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Kelly has now formed an Independent Alliance group on the council which includes other defectors from both the Conservatives and Labour. As we shall now discuss, in November a further Conservative councillor was suspended and two more resigned altogether. Labour are defending this by-election following the death of Labour councillor Diana Friend, a retired teacher who passed away in May at the age of 72. She was the serving deputy mayoress of Warrington, as her husband and fellow ward councillor Graham Friend was the borough’s deputy mayor for 2022–23. They married in 2017 within the ward, at the Church of the Resurrection in Cinnamon Brow; Diana was already a ward councillor then, having been first elected in 2016 under her previous surname of Bennett, and she and Graham had met through their political work. Before we start this week, there are a couple of corrections to the Leicester piece from last week. Aasiya Bora may have finished as runner-up in last week’s by-election, but in fact she placed third in last year’s poll. Keith Vaz is no longer the chair of the Leicester East branch of Labour; he is now the constituency party’s campaigns officer, which can’t be a particularly comfortable position to hold given his candidate’s disastrous performance last week. For the other East Midlands region we take another trip to England’s “smallest” “county” as we come to Uppingham, which with a population of just under 5,000 is the second-largest metropolis in Rutland. Uppingham is best-known to outsiders for its public school, which clearly shows up in its 2011 census return: the ward’s proportion of 16- and 17-year-olds (10.2%) is the sixth-highest of any ward in England and Wales and the highest figure for any ward in the East Midlands, and Uppingham ward is also in the top 50 for those employed in education (22.4%). The pupils are of course too young to vote, and for the adults Uppingham’s elections are curiously balanced affairs with no party ever standing a full slate for the three available seata. Four of the ward’s five ordinary elections this century have returned candidates from three different political traditions, including the 2019 election at which the Tories’ Lucy Stephenson and independent Marc Oxley were re-elected, while the Green Party’s Miranda Jones (who had been the Labour candidate here in 2015) defeated Tory councillor Rachel Burkitt for the final seat.
Oxfordshire’s Vale of White Horse district has a by-election in Steventon and the Hanneys ward, which covers four parishes along the Great Western main line to the north of Wantage. This seat is vacated by the Conservatives’ Matthew Barber, a former leader of the council who was elected last year as the Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner. Barber was run close in 2019 by the Liberal Democrats; Louise Brown is the defending Conservative candidate, the Lib Dems’ Sally Povolotsky may fancy her chances of a gain, while independent candidate David Corps also stands. All these shenanigans have left Plymouth council hung again. A further defection earlier this week left Labour as the largest party on the council; the latest composition following a further defection earlier this week gives 24 Labour councillors, 23 Conservatives plus two vacancies, five councillors in the Independent Alliance group (four ex-Conservative, one ex-Labour), two Greens (one of whom was elected as Labour), and an ex-Conservative independent. It’s a very fine balance. Any Conservative losses in these by-elections will mean that Labour increase their lead on the council, although they will remain short of the 29 seats necessary for a majority. Now, unlike some other cities, Oxford’s ring road doesn’t necessarily mark the end of the urban area: large parts of Oxford’s south-east fringe are outside the ring road. This includes the former village of Littlemore, which has existed for a very long time but only got a parish church in 1838; its first incumbent was John Henry Newman, who later became a Roman Catholic cardinal and a saint. Newman gives his name to the local primary school. Littlemore ward also takes in the Oxford Science Park and the Kassam Stadium, home of Oxford United FC, both of which are on the southern edge of the city. The ward is represented on the City Corporation by the Alderman and two Common Councilmen. Since the last City elections in March 2022 one of the two Common Councilmen for Bread Street has been Emily Benn, Tony Benn’s granddaughter. Emily has served as a Labour councillor in Croydon in the past and has stood three times for Parliament as a Labour candidate, but elections in the City don’t work like that; even politicians who are well-known for being partisan in other fields will normally seek election in the City as independent candidates, as Benn did. This memo was seemingly not received by Harini Iyengar, who stood in Bread Street in 2022 as an official candidate of the Women’s Equality Party and finished last out of four candidates.Since 2004 this ward had been represented on Monmouthshire council by the Conservatives’ Bob Greenland, who was elected without a contest