Previewing the eight council by-elections of 29th September 2022
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Before we start this week there are some updates to last Thursday’s piece. The Llanuwchllyn by-election in Gwynedd last week was due to Plaid councillor Alan Evans failing to sign his declaration of acceptance of office; I am informed that this is because Evans had a fairly serious bout of COVID, which would explain why he got over 95% of the vote in the resulting by-election. And Stoke-on-Trent of course has six towns, not five; the five towns was a mistaken reference to Arnold Bennett, who like your columnist had forgotten Fenton. Jesus Christ. Fenton.
There are eight by-elections, for nine seats, on 29th September 2022. In Labour conference week the party only has one seat to defend; there are three defences each for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, one for Plaid Cymru and an independent seat up for grabs. In a week where there is something for everyone to enjoy, let’s start with the independent seat by travelling to the Highlands and Islands…
Kintyre and the Islands
Argyll and Bute council, Scotland; caused by the death of independent councillor John McAlpine.
We’ve already had a few by-elections in Scotland since the country’s local elections in May, but those were to fill vacancies caused by insufficient nominations in those elections. It’s now time for the first proper by-elections of the 2022–27 term. Like the previous polls in the Western Isles and the Shetland archipelago, we’re going offshore.
Specifically, we’re going to Islay. The southernmost and one of the largest of the islands which make up the Inner Hebrides, Islay is a large island of 620 square kilometres and over 3,000 people; the notice of poll for this by-election gives an electorate for Islay’s five polling districts of 2,685, just under 50% of the electorate for the ward as a whole. This island wasn’t fully incorporated into Scotland until the fifteenth century, before then being ruled by (working backwards in time) the Lords of the Isles, the kingdom of Norway and the kingdom of Dál Riata. The latter was a Gaelic kingdom, and the Gaelic language is still widely spoken on the island today.
Islay’s main export today is Scotch whisky, of which the island is a major centre with nine distilleries currently active. The oldest of these is Bowmore, which is first recorded in 1779. Most of the major drinks companies have interests in Islay distillers: Bowmore and Laphroaig are owned by the Japanese brewers Suntory, the multinational Diageo controls Caol Ila and Lagavulin, and Ardbeg is in the hands of the French luxury goods company Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy. Islay’s newest and smallest distillery, Kilchoman, has to date escaped the attention of the multinationals and is still independently owned.
The island has left its mark on politics. Islay natives who have become prominent on the national or international stage include the Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael, the BBC Scotland political editor Glenn Campbell and the NATO secretary-general George Robertson. Robertson sits in the House of Lords with the title Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, a reference to Islay’s largest village. Port Ellen was founded in the early nineteenth century by the Laird of Islay and MP for Argyll Walter Campbell, who named it after his first wife Eleanor. It has just under 1,000 electors.
The largest single settlement of the ward is, however, on the mainland. Tarbert is a name which occurs commonly in the Highlands for settlements on an isthmus; this Tarbert lies on the narrow strip of land between West Loch Tarbert to the west and Loch Fyne to the east, linking Knapdale to the north with the Kintyre peninsula to the south. Looking out over Loch Fyne, Tarbert was once a port supporting a thriving herring industry; it is still noted for its seafood. The mainland accounts for 42% of the electorate of Kintyre and the Islands ward, about half of whom live in Tarbert.
There are three other inhabited islands in this ward which have polling stations, although none of them have more than 200 electors. Colonsay is located north of Islay; Gigha lies just off the west coast of Kintyre; and Jura is a large, mountainous and sparsely-populated island north-east of Islay. The novelist George Orwell had a house on Jura, and his book Nineteen Eighty-Four was completed there.
This ward elects three Argyll and Bute councillors and has had unchanged boundaries since proportional representation was brought in for Scottish local elections in 2007. All of the four elections to date have returned an SNP candidate and Robin Currie for the Lib Dems, although Currie started in fourth place in 2012 and needed transfers from Labour to overtake the Conservatives’ Alastair Redman. The other seat went to independent John McAlpine in 2007 and 2012, and to Redman for the Conservatives in 2017.
In May this year the new SNP candidate topped the poll with 30% of the vote and was elected on the first count. John McAlpine started with 24% and had no problem getting the transfers to reach the 25% required to get his seat back. That left the final seat between Currie for the Lib Dems and Redman, who by now had left the Conservatives and was seeking re-election as an independent. Currie and Redman started the count in a tie for third place on 474 votes each, 16% of the vote; the transfers decisively broke in favour of Currie who ended up winning the final seat by 670 votes to 623.
