Previewing the eight by-elections of 17th November 2022
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
There are eight by-elections on 17th November 2022, with Labour defending four, the Conservatives two and the Green Party and independents one each. There’s a wide geographical spread this week and something for everyone to enjoy, so let’s start with the Green defence:
Beccles
Suffolk county council; caused by the resignation of Green Party councillor Peggy McGregor.
By-election defences by the Green Party don’t often appear in this column. However, and without getting an awful lot of publicity for it, the Greens have actually done rather well in local elections over the last decade or so; the number of Green councillors increases at every local election, as does the number of councils they are represented on. There has never yet been a Green-majority council, but the party runs the city of Brighton and Hove as a minority and participates in a number of other ruling coalitions up and down the country.
One of the more long-standing Green hotspots is Beccles, a market town on the northern border of Suffolk — here, the River Waveney — which is one of the larger urban centres in the Broads. The parish church’s bell tower is, rather unusually, detached from its church; a climb to the top will be rewarded with views over the flat landscape of the Broads and eastwards to the North Sea. The town is a passing-place on the single-track East Suffolk railway line, with hourly trains to Ipswich and Lowestoft.
The Beccles division of Suffolk county council extends east along the main road towards Lowestoft to take in the smaller parishes of Worlingham, North Cove and Barnby. At the time of the 2011 census this area was divided between three wards of Waveney council, called Beccles North, Beccles South and Worlingham. Beccles South was an unusually working-class area compared to the surrounding wards, and had 97.6% of its population born in the UK; only four wards in the Eastern region recorded a higher figure for this statistic.
Waveney council itself disappeared in 2019 in a merger with Suffolk Coastal council to the south; the resulting East Suffolk council is run out of the former Coastal offices in Woodbridge, some distance to the south of here. For the inaugural 2019 East Suffolk elections a new ward was drawn up with the same boundaries as this county division but with a longer name, “Beccles and Worlingham”. It returned a full slate of three Green councillors, very comfortably.
The Beccles county division has a rather longer history, with the current boundaries dating from 2005. It elects two Suffolk county councillors. The 2005 election saw the seats split between the Conservatives and Labour; the Conservatives gained the Labour seat in 2009. The Green Party broke through in 2017 by winning one seat, and then gained the other seat from the Conservatives in 2021; shares of the vote were 52% for the Green slate and 41% for the Conservatives, which is a heck of a lot closer than the 65–22 Green lead in the district elections two years earlier. Judging from the old Waveney council results, Worlingham and the two small parishes are the Conservatives’ best area with the Greens likely doing better in Beccles town.
The second Green councillor, elected with a majority of just 101 votes, was Peggy McGregor. She stepped down in September, leaving the Greens with what might be a tricky by-election defence.
Defending this county council seat for the Green Party is Ash Lever, who is a Beccles town councillor and former Mayor of Beccles. The Conservatives have selected Letitia Smith, who is an East Suffolk councillor for Kessingland ward, on the coast to the east. As in 2021, we have a three-way contest with Labour’s Christan Newsome completing the ballot paper.
Parliamentary constituency: Waveney
East Suffolk ward: Beccles and Worlingham
ONS Travel to Work Area: Lowestoft
Postcode district: NR34
Ash Lever (Grn)
Christian Newsome (Lab)
Letitia Smith (C)
May 2021 result Grn 2594/2131 C 2030/1769 Lab 374/368
May 2019 East Suffolk council result Grn 3806/3456/3439 C 1293/1110/840 UKIP 477 Lab 276/273
May 2017 result C 2241/2031 Grn 2189/1446 Lab 541/388 UKIP 224/194 LD 105/96
May 2013 result C 1822/1449 Grn 1322/918 Lab 973/868 UKIP 856 LD 135/111
June 2009 result C 2021/1782 Grn 1473/1018 Lab 746/704 LD 604/386
May 2005 result C 3104/2255 Lab 2757/2714 LD 1280/1139 Grn 822/383
Previous results (Suffolk CC) in detail
Abercynon
Rhondda Cynon Taf council, Glamorgan; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Marcia Rees-Jones.