in 2008 and had large leads over the Lib Dems in 2004, 2012 and 2017. All of those local elections also resulted in Conservative-led government of Monmouthshire county council, the party winning an overall majority in 2004, 2008 and 2017 and ruling from 2012 to 2017 in coalition with the Lib Dems. To allow consistent comparisons to be made across local elections from year to year, the BBC make an estimate of how the vote would have gone across the whole country based on vote changes in a representative sample of wards. Their Projected National Share for the 2018 local elections put the Conservatives and Labour level on 35% each and the Lib Dems on 16%. We can see from the differences between these and the figures above that the wards holding elections tend to be stronger for Labour, and weaker for the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, than the GB average. Quite the contrast with the far side, the Lancashire side, of the Mersey: there lay Didsbury, a suburb of the crowded, industrial city of Manchester. Didsbury was and remains an attractive suburb for the middle classes, but in 1923 inner-city Manchester had a lot of substandard slum terraces which needed something doing to them for reasons of public health. But what to do with all the people living there? So, we have here a three-councillor ward whose representation is split between Labour and the Conservatives, and a single-member ward which has voted for both parties within the last two years. And Labour are defending both of these wards in by-elections, following the resignations of their councillors Sue Moffat and Steph Talbot. I have not been able to find any given reason for their resignations, but in the case of Moffat it is noticeable that she recently applied to be Labour’s next parliamentary candidate for Newcastle-under-Lyme and didn’t get the selection; while last December Talbot was ousted as the head of the Alice charity. Tamworth council, Staffordshire; both caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Richard Ford.
The only elections in Cheshire this year are for one-third of Halton council (Runcorn and Widnes), which is culturally closer to Merseyside than to Cheshire and accordingly has a secure Labour majority. The councillors up here were last elected in 2021 following boundary changes. Yorkshire So, defending this seat for the Conservatives is Neil Waller, an NHS finance manager and former Wealden councillor who lost his seat two months ago in Crowborough South West ward. The Greens have selected Anne Cross, an interfaith minister who lives in Heathfield. The Lib Dems also put a nomination in, but their candidate has withdrawn and will not be on the ballot; that leaves this by-election as a straight fight between Waller and Cross. The village of Devauden itself is the location where John Wesley first preached in Wales, doing so on the village green in 1739. The ward also includes a number of other small villages, as far west as Llangwm. This was historically hunting territory, and to some extent still is: the village of Itton at the southern end of the ward is home to the foxhounds of the Curre and Llangibby Hunt. It probably doesn’t help that Hartlepool Labour have had to spend a lot of money over the last year defending an election petition against the 2021 result in Fens and Greatham (GREE-tham) ward, where Labour’s Jennifer Elliott finished in third place in 2021 and hence is up for re-election this year. Elliott won her seat by a margin of ten votes over outgoing Independent Union councillor Bob Buchan, who lost his seat. The Labour campaign had wrongly claimed that Buchan had voted in favour of a controversial planning application in the ward; in fact he was ill on the day of the vote in question and had not attended the meeting. Buchan took Elliott to the Election Court, which agreed that this was a false statement of fact but did not overturn the result, deciding that the false statement related to Buchan’s political conduct rather than his personal character. Round 3 of Elliott v Buchan will take place this May at the ballot box rather than in the courtroom: Elliott is seeking re-election for Labour in Fens and Greatham and she is opposed only by Buchan, who this time has the Conservative nomination.It’s the council who get to have the final say on important matters like how often the bins are emptied, how often the roads are resurfaced, and how much their employees get paid for doing that. It’s the council who get to have the final say on important matters like where shops can be opened, how our libraries are run, where our children’s schools are located, where new housing is to be built, whether new housing is to be built. It’s the council that registers our hatchings, matchings and dispatchings, and that supports its more vulnerable residents in between through one of the largest parts of the local government budget — social services. To do all this our 400 or so local councils, between them, employ around two million people — a figure that has reduced by a third since 2010 as central government, who stump up the bill for much of this, have slowly turned the financial thumbscrews. Eight