How to be a bad winner: guidance brought to you by Labour

Labour in Oxford are living proof there's such a thing as a bad winner.

A couple of months ago, their government effectively gave the green light to an urban extension at Grenoble Road. Let's leave aside that, as I pointed out before, it will only provide well under 2000 units of affordable housing, that it would have been better to have a strategic review of the whole Green Belt, not just one part of it -- this is not the solution to the housing crisis that Labour would like to pretend it might be, but at least there are going to be much-needed houses.

In short, the case is won. But are Labour happy? Rather than follow their government's instructions that the two local authorities who have an interest in this site -- Oxford City Council and South Oxfordshire District Council -- should sit down and work together, Labour seem intent on doing the opposite.

The City Council has put in a request to the Boundary Commission that, in 2009, it review Oxford's boundaries with the aim of bringing in the planned urban extension to the city. Never mind that building is necessarily some years off -- there's a sewage works to move, after all -- and that this is therefore hopelessly premature. This is bound to ratchet up tension with Oxford's neighbours, making it less likely rather than more that the project will move ahead quickly.

Of course, no one is suggesting that working with the Tories of South Oxfordshire will be easy. The Conservatives' first reaction to talk of a housing crisis is 'what crisis', the second 'that's not our problem.' But the situation's changed: as Grenoble Road is going to happen, even a Tory should realise it's in South Oxfordshire's interest to be at the table. That's the only way they can work to minimise the difficulties they fear from an extension. They should be there to get cast-iron guarantees for the rest of the land around the site. And it's in the City's interest to be at the table too: we're going to have to work with our neighbours if we really want to deal with the challenges the new build will necessarily create.

Instead, we have the City Council willing up a stand-off from which no one will win -- least of all the people in dire housing need who should be our first priority.

Inspired typo

Sometimes, I love The Oxford Mail. No, I really do. Take today: they report the Tory Policy Exchange proposal for house-buiding in the south-east, opening with:

One million new homes should be built in Oxford to help the city become an economic power-house of the 21st century, a barmy academic report says today.

Not having managed to hide their opinion very well, the article then -- and here it comes -- closes by saying:

The Tories this morning distanced themselves from the report. Chris Grayling, the shadow minister for Liverpool, said it did not reflect arty policy.

Masterful. Genius. The paper subtly implies by an 'accident' of typography that the Tories' main concern is the impact of house-building on the lifestyles of the literati. The Shadow Cabinet, one imagines, recoiled in collective shock at the idea of Le Corbusier-inspired architecture -- 'but where is the opera house?' -- leaving no space for ballet-classes or landscape-painting opportunities. You do wonder: who's taking the 'p'?

Housing for Oxford: Labour misses the opportunity

So, Ms Blears announced, like the Fairy Godmother to Cinderella, that Oxford can have an urban extension. People will rush to fight over whether south of Grenoble Road is the best place to build, but in scrambling to do so, they'll miss the bigger issue.

What has been announced, from what I have seen, is that an estate of 4,000 houses, 40% of them affordable, can be built in that area. If Andrew Smith imagines that that is anywhere near large enough even to dent substantially the housing crisis this city and this county faces, he just doesn't appreciate the magnitude of the problem.

The Secretary of State's response to the Structure Plan was a real opportunity for the government to call for a strategic vision for solving the crisis -- and that must begin a review of the whole Green Belt. But, as so often, they've bungled their chance and missed an open goal.

Those of us who believe in the concept of the Green Belt and want to see it last would have supported a proper, full review. There is nothing worse than a piecemeal removal of one section from the Belt, allowing the argument to be made in the next decade that a precedent has been set and yet one more section should also be removed -- and so it will go, decade after decade. On the other side, of course, are the Tories who stand for no building anywhere: they can't even seen the housing crisis beyond the gates at the end of their manicured lawn. But their attitude that the Green Belt, in its present format, is sacrosanct in every regard is equally unsustainable. Their friends, the developers, will see to that. In the meantime, there are people in desperate need and it should be our first duty to help them. Sadly, once again, the Conservatives have shown they aren't in on it and Labour that they aren't up to it.

Cribbing is the sincerest form of flattery

Whatever else you say about the Tories, you've got to give them this: they have a redoubtable ability to put a smile on our faces. I'm not thinking now about Cameron announcing he's the heir of Blair, just at the time when most of the nation are counting down the days until the PM finally shuffles off his super-mortal coil. What's amusing me is the Tories' apparent embarrassment about having drawn to their ample bosom two city councillors formerly stranded on the Independent bench.