We now travel west from the flat wetlands of the Broads to the steep-sided and narrow valleys of South Wales. Three of these give their names to the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf; Abercynon lies at the junction of two of those valleys, where the Cynon flows into the Taff.
The mountainous terrain here forces many lines of communication through Abercynon. At the start of the nineteenth century this included the Glamorganshire Canal, an early link between the ironworks of Merthyr Tydfil and the sea at Cardiff. The canal offices were in Abercynon (which was then called “Navigation”), close to the point where the canal crossed from the west to the east side of the Taff on an aqueduct. It was in Abercynon that spectators on 21st February 1804 saw a harbinger of things to come: a steam locomotive, built by Richard Trevithick, travelled 9¾ miles down the valley from Penydarren to the Abercynon canal basin hauling ten tons of iron.
Not so long afterwards, Abercynon became a railway junction with trains running north-east to Merthyr, north-west to Aberdare and south to Cardiff. This was part of the Taff Vale Railway, which essentially superseded the Glamorganshire Canal. The Taff Vale had its fair share of trouble with the unions, notably around 1900 when the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants went on strike. The trigger for the strike was the company’s unfair treatment of John Ewington, a signalman from Abercynon who had been victimised for seeking higher pay. Although the dispute was settled after two weeks, the railway then sued the union for loss of profits caused by the strike action and won their case in the House of Lords.
The Taff Vale case caused outrage in the labour movement, and directly led to the rise of the modern Labour Party. In 1906 Labour MPs introduced a private members’ bill, which was supported by the Liberal government and became the Trade Disputes Act 1906, to overturn the effect of the Taff Vale and other legal decisions; its effect was to prevent workers and trade unions from being sued for damages caused by industrial action. This provision, now contained in the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, is still on the statute book today.
Coal was, of course, king in the South Wales Valleys, and Abercynon’s colliery lasted into the 1980s. This industry and its aftermath has helped the modern Labour Party to dominate national and local elections in Abercynon for a century now, and both of Abercynon ward’s seats on Rhondda Cynon Taf council have been represented by Labour since an independent councillor was defeated in 2012. The last Welsh local elections were six months ago, with the Labour slate polling 61% in Abercynon and Plaid Cymru’s 16% being best of the rest.
Labour councillor Marcia Rees-Jones has stepped down just a few months after her election in May, prompting this by-election. Defending for Labour is local resident Andrew Dennis. Plaid Cymru have reselected Matt Skinner following his rather distant runner-up finish six months ago. Also standing are Adam Robinson for the Conservatives and Jeffrey Baxter for the Green Party.
Westminster and Senedd constituency: Cynon Valley
ONS Travel to Work Area: Merthyr Tydfil
Postcode districts: CF37, CF45
Jeffrey Baxter (Grn)
Andrew Dennis (Lab)
Adam Robinson (C)
Matt Skinner (PC)
May 2022 result Lab 918/851 PC 234 Propel 192 C 154
May 2017 result Lab 850/775 Cynon Valley Party 295 PC 178 C 159/84 UKIP 143/98 Grn 134
May 2012 result Lab 903/681 Ind 519 PC 334 Grn 161 LD 65
May 2008 result Lab 1066/487 Ind 818 Grn 371
June 2004 result Lab 1090/427 Ind 861 PC 332 Grn 119/101 LD 84
Previous results in detail: 2004–17 2022
Pinxton
Bolsover council, Derbyshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Stan Fox.
Last week I gave you the third entry in a trilogy of by-elections along the Erewash valley, which forms the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Over the last three weeks we have seen the Conservatives lose a Derbyshire county council seat to Labour (Long Eaton), lose a Nottinghamshire county council seat to an independent (Eastwood) and hold a Broxtowe council seat (Greasley).
Well, for the fourth week in a row this column is back on the banks of the Erewash. In the latest entry of this increasingly inaccurately-named trilogy we have come to Pinxton, a village on the Derbyshire side of the river. This is a place where many pass by but few stop, as Pinxton is located next to the M1 motorway.