weeks later, the Labour group found themselves a man down following the resignation of Labour councillor Drew Moore, who indicated that he could not balance his new democratic duties with a new job. Moore had won the final seat in the ward with a majority of just 33 votes over the lead Conservative Peter Berry, so Labour have work to do to hold this by-election. St Helens is the smallest of England’s 36 metropolitan boroughs in terms of council size, with a total of 48 councillors. All of them were up for re-election in May with new ward boundaries being introduced; this resulted in an increased Labour majority with 35 council seats against 4 Lib Dems and three seats each for the Conservatives, Greens and independents. Moss Bank ward was left almost untouched by the boundary changes so we can read its political history over quite a long period: it was a safe Lib Dem ward until the Merseyside Lib Dem vote evaporated in 2010 on the formation of the Coalition, and has been a safe Labour ward since then. In May the Labour slate polled 52% here with the Conservatives and Lib Dems on 17% each. Finally, we have the last election to North Yorkshire county council, which returned a Conservative majority at its previous election in 2017: 55 Conservatives against 10 independents, 4 Labour and 3 Lib Dem councillors. There are new division boundaries this year with an increase from 72 councillors to 90. As a result of local government reorganisation the county council will become North Yorkshire’s unitary council in April 2023, with all the district councils underneath it disappearing then. The Tories were much weaker here in the 2019 district council elections: Scarborough council is run by a Labour-Independent coalition, Ryedale by a Lib Dem-independent arrangement, Richmondshire by an independent-led anti-Conservative coalition. The Conservatives do, however, have majorities in Selby, Hambleton and Harrogate districts and hold half of the seats in Craven. Five of the six Green district councillors represent either Hythe Rural ward, all of which is within this division, or Hythe ward. Dymchurch is covered by Romney Marsh ward, which returned the two UKIP councillors. They are still in that party. UKIP aren’t dead yet, you know.
From May, you will need photo ID to vote in person at a parliamentary election in Great Britain or a local election in England. If you don’t have one of the accepted forms of photo ID, you can apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate or a postal vote from your local council elections office. Do it now and beat the rush. In May 2023 the Tories lost their majority on Broadland council, falling from 33 to 21 seats out of a possible 47, and that cost them power. All the other councillors (14 Lib Dems, 8 Labour and 4 Greens) have joined together in a traffic-light coalition, under a Lib Dem leader. The result in Thorpe St Andrew North West was closer than in the October 2022 by-election, but a Labour lead of 48–42 was enough for Labour to take all three seats in the ward.Outgoing councillor Baker-Smith doesn’t appear to have completely left her Isle of Wight roots. She was working remotely in an NHS job which is nominally based there, and she quit Manchester council in July to spend more time on the island caring for a family member. On the night of 14th March 2023, contractors moved in on Armada Way in Plymouth. This is a pedestrian boulevard which runs in a straight line through Plymouth city centre: at the north end of Armada Way is Plymouth’s intercity railway station; at the south end is Plymouth Hoe. In the middle is the city’s main shopping district and some mature trees. But not nearly as many as there used to be. We finish with the Labour defence of the week, which comes at the northern end of St Helens. This town was called into existence by the Industrial Revolution as a centre of heavy industry, partly thanks to its location on the Lancashire coalfield, and it became a major centre for pharmaceuticals and glassmaking. Pilkington Glass is still a big employer in St Helens but no longer has the dominance it once did; the company was taken over by a Japanese firm in 2006, and some of its St Helens factories have since ceased production. This includes the Cowley Hill works to the north of the town centre, which is now being redeveloped. We should note here that the Conservatives have often put in particularly poor by-election performances in recent years along the High Speed 2 route, a record which includes the Chesham and Amersham parliamentary by-election two years ago. The Gerrards Cross part of this ward will transfer into Chesham and Amersham at the next general election; for now, Denham is wholly part of the Beaconsfield parliamentary seat which is safely Conservative. As one Tony Blair found out when he stood there as a Labour candidate in a 1982 by-election; in those days you needed 12.5% of the vote to save your deposit, and he didn’t manage that. ONS Travel to Work Area: Slough and Heathrow (Denham and Fulmer parishes), High Wycombe and Aylesbury (Gerrards Cross East parish ward of Gerrards Cross parish)
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