Situation Vacant…

Posted on 14/05/2012 by samchapman

…but you’ve got to be quick, as it closes today. Oh, and you will need to be already vetted to Counter Terrorism Check level.

No?

Me neither.

But if you are, the Association of Police Authorities are advertising for a Communications Officer.

“Why are you bothering us with this, Chapman?” I hear you cry.

Because the position is a fixed term contract till the end of March 2013, yet the Police Authorities the Association represents will stop existing on 22 November this year. Further evidence that the Home Office is serious about the APA becoming at least a temporary representative body for the new PCCs.

Also, the full job title is “Communications Officer (Association of Police and Crime Commissioners)” which means that the name that was suggested by, er, me, has been chosen.

This is significant because of the royalty cheques I’m now waiting for patiently, and the fact that it is not the “Police and Crime Commissioners Association” which the Local Government Association were today touting as ‘the’ national representative body for PCCs.

Hang on. If the PCCA is ‘the’ body, how come there’s also APaCCs? How come APaCCs will have seats on all relevant national policing bodies? And how come APaCCs is the one commissioned by the Home Office, with a £36k per annum PR person with a £125k ICT budget? (they clearly don’t do cheap and cheerful websites either)

This suggests that the initial idea that the APA and LGA could work together on one body isn’t working out. I’m no fan of either organisation – considering them both to have spent taxpayers’ money campaigning against the PCCs they are now trying to recruit – but at least the APA has a background in police governance that could tide PCCs over until 2013 when they can do their own thing if they want to.

It’s a bit like really needing a babysitter, and only having Herod and Pharaoh to choose from.

One thing the LGA is making a feature of is how it has 4 political groups. I would have thought this was something to de-emphasise for this election. I’m clear that people should know a Candidate’s political standpoint, but PCCs are individuals, not political groups, and why should we assume they should organise themselves into groups at a national level. It isn’t a parliament – it’s a representative body, and only a minimal body is needed when you can actually get them all in the same room if needed.

Perhaps that is the issue. Perhaps Herod and Pharaoh don’t want people to realise that actually you can manage perfectly well without them, buy expert support in when needed, and get on with doing the job locally. If people got wind of that, what precedent would it set for Councils and bodies like the LGA?

Posted in Perspectives | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Cashing in on TopOfTheCops?

Posted on 13/05/2012 by samchapman

Chapter 12 of the Second Book of Samuel is possibly my favourite chapter in the Bible. In it the prophet Nathan tells King David a tale about a rich farmer with many sheep who, to feed a guest, takes his poor neighbour’s one and only lamb and slaughters it. David’s righteous anger is kindled, before Nathan explains that the story is about David himself, who has taken Uriah’s wife Bathsheba to bed and had Uriah killed. For us Brits the tale of the poor underdog falling victim to someone rolling in money is almost as powerful as the story of the powerful man brought to public shame for private iniquity.

If you think politicians are all nest-feathering duck-house owners, ruling the roost like David, whereas Top Cops are struggling by on their last few, er, coppers, then last week must have been a convention-challenging time on TopOfTheCops:-

First we revealed ACPO inviting PCC candidates to attend one day out of a 3-day ‘mutually beneficial’ conference. Want to go? £267 please!

Then the contrast of a parade of one candidate after another who had sacrificed income and advancement just to take a shot at public service in the Police and Crime Commissioner role. Hmmm. These people don’t have a whole lot of money to spend.

You may also recall that ideas behind this website – listing potential candidates by police force area and featuring statements by those candidates, were such good ones that they were robbed by the Home Office for a website they will set up in a few months time. Well, I should have sued, because, launching this week we have policecrimecommissioner.co.uk where you can browse a re-formatted version of the Police Foundation candidate list, without the tedious detail of the updated information the Police Foundation provides as to whether those people are still candidates. Like TopOfTheCops, the new site hopes to provide candidate statements too, and PCC news, which is perhaps why they follow the TopOfTheCops twitter feed.

There is a catch though – to get some of your details and a candidate statement on that site will cost you £299 + VAT, and your statement will be limited to 250 words, not the 400 words you get here FOR FREE. Goodness, if I had been charging like that, I could have paid for my campaign already!

Of course, if you have serious money to burn, they will do you a ‘professionally designed dedicated candidate website’, for a mere £1,499 + VAT, which seems to include not your own “.co.uk”, but a subdomain of theirs, or what I would call a share of a domain name you could buy for £2.50 per year.

