DATUK SHEIKH AND THE LOCAL ELECTIONS
In another life I used to visit the Far East, particularly Malaysia, on a regular basis promoting British degrees and British education. On one memorable tour of Sabah and Sarawak, everyday a different town, I was on the same plane and staying in the same hotels as the Malaysian pop singer Datuk Sheikh (or Shake as it became in the anglicised version). A popular Malaysian singer, it ensured that wherever we went by plane and, indeed, at every hotel there were hordes of Malaysian pop fans for Datuk’s concerts – the seminars on British Law degrees weren’t badly attended either!
Whether we were in Sibu, Kuching, Kota Kinabalu or Sandakan, the response was the same. All towns looked the same to me as Simon and Garfunkel memorably said in ‘Homeward Bound’.
The local government campaign has provided a strange echo of that tour of East Malaysia because everywhere I went the response on the doorstep was the same and on the same issue – hostility to the government of the day on the withdrawal of the 10p tax band and more broadly on handling of the economy.
Other issues were mentioned but they tended to be the local planning application for housing or the state of the pavements or the roads, but there was a crushing uniformity about the hostility to the government, to the Labour Party and to the Prime Minister, whether it was from Flintshire, Ceredigion, Powys, Swansea, Cardiff, the Vale or Newport. People thought it was time for a change and that the Labour Party had lost touch with the voters.
This was reflected in the results and, of course, not just in Wales but in England, and dramatically in London too.