Long before the motorway was built, Pinxton was an important local transport hub, in a similar way to Abercynon in the previous entry. A branch of the Cromford Canal came here in 1794, and in 1819 the horse-drawn Mansfield and Pinxton Railway was opened, linking the canal to the coal-mines of Mansfield. The canal here is now abandoned, while the railway line past Pinxton — which has been converted from horse power to diesel power — is now freight-only. Pinxton had a colliery of its own, whose site has now been redeveloped as a large industrial estate.
Perhaps because of this, Pinxton is a very working-class ward. In the 2011 census it made the top 30 wards in England and Wales for people working in “routine” occupations (25.4%) and was in the top 70 for those employed in manufacturing (23.5%).
It’s places like Pinxton which for most of the last 60 years formed the bedrock vote of the Beast of Bolsover, Dennis Skinner. Skinner was the local MP from 1970 all the way up to his defeat in December 2019, at which point Bolsover gained a Conservative MP (Mark Fletcher) for the first time.
In retrospect you couldn’t really say this result wasn’t coming. The Bolsover constituency had swung strongly to the Conservatives against the national trend in 2017, and Labour had lost control of Bolsover council (which covers a slightly smaller area than the constituency) in May 2019.
The 2019 Bolsover elections returned 18 Labour councillors, 16 independents, 2 Conservatives and a single Lib Dem. This included an independent gain of one of the two seats in Pinxton ward, which had previously had a full slate of Labour councillors throughout this century; indeed nobody had opposed the Labour slate here in 2007. Shares of the vote in Pinxton were 53% for the independents and 39% for Labour, with the Lib Dems being the only other party to stand.
The Conservatives built on their parliamentary gain in December 2019 by increasing their majority on Derbyshire county council in May 2021. Bolsover’s six county council seats are now split between three Conservative and three Labour councillors, with the Conservative tally including the South Normanton and Pinxton division which covers this ward.
However, there is other evidence from May 2021 which suggests that Pinxton ward might be a tougher nut for the Tories to crack. The independent councillor for Pinxton, James Watson, passed away in December 2020; the resulting by-election in May 2021 (Andrew’s Previews 2021, pages 95 and 185) saw the seat return to Labour, whose candidate Stan Fox defeated the Conservative candidate by 49–33. That gain meant that Labour returned to majority control of Bolsover council.
Stan Fox resigned in September after fourteen months in office, so Pinxton’s voters are now being called out for a second by-election for the same seat in the same term. Unlike the previous three weeks of by-elections in the Erewash valley, this time we have a Labour defence.
There is also a straight fight, and with majority control of Bolsover council on the line the result will be a crucial one. Defending for Labour is the chairman of Pinxton parish council Mark Hinman, who is a self-employed railway fabricator and also runs the Village Inn within the Pinxton village hall. Challenging for the Conservatives is the local county councillor Julian Siddle, who works as a maintenance engineer.
For now, that’s definitely it for the Erewash Valley by-elections series. We do have two more Nottinghamshire by-elections on the bill for next week, but neither of them are on this river. Stay tuned for those — and make sure you tune in early, because one of them will poll on Wednesday.
Parliamentary constituency: Bolsover
Derbyshire county council division: South Normanton and Pinxton
ONS Travel to Work Area: Mansfield
Postcode districts: DE55, NG16
Mark Hinman (Lab)
Julian Siddle (C)
May 2021 by-election Lab 442 C 299 Ind 140 LD 14
May 2019 result Ind 405/221 Lab 299/278 LD 63
May 2015 result Lab 960/752 Ind 601/587
May 2011 result Lab 658/608 Ind 330/210 C 178
May 2007 result 2 Lab unopposed
May 2003 result Lab 534/476 Ind 386
Previous results in detail: 2003–15 2019–21
Hollinwood
Oldham council, Greater Manchester; caused by the death of Labour councillor Jean Stretton.
We now come to a series of three polls taking place in what was once Lancashire, although none of these are in the area now covered by Lancashire county council. Indeed Hollinwood is very much part of the Manchester urban sprawl, but the ward of that name lies just outside the M60 motorway and is included within the Oldham council area.
