Previewing the eight council by-elections of 2nd November 2023
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
By the time you read this, I’ll be out of the country: all being well, I travelled to the Costa del Sol on Tuesday to take part in the 2023 International Quizzing Championships. This piece was filed at the weekend before I left, so no doubt something in here has changed over the last few days. Hopefully whatever the anachronism is will be amusing.
There are eight local elections taking place on 2nd November 2023:
South Kintyre
Argyll and Bute council; caused by the resignation of independent councillor Donald Kelly.
We’ll start this week by considering one of the most remote parts of the Scottish mainland. If you want to drive to Campbeltown, it’s a long old way: the road from Glasgow to Campbeltown is around 135 miles long and takes an extremely indirect route via Loch Lomond and the Rest and Be Thankful mountain pass, which is often impassable in winter. Even in good weather, this will take well over three hours to drive. So, even though Campbeltown is part of the mainland the most convenient way to it can be by air or sea. Loganair run two daily return flights from Glasgow on weekdays, all year round; in the summer months (which we are not), ferries connect Campbeltown with Ardrossan in Ayrshire and with Ballycastle in Northern Ireland.
Once you reach Campbeltown you’ll find a fishing port, named after the Campbell family — this is Argyll, after all. The town’s main export is Scotch whisky: there are three distilleries here, and Campbeltown forms its own whisky-producing region. Unfortunately, other industries in the town have gone by the wayside: the local creamery and a wind turbine factory both closed down in 2019, with significant job losses.
It’s not the first time that Campbeltown has suffered the loss of a major local industry. There is a tiny coalfield under south Kintyre, which was worked into the 20th century from a single colliery at Machrihanish on the west coast. This colliery was linked to Campbeltown first by a canal, then by the narrow-gauge Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway which operated from 1906 to 1932. Machrihanish’s economy is now based on Campbeltown Airport, which is located here: this is now owned by the local community, but during the Cold War it was a key military airport with Scotland’s longest runway. It was certified as an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle. The name of Machrihanish will also be familiar to insomniac radio listeners: weather data from here are broadcast on the Radio 4 Shipping Forecast at 00:48 each day.
To the south of this low-lying area the land ends at the Mull of Kintyre, from which there are views across to the Antrim coast just 12 miles away and, on clearer days, to Ailsa Craig and the Ayrshire coast to the east and to Malin Head to the west. The high ground of the Mull of Kintyre is littered with wrecked aircraft which failed to navigate the mist rolling in from the sea: most notoriously, an RAF Chinook helicopter crash here in 1994 killed almost all of the UK’s senior Northern Ireland intelligence experts.
South Kintyre ward was created in 2007 when Scottish local councils went over to proportional representation, and has had unchanged boundaries since the. Its ordinary elections have been dominated by Donald Kelly, who has represented at least part of the area since a 2001 by-election and was originally in the Conservatives. Kelly polled almost 43% of the first preferences in 2007, enough for the Conservatives to have a good chance of a second seat on his transfers; but it didn’t work out, and the other two seats went to the SNP and the Lib Dems. The SNP councillor resigned in the wake of the independence referendum defeat in 2014, and the Nationalists held their seat in the resulting by-election in December 2014 with 62% of the first preferences. In 2017 nobody stood against the three outgoing councillors Kelly (C), John Armour (SNP) and Rory Colville (LD), who were re-elected unopposed.
At the last Scottish local elections in May 2022 all three councillors stood for re-election again, but this time the Conservatives had deselected Kelly and gone for a new candidate, Tommy Macpherson. Donald Kelly, who is a pest controller by trade, stood for re-election as an independent and showed that the Tories can’t exterminate him that easily. On first preferences Kelly topped the poll with 36% of the vote, the SNP’s Armour polled 33% and the Conservatives’ Macpherson 23%. Kelly and Armour were elected on the first count as they were over the 25% required to win, and Macpherson easily made up the 2% he needed from Kelly’s surplus votes. The Lib Dem councillor Rory Colville lost his seat.
Argyll and Bute council currently has the same boundaries as the Argyll and Bute constituency in the UK parliament, which has been represented since 2015 by the SNP’s Brendan O’Hara; following a recent reshuffle, O’Hara is the SNP’s foreign affairs spokesperson at Westminster. His seat will be expanded for the next general election, with the new name of Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber. The Argyll and Bute constituency in the Scottish Parliament is smaller than the council area, excluding Helensburgh which is in the Dumbarton seat; it has been in SNP hands since 2007, and the current MSP Jenni Minto is a junior minister in the Yousaf government with the public health and women’s health portfolio.
The 2022 election for Argyll and Bute council returned 12 SNP councillors, 10 Conservatives, 7 independents, 5 Lib Dems, 1 Labour and 1 Green. Recent Argyll and Bute councils have proven to be rather unstable, and the current administration — a coalition of the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and four of the independent councillors, under a Lib Dem leader — holds just 18 of the 36 seats. Significantly, Donald Kelly was not a supporter of the administration. He stepped down in August, expressing some frustration with how the council is run.
One independent candidate has come forward to replace Donald Kelly in the South Kintyre by-election: his daughter Jennifer, who works in the family pest control business. The SNP have selected John Richardson, an incomer from England who runs a business in Campbeltown. The Conservative candidate is Joe Cunningham, a self-employed gas engineer. Also standing are Kenny Mackenzie for the Liberal Democrats and Alan McManus, who gives an address in faraway East Dunbartonshire, for the Freedom Alliance. The Campbeltown Courier has interviewed all the candidates, and you can find out more here (link).
Westminster constituency: Argyll and Bute
Westminster constituency (from next general election): Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber
Holyrood constituency: Argyll and Bute
ONS Travel to Work Area: Campbeltown
Postcode district: PA28
Joe Cunningham (C)
Jennifer Kelly (Ind)
Kenny Mackenzie (LD)
Alan McManus (Freedom Alliance)
John Richardson (SNP)
May 2022 first preferences Ind 848 SNP 773 C 531 LD 206
May 2017 result SNP/LD/C unopposed
December 2014 by-election SNP 942 LD 214 C 205 Lab 156
May 2012 first preferences C 1133 SNP 618 LD 351 Ind 167 Ind 138 Ind 63
May 2007 first preferences C 1484 SNP 663 Lab 444 LD 441 Solidarity 76
Previous results in detail
Bucklow-St Martins
Trafford council, Greater Manchester; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Adele New.
For our first English by-election of the week we turn to a corner of Greater Manchester which is unheralded and little visited. Even the name of this ward obscures where we’re going: Bucklow is a former rural district of Cheshire which mostly consisted of commuter villages around Altrincham and Knutsford, while St Martins is a small corner of the very middle-class town of Sale.
This may all sound bucolic, but this is not an area frequented by the Real Housewives of Cheshire. You might see some footballers’ wives here, but that’s because Bucklow-St Martins ward includes the Manchester United FC training ground at Carrington; this is not the sort of place where footballers’ wives would care to live.
The main centre of population in Bucklow-St Martins ward is Partington, a small, grim and isolated town which owes its existence to the Manchester Ship Canal. Once the canal was opened in 1894, Partington became the most convenient seaport for the Lancashire coalfield: between 1894 and 1914 more than half of the canal’s export tonnage was coal from Partington. This attracted other industry. Carrington may well be best known for its football training pitches, but these compete for space with an enormous chemical works and a relatively new gas-fired power station, which came online in 2016.
In the postwar years Manchester city council greatly increased the population of Partington by building overspill council estates, which then lost their links to anywhere else when the railway line through Partington was closed in the 1960s. The ward’s very poor road connections were improved in 1987 by the opening of the Carrington Spur, a two-lane single-carriageway road which originally had motorway status and the number A6144(M). Until it was downgraded in 2006, the Carrington Spur was one of the very few places where it was legal to drive at 70mph on a single-carriageway road.
As this column observed when previewing a previous by-election six years ago (Andrew’s Previews 2017, page 246), this all adds up to a safe Labour ward which has become even safer since then as Trafford council has swung hard to the left. In May 2023 Labour led the Conservatives here by 65–19. The whole of the council was up for election on new boundaries in 2023, although Bucklow-St Martins ward was unchanged — it’s a little undersized at the moment, but new development should soon sort that out. The ward is part of the safe-Labour Stretford and Urmston parliamentary seat, which was won in a by-election last December by Andrew Western who at the time was leader of the council; that seat will be unchanged at the next general election.
This by-election is to replace Labour councillor