Just supposing you can’t stretch to their £1,499, I am prepared to charge you £1,000 for a site with a cheap-and-cheerful design very much like this one but with each of the promised inclusive features, which admittedly will leave me with well in excess of £900 spare – but for that ridiculous profit you buy my silence – so none of your voters will know that you lack the very basic, not-much-more-than-web-browsing, IT skills to set up a simple site, and they’ll never find out about your tendency to spend money like it grows on trees on possibly-over-priced products. Now that silence has got to be worth way more than £1,000. Any takers?

My point is that if anyone coughs up £299 + VAT for the “Standard Web Presence” on that site, when they could get better here for free, they should be issued with a set of “I’m with Stupid” T-shirts for their companions to wear, because by appearing there they are virtually admitting they should never be let within several miles of a police budget or computer system.

So who has thought of this daring way to extract the pounds from PCC hopefuls? Well, the site has few details of who is behind it all, but their domain name is registered to a certain Mike Glanville at a PO Box in Dorset. Wait a minute! Could this be the same Mike Glanville who has just retired as Assistant Chief Constable of Dorset? Well, that changes everything! If he has to eek out his meager ACPO-level police pension, I can hardly advise those poor penny-pinching potential PCCs to do anything other than spend, spend, spend.

In one other curious development, the example the site gives for the sort of email address and domain you get in your £1,499+ VAT package is joeexample@norfolkpcc.co.uk, but further investigations show that the norfolkpcc.co.uk domain is actually registered to Norfolk Police Authority. Enquiries with said Police Authority are continuing.

Update: Since this article was published the example email has been amended to point to norfolkpcc.com, which is registered with the company concerned.

 

Posted in Perspectives | Tagged | 1 Comment

Risking It All – part 5 – Tal Michael

Posted on 13/05/2012 by samchapman

Editor’s note:- Some are attracted to the PCC role as an opportunity to be at the centre of something new, but Tal Michael, as Chief Executive of North Wales Police Authority, already had a ringside seat. That wasn’t enough, so he has stood down from that role, and is currently shortlisted for the Labour PCC nomination in North Wales. See more from him here.

The assumption that politicians are “in it for themselves” is very depressing – avoiding public service is usually much more lucrative for those concerned. Status is of course something that people look for in politics and if they are going to get vilification instead, I fear for the future.

There can’t be many posts where in order to secure promotion you have to forgo a salary completely for eight months and then if you are successful, you take a pay cut…

To be fair, I think lots of people go for career changes for a whole host of reasons. People talk about “downshifting” but really what it comes down to is that money isn’t the main motivator for many people, particularly once they have achieved an income level where they can be comfortable. I think over a certain level salary is a way of keeping score rather than a motivation in itself. If you want to do “something else” you may well take a cut or even a break.

My personal decision was influenced by my desire to return to active involvement in politics. The fact that the Government wouldn’t listen to expert advice on police governance is only a small part of the bigger picture where they have ignored the lessons of history in relation to economics. So although I have given up a successful career as a non-political public servant I am actually looking forward to the opportunity to having a responsible role where I am also allowed to engage in politics.

I do think that Theresa May made a serious mistake in not requiring PCCs to take a cut in salary if they don’t perform the role of Commissioner full-time. I intend to work full-time and to maintain and publish records to confirm that I am doing so. It is important that political activity is seen as additional to the work of a PCC not a substitute.

The more I considered resigning, the more liberated I felt. Being a politician is often seen as an act – being clever, popular and having “the common touch” are all seen as essential. I decided I would just try and be me – and since my politics is part of who I am, I realised that I have spent a lot of time carrying it as if it was a guilty secret. I don’t think it would be good for us to move to an American model where civil servants are appointed for their politics and change over every four years, but I think we should be a bit more relaxed about senior people being open about their political affiliation.

 

Posted in Labour, Perspectives | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Risking It All – part 4 – Sam Chapman

Posted on 11/05/2012 by samchapman

Editor’s Note:- Yes, it’s me, Sam Chapman, seeking to be the Conservative candidate for Lancashire Police and Crime Commissioner, with more at Sam4Lancs.com


It was a simple decision, though not an easy one. Having spent 12 years managing Community Safety Partnerships I was, like most of those who do that kind of thing, employed by a local authority. I had extricated myself from the political restrictions on local government officers that would normally present a problem, but then I found that the legislation establishing Police and Crime Commissioners contained a clause that meant that a Council officer could not stand for the job – no arguments, ingenuity, or appeals to committees would get past this. If I wanted to run for the new job, I would have to give up the old one.

This would mean standing down from leading a multi-agency team with a lot of highly-committed and well-performing staff, and all the reflected glory that entails. It would mean that for the first time in many years my day job would not be to make sure that crime fell in a particular area. It would mean that, at the very moment my wife had finally mastered how to say my job title and tell friends a bit about what I actually did, all those years of struggle would lose their value, and we would have to start again.

And then there’s the question of trading a relatively secure job that paid well enough to meet my growing family commitments, for an unpredictable income, rendered very low in the immediate run-up to the election due to the full-time nature of a countywide campaign. I had seen other people give up years of employment to try and bring change to their area through one political campaign or another, only for electoral rejection that could not possibly have been personal to take its toll. So why would I do that, and in an area where there are plenty of other candidates to choose from, and an uphill battle for my preferred party to win?

I think it’s a decision I had made already, many years before, in my last year at university. As I was preparing for graduation, various friends and acquaintances were preparing to head off to an American university here, a management consultancy there, or to various careers that would combine well with their parliamentary ambitions. I went home and joined the police. To me this was more socially and personally valuable than those other things. When you do that job you don’t need to worry about some abstract contribution to society that you might be making – you see the results pretty much straight away, and you go home knowing whether you’ve helped a victim, hindered a criminal, and generally made the place a bit safer. It was the right thing to do, as well as being far more fun.

So, years later, having acquired a working knowledge of the various problems and frustrations you have when you’re trying to cut crime, a position opens up which seems to provide the biggest opportunity for actually doing something about those problems with that knowledge. To me at least, every one of my experiences in life seems to have prepared me for this role so, despite the likelihood of not getting it and the personal impact that would have, it seemed it would almost be a crime not to have a go.

 

 

Posted in Conservatives, Perspectives | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Risking It All – part 3 – Kashaf Walayat OBE

Posted on 10/05/2012 by samchapman

Editor’s Note:- Some candidates have jobs where laws or rules prevent their political involvement, yet those same roles may give them experience and insight that could make them a better Police and Crime Commissioner. We have already covered the case of Simon Bullock, who withdrew from Labour’s shortlist in Bedfordshire when the civil service decided their rule against involvement in ‘national’ politics applied to PCCs. When Kash Walayat faced the same choice, he made a different decision, resigning without any redundancy payment, to show his commitment in a Labour nomination contest in South Yorkshire with three other heavyweight contenders, including the former Chief Constable. You can read more from him at www.kashaf.co.uk


It was a very big decision to resign from my permanent job of 25 years in this time of economic difficulty. I have family and a mortgage and for the first time in 25 years I will have no significant income coming in, so this was not a decision I made lightly.

Having talked it over with my family, I am pleased to say they believe I am doing the right thing. I am blessed with a supportive family which makes taking tough decisions that bit easier.

I am standing for the post of Police Crime Commissioner because I cannot stand idly by while cut after cut is made to public services and jobs are being lost and privatised. I was not born into privilege. I know how vital good, reliable public services are to hard working people and society as a whole.

I have been serving on the Police Authority for 5 years so when this new post of Police Crime Commissioner came along, I knew I had the experience to make a difference from day one.

Of course, the easy thing for me to have done would have been to just sit back and let someone else deal with this. I could have kept my permanent job which pays well and I could say this change will not affect me.

But I am not a man who takes the easy option. I am not a man who thinks only of himself. I am a man who wants to work for the greater good of the country that gives those who work hard the chance to better themselves.

The truth is that the Police Commissioner reform will affect all of us in some shape or form, as the character and nature of a society’s police service plays a large part in determining how pleasant that society is to live in.

Working in Health and Education along with serving on the Police Authority has given me a track record of standing up for the interests of the public and the Policing service. For example, I fought hard against the decision to scrap the Police Helicopter for South Yorkshire.

I have lots of ideas on how to improve policing within South Yorkshire and, if given the opportunity, I will work tirelessly to listen to the public and ensure we have the best Police service in the country.