John McAlpine’s council career had started in the first-past-the-post era, in which he was first elected as councillor for North and West Kintyre ward in 2003. He was also known in the area as a keen sportsman who excelled at golf and football. Sadly, McAlpine passed away in July, two-and-a-half months into his fourth term of office.
There’s a lot of interest in the by-election to replace McAlpine. One independent is standing to replace him: that’s Islay resident Alastair Redman, who is seeking a quick return to the council after narrowly losing his seat in May. The SNP, who represent the area at both Westminster and Holyrood level, have nominated Lachie Macquarrie who has returned to his native Argyll after a long career in computer telephony which has taken him to Europe and offshore. The Liberal Democrats have selected Kenny Mackenzie, who works as a chef at a hotel in Campbeltown (which is not part of this ward). Also standing are Hamish Stewart for the Conservatives, Gopi Ageer (who gives an address in faraway North Lanarkshire) for Labour and Tom Skinner for the Scottish Greens. You can read statements from all the candidates here (link). This is a Scottish local by-election, so Votes at 16 and the Alternative Vote apply here.
Westminster constituency: Argyll and Bute
Holyrood constituency: Argyll and Bute
ONS Travel to Work Area: Mull and Islay (islands), Lochgilphead (mainland)
Postcode districts: PA28, PA29, PA41, PA42, PA43, PA44, PA45, PA46, PA47, PA48, PA49, PA60, PA61
Gopi Ageer (Lab)
Kenny Mackenzie (LD)
Lachie Macquarrie (SNP)
Alastair Redman (Ind)
Tom Skinner (Grn)
Hamish Stewart (C)
May 2022 first preferences SNP 863 Ind 680 LD 474 Ind 474 C 276 Lab 122
May 2017 first preferences SNP 821 C 648 LD 626 Ind 411 Lab 160 Grn 134
May 2012 first preferences SNP 610 Ind 584 C 553 LD 540 Lab 225 Grn 73 Ind 19
May 2007 first preferences LD 1131 Ind 608 SNP 482 Ind 342 C 300 Lab 219 Ind 190
Previous results in detail
Facit and Shawforth; and
Helmshore
Rossendale council, Lancashire; caused respectively by the resignations of Conservative councillors Lynda Barnes and Tony Haworth respectively.
We now cross to England into a strange landscape of high, bleak moors and deep, steep-sided valleys, which may be only a few miles from metropolitan Greater Manchester but is surprisingly little-known to the outside world. In the case of B**** — a town which the League of Gentlemen thought was too disturbing to act as Royston Vasey — perhaps that’s for the best.
Mind, it’s surprising that the Rossendale town of Whitworth didn’t end up in Greater Manchester when nearby places like Wardle, Littleborough and even Saddleworth did; particularly so given that Whitworth is not part of the upper Irwell valley at all. It’s located in the valley of the River Spodden, which flows south towards Rochdale. This is a town with one road in and one road out; all travellers from Whitworth have to either go south down the valley to Rochdale or north over the pass to B****. There is no way east or west unless you fancy hiking. Facit and Shawforth is the northern — the upper — of the two wards covering Whitworth parish.
Helmshore is much better connected, and has grown a bit in recent years as a base for Manchester commuters. This village lies in the Ogden valley — a western branch of the Irwell valley — to the south of the Haslingden bypass. Like much of this part of Lancashire it was a textile centre, and two of the mills here have been preserved as the Helmshore Mills Textile Museum (open only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays during the summer months). Until 2003 Helmshore was also home to the main offices of the travel agents Airtours, who then moved to Rochdale and ended up as part of the ill-fated Thomas Cook.
If you want to study political swing voters, it would be difficult to do better than Rozzendale. It’s full of swing voters, and has very volatile elections to match. Nearly all the wards are both marginal and very politically similar to each other, so a good election for the Labour or Conservative parties can result in near-wipeout for the other side on majorities of handfuls of votes. The ward map below is from 2019, which was an even year: Labour led the Conservatives across the district by just seven votes, with the two parties winning five seats each. Two of those Conservative seats are up in today’s by-elections.
