Votes not assessment but ingrained tribalism

THE results of the Shelthorpe byelection will feature elsewhere, with the focus probably – and rightly – on the appallingly low turnout of 18.66%. (For comparison, the lowest in the last full council elections in England for which data are available is 24.2% in Hartlepool).

However, another negative aspect of British politics exemplified by the Shelthorpe poll is revealed by the whopping 60.5% share of the votes cast being captured by the two winning Labour candidates.

Now, it could well be that they’ll prove to be perfectly competent councillors (although, with the Tories’ dominance in Charnwood, their impact on policy will be minimal, if not zero), but I refuse to believe that most of the 1,363 residents who voted for them did so after a careful examination of their credentials. The pile of ballot papers with two “block” votes for the same party was easily the highest.

What British elections tend to reflect is not objective individual assessments but ingrained tribalism. Indeed, even the Brexit referendum showed this in a different way.

I admit to falling into this trap myself: often having neither the time nor the inclination to investigate parties’ current policies – let alone the qualities of the candidates themselves – I’ve simply opted for the party whose apparent ethos most matches my own.

Woe betide, then, any candidate brave enough to stand under an “Independent” banner. At Shelthorpe, the commendable effort of one such, David Hayes, while generating enough votes to trounce two Greens and two Lib Dems, fell short of even the sole representative of the embattled Conservatives.

There’s a place in human affairs for loyalty to the tribe. Politics isn’t it.

Richard Guise, Quorn