What with the Witney Wonder himself taking the unusual step of setting foot into Oxford to find out what the two were like, you would have thought that they might have wanted to blow their trumpet. But they're obviously lost for words. And when, finally, something was posted on their website, it somehow didn't feel quite right. It was not only that the Tory party was here revealing that one of the councillors had left the Liberal Democrats because his then-colleagues had judged that he was not up to being on Oxford City Council's Executive Board. It was that all the words seemed somehow familiar -- and, indeed, they are identical to the words of the Oxford Mail originally reporting the defections.

Now, we knew the Conservatives were desperate but this takes it into a different league. What I wonder is whether Giles Sheldrick, the journalist who is been unwittingly writing the Tories' press release, is getting his royalties. Or will he demand that they remove his well-hewn prose from their website? It's hard to imagine that the Mail's Chief Reporter feels flattered by their act of piracy.

Tories in Oxford: remember, you read it here first

So the story of the mass defections from Oxford's Independent Group to the Tories has broken. As attentive readers of this blog could have read about this back at the start of last month, this can hardly count as new news. Except for that fact that the predictions were for at least three Tory councillors -- but they've only mustered two.

Clearly, the silver-tongued smooching of the latest Camerooney failed to persuade those other councillors who were the objects of his attention. Amazingly, those other councillors decided that the idea of moving from a small group to an even smaller one lacked something in the enticement stakes.

It does leave the acrid scent of desperation hanging in the air. It's just a question of who is more desperate: Oxfordshire's Conservatives, who in the Witney Wonder's own backyard can't get anyone with a blue rosette near to winning an election in the county's capital. Or the formerly Independent-minded councillors, counting the days to the next election campaign and deciding that being in any party whatsoever is better than none.

It's a curious political journey for the individuals involved, one of whom has discussed joining at least two other parties before, while the other is a regular attendee at 'Save the NHS' marches. I suppose that will now be out and in will come support for charging for residents parking permits, anti-European rhetoric and backing for the Iraq war. We should wish them luck for their last few months on Oxford City Council.

Wiping Cameron's smile off his face

So, we’re told the Tories are back on the map. Last Thursday was their good-news day, we hear. Well done to them – but should they really look so smug?

The Conservatives in the past have had this problem: premature concentration. They – and their voters – have focussed too early on areas where they do well, rather than working to spread support efficiently across the constituencies they want to win. Have they learnt to master their unfortunate condition? The evidence from one patch doesn’t bode so well for them.

The Tories in Oxfordshire could celebrate this past weekend because they got a whopping increase in councillors in parts of the county – except, it was concentrated in the seats where they are established kings. In the Vale of White Horse, most of which is in their LibDem-held target seat of Oxford West and Abingdon, they managed, against all expectations, not even to hold their own. They lost out hugely to the LibDems, leaving Abingdon without any Tories at district or parish level.

In other words, in Oxfordshire, the Witney Wonder is winning votes – but not where it matters. They’re piling up their votes in their heartlands, but sliding back elsewhere – and they are still without any councillor whatsoever in the county’s capital.

The strange case of Oxford and the Conservatives is one I’ve mentioned long ago. The rumours persist that at least one City Councillor wants to put a smile on a Tory face. Whether there are enough of is another matter: the Colossus of the County, Kaiser Keith, is too shrewd an operator to accept just one or two city councillors changing allegiance. After all, on his own Council, two may be company, but nothing less than three is a group. And nothing less than four would look respectable if the Tories wanted to claim they were making a real break-through. But finding four humans in Oxford – let alone that sub-species, councillors – who would stand up for Cameron’s right-wing agenda, well, if the ‘new’ Conservatives believe they can do that, frankly, they’re out of their newly-drawn tree.

Will Oxford get Tory Councillors by the back door?

As anyone at all conversant with the politics of Oxford can tell you, this city is one of Britain’s many Tory-free zones. The Conservative party repeatedly poll fourth across Oxford. This leaves us with a County Council which is run by a party which has no representation at any level in the capital of the shire it claims to represent. But might that be about to change?

Of course, I’m not imagining that the Conservatives are going to storm to victory in the good clean fight of an election. We don’t have elections here this May. And recent by-elections haven’t shown any improvement in the Tories’ performance – quite the opposite: all the more effort they put in, the lower their vote goes. This is much to the chagrin of the Leader of the County, the councillor known as Kaiser Keith. He’s an intelligent, amiable but incorrigibly unreconstructed Tory: the sort of person who thinks that Jeremy Clarkson is a real man, and who imagines wearing a pound sign in his lapel will be some sort of talisman against progress.