More recently Labour have had the upper hand here, and Rossendale council currently stands at 19 Labour councillors, 9 Conservatives plus these two vacancies, 4 independents, 1 Green and 1 seat for Community First, a Whitworth localist party. The small Labour majority on the council is not at risk here.
The results for Facit and Shawforth give a good idea of what the political student of Rossendale has to be able to handle. In the 11 elections here since 2002 the score currently stands at 5 Conservative wins, 4 Labour and 2 independents. Four of those Conservative wins have gone to Lynda Barnes who was first elected for this ward in 2004, lost her seat to an independent in 2012 and gained the ward’s other seat from Labour in 2015. The ward last went to the polls in 2021 when it was gained by independent candidate Janet Whitehead, who polled 43% against 31% for the Conservatives and 26% for Labour (who were defending the seat).
This ward is part of the Whitworth and B**** division of Lancashire county council, which the Conservatives won by 17 votes in 2017; their majority increased to 60 votes in 2021, in a close three-way marginal result involving Community First.
Helmshore is very much the safe exception to the marginal rule in Rossendale, being the borough’s most middle-class ward: it has had a full slate of Conservative councillors since 2003. From a June 2009 by-election one of its councillors was Amanda Milling, who then resigned from the council in 2014 after being selected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Cannock Chase in Staffordshire. Milling went on to win that election, and she served in the Johnson cabinet from February 2020 to September 2021 as Conservative party chairman and minister without portfolio; however, there is currently no place for her in the Truss administration.
Helmshore also has a entry in the Councillors Behaving Badly file in respect of David Stansfield, who was elected as a Rossendale councillor for this ward in 2016 and as Lancashire county councillor for the local division of Rossendale West in 2013. In 2016 he was prosecuted by Rossendale council for wrongly claiming council tax benefit, being fined £1,000 and repaying the council £3,000; when this came to public notice the following year Stansfield was thrown out of the Conservative party. He was subsequently readmitted, but then got suspended from the party just before the 2021 elections for voting against the Lancashire county council budget. Stansfield sought re-election to both councils in May 2021 as an independent; he lost both seats, and the Rossendale West county division was gained by Labour. In May 2022 the Conservative majority in Helmshore fell to 47–37, the closest result and worst Conservative vote share here since 2012.
There is nothing untoward as to the resignations of councillors Lynda Barnes and Tony Haworth, both of whom have stepped down on health grounds. Haworth won the October 2014 by-election in Helmshore ward after Amanda Milling left for Staffordshire, and he had served continuously since then. The main drama during the campaign has involved the Labour council and the Conservative opposition both trying to take the credit for a proposed new swimming baths in Haslingden. Both of the winners of today’s by-elections will need to seek re-election in May next year, so they will not be able to rest for long.
Defending Facit and Shawforth for the Conservatives is Scott Smith, who has been the Lancashire county councillor for Whitworth and B**** since 2021. Whitworth town councillor Kim Olaolu is standing as an independent. Labour have turned to the next generation by selecting Caitlin Chippendale. Completing the ballot is the ward’s first Green candidate since 2011, Alex Vijatov.
In Helmshore the defending Conservative candidate is Ann Hodgkiss, a local resident. The Labour candidate is Neil Looker, who has contested Greenfield ward in Haslingden at the last two borough elections. Katrina Brockbank for Greens and independent David Stansfield (yes, that David Stansfield) return from May’s election, and they complete the candidate list along with Steve Nelson for the Lib Dems.
