Lib Dems thrive on south coast despite problems in Westminster

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jan/04/lib-dems-south-coast-westminster

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Residents in Boorley Green, on the rustic fringe of Southampton's suburban sprawl, are angry with the Liberal Democrats. But Nick Clegg's coalition problems 60 miles up the M3 in Westminster are not uppermost in their minds.

It is the proposal of the Lib Dem-controlled Eastleigh borough council to swamp their community with 1,400 new houses that is dismaying them.

People living off the busy Botley road are keen to tell visitors how Tory-controlled Hampshire county council stoutly refused to sell Eastleigh another site at Woodhouse Lane, but that a further 300 houses are planned for Winchester Street – all this in a village that has only 200 homes now.

Pillars of the local action group Hans and Pauline Solheim sum up the village's objections. "It's not sustainable in terms of jobs, transport, infrastructure like sewage or the risks of flooding from the [river] Hamble. Ecologically it's a disaster," warns Pauline.

Lib Dem votes will be counted more quickly here next time.

Battles between planners demanding sites for more homes and nimby-ish resistance groups are familiar far beyond the fast expanding communities of south Hampshire. And Boorley Green has long fought Eastleigh – whose trim suburban villas are abruptly overtaken by green pastures and handsome beech-lined lanes – over the borough's need to meet targets set by successive governments to build 9,400 new homes by 2027, half on greenfield sites.

But a funny thing keeps happening on election day. Despite national opinion polls which suggest that Clegg's support is floating away down the Hamble, the Lib Dem grip on the council has strengthened during the turbulent coalition years. In Eastleigh proper, an old railway-cum-London-overspill town which was once safe Conservative territory, a Lib Dem MP has been in place since David Chidgey won the 1994 byelection. Chris Huhne has held the seat since 2005.

And in May 2012 the Lib Dems took 40 of the 44 council seats, leaving the Tories with just four, and Labour, which once hoped to capture Eastleigh, with none at all. A rise in Ukip's share of the Tory protest vote helped secure Lib Dem hegemony, but Huhne's share of the poll in 2010 was 45%, not far short of the 51% won in 1992 by the Conservatives' Stephen Milligan.

Lib Dem ascendancy is not evident in Southampton, where local Labour has deeper roots and two energetic MPs, Alan Whitehead, described by some opponents as "the city's best council leader in the past 30 years", and the former cabinet minister John Denham.

But Lib Dem power is visible just along the M27 corridor in the naval city of Portsmouth, its history still embodied in Nelson's formidable flagship, Victory. Lib Dems took office here as a minority regime in 2004, with 16 seats out of 42, and were expected by their rivals to fall apart. Instead they keep their squabbles private and now boast 25 councillors to 12 Tory and five Labour ones.

All this despite Clegg's problems. "The most successful years for us were 2011 and 2012 when we twice won nine of the 14 wards up for election. We work hard and people see we deliver on the ground," says Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Portsmouth city council leader and a national figure in local government politics.

He rattles off Pompey's safer roads (94% are 20mph zones), restored weekly bin collections, the Olympic-size pool, Britain's only council-owned motorway spur (the M27), low council tax, £7m-a-year profit from the council-owned port, and other municipal achievements reflecting practical implementation of the doctrine of localism. Last year the council even converted the old Woolworths building in Southsea into a popular new library.

If all politics is local, then local politics is idiosyncratic. Hardly any of Hampshire's famous green spaces are to be seen in the tight little island of Portsea, one of the densest urban environments outside inner London, packed with old terraces and high-rise flats, most of Portsmouth's voters and many of its 16,000 students.

But insularity breeds wholesome habits of cross-party co-operation on vital local issues. First there is the fight to ensure BAe Systems does not abandon the naval dockyards after work on the navy's two giant carriers ends (and before new frigate orders are started). Then there is the bridging loan that will help the supporters' trust buy the much-loved-but-struggling Portsmouth Football Club with its involvement in community youth work.

Yet, as in Westminster, co-operation does not preclude competition and party calculation.

In 2015 Labour should retake the swing seat of Portsmouth North, which it lost to the Tory Penny Mordaunt in 2010, but its rivals reckon it won't. In Portsmouth South the maverick Lib Dem (ex-Labour and SDP) MP, Mike Hancock, is a local hero who can probably stay as long as he wants.

