Previewing the Cambridge and Lancashire by-elections of 18th August 2022
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
There are two by-elections on 18th August 2022, both in wards whose electoral history can be traced back a very long way. Later we will come to a Conservative defence in rural Lancashire, but let’s start for the week in the city of Cambridge:
Trumpington
Cambridge council; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Alan Cox.
For our first poll today we travel to an old village on the edge of Cambridge. Trumpington lies a couple of miles south of the city centre on the main road towards Royston, and forms the south-west corner of the modern city.
The general Cambridge area has seen huge population growth in recent years, and this has mostly been achieved by tacking new housing estates onto pretty much all the existing villages. Trumpington has not escaped this process, and the village’s population is booming — although not all of the new development is within the Cambridge city boundary. Nevertheless, there is enough new housing here for this ward to have been cut back in size at boundary changes in May 2021, and the Local Government Boundary Commission have allowed for population growth here of 16% between 2018 and 2024.
Similar things are going on in the villages outside the Cambridge city boundary, and one result of this is the blue dashed line you can see in the ward map. This is the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, which links Trumpington to Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge railway station and the city centre. The Busway terminates at Trumpington Park and Ride, whose large car park straddles the city boundary.
Before all that development this was a rather agricultural area, as we can see from the fact that the Plant Breeding Institute was based in Trumpington from 1955. Their offices were in the minor stately home of Anstey Hall on Maris Lane, and that thoroughfare has given its name to a number of varieties of staple plants: the Maris Piper potato remains in wide use by British farmers, while Maris Otter barley is popular with real ale breweries and for home-brewed beer. Several centuries earlier Trumpington was the home of Symkyn the miller, whose tale was told by the Reeve in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
In the eighteenth century Anstey Hall was owned by Christopher Anstey, who lived here as a country squire for a while before moving to Bath and becoming well-known as a poet. Anstey’s works include An Election Ball, which is more a description of Bath’s social scene than an election as we would understand it today.
Trumpington was incorporated into Cambridge in 1934 and has formed a ward of the city continuously since then. The present ward, whose boundaries date from 2021 as stated, is a seriously middle-class area. On the previous boundaries Trumpington was in the top 40 wards in England and Wales for those in higher managerial and professional occupations (27%) and those working in education (24%), and also made the top 90 for those working in scientific and technical activities (18%) and for degree-level qualifications (57%).
In Cambridge city council elections, Trumpington ward returned Conservative councillors continuously from 1945 to 1993 and then Liberal Democrats continuously since 1994, with four exceptions: Labour won one of the two seats available in 1945, and the ward voted Conservative in 1998 and 2012 and Labour (by four votes) in 2018. As often happens in Cambridge, some of the ward’s previous councillors are notable enough for Wikipedia. See for example the transgender rights campaigner Zoë O’Connell, who was a Lib Dem councillor for this ward from 2015 to 2019 and is one of the few openly-trans people ever to have held UK elected office.
However, former councillor Jean Barker deserves a couple of paragraphs all to herself. Barker represented this ward from 1963 until the abolition of the pre-reform Cambridge city council in 1974, and was she also the local county councillor from 1973 to 1975. But this represented only one corner of an extraordinary life. Barker was coached in tennis in her youth by the Grand Slam champion Jean Borotra, worked in naval intelligence at Bletchley Park before moving on to Paris and New York, and eventually settled in Cambridge where her husband was headmaster of the Leys School (just outside the current ward boundary). She was Mayor of Cambridge in 1971–72.
After her local government career ended Barker went into national and international politics, serving as the UK’s representative on the UN Commission on the Status of Women before entering the Lords. Baroness Trumpington, as she now was, served as a government whip and junior minister for much of the Thatcher and Major years before the Conservative defeat of 1997 ended her government career. She remained in the public eye into her nineties, guest-editing the Today programme in 2017 at the age of 95 (the year before she died), and becoming the oldest ever Have I Got News for You guest in 2012.
But whatever you do, don’t insult the noble Baroness’ age. Even if you’re in the House of Lords chamber.
It will be hard for the winner of this by-election to top that for a life story, but you never know what’s around the corner.
Unfortunately, the reason for this poll is one for the Councillors Behaving Badly file because the outgoing Lib Dem councillor, Alan Cox, pleaded guilty last month to possessing over 600 indecent images of children. Cambridge magistrates have referred his case to Cambridge Crown Court for sentencing, which is due to take place in September.
Cox had served on Cambridge city council for just over a year, having been elected at the top of the Lib Dem slate in the first contest on the current Trumpington ward boundaries in May 2021. He was due for re-election in 2024. His disgrace leaves the Lib Dems with a slightly tricky by-election to defend if May’s result is anything to go by: three months ago the Lib Dems held Trumpington ward with 42% of the vote against 31% for Labour and 14% for the Conservatives.