Facit and Shawforth
Parliamentary constituency: Rossendale and Darwen
Lancashire county council division: Whitworth and B****
ONS Travel to Work Area: Manchester
Postcode districts: OL12, OL13
Caitlin Chippendale (Lab)
Kim Olaolu (Ind)
Scott Smith (C)
Alex Vijatov (Grn)
May 2021 result Ind 425 C 310 Lab 255
May 2019 result C 524 Lab 346
May 2016 result Lab 381 C 304 UKIP 200
May 2015 result C 602 Lab 565 UKIP 436 Community First 207
May 2012 result Ind 512 C 238 LD 115
May 2011 result Lab 526 C 429 Grn 148
May 2008 result C 336 LD 298 BNP 218 Ind 185 Lab 121
May 2007 result Lab 431 LD 393 C 251
June 2004 result C 660 Lab 533
May 2003 result C 422 Lab 372
May 2002 result Lab 550/527 C 378/290
Previous results in detail
Helmshore
Parliamentary constituency: Rossendale and Darwen
Lancashire county council division: Rossendale West
ONS Travel to Work Area: Blackburn
Postcode districts: BB1, BB4, BL8
Katrina Brockbank (Grn)
Ann Hodgkiss (C)
Neil Looker (Lab)
Steve Nelson (LD)
David Stansfield (Ind)
May 2022 result C 892 Lab 701 Grn 219 Ind 101
May 2021 result C 1081 Lab 673 Ind 333
May 2019 result C 1115 Lab 687
May 2018 result C 1188 Lab 911
May 2016 result C 1003 Lab 700 Ind 236
May 2015 result C 1894 Lab 1049 UKIP 423 Grn 175
October 2014 by-election C 771 Lab 444 UKIP 364
May 2014 result C 1109 Lab 675
May 2012 result C 674 Lab 566 Ind 548
May 2011 result C 1167 Lab 846
May 2010 result C 1969 Lab 1212
June 2009 by-election C 1015 LD 490 Lab 389
May 2008 result C 975 Lab 320 LD 181 Ind 145
May 2007 result C 859 Lab 434 LD 244
May 2006 result C 897 Lab 549 LD 275
June 2004 result C 1084 Lab 633 LD 500
May 2003 result C 694 Lab 473 LD 244
May 2002 result C 763/748/666 Lab 716/714/627 Ind 405
Previous results in detail
Grappenhall
Warrington council, Cheshire; a double by-election caused by the resignations of Liberal Democrat councillors Ryan Bate and Mike Biggin.
We stay in the north-west for the next by-election by coming to Grappenhall. This is one of a number of attractive southern suburbs of Warrington, located south of the arrow-straight dividing line which is the Manchester Ship Canal and thus part of Cheshire even in the days when Warrington was a Lancashire town.
Grappenhall goes back a long way. It was mentioned in the Domesday survey, and its church (dedicated to St Wilfrid) is of Norman origin. The church has a carving of a cat on its outside wall immediately below the west window; this has been suggested as the origin of the Cheshire Cat in the children’s literature of Lewis Carroll, who was born five miles away in Daresbury.
This area was full of rich and/or landed families long before the days of Real Housewives of Cheshire. Definitely in the rich category was the Parr family, which used profits from the West Indies sugar trade to found Parr’s Bank of Warrington — one of the many local banks which existed in the days before the banking industry became dominated by a few global firms. And Parr’s has not escaped that fate: following a buyout by the London County and Westminster Bank in 1918 and later merger activity, Parr’s is now part of the NatWest empire. In 1830 the company’s chairman Thomas Parr put some of his money into the Grappenhall Heys Walled Garden, a combined leisure and kitchen garden for Parr’s mansion house. The house no longer exists; the garden is now in the hands of Grappenhall and Thelwall parish council, which has restored it into a tourist attraction.
As well as being a combined parish, Grappenhall and Thelwall was a ward of Warrington until it was broken up by a boundary review in 2016. Thelwall is now in a ward with the northern half of Lymm; Grappenhall became a ward of its own, gaining some urban territory around the Latchford Swing and Cantilever Bridges and the village of Appleton Thorn to the south to make up the numbers. Appleton Thorn is rather more industrial than it sounds. During the Second World War it was the site of a Royal Navy air station, HMS Blackcap; the M56 motorway has since been built across that site, and the part of the airfield north of the motorway has been redeveloped into an industrial estate and the low-security Thorn Cross prison.
Warrington south of the Ship Canal is a local stronghold of the Liberal Democrats, who won 10 seats here out of a possible 12 in the 2016 local elections and subsequently gained a by-election from the Conservatives in Lymm South ward (Andrew’s Previews 2018, page 142). The Conservatives did, however, subsequently gain the local parliamentary seat of Warrington South in December 2019 from one-term Labour MP Faisal Rashid. The Tory majority in that constituency is only 2,010 votes, and the Warrington South seat is oversized and will need trimming down by the next boundary review; the current draft map from the Boundary Commission achieves this by transferring Lymm and Thelwall into the Tatton constituency, which would probably wipe out the Conservative majority in Warrington South.
Anyway, the Tories built on that parliamentary gain at the last Warrington elections in 2021 by gaining Appleton ward from the Lib Dems and coming close in some other wards, including Grappenhall where the Lib Dem lead was cut to 47–37 and the second Lib Dem seat was held by just 84 votes.