Indeed, the construction of the M60 in 2000 drove through the heart of the Hollinwood area to extent that some parts of it, like Hollinwood tram stop and the Hollinwood Academy secondary school, are no longer part of this ward. Another victim of the motorway construction was the Help the Poor Struggler, the pub which was owned in the 1940s and 1950s by the hangman Albert Pierrepoint. Instead this ward is made up of a lot of pre-war housing on the southern edge of Oldham, much of which is still social housing. If you drive into Oldham from the Manchester direction, chances are this is the first bit of the town you will see. This is one of the white working-class wards of Oldham, which like many Pennine textile towns is strongly racially divided.
Oldham council has had a Labour majority for some time now, but the council is currently on its third leader in as many years after Sean Fielding lost his seat in Failsworth West ward in 2021 and Arooj Shah was similarly defeated in Chadderton South ward in May. Which brings us to what is clearly a serious problem with the political culture in the Home of the Tubular Bandage. Shah had her car firebombed while in office and attracted controversy over her association with the getaway driver for the cop killer Dale Cregan. Fielding attributed his defeat last year to an online disinformation campaign which accused him of covering up child abuse. One wonders what the local MP thinks of all this. Jim McMahon, himself a former Oldham council leader, has represented Oldham West and Royton since winning a by-election in 2015 and he is currently in the Shadow Cabinet as shadow environment secretary.
Fielding’s cause in May 2021 may not have been helped by the then-unresolved case of Martin Judd, who was elected as a councillor for Hollinwood ward in 2018: he was originally due to fill the final two years of a four-year term after Labour councillor Brian Ames died. Judd was in his early 20s at the time, but had already become one of the youngest ever Rotary Club presidents. His term was extended to 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Judd never finished it: he resigned from Oldham council in January 2021 after being charged with downloading child pornography. A trial was scheduled for January 2022, but it appears that the case subsequently collapsed: in June 2021 Judd was found not guilty on all charges.
To date these controversies do not seem to have significantly moved the dial on the votes in Hollinwood, which voted Lib Dem at the tail-end of the last Labour government but is now firmly in the Labour column. In May this year Labour councillor Jean Stretton was re-elected for another term with a 59–18 lead over the Conservatives. Stretton, who passed away in September at the early age of 64, had represented Hollinwood ward since 2003; she lost her seat to the Lib Dems in 2008, but got it back in 2010. She was the first woman to serve as leader of Oldham council, holding the top job from 2016 to 2018 (between Jim McMahon and Sean Fielding).
Defending this by-election for Labour is another high-profile figure. Hannah Roberts has previously served on Oldham council for eight years as a councillor for Royton North ward, but she lost her seat to the Conservatives in May; at the time she was the council’s cabinet minister for housing. The Conservatives have selected Kamran Ghafoor, an entrepreneur and businessman who was their parliamentary candidate here in 2010 and 2015. Also standing are John Lawrence for the National Housing Party (an anti-refugee group), Dominic Cadman of the Lib Dems and independent candidate Barbara Whitehead.
Parliamentary constituency: Oldham West and Royton
ONS Travel to Work Area: Manchester
Postcode districts: OL8, OL9
Dominic Cadman (LD)
Kamran Ghafoor (C)
John Lawrence (National Housing Party)
Hannah Roberts (Lab)
Barbara Whitehead (Ind)
May 2022 result Lab 1010 C 313 National Housing Party 174 LD 151 Northern Heart (UK) Oldham 67
May 2021 result Lab 1036 C 478 Proud of Oldham and Saddleworth 361 LD 101
May 2019 result Lab 990 UKIP 457 C 123 LD 118 Grn 76
May 2018 double vacancy Lab 1198/1184 C 353/262 LD 122/106
May 2016 result Lab 1157 UKIP 615 C 171 LD 86
May 2015 result Lab 2089 UKIP 1118 C 399 LD 137 Grn 126
May 2014 result Lab 1094 UKIP 813 C 155 LD 122
May 2012 result Lab 1266 LD 456 C 155
May 2011 result Lab 1394 LD 563 Ind 339
May 2010 result Lab 1653 LD 1281 C 568 Ind 269
May 2008 result LD 1268 Lab 992 C 208
May 2007 result LD 943 Lab 905 C 285 Grn 94
May 2006 result LD 1009 Lab 906 C 352 Grn 202
June 2004 result Lab 1138/1107/1066 LD 989/837/720 C 551/451 Grn 356
Previous results in detail
Darwen South
Blackburn with Darwen council, Lancashire; caused by the disqualification of Conservative councillor Andrew Walker, who failed to attend any meetings in six months.
We now travel north-west from Hollinwood into the moors along the Devil’s Highway, the A666. This descends steeply into Darwen, another of the many cotton-spinning towns of West Lancashire. Unlike Oldham, Darwen is a town which repays a visit; the town centre is a bit of a hidden gem, and your columnist has had a number of enjoyable nights out there with Darrener friends. And it’s more accessible than ever before, with half-hourly trains downhill to Blackburn and through the tunnel south to Bolton.
The Darwen South ward covers most of the town south of the town centre, up the valley. Here can be found Spring Vale, which was visited in 1931 by Mahatma Gandhi; he had been invited here by a local mill manager to see what effect India’s cotton boycott was having on the Lancashire textile industry. That industry is now nearly extinct, but there’s still a fair amount of other manufacturing going on here and down the valley in Blackburn.
Darwen South ward was created in 2018 as a merger of Marsh House ward with most of Whitehall ward. Whitehall was safely Lib Dem, while Marsh House was a politically volatile ward which returned councillors from all three main parties and the localist “For Darwen” party between 2004 and 2018. At the time of its abolition Marsh House had a full slate of Conservative councillors following a by-election gain in 2017 (Andrew’s Previews 2017, page 107), and Darwen South has continued in that vein by voting Conservative in all four elections to date.
The town of Darwen has been named in a parliamentary seat continuously since 1885, currently as part of the Rossendale and Darwen constituency. Darwen has only ever had a Labour MP in the period 1992–2010; since 2010 the Conservative MP for the area has been Sir Jake Berry, who was Tory party chairman and a cabinet minister for about five minutes during the Liz Truss premiership. Mind, he did get a knighthood out of it.
However, for local government purposes Darwen is combined with Blackburn and is essentially outvoted by it. Blackburn with Darwen council has had a Labour majority since 2011 and this looks unlikely to change in the near future. The council currently stands at 36 Labour councillors, 13 Conservatives plus this vacancy, and a single Lib Dem.
This by-election is to replace Andrew Walker, who was elected for the ward in May 2021. In the run-up to that election Walker had attracted controversy over a series of controversial social media posts from 2017 and 2018 in support of the EDL founder “Tommy Robinson” and joking that stabbing Jeremy Corbyn, then the Labour party leader, should “earn you a knighthood”. Walker was suspended by the Conservatives, but it was far too late to take his name off the ballot paper and he was duly elected with a 54–27 lead over Labour. He was never fully admitted to the council’s Conservative group, and instead sat as an independent until last month when he was thrown off the council under the six-month non-attendance rule.
Andrew Walker’s disqualification leaves a tricky by-election for the Conservatives to defend in what is now a marginal ward: Labour reduced the Conservative lead to 46–38 at May’s election in Darwen South.
Defending for the Conservatives is Janine Crook, who runs an equestrian centre; she contested her home Darwen West ward in May. Labour have reselected their candidate from May Matt Jackson. Also standing here is Mark Davies for the Lib Dems.
Parliamentary constituency: Rossendale and Darwen
ONS Travel to Work Area: Blackburn
Postcode district: BB3
Janine Crook (C)
Mark Davies (LD)
Matt Jackson (Lab)
May 2022 result C 880 Lab 731 LD 299
May 2021 result C 1037 Lab 509 LD 374
May 2019 result C 949 Lab 648 For Britain Movement 220
May 2018 result C 934/874/817 Lab 624/598/577 LD 574/545
Previous results in detail
Greenlands
Blackpool council, Lancashire; caused by the death of Conservative councillor John Wing.
Our tour of the north-west comes to an end in suburban Blackpool. Greenlands ward lies on the landward side of town behind the North Shore, and is located immediately north of the railway line into North station; Layton railway station is on the southern boundary of the ward. The local economy here has traditionally been driven by public administration, focused on the sprawling Department for Work and Pensions offices at Warbreck House; however, this might not be the case for much longer, with the DWP due to move into newer premises in the town centre in the near future.
As with Darwen South in the previous entry, we have here a case where the local MP is a Conservative (Paul Maynard, of Blackpool North and Cleveleys) but the local council is not. Blackpool council has been run by Labour since 2011, with the 2019 elections returning 23 Labour councillors, 15 Conservatives and 4 independents despite the fact that the Conservatives actually polled the most votes across the town. The Conservatives have since picked up an independent seat in a by-election in Norbreck ward (Andrew’s Previews 2021, pages 80 and 181) and the Labour group appears to have split, leaving the council hung at 19 Labour councillors, 15 Conservatives plus this vacancy and 7 independent councillors.
Greenlands ward is a closely-fought marginal which voted Labour in 2003, Conservative in 2007, Labour in 2011 and 2015 and Conservative in 2019, by the narrow margin of 52–48 in a straight fight. Blackpool council is independent of Lancashire county council, so there have been no local elections here since 2019.
This by-election is to replace Conservative councillor (Bernard) John Wing, who was first elected in 2019. Wing was a retired greengrocer and post office manager. He passed away in August at the age of 68, having been in poor health in recent years with pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease.
Defending for the Conservatives is Jane Warne, who has previous local government experience: she was a Rochdale councillor from 2016 to 2021, sitting for Bamford ward and being elected under her previous name of Jane Howard. The Labour candidate is Peter Wright, who teaches classical civilisations and ancient history at the Blackpool Sixth Form College. This time there will be not be a straight fight, with the Liberal Democrats nominating Kev Benfold.
Parliamentary constituency: Blackpool North and Cleveleys
ONS Travel to Work Area: Blackpool
Postcode districts: FY2, FY6
Kev Benfold (LD)
Jane Warne (C)
Peter Wright (Lab)
May 2019 result C 757/718 Lab 702/675
May 2015 result Lab 1280/1191 C 1129/1061 UKIP 692
May 2011 result Lab 861/851 C 816/758 Ind 295 UKIP 258 LD 142
May 2007 result C 948/896 Lab 786/687 BNP 370 LD 314
May 2003 result Lab 1209/1146 C 1012/1008 LD 445
Previous results in detail
Linn
Glasgow council, Scotland; caused by the death of Labour councillor Malcolm Cunning.
Taggart, there, one of the UK’s longest-running police dramas. STV, the ITV franchise for most of Scotland, brought to our screens over 100 episodes of crime in Glasgow over the quarter-century from 1985 to 2010. The show was strong enough to survive the death of its title character: Mark McManus, who played DCI Jim Taggart, died in 1994 partway through filming an episode.
DCI Taggart and his successors operated out of Maryhill CID, but the original series titles (as seen in the video) featured a long shot of Glasgow taken from some way away from Maryhill. You are looking northwards from Cathkin Braes, the highest point of the Glasgow city council area and home to the mountain bike events of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
This isn’t the only open space on the southern edge of Glasgow. Consider also Linn Park, the third-largest park in Glasgow. The name refers to a waterfall on the White Cart Water, which is crossed here by the cast-iron Halfpenny Bridge. Within the park can be found what is left of Cathcart Castle (which was mostly demolished by the council in 1980), the mansion of Linn House (now split up into four homes), and a golf course.
Up on the hill next to the Cathkin Braes is the sought-after village of Carmunnock, while down in the valley we have some other attractive residential areas: Simshill and part of Cathcart. The northern boundary of Linn ward is a railway line containing three stations, Cathcart, Kings Park and Muirend, from which there are frequent connections to the city centre.
However, the political tone of Linn ward is set by the high-rises and tenements of Castlemilk. In the 1950s this became one of the four main peripheral housing schemes set up by Glasgow city council to rehome people from slums in the inner city. It wasn’t that successful, and many of the tower blocks you can see in the Taggart opening titles from 37 years ago have since been demolished. The housing which is left in Castlemilk forms one of the most economically deprived parts of Glasgow.
That’s the Linn ward, which has returned four members of Glasgow city council since proportional representation was introduced in 2007. Its first two elections returned two Labour councillors, one SNP and a Lib Dem, Margot Clark; she got in on Conservative transfers in 2007 and was a beneficiary of Labour not running a third candidate in 2012. Clark was the last Liberal Democrat elected specifically for Glasgow or one of its subdivisions: in 2012 Linn was the only ward of the city to return a Lib Dem councillor, and there has been no Lib Dem MSP for Glasgow since 2011.
The 2017 local elections here marked a change in Linn’s representation, as Scotland’s local councils caught up with the country’s political realignment of 2014–15. Labour lost their majority on Glasgow council and the SNP became the largest party. The Nationalist surge included a gain of a second seat in Linn ward from Labour, while Margot Clark lost her seat to the Conservatives.
This political realignment has also brought the area’s representation in the two parliaments into SNP hands. Linn is part of the Glasgow South constituency at Westminster and the Glasgow Cathcart constituency at Holyrood. The unsuccessful Labour candidate for Glasgow South at the last Westminster election in 2019 was Johann Lamont, who was previously leader of Scottish Labour from 2011 to 2014.
Scotland’s local councils were last up for re-election in May this year, which was a better year for Glasgow Labour than 2017. The SNP still topped the poll in Linn ward, but only narrowly with 33% of the first preferences; Labour polled 32%, the Conservatives 12% and an independent candidate, James Toner, had 9%. This was enough for Labour to gain the Conservative seat, leaving the seat count in Linn split at 2–2 between the SNP and Labour.
Top of the poll here was Labour councillor Malcolm Cunning, who was elected on the first count. Cunning was a long-serving and high-profile councillor who had been leader of the opposition Glasgow Labour group going into May’s elections: he had served this ward since 2012, and previously sat for the Strathbungo ward (further north in the city) from 2003 to 2007. Labour gained seats in Glasgow in May both here and elsewhere in the city, but the SNP are still the largest party and still run the City Chambers as a minority. There are currently 37 SNP councillors, 35 Labour plus this vacancy, 10 Greens and 2 Conservatives. Cunning lost a leadership challenge after the May elections, and he subsequently passed away in September at the age of 65.
This is a local by-election in Scotland, so Votes at 16 and the Alternative Vote are in use, and the latter could prove useful to Labour’s defence of this by-election. Linn ward has a Unionist majority, and if we rerun the votes from 2022 for a single vacancy then Cunning would have won it on Conservative transfers, overtaking the SNP.
Another benefit of the Alternative Vote is that it will avoid candidates winning this by-election with low vote shares and freak vote splits, which would certainly be a possibility under England’s first-past-the-post system given that there are nine candidates for the electors to choose from. Defending for Labour (who are using the ballot paper description “Glasgow Labour”) is John Carson, a postman and CWU rep who fought the city-centre Anderson/City/Yorkhill ward in May. The SNP have selected Chris Lang-Tait. Standing for the Conservatives is Pauline Sutherland, who contested Drumchapel/Anniesland ward (the city’s north-west corner) in May. The independent candidate from six months ago has not returned, so completing the ballot paper are Joe McCauley for the Lib Dems, Jen Bell for the Greens (who are using the ballot paper description “Elect a Scottish Green Councillor”), Kirsty Fraser for the Alex Salmond vanity project Alba, Christopher Ho for UKIP, George Macdougall for the Scottish Socialist Party (now there’s a blast from the past), and Di McMillan for the Freedom Alliance. This last outfit has the ballot paper description “End Lies, Fear and Corruption. Freedom Alliance”, which is slightly surprising because ballot paper descriptions are supposed to be a maximum of six words; it looks like someone made an administrative error somewhere along the line, but the end result of this is that McMillan is a candidate.
Westminster constituency: Glasgow South
Holyrood constituency: Glasgow Cathcart
ONS Travel to Work Area: Glasgow
Postcode districts: G44, G45, G73, G76
Jen Bell (Grn)
John Carson (Lab)
Kirsty Fraser (Alba)
Christopher Ho (UKIP)
Chris Lang-Tait (SNP)
George Macdougall (SSP)
Jo McCauley (LD)
Di McMillan (Freedom Alliance)
Pauline Sutherland (C)
May 2022 first preferences SNP 3004 Lab 2876 C 1035 Ind 849 LD 572 Grn 544 Alba 114
May 2017 first preferences SNP 3126 Lab 2377 C 1395 Ind 744 LD 676 Grn 288 Ind 69 Solidarity 67 UKIP 58
Previous results in detail
Shetland West
Shetland Islands council, Scotland; caused by the resignation of independent councillor John Leask.
