07-05-2010 Tactical voting impacts minor parties in election

Animals Count has received the election result for Islington South & Finsbury constituency for the General Election 2010 where the Deputy Leader, Richard Deboo, was standing as our candidate. The result shows that we received 149 (0.3%) votes; the winner was the current MP Emily Thornberry (Labour) who won with a seven-fold increase in her majority (3,569 votes) compared to 2005.

Whilst this result is a disappointment for us and at the lower end of our expectations we should not be too disheartened. We know that Animals Count offered a professional and positive campaign to the electorate, with the tremendous efforts of our small, volunteer team who gave up very considerable personal time to taking the message we offer out to the voters. We received a lot of encouragement and support on the streets and via messages and emails to the Animals Count website, and our membership has increased, but regrettably that local support did not translate into actual votes as people decided to vote tactically for the “big” parties, and this is something that was seen across the country and should not be perceived purely as a rejection of the Animals Count policies and objectives.

We should remember that we have only been in operation for three years and this was our first participation in a General Election. The Green Party has just achieved the great success of having their first MP (Caroline Lucas, Brighton) and we offer our sincere congratulations to them, but it has taken the best part of 30 years for that dream to come true, and so we must recognise that we (Animals Count) are still in the very early stages in our evolution as a political party in this country.

Everyone (including those regarded as the best and brightest and smartest pundits!) thought that this election would represent real political change and “other” parties would do really well (following on from the credit crunch, the expenses scandal, lobbygate et al) but in fact the British electorate, up and down the country, knew that it would be an extremely close contest. In the last days before the elections, the government and headlines screamed ‘Vote tactically’ and that is what everyone did, to either keep Labour or the Conservative Party out. This type of voting behaviour on this scale has not been seen before.

Despite the media’s insistence that the TV debates had “changed the game forever” and “talking up” the alleged “surge” in support for the Liberal Democrats and their leader, Nick Clegg, nothing has changed and no “surge” in support for the “third” party has been forthcoming – far from it, the Liberal Democrats have lost seats compared to 2005.

We should, therefore, examine the Animals Count result in light of this dramatic attempt to either keep Labour or the Tories out across the UK. Many people (if not a majority) must not have voted for their first preference. It is regrettable that there is still huge support for the “big two” despite the damage they have done to our economy, the environment and communities over recent decades. In addition, due to the recession, people probably also considered their own interests ahead of more sustainable environmental interests.

However, the media was sufficiently interested (we were mentioned in a BBC online article, Richard Deboo was interviewed on the BBC2 Daily Politics show and by the Telegraph, and there were articles about Animals Count in local newspapers and animal-related magazines). In the 2009 European Parliament elections, we received over 13,000 votes in the Eastern region, which shows that the public is interested in animal issues.

We would like to thank all of our supporters for their help, and for the many messages of encouragement and hope that we have received during our campaign. It is tremendously heartening to us to know that there are people out there who do care about more than their own narrow self-interest and do want to ensure that those millions of animals in our society, who are so utterly at our mercy, can be properly represented in our political system, and who are so determined to see that politics can and should have compassion at its heart.

We will keep fighting!