Warrington council has a Labour majority, which comes from other wards of the town. Given the current difficulties in the financial markets it should probably be noted that Warrington council has made some rather aggressive investments financed by huge amounts of debt, mostly from the former Public Works Loan Board. These investments included Together Energy, an energy company 50%-owned by the council which went bust in January, leading to an unsuccessful attempt by the Conservatives and Lib Dems to no-confidence the council leader. The latest indications from Together Energy’s administrators is that Warrington council should get its money back on that one, but that still leaves the council in debt to the tune of £1,700 million and counting.
Both Lib Dem councillors for Grappenhall ward have now resigned. Mike Biggin had been a Warrington councillor since 2006, originally sitting for Grappenhall and Thelwall ward, and he was Mayor of Warrington in 2011–12; Ryan Bate had served on Warrington council since 2016 and was a Grappenhall and Thelwall parish councillor before then. Bate is emigrating to the USA, where he is taking up a new job at the British International School in Washington DC. Biggin, who has had problems with his health, has taken the opportunity to leave the council stage at the same time, which saves costs and effort for everyone involved by allowing one by-election to be held to replace both councillors at once. We don’t get double by-elections like this very often, but there are some more in the pipeline for later in the year.
Defending for the Liberal Democrats are Mark Browne and Helen Speed, both of whom are Grappenhall and Thelwall parish councillors; Browns is vice-chair of that council. The Conservatives have selected Moira Dolan, who is a local businesswoman, and Philip Ford who gives an address in Lymm. Also standing are Denis Matthews for Labour and Denise Harris for the Green Party.
Parliamentary constituency: Warrington South
ONS Travel to Work Area: Warrington and Wigan
Postcode district: WA4
Mark Browne (LD)
Moira Dolan (C)
Philip Ford (C)
Denise Harris (Grn)
Denis Matthews (Lab)
Helen Speed (LD)
May 2021 result LD 1335/1136 C 1052/803 Lab 261/258 Grn 194
May 2016 result LD 1306/1119 C 565/421 Lab 380
Previous results in detail
Edwinstowe and Clipstone
Newark and Sherwood council, Nottinghamshire; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Michael Brown.
We come to the end of a week in which the brand-new Chancellor of the Exchequer has successfully provoked a sterling crisis, with a plan to give to the rich through tax cuts. It’s the opposite of the legend of Robin Hood, which neatly brings us to the remaining Conservative defence of this week in Sherwood Forest. Let’s talk trees — but perhaps not magic money ones.
Since 2014 the Woodland Trust has held an annual Tree of the Year competition, with winners from the four nations of the UK going forward to Britain’s Tree of the Year and then onto the European Tree of the Year competition. No British tree has won that title yet; our best placing so far came in 2017 when the Brimmon Oak, near Newtown in Powys, finished second in the European popular vote.
Past winners of the English section of this competition include the Sycamore Gap Tree in Northumberland, which your columnist visited while on holiday last week. It’s located on a particularly dramatic section of Hadrian’s Wall about 2 Roman miles west of Housesteads. The Wall is 1900 years old this year; the sycamore is a few hundred years old; the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, in which Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman do their best to act around it with a ridiculous script, is 31 years old.
Anybody who can celebrate with their father that evening, having landed at Dover and travelled via Hadrian’s Wall, has better transport than is available to your columnist, never mind Robin Hood. And we’d have to assume that that celebration would take place in Nottinghamshire, because it’s Sherwood Forest that we normally associate Robin Hood with.
And Sycamore Gap is not the only winner of the England’s Tree of the Year competition to be associated with Robin Hood. Back in 2014 the competition’s first winner was the Major Oak, which has stood for over 800 years north of the village of Edwinstowe in Nottinghamshire. Edwinstowe certainly trades a lot on its associations to Robin Hood: an earlier tree near the village (which no longer exists) was claimed as Robin Hood’s Larder, while local legend holds that he married Maid Marian in the local parish church. That parish church, dedicated to St Mary, is also rumoured to be the place where the body of King Edwin of Northumbria was hidden following his death in the seventh-century Battle of Hatfield Chase. Edwin gave his name to the village of Edwinstowe.
At the time of the 2011 census Edinstowe’s major employer was Thoresby Colliery, which was the last deep coal mine in Nottinghamshire and the second-last deep coal mine in the UK. Both Edwinstowe ward and the neighbouring Clipstone ward made the top 100 wards in England and Wales for those employed in the mining and quarrying sector. The mine is gone now and the pithead area is being redeveloped as Thoresby Vale, new housing on the edge of Sherwood Forest. Thoresby Colliery Band, however, is still going.
The end of mining here has led to a population decline, which resulted in the creation of Edwinstowe and Clipstone ward in 2015: the two predecessor wards had two councillors each, the merged ward only has three councillors. The end of mining here has also led to a stepchange in the area’s local politics, which previously followed the usual coalfield pattern of Labour versus independent candidates; the Conservatives have started to stand candidates here and suddenly found a large vote they can tap into. The inaugural election for Edinstowe and Clipstone ward had a 48–35 Labour lead over the Conservatives; the 2019 election was 50–50, with the three seats splitting two to the Conservatives and one to Labour.
The Conservatives already held the local parliamentary seat: the MP for Sherwood is Mark Spencer, who served in the Boris Johnson cabinets as Chief Whip and then Leader of the Common. He was demoted by Liz Truss to become a junior agriculture minister, and left the Cabinet two days too early to preside at the Accession Council for Charles III. Having gained his seat from Labour in 2010, Spencer now has a very large majority. The Conservatives built on that to gain the Sherwood Forest division of Nottinghamshire county council, which covers this ward, at the 2021 county elections. However, Labour did perform well in a Newark council by-election for the neighbouring Ollerton ward last June, and the party also successfully gained a neighbouring ward in Mansfield two weeks ago. There might still be some life in the local Labour party yet.
The Conservatives are defending this by-election following the death of their councillor Michael Brown in June. Brown had served on Newark and Sherwood council since 2019 and on Edwinstowe parish council since 2015. A warm tribute was paid to Brown on his death by the ward’s remaining Labour councillor Paul Peacock; Brown and Peacock had been team-mates on the cricket field, if not politically.
Defending for the Conservatives is Edwinstowe parish councillor Nigel Booth. In a straight fight, he is opposed from the red corner by Andrew Freeman; Freeman stood in a Newark town ward in 2019, but lives here. All we need now is Alan-a-dale to announce the result. Oo-de-lally!
Parliamentary constituency: Sherwood
Nottinghamshire county council division: Sherwood Forest
ONS Travel to Work Area: Mansfield
Postcode districts: NG19, NG21, NG22
Nigel Booth (C)
Andrew Freeman (Lab)
May 2019 result C 989/969/949 Lab 983/946/931
May 2015 result Lab 2327/2264/2123 C 1682/1475/1389 Ind 814/752/479
Previous results in detail
Market Harborough — Logan
Harborough council, Leicestershire; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Dominic Fosker.
We now travel to the southern edge of Leicestershire. Market Harborough is, you might be surprised to hear given its name, an old market town which lies on the main railway line from Leicester to London. This was once a major population centre for Rockingham Forest, which is mostly part of Northamptonshire. Mediaeval forests were not necessarily full of trees but were instead areas set aside for hunting; this was still a major contributor to the local economy well into the nineteenth century, when Market Harborough was a foxhunting centre. The National Hunt Chase, one of the horseraces from which the modern Cheltenham Festival grew, was first run in 1860 over the local countryside.
In modern times a major employer in the town is Harborough council, which has been run by the Conservatives for many years. However, the Tory majority doesn’t always include Market Harborough-Logan ward, the north-west quadrant of the town. That ward split its two councillors between the Conservatives and Lib Dems from 2007 to 2019 when there were major boundary changes; on the new lines the Lib Dems won both seats with 35% of the vote, against 27% for the Conservatives, 18% for the Green Party and 11% for independent candidate Robin Lambert. The new boundaries have left the ward split between Market Harborough’s two divisions of Leicestershire county council; these both voted Conservative in 2021, with Market Harborough East being a gain from the Lib Dems.
The outgoing Lib Dem councillor Dominic Fosker, an automotive engineer, was first elected in 2019 and was in his first term on Harborough council. He relocated to Surrey earlier this year, and had originally intended to see out his term on the council (which expires next May) but stood down after criticism of that decision.
Defending for the Lib Dems is Geraldine Whitmore. The Conservative candidate is Robin Cutsforth, who runs a carpet firm in the town. The Greens have not returned from 2019 but independent candidate Robin Lambert is back for another go; Lambert has since been an independent candidate for the Harborough constituency in the 2019 general election, finishing in fifth and last place. Labour’s Maria Panter completes the ballot paper.
Parliamentary constituency: Harborough
Leicestershire county council division: Market Harborough West and Foxton (western part), Market Harborough East (eastern part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Leicester
Postcode district: LE16
Robin Cutsforth (C)
Robin Lambert (Ind)
Maria Panter (Lab)
Geraldine Whitmore (LD)
May 2019 result LD 774/635 C 587 Grn 389 Ind 242 Lab 198
Previous results in detail
Hinksey Park
Oxford council; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Marie Tidball.
The only Labour defence of the week is the one in south-east England. We’re in New Hinksey, a suburb of Oxford which was developed in the nineteenth century on watermeadows immediately south of the city centre. Walk south from the Carfax down St Aldate’s to the Thames at Folly Bridge, cross the bridge over the river, and you are in Hinksey Park ward. And, until this area was incorporated into Oxford in 1889, you would also have crossed into Berkshire. The Thames is the eastern boundary of the ward, but not the northern boundary; Hinksey Park ward also crosses to the Oxfordshire bank to take in the housing estate of St Ebbe’s by the River.
There are no Oxford colleges here, but the University has a major influence on the area nonetheless. Brasenose, Queen’s and University colleges have recreation grounds and boathouses here. The census return also tells a story. In 2011 Hinksey Park ward was in the top 15 wards in England and Wales for those employed in education (29.6%), in the top 50 wards for those educated to degree level (60.1%), and in the top 100 for people born in the pre-2001 EU states (7.3%). It also had one of the highest concentrations of the White Other ethnic group in the south-east region.
Unlike the Cambridge by-election we covered last month in Trumpington, Hinksey Park’s highly educated demographic translates into a safe Labour ward of Oxford city council. A boundary review for 2021 left it unchanged. At the most recent Oxford elections in 2022 Labour led the Greens here 62–20. The ward is covered by the Isis division of Oxfordshire county council, which is also safely Labour. Labour have a large majority on the city council, and are part of the ruling coalition on the county council.
The outgoing Labour councillor Marie Tidball had represented this ward since 2016 and had served on the Oxford council cabinet. She has parliamentary ambitions, and she was the Labour candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon in the 2017 general election. (Oxford West and Abingdon does not cover Hinksey Park ward, which is part of the safe-Labour Oxford East constituency currently represented by the former Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds.) Tidball is leaving Oxford to return to her native Yorkshire, where she has been selected as the prospective Labour candidate for the next general election in the Penistone and Stocksbridge constituency.
Defending for Labour is Anna Railton, who is a machine learning engineer with Github (that’s a web hosting service for software development and version control, not necessarily a hub for gits); Railton is a parish councillor in Littlemore, on the southern edge of Oxford. The Greens have selected Alex Powell; he is a law lecturer at Oxford Brookes university. Also standing are Rick Tanner for the Lib Dems, Jennifer Saunders (no, not that one) for the Conservatives, independent Deborah Glass Woodin who has finished as runner-up here on three occasions (for the Greens in 2002 and 2008, and as an independent in 2021), and Callum Joyce of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.
Parliamentary constituency: Oxford East
Oxfordshire county council division: Isis
ONS Travel to Work Area: Oxford
Postcode districts: OX1, OX4
Deborah Glass Woodin (Ind)
Callum Joyce (TUSC)
Alex Powell (Grn)
Anna Railton (Lab)
Jennifer Saunders (C)
Rick Tanner (LD)
May 2022 result Lab 1118 Grn 369 LD 211 C 109 May 2021 result Lab 1273/986 Ind 321 Grn 310/195 LD 244/137 C 128/122
May 2018 result Lab 1094 Grn 228 LD 206 C 156
May 2016 result Lab 1273 Grn 273 C 199 LD 140
May 2014 result Lab 1158 Grn 373 C 195 LD 108 UKIP 88
May 2012 result Lab 906 Grn 331 C 172 LD 101
May 2010 result Lab 1530 LD 681 C 501 Grn 417
May 2008 result Lab 871 Grn 391 C 222 LD 185
July 2006 by-election Lab 676 Grn 436 LD 217 C 155
May 2006 result Lab 882 Grn 543 C 221 LD 161
June 2004 result Lab 869 Grn 534 LD 282 C 258
May 2002 result Lab 961/836 Grn 649/434 C 226 LD 139/125
Previous results in detail: 2002–18 2021-
Ynysybwl
Rhondda Cynon Taf council, Glamorgan; caused by the death of Plaid Cymru councillor Tony Burnell.