Defending for the Lib Dems is David Levien, an engineer who has lived in Trumpington for 30 years. The Labour candidate is Rahima Ahammed, who if elected would become the first Cambridge councillor to wear a veil. Standing for the Conservatives is Shapour Meftah, who was elected in 2012 as the last Conservative councillor for Trumpington but has had rather less luck here since losing his seat in 2016. Completing the ballot paper is the ward’s regular Green Party candidate Ceri Galloway.
Parliamentary constituency: Cambridge
Cambridgeshire county council division: Trumpington
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cambridge
Postcode district: CB2
Rahima Ahammed (Lab)
Ceri Galloway (Grn)
David Levien (LD)
Shapour Meftah (C)
May 2022 result LD 1151 Lab 853 C 379 Grn 352
May 2021 result LD 1298/1246/1085 Lab 946/729/720 Grn 604/359/319 C 574/548/421
Previous results in detail
Preesall
Wyre council, Lancashire; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Andrew Cropper.
Our other by-election today takes place in Over Wyre, the corner of Lancashire’s Fylde peninsula which lies north of the River Wyre. The Wyre forms a wide estuary as it nears the Fylde coast, turning north and narrowing until it reaches the open sea at Fleetwood.
Opposite Fleetwood on the east bank of the Wyre is Knott End-on-Sea, which is linked to the town by a seasonal ferry which crosses the estuary. That ferry is the only link between the two halves of the Lancashire and Fleetwood parliamentary seat. Knott End lies in, and is a major part of, the parish of Preesall. There was once a large salt mine here, but these days the ward functions as a retirement centre.
Preesall parish has returned three members of Wyre council, on unchanged boundaries, since the council was formed in 1974. Since 1999 it has returned a full slate of Conservative councillors at every opportunity, including a previous by-election in January 2018 (Andrew’s Previews 2018, page 20). That by-election had an unusually close result, with a 55–45 lead for the Conservatives in a straight fight with Labour; at the last Wyre council elections in May 2019 the Tories extended their lead to 63–37. Wyre council, which takes in the towns of Fleetwood, Thornton-Cleveleys and Poulton-le-Fylde as well as the rural Over Wyre area, has a large Conservative majority: the 2019 elections returned 39 Conservative councillors, 9 Labour and 4 UKIP with the opposition councillors concentrated in Fleetwood.
The Conservatives also hold the local Lancashire county council division of Wyre Rural Central, but not the local parliamentary seat. Lancaster and Fleetwood is a key marginal which has been Labour-held since 2015.
Andrew’s Previews was in Wyre district a couple of months ago covering a by-election in Cleveleys Park ward. Like in Preesall, the Conservatives had won there by 63–37 in 2019; that by-election on 30th June turned in a rather closer result with the Conservative lead reducing to 54–46. This was on the day that Chris Pincher resigned as deputy chief whip, setting off the chain of events which led to the downfall of Boris Johnson’s premiership. Such national drama is unlikely to be played out for this poll, but there is a local factor to consider: Preesall is proposed as the location for a new quarry, with 460,000 tonnes of sand gravel projected to be removed. This has not gone down well with the locals. The proposal has come from Callum Baxter, who as well as running a local housebuilding firm is a member of the majority Conservative group on Wyre council.
Will this have an effect on the by-election? We shall see. The outgoing Conservative Andrew Cropper has resigned after three years in post, and there are four candidates to replace him. Defending for the Conservatives is Steven Taylor-Royston, who is retired from a career in the aerospace industry. The Labour candidate is William Jackson. Two independent candidates complete the ballot paper: Collette Rushforth is standing on an anti-quarry ticket, while Garry Wright has got stuck in with work in the local community as one of the people behind the Preesall and Knott End Help Group.
Parliamentary constituency: Lancaster and Fleetwood
Lancashire county council division: Wyre Rural Central
ONS Travel to Work Area: Blackpool
Postcode districts: FY6, PR3
William Jackson (Lab)
Collette Rushforth (Ind)
Steven Taylor-Royston (C)
Garry Wright (Ind)
May 2019 result C 960/957/905 Lab 571/554/551
January 2018 by-election C 930 Lab 753
May 2015 result C 2008/1944/1818 Lab 1082/880/819
May 2011 result C 1299/1226/1220 Lab 656 UKIP 530
May 2007 result C 1418/1386/1380 Lab 496/428
May 2003 result C 1012/936/935 Ind 750 Lab 498/412
May 1999 result C 1180/1096/1072 Lab 598/524 Ind 427
May 1995 result C 1034/1028/900 Lab 1030/938/928
May 1991 result C 1089/1038/982 Lab 1037/905/878
May 1987 result C 1334/1199/1121 Lab 540/532
May 1983 result 3 C unopposed
May 1979 result 3 C unopposed
May 1976 result C 1116/1091/939 Ind 438/286 Lib 335 NF 241
May 1973 result Ind 1374/729/650 C 894/537/480
Previous results (2003 onwards) in detail
If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them — going back to 2016 — in the Andrew’s Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale
