Labour and this must bode well for the Guardian-reading Labour vote turning out in other areas of the constituency - such as the two Didsbury wards - for the next general election. Incumbent MP John Leech did his best to micro-manage his chosen candidate’s campaign without success and this will come as a personal blow to him, particularly as the Liberals failed to make any in-roads into Old Moat.

Elsewhere in Manchester it was a very mixed night. Labour made gains in Hulme - by wiping out the Greens from the council, though not by anywhere near as much as was expected - and in Longsight. The latter saw an outstanding result, turning a loss last year into a massive 1,200 majority for the young local lad, Luthfur Rahman. In the City Centre ward - a target for a committed Labour team with small resources - Anthony McCaul narrowly failed to beat the high-profile incumbent Lib Dem, Marc Ramsbottom, after running a energetic and fantastic campaign. Anthony must be disappointed personally but in reflection he'll be proud of such a hard fought campaign in a ward where Labour have not previously run credible active campaigns. It was not so great news elsewhere however. Labour missed its target of Whalley Range by a distant margin (it proved not to be the three-way race the Tories had predicted, and they came a distant third). Worse was to come however in the Northenden seat where Mike Kane lost his seat to the Lib-Dems by a heart-breaking eight votes and in Miles Platting/Newton Heath where former UKIP member and Labour councillor Damien O’Connor was elected as a Lib Dem by a comfortable margin of 815 votes.

Despite the two losses in Northenden and Miles Platting/Newton Heath, Labour should be very happy that they have managed to ‘buck the trend’ for each of the three years of the electoral cycle; Manchester City Council remains - and should remain - comfortably within the hands of Manchester Labour. The ‘Manchester Labour’ brand remains strong across the city and the councillors and its executive members must be praised for that. A final well done though should go to Dr Leif Jerram, history lecturer at the University of Manchester, and candidate for the Withington ward (the ward where I was agent last year). Leif managed to gain nine more votes than last year’s candidate, Andrew Simcock, and cut the Lib Dem majority to a mere 759. At this rate Leif should finally become a Withington councillor in the middle of the next millennium!