We finish for the week in the Valleys of South Wales. Specifically we are in Cwm Clydach, a western arm of the Cynon valley which diverges from it just north of Pontypridd. The majority of this small valley is covered by Ynysybwl ward, which takes in the village of the same name and the smaller settlement of Coed-y-cwm further down the valley.
Ynysybwl is perhaps best known to the outside world for its sports stars. The rugby player Garin Jenkins, who was born and still lives here, won 58 caps for Wales at hooker between 1991 and 2002 — a Welsh record at the time. However, he is probably outranked in the public consciousness by Leighton Rees, who in 1978 became the first world professional darts champion. Rees was born and died in Ynysybwl, and a street in the village is now named after him.
For just over a century the village of Ynysybwl was completely reliant on the Lady Windsor Colliery, which was sunk in 1884 and eventually closed in 1988. This led to a decline in population, from around 6,000 to 7,000 at the colliery’s peak to 4,664 at the time of the 2011 census. However, this population decline would appear to have been stemmed now: a boundary review for the 2022 Welsh local elections left the boundaries of this ward unchanged but doubled its representation from one councillor to two.
The boundaries of Ynysybwl ward have in fact been unchanged since the first Rhondda Cynon Taf council election in 1995. In that inaugural poll Labour beat Plaid Cymru here by 696 votes to 695, a majority of one vote. Don’t let anybody tell you your vote never changed anything. Plaid Cymru gained the ward in 1999, with Labour recovering it in 2012 — an election where Plaid actually finished third behind the Lib Dems, who haven’t been seen here since.
At Parliamentary and Senedd level Ynysybwl is part of the Cynon Valley constituency, which has comfortably returned Labour MPs and MSs continuously since its creation in 1983. Ann Clwyd was the Labour MP here for 35 years, from a 1984 by-election until 2019. The constituency has given short shrift to some notable minority candidates in its most recent elections: Steve Bray, the “Stop Brexit” Parliament Square protestor, finished sixth and lost his deposit here as the Lib Dem candidate in 2019, while the former UKIP group leader in the Senedd Gareth Benett finished in eighth and last place here as an independent candidate in 2021, losing not only his deposit but also his seat.
Labour also have a large majority on Rhondda Cynon Taf coucnil, but this no longer includes Ynysybwl ward. In May 2022, the first poll here for two councillors, the Labour vote crashed and Plaid Cymru gained Ynysybwl by 52% to 33%. Unfortunately one of the newly-elected Plaid Cymru councillors, Anthony Burnell, passed away just a couple of months later. Burnell had worked his way up to that role as a long-serving member of Ynysybwl and Coed-y-cwm community council, and he had worked for Rhondda Cynon Taf council in the past.
Defending for Plaid Cymru is Paula Evans, who like the late Tony Burnell is an Ynysybwl and Coed-y-cwm community councillor. Labour have reselected Richard Flowerdew who was runner-up here in May; he is a senior figure in the Scouts. Also returning from May is community councillor Jessica O’Donovan for the Welsh independence party Gwlad, who completes the ballot paper along with Lloyd Griffiths for the Conservatives and Jeffrey Baxter for the Green Party. This is a Welsh local by-election, so Votes at 16 applies here.
Westminster and Senedd constituency: Cynon Valley
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cardiff
Postcode district: CF37
Jeffrey Baxter (Grn)
Paula Evans (PC)
Richard Flowerdew (Lab)
Lloyd Griffiths (C)
Jessica O’Donovan (Gwlad)
May 2022 result PC 629/581 Lab 392/372 Gwlad 112/92 C 70
(Prior to 2022 this ward had 1 councillor)
May 2017 result Lab 719 PC 510 C 110
May 2012 result Lab 587 LD 414 PC 316 C 55
May 2008 result PC 655 LD 316 Lab 307
June 2004 result PC 508 Lab 339 Ind 254 LD 205
May 1999 result PC 745 Lab 504 Ind 380
May 1995 result Lab 696 PC 695 Ind 204
Previous results in detail: 2004–17 2022-
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
