Haltemprice and Howden: a failure for the Greens?

No surprises in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, then, which may not quite have managed to put civil liberties on the political map to the extent that some would have hoped but has at least introduced the political commentariat to two previously unknown towns near Hull.

David Davis has got his expected walkover on a low turnout, with two out of three registered voters staying at home. He can now savour what must be the biggest majority (in percentage terms) in the country, albeit one that guarantees a huge swing against him at the general election. None of the loonies managed to save their deposits, although Miss Great Britain on 521 votes (5.21 per cent) must be mightily pleased at beating anti-rape campaigner Jill Saward on 492 votes (2.07 per cent) and the Official Monster Raving Loony candidate, Mad-Cow Girl on 412 (1.73 per cent).

The most disappointed candidate, however – apart from independents Tony Farnon and Norman Scarth, who couldn’t even get all of the ten people who nominated them to cast their votes in their favour – must be the English Democrat, Joanne Robinson. She called for a recount after losing second place to the Greens by just 44 votes.

The Green Party candidate, Shan Oakes, polled 1,758 votes (7.40 per cent, which the party is claiming as a by-election record). In any normal by-election in England, fighting candidates from all three major parties, that would have been a creditable result. In Haltemprice and Howden, it’s a poor performance – barely beating a fringe nationalist group and doing no better than the combined vote of the various loony candidates.

In the absence of the major parties, but with the presence of the national media, all desperate for a fresh and different angle on the campaign, this was an unparallelled opportunity to present the Greens as 'the real civil liberties candidate', as the party's slogan had it. That opportunity was missed.

I wrote last month that ‘anything less than several thousand votes and second place will have to be marked down as a failure’ for the Greens. I see no reason to change that assessment now.

Green takes on grey in Haltemprice and Howden

I’ve always had a soft spot for people who are prepared to put their money where their mouths are. So even when I didn’t agree with a lot of what was coming out of their mouths, I had a degree of respect for the Militants who would refuse to take more than a worker’s wage on the few occasions that they got themselves elected.

Now the Green Party candidate in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election has made a similar pledge in promising that she will donate half of her MP’s salary to her party in the unlikely event of her beating David Davis on 10 July. Shan Oakes, who has lived in the East Riding of Yorkshire since 1975, is billing herself as ‘the real civil liberties candidate’ as well as challenging Davis on the Iraq war, global capitalism and the lack of a bus service from Howden station.

Despite a total of 26 candidates, ranging from the Mad Cow-Girl standing for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party to one-time Green Party speaker David Icke standing for the Absolute Nutters Alliance, Oakes is the only alternative to David Davis who stands any realistic chance of putting in a credible performance. Anything less than several thousand votes and second place will have to be marked down as a failure.

David Davis's militant tendency

'Libertarians from the left and right sometimes meet in the middle against an authoritarian state,' declared Tony Benn in announcing his support for David Davis in his Haltemprice and Howden by-election defence of civil liberties. Now, judging by a photo in the first email from the 'David Davis for Freedom' campaign, the former shadow home secretary has enlisted another left-wing icon in the fight against NuLab tyranny: the clenched fist salute.

Apart from the fact that they look a little less angry and a little more clean cut, this could be the Militant Tendency circa 1985. What does Davis have in store for us next? A weekly newspaper and a general strike?