On biased editorials

Post election there are a lot of things to analyse. On the whole we feel that Labour posted some good results in north London, from a lower point 2 years ago.

Here in Camden we’ve had to deal with the extraordinary bias of the Ham&High, as evidenced in this week’s editorial - which I had to buy contrary to my post below (I don't by it that often anyway, we get free clippings at the Town Hall).

Rather than the Labour meltdown argument that the editor chooses to propagandise in a very political editorial - the actual election stats show that across north London Labour fared far better than elsewhere in the country.

Across London Ken Livingstone vote increased by 30% in first preference, an amazing achievement for a candidate seeking a third term. In Camden and Barnet the share of our vote increased by 3.6%.

In 2004 we polled 36,000 Assembly votes – in 2008 this was up to over 52,000.

Labour actually gained neighbouring Harrow and Brent from the conservatives and fought off a challenge in Enfield, which the Tories were heavily tipped to win.

Yes, Boris did win Camden and Barnet – but the nominally more Tory voting area is a third larger than the Labour-voting south - a whole constituency.

The Labour vote was still up –and for the first time the a ward was decisively held by 'progressives' i.e. the Green, then Labour - a development not to be dismissed.

And where was the opposition? As I’ve said, the Tories must have been disappointed but the real story was how the Lib Dem vote tanked in the area to 12%.

While there are national problems, local Labour has been emboldened by our mayoral results. With Boris taking London and the Tory/Lib Dem coalition pressing ahead with a massive cuts programme Labour is very much in an ‘underdog’ position, which many relish.

I do hope papers which proport to be local (but are in fact owned by giant media conglomerates) would actually take a local analysis when they sound off about politics. This week the Ham&High seems to be taking the national narrative, rather than a Camden analysis. But what do you expect? The Ham&High is part of Archant group – and is about as local as a TESCOs Local.

I'm not in the newspaper business but I do wonder whether (a) running a BNP ad in a highly diverse area followed by (b) slagging off a party which 60,000 local people just voted for, is really such a good idea...