Something stirring in London's election pot

Now I'm no psephologist, nor do I have any aspirations to be one, but I do recognise something unusual when it happens.

All sorts of predictions were made for last week's election many of which did not come to pass in London.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a stunt in Barking which sat awkwardly in the mass of general electioneering. It turned out to be one of many pulled off by the British National Party. It appears it all made little impact on local voters.

The BNP share of the vote declined although they did secure roughly the same amount of votes as in 2005.

At 61% turnout was very high for both the Parliamentary and local election votes. Given the resources and personnel pumped into this one constituency it says an awful lot about what the majority of people really thought about the BNP and their record in local government in Barking.

If you add to that the oft stated objective of Nick Griffin to really secure the Council, you can see what damage has been done to their movement.

They lost all 12 local council seats including that held by London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook.

I asked Nick Griffin during the campaign whether people might feel a vote for the BNP would be a wasted vote, since all the mainstream parties appeared equally tough on immigration.

He conceded the other parties had stolen his immigration cloak but that the voters would trust his party more.

That turned out to be as fictitious as the St George and the Dragon stunts Richard Barnbrook engaged in during the campaign.

But there is a deeper question here.

Why did voters not endorse the party that had spent weeks telling them they would save them?

Of course, it's possible that the threat the BNP perceive is not the same as the one most voters perceive.

If immigration is no longer dominated by the colour question it makes it much harder for them to identify their target.

The other mainstream candidates did not deny there was a set of important local issues arising from immigration. As well as recognising them, they also dealt more robustly with the ways to tackle them.

The fact that there was a swing to the Labour candidate, Tourism Minister Margaret Hodge, says a lot about the tenacity of her campaign.

It also vindicates the hard line taken by Hodge within her own party. Her campaign team stuck to their guns, despite wider internal party criticism, on her way of dealing with the issues local voters were concerned about.

She talked about local housing for local people (skin colour not a useful guide), public investment and jobs. There are lessons in that for other local election campaigners.

Both the Conservative and Liberal Democratic candidates engaged voters on the street head on. They focussed on their manifestos and the issues rather than each other.

They all told me during the campaign how sensible, no nonsense debate was the way to restore pride and political sanity to Barking.

There can be little doubt their combined common sense made Barking a watershed moment in British politics.