Posted in Labour, Perspectives | 4 Comments

Risking It All – part 2 – Ken Maddock

Posted on 09/05/2012 by samchapman

Editor’s Note – Some PCC hopefuls already have important positions in local politics, or another commitment that would be difficult to combine with being PCC. A few may be wondering whether voters will wear them squeezing the two together under the Home Secretary’s you-can-do-other-stuff concession, but Council Leaders already have a clear steer from Nick Herbert that they have a conflict of interest. What should a busy candidate do? Wait and see whether you win the election? But if you do that, would you have time for a proper campaign? Wait till you get the nomination? So then you win it but look uncommitted, or lose it and treat the current job as a consolation prize? Not Ken Maddock. Until recently he was the leader of Somerset County Council, but he has stood down from this post to seek the Conservative nomination for Police and Crime Commissioner in Avon and Somerset. You can find more from him at www.kenmaddock.org.uk.

I really feel that this is the start of a new era and as such it represents an opportunity to get in on the ground floor and help shape it to really suit the local area. If it is done well, it can make a huge difference to everyday life for all of us, and that is why I think it is so important.

A good candidate needs to be local, high profile and very visible. There is a lot of talking, listening and learning to be done between now and November to get a real sense of the feelings of over 1.5 million people in the Avon & Somerset area (in my case). This will take hard work, good organisation and above all a lot of time. So it is important to start as early as possible. That is not consistent with ‘hanging on to what you’ve got in case you don’t succeed’. That would just give the impression of being a part-timer who lacks self-belief and lead to a half-hearted effort. I cannot see 40 Commando yomping across the Falklands without pulling out all the stops and believing.

Of course it is a wrench for me to give up my role as Leader of Somerset County Council, and I am sorry that not all the things I wanted to do are finished yet. But I am confident that I leave the organisation a lot better than I found it. The essential building blocks are in place for further improvements. And there are good people there who will move the business on still further.

It can be hard to walk away from a £40,000 a year ‘job’ for six months without pay with no guarantee of another income at the end of it. But personally I think that money is completely the wrong reason to do public service, as it is intrinsically insecure and the money can cloud your judgement. So in the end I come back to the point that you have to be serious and show that you are serious about it. Personal committment before party selection really demonstrates this. You may feel it is the measure of the man.

 

Posted in Conservatives, Perspectives | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Risking It All – part 1 – Keith Hunter

Posted on 08/05/2012 by samchapman

Editor’s note:- At elections most candidates lose. Even those who seek out ‘safe seats’ find them heavily contested within their parties. Without people prepared to run the risk of the public rejection and embarassment at the end of an election there is no democracy. However for some candidates the risk is greater. Some have taken substantial risks to put themselves forward and, at this point, have done so without even knowing whether they will be chosen to fight the election at all. As part of a new series on TopOfTheCops, these people explain what that is like, and why they have done it, starting with Keith Hunter, applicant for the Labour nomination for Humberside Police. You can read more from Keith at keithhunter4pcc.com

 

I was asked if I would prepare a short article as one of relatively few potential PCC candidates who have had to ‘give up’ something tangible in order to even put themselves forward for selection. It may be strange for some to understand but I didn’t, and still don’t, think of myself as having made a sacrifice. Nevertheless, on being asked to contribute this article it did give me cause to reflect on my journey.

I was never one of those ‘high flyer’ types in the police. Although I passed my sergeants exams with 2yrs service I didn’t actively seek promotion until I had 10 years service, largely because I enjoyed the front line so much. Having once started on the upward journey I found I had the ability to see through problems others faltered at. My ambition, moulded from my front line experience, was always to make the organisation better able to deliver a service to those who required it. Personal ambition was always very much in the background. This led to some interesting hiccups in my career. Nevertheless I progressed to the largest command in force and with 29yrs service was successful in passing the National Strategic Command Course which qualified me for promotion to Chief Officer rank. For those not in the police it is difficult to explain the significance of this achievement. To the ambitious it is seen as the pinnacle of achievement and the opening of the door to riches and power.

Being relatively new to the Labour party and seeking office some, understandably, question my motives. The truth is that whilst on the Strategic Command Course, when everyone else was planning their future within the service, I came home one weekend and joined the Party. Admittedly I had been a life-long Labour supporter but the push I needed to join was the realisation of what was on the horizon for policing. This followed many weeks mixing with the most senior Police Officers in the land together with Government and Shadow Ministers and senior people from all walks of life. My concern became not how to progress further in the service but how best to create a coherent counter argument to the prevailing culture, now being seen in creeping privatisation and the Winsor review. I felt this could best be done through the Labour Party.

When, some time later, the Party indicated it would fight a PCC election my decision was effectively made for me. It was a big decision to take, but not a difficult one, to leave the service on the verge of a massive promotion. I believed that because of my experience and success I offered the best chance of a Labour victory in my area and that felt more important than personal employment security. So, I am now living on my pension and funding my own campaign from it. It doesn’t however, feel like a sacrifice. It feels as if I have maintained the principles I displayed during my progress in the service; do what you believe in for the right reasons and live with the consequences. That creates a feeling of empowerment, not sacrifice. Others refer to the many unpaid hours of work I now spend on my campaign and the salary I could have earned if I’d just kept my mouth shut and my head down – much more than the PCC salary in this area. It is my honestly held view that had I done so I would be feeling a much greater sense of personal sacrifice than I do now.

 

Posted in Perspectives | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

A personal note

Posted on 07/05/2012 by samchapman

This site has completed its first trimester. I must thank my loyal readership for coming back so often, and in particular a few dozen candidates from across the political spectrum for their contribution. I don’t know what you learn from me, but I’m learning more from you than I would ever have imagined.

In the next few days I hope to bring you some personal perspectives from candidates in more extreme personal circumstances, in the hope you can see what motivates them, how they think, and to give you empathy with some people who find themselves running for election, and therefore politicians. Empathy for politicians? Is there no end to my ambition? What’s next, world peace?

Well, before I get to world peace, I need to update you on my own situation. I’ve been open with you about my right-of-centre political standpoint, and my rumoured interest in the PCC post in Lancashire, but I’ve been puting a fair amount of energy into the local elections, and I know many of you have done the same. Now that is over, it’s time for something new to begin, namely my own campaign to be Lancashire’s first Police and Crime Commissioner. I have applied to be the Conservative candidate in my neck of the woods and that visit to Westminster that generated the ‘Malcolm Tucker’ shots was what happened when I went to Millbank for my interview. That seems to have gone well, as I have been added to a list of validated PCC candidates and now move to a local selection process. My campaign begins in earnest, and there’s even a website at Sam4Lancs.com One day there may even be a Candidate Statement here – I’ll need to come up with 400 words and a photo!

Sorry to puncture the suspense, but I wanted to reassure you that this site will continue as before – it will not be a campaign website for me or my party. It will continue to reflect my personal take on things, the news you come here for, and hopefully the experience of a diverse range of candidates. I have been impressed at the willingness of so many people from different parties to trust TopOfTheCops with their news and views, and hope we can continue to do that, because no doubt at least some of us will need to work together up to these elections and beyond.

One thing though. I can manage two websites. I can manage many different roles, and various metaphorical hats, but I don’t think I can do two active twitter accounts. It would confuse me endlessly, and possibly send me mad, or madder, depending on your point of view. So on Twitter it’s just me, whether I’m telling you about someone else’s campaign, or going on about my own. Either way I hope not to be too partisan. It just turns people off.

P.S. I understand that many of you cannot honestly wish me ‘good luck’. Clearly your honesty is the only thing that’s stopping you!

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

The First One Isn’t Always Free…

Posted on 06/05/2012 by samchapman

Earlier this week a nice man from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) rang me up while I was driving. I carefully pulled in to the side of the road, officer, and took the call.

Together with the Association of Police Authorities, they are having a big conference in Manchester from 22-24 May called ‘Leading Change in Policing’ and, on the middle day, are opening it up to outsiders in the form of prospective PCCs. It will be a bit like when the local Freemasons let people come in and have a peek at their halls. Possibly with many of the same faces, come to think of it…

Anyway, the nice man wanted to know whether, as I had a blog that quite a lot of candidates and the like read, would I mind advertising it for them…

I waited the appropriate amount of time, but financial inducement came there none. However, I’m always keen to keep taxes low, so I said yes, and er, this post is that said advertisement for that said conference.

I had a brief conversation with the nice man and established that prospective PCCs would need to pay to come to the conference, but I did not ascertain how much. I advised him that precious few prospective PCCs would have been formally selected as candidates by their party, and would lack the resources of a large organisation on which to call, unlike the other attendees at the conference, and that even those selected by the parties probably couldn’t squeeze the money out of them.

Later in the week, ACPO took to Twitter to further advertise the same event, at which point inquisitive wannabe candidates established that the cost for attendance would be…

…wait for it…

…£267.

It didn’t go down well with candidates

The Local Government Association, who are trying to hook prospective PCCs into an LGA-affiliated Police and Crime Commissioners Association, spotted an opportunity, and swooped in

https://twitter.com/LGACommSafety/statuses/198453820517400578

which resulted in firm responses from yours truly

ACPO tried to save the day, with a staff member pointing out

and that it was

But yours truly thought that

This last reference to ACPO’s current scandal around procuring costly consultancy arrangements with former members of, er, ACPO, was apparently too much!