We’ll finish by going north to the land where there is even less daylight at this time of year than there is where you’re probably reading this. On polling day the sun rises in the Shetland village of Sandness at 08:10 and sets at 15:32, giving 7 hours and 12 minutes of daylight; and we are still a month away from the winter solstice. Whether the sun actually puts in an appearance will depend whether it stops raining, which might not happen.
Sandness is the westernmost village on the Shetland Mainland, 30 miles by road from Lerwick. It’s home to around 160 people and to the UK’s most northerly vegbox scheme. The village looks out towards the offshore island of Papa Stour and its fifteen residents — a big drop from the nineteenth century when Papa Stour supported a population in the hundreds.
On the southern coast of this ward lies Walls, a port sheltered behind the islands of Vaila and Linga. The Shetland West ward also includes the Sandsting and Aithsting parishes to the east, including the village of Aith at the end of a long sea inlet. Aith is home to the UK’s most northerly lifeboat station.
These are all Norse names, and Shetland has a Nordic culture distinct from that of Scotland. Walls in particular is associated with the Shetland Fiddlers’ Society, the twentieth-century poet Thomas Robertson (who wrote under the mononymous name Vagaland, an old name for Walls), and the modern poet Christine de Luca. De Luca is a major advocate for the Shetland dialect, and she has translated a number of well-known children’s books into Shetlandic.
A long way offshore from here is one of the most remote of the British Isles. Foula, a speck in the Atlantic on the same latitude as St Petersburg, has a population of around 30 or 40 people who make a living from crofting and from visiting birdwatchers. The only way on or off the island is a flight from Tingwall or a ferry to Walls, which picks its way carefully around the treacherous waters near the islands. One major threat to shipping here, the underwater reef of the Shaalds of Foula, includes among its victims the White Star liner RMS Oceanic, once the largest ship in the world, which ran aground here in flat calm and clear weather while on Royal Navy service in September 1914.
Foula and Papa Stour do not have polling stations and their inhabitants traditionally vote by post. Shetland forms a Westminster parliamentary seat with Orkney and a Scottish Parliament seat of its own, both of which are held by the Liberal Democrats; but local elections in the archipelago are generally non-partisan affairs. In May’s local elections 20 of the 23 seats on the Shetland Islands Council went to independent candidates, including both seats in Shetland West ward which was cut back from three councillors to two as a result of boundary changes. One of those two seats went to independent councillor Liz Boxwell, who polled 39% of the first preferences and was elected on the first count; the other seat was close between John Leask and Mark Robinson who started on 18% and 17% respectively. On the first count Leask was seven votes ahead of Robinson, and after votes from Boxwell’s surplus and the other five candidates had been transferred he finished the count still seven votes ahead. Unusually there were party political candidates standing here in May, but they didn’t do very well; the Green Party got 9% and the SNP 8% of the first preferences.
John Leask stepped down from the council in August, less than four months after his election, explaining that his was due to a major change in the work pattern of his other job. So we have what is already the second by-election of the current Shetland council term, following a poll in August in North Isles ward after not enough candidates stood there in May. It’s been a busy time for the Shetland returning officer Jan-Robert Riise (another Nordic name there), who has now had to organise three local by-elections in less than twelve months.
We have three candidates standing in this poll, and they are the candidates who finished in third to fifth place here in May. Third and a close runner-up was independent candidate Mark Robinson, who is hoping to join his brother Gary on the council. Fourth was Debra Nicolson of the Scottish Green Party, who is a Sandsting and Aithsting community councillor and is involved in several community groups. Completing the ballot paper is the fifth-placed candidate from May, Zara Pennington for the Scottish National Party.
Westminster constituency: Orkney and Shetland
Holyrood constituency: Shetland Islands
ONS Travel to Work Area: Shetland Islands
Postcode district: ZE2
Debra Nicolson (Grn)
Zara Pennington (SNP)
Mark Robinson (Ind)
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Andrew Teale