Kaiser Keith is acutely aware of the perceived injustice of rural Conservatives lording it over a Tory-free city. And if he can’t change the electors, perhaps he’ll have more luck with those who’ve been elected. For there are rumours flying that there may be at least one city councillor willing to defect to Mr Cameron’s party.

Since last May, there has been one Independent councillor, a former LibDem. It is apparently an open secret that he has been in talks with Kaiser K. The rumours seem to be even more persistent than those of a few years ago which had it that the same councillor was about to defect to either Labour or the Greens. Those predictions came to nothing then and perhaps the same is the case now. After all, the Leader of the County might shrewdly have calculated that getting a lone councillor on the City is not much of a coup.

But, that one Independent is now a group: he has been joined by a councillor I genuinely like and respect. And, within weeks (and just before I left the country last month), the two Independents have been photographed giving the Leader and Deputy of the County a tour of part of the city-centre. Personally, I’m surprised that Keith needed the introduction and I wonder how long it will be before he asks to get to know the other 95% of the city. But, let’s not be churlish: it’s brave of him even to hint at such a political romance in public. The question now is: will this apparent flirtation actually be consummated? Will Oxford’s smallest political group rush to offer up the cherished cherry of their Independence? Or, considering the Tories’ poor reputation, will they not don the blue rosette until after the next elections that they have to fight?

Where have all the Tories gone?

In my favourite weekend paper, The Financial Times, the death of the Tory party is announced. Well, not a complete demise – paralysis is confined to certain limbs, in particular the North-East of England, you will be relieved / disappointed / utterly uninterested to learn. This is a media-take on a new report from those clever girls and boys at Unlock Democracy, which is Charter 88 for the Noughties.

As always, there are questions over methodology – the report may actually paint a rosier picture than is the case, as it is necessarily biased to the responses received: what about all those constituency parties that couldn’t even find someone to hold the pen? And I’m also interested to know why our own party was more active than the others in responding – a sign of our vitality or that LibDems are more naturally inclined politely to comply with requests for form-filling?

But what struck me is that, in this new political map of Britain, Oxford would seem to have ended up in the North-East. We live in a county which has Tory MPs for whom the adjectives 'high' and 'flying' could have been invented - not to forget Boris Johnson and Tony Baldry. But within that county exists a rosebud (for all you Citizen Kane fans) of a Tory-free haven. The Witney wonder (as you’ll remember, it’s wonder as in wonder what he stands for) really has a credibility problem in his own backyard. He may claim to be the Tory Blair – I think that title’s already taken, Dave – claiming to provide a Conservative party for all but here in his own county, his success is confined to the countryside.

There have been no Tory councillors representing Oxford wards or divisions for several years. The last time there was a Conservative, there was just one and she fled to Wales before her time was done. What’s more, there appears to be very little Tory party organisation in this city. Whenever there’s a by-election, they have to parachute in their activists, including the Leader of the County Council – and still they come third or fourth. Even the address of Oxford East's Conservative Party is at Watlington, some ten miles from the constituency.

The Leader of the County, known to his friends as Kaiser Keith, and incidentally my parents’ local councillor (he should be proud), would dearly like to make a break-through in the city. Quite understandably, considering the Conservative mandate to run the County has this credibility problem, being seen as the imposition of the shire on an unwilling urban centre. But, it seems, their party just can’t create the organisation here. And, in truth, they are not helping themselves by making foolish decisions that just increase Tory unpopularity in Oxford.

Now, those who pass for campaigning gurus among them may decide that they can do without the university town. After all, they’re gunning to win back control of the Vale of White Horse Council in 2007, which covers Abingdon and the surrounding area and they realise they have a fight on their hands as the LibDem administration has been successful and popular. Shrewd tactics might convince them to accept the status quo and leave Oxford a Tory-free zone where the occasional appearance of Mr Cameron is met with wry amusement. But that would be poor strategy for them: how can they convince the country that they can govern when even in Oxfordshire they’ve forgotten what it’s like to represent a city?

Unlock Democracy has provided interesting data, organised by regions of the country. But much more worrying for the Conservative party than losing their presence in any one particular geographical area is becoming aliens in one type of settlement – the cities that drive our economy and society. Personally, I would rather like to take on a serious Tory challenge here. But I’m not holding my breath.