Those of you dedicated enough to read down past all the twittering are rewarded with a special bonus…

In my chat with the nice-man I also established that some PCCs will be able to escape the fee by being invited to be a panelist at a session in the conference.

When I heard this I again waited the appropriate amount of time, but panelist invitation came there none. Apparently ACPO don’t want to mess with any implied backing involved in selecting the candidates, so have asked the political parties to do it for them, and for Independents have approached the LGA (grrr!).

I pointed out that, as Labour have a grand total of 3 selected candidates, and no other party has any, that this caused a problem for the parties, because it would mean treating some candidates differently from others, while they were still going through a selection process with those candidates, but again to no avail.

So. What’s the right thing to do?

Is Bernard right? Steer well clear of any potentially contaminating cosy relationship?

For me it’s an academic point. If £267 became free, I have plenty of kids who can find a better use for it, and this post probably blows my chances of a free place. I think Peter Walker has a point – what is there to add to what a good local briefing would cover?

But to be honest, I think PCCs need to be made of fairly stern stuff, and I’m always open to the possibility of finding out something new, and of gathering some tales about top cops for my devoted readers, so in this hypothetical world, I’d go, and shout about it so no-one later could suggest there was something bad being done in secret. But that would be in preference to the ‘free’ LGA do, which you really will have to pay for in time, as I don’t think they will be in as good a position to brief candidates, and I remain open to the possibility that someone else could come up with something fresh, bespoke and more useful to candidates than these events which are not mainly directed at them and where the host organisations may retain a latent hostility to their unwelcome presence.

Posted in Perspectives | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Not Ken Again?

Posted on 05/05/2012 by samchapman

Yesterday’s London Mayoral victory was a significant political achievement for Boris Johnson, who from roughly 2 million voters, polled roughly 250,000 votes better than his party did. Lots of people have noticed this, and it should be recognised, showing the potential contribution an individual candidate can make to this sort of election, but so should two other points of particular interest for Police and Crime Commissioner elections.

Firstly, these Mayoral elections command very large electorates, and provide impressive mandates. PCC elections will not quite be of the same order, but they won’t be far off. Having performed so impressively in his own party’s mid-term compared to how well he did when they were the home of the protest vote, his personal mandate and brand is significantly strengthened. Authenticity seems to work. This could make party candidates more inclined to be themselves. Either that, or there will be good money to be made in teaching people how to fake authenticity!

Boris’s impressive achievement still resulted in a narrow victory. He didn’t clear the magical 50% figure on the first round, so the second preferences of everyone who had voted for someone who wasn’t in the top two were used to redistribute those votes.

The count was tense. After all this time ahead in the polls, and having come first on first preferences, could Boris really lose? But a quick look at the most well supported minor parties showed the bulk of the votes with the Greens, the Lib Dems and an Independent. How many Greens really prefer Boris? How many of what remains of the Lib Dems really support Labour? How many of Siobhan Benita’s voters were voting for her, then Ken, and how many for her instead of Ken?

We don’t know. That data varies between not available, not counted and not released. What we do know is that Ken had more than 55% of the second preferences, to Boris’s 45%, but as there were so few of them, Ken’s 10% lead was not enough to bring his total beyond that of Boris, leaving him 62,538 votes behind. On a total vote of 2.2 million, that’s not a whole lot to win or lose by, but it is enough.

Which leads us to our often-overlooked second point. The total level of votes for candidates other than Boris and Ken was 346,626, but only 185,235 second preferences were counted. This means that 161,391 people, or more than two times the eventual winning margin, either expressed no second preference, or used a second preference that was not counted because it was not for one of the two main candidates.

Put differently, just shy of 16% of voters gave their first preference to a candidate other than the two front runners. Of those, 53% who had clearly made their point then made the real decision that everyone knew the election was about, and a whopping 47%, representing 7.3% of the total votes in the first round, did not. This happened despite just about everyone who voted knowing who those top two candidates were going to be.

The PCC elections are less predictable, so rarely will be as clear as this in terms of who the two front runners are to be, and to be fair there are perhaps unlikely to be as many candidates, apart from in Sussex where the whole population appears to be standing. The ‘minor’ candidates, the second preferences of those who support them, and the varying tendencies of those supporters to express those preferences could make all the difference in these elections.

Posted in Perspectives | Tagged , , | 4 Comments