First elected a city councillor in 1970 and now 66, Hancock, the son of a seaman, is still a councillor, more powerful than Vernon-Jackson, some believe.

Lurid Westminster stories about his links with dodgy Russians and exotic girlfriends cut little ice in Pompey, where his free-wheeling populism routinely attacks coalition policy and champions city causes. "Mike's a big figure," concede opponents.

The picture in less colourful Eastleigh is different but the pattern similar: solid Lib Dem gains amid voter volatility and an MP who has also endured negative national publicity. Talk of a dramatic byelection has receded as Huhne's court case for allegedly dodging speeding points drags on. But the cerebral former energy secretary is reputedly an assiduous constituency MP who may yet bounce back. As in Pompey, local factors may prevail over national trends.

Keith House, Eastleigh council's leader for 18 years and a Lib Dem, says of the Tories: "They are in a hole. Wherever we are in control of the council or entrenched in a local community we are not seeing a downside. Forget about parliament, in local elections we are doing pretty well. Can we push the Tories out of overall control in Hampshire next May? I think we can."

Yet just a year ago House, described as "a bit of a dictator" by his critics in Boorley Green, was unhappy about the future precisely because hefeared the coalition's unpopularity would drag his council down too.

"For a year or so after 2010, in some parts of the country, the party seemed to go to sleep. But Liberal Democrats have learned to differentiate themselves better from the Conservatives. Activists and councillors realised it's still OK to campaign against the Conservatives. It's better for morale too. Nick Clegg has also changed his own conduct – that makes it easier too."

House's deputy, Anne Winstanley, says: "There are times when Nick has not presented things as well as he can, but we all make mistakes, he's getting better."

Vernon-Jackson says: "Not everyone likes him, but no one has put up a credible alternative."

The sight of Clegg making his own "we're not on the same page" statement to MPs on the Leveson press review immediately after David Cameron might prove a pivotal event, they agree.

With plenty of councillors and troops on the ground Lib Dems make sure they pound pavements, hold public sessions, leaflet, (standard Lib Dem techniques, according to Winstanley) and exploit unpopular policies that can be blamed on "reactionary" budget-cutting rural Tories from the smart abodes of north Hampshire who dominate county politics in Winchester.

Some Labour-leaning voters whom activists persuaded to vote Lib Dem in 2010 ("to keep the Tories out") are unhappy with the coalition, Winstanley concedes. "But others understand that with the numbers in parliament there was no alternative. We couldn't have supported a Labour government."

It helps that Eastleigh invested in commercial property when it was cheap and has been able to protect most services ("to survive you have to be innovative") from the 28% cuts in Whitehall grants, while keeping council tax rises below inflation.

But local Lib Dems are also getting better at going through spreadsheets to explain how much coalition-generated policies, such as the Clegg-inspired pupil premium, means to schools. The tax credit and housing benefit crackdown is less welcome; there just aren't enough one-bedroom homes for the young or downsizing old, says House.

So it is housing need, those local development plans required by Whitehall, which keeps him awake at night.

The 1,400-house deal for Boorley Green would provide a much needed relief road for congested Botley. But voters remain unpersuaded.

In Portsmouth Vernon-Jackson does not lose sleep this way. With no greenfield sites for him to threaten, the council's plan to knock down one unlovely high-rise on the harbour front and build an even taller one is uncontroversial. It helps, mutter the Tories, that the local press is sympathetic to the Lib Dems.

On Queen Street near Portsmouth harbour's Victory gate voter indifference is tangible but not noticeably hostile. "I think the council's all right," says one woman. "I don't know much about it, but I don't vote," says another.

Simon Bosher, the Tory group leader on Portsmouth council, says: "There's no coalition here, but we do work together for the good of the city." He then takes a sideswipe at Vince Cable for "unhelpful remarks" about the naval dockyard's future.

As a Tory core voter, the Boorley Green activist Pauline Solheim instinctively mistrusts such talk and thinks Lib Dems have too much sway over Cameron's coalition. Her husband gently teases her. "I'm a Norwegian. We are used to coalitions, we understand there must be give and take. People here don't understand that yet."