A night of drama

Written by Jenny Randerson and published in Cardiff Post on Mon 12th May 2008

Election nights are often full of drama and intrigue, but rarely as much so as the night of May 1st 2008. In the run up to the elections, nobody across Cardiff really knew what was going to happen, although many commentators were fairly sure that it would be a bad night for the Labour party.

Not even the most bold commentators were correct in their assessment of just how badly things got for Cardiff Labour though. Not only were they hit hard on the issue of the 10p tax rate and Post Office Closures, but I believe that their campaign was lacklustre, and unable to do anything much beyond criticising the Lib Dem run council. Now I have been in politics for many years, and while I am aware that attacking your opponents is part and parcel of elections, rarely have I seen a campaign based on such negativity.

The last four years have seen the Lib Dem council seize the initiative on some very difficult issues facing our city. As a party without a majority, this was a very tough and brave decision to make. It would have been very easy, as the Labour party did for many years, to sit back and ignore the impact that falling school numbers was having on our schools and the fact that commuter parking has increased year on year. Instead, the Lib Dems sought to tackle these problems head on, even though the lack of a majority in the Council Chamber meant that it was not always possible to make the tough decisions we wanted.

Sadly, Labour used the last four years as an opportunity to oppose almost everything the Lib Dem Council tried to do, and I think that their drubbing this time, as well as the impact of national issues, was also a wholesale rejection of Labour's strategy of pointless opportunism and shallow mischief-making that has characterised the part they have played in politics in the city in the last few years. Since their monumental fall from grace four years ago, few would have thought that things could have got any worse for them. It is hard to believe that just five years ago, the Labour party held two thirds of the seats on Cardiff Council, now they are down to third place with just 13 seats out of 75.

No political party has a right to win elections. Success can never be taken for granted. Political parties that enjoy continued success do so because they listen to what the people want - and deliver it. Over the last four years the Welsh Liberal Democrat administration has done that. I am confident that the next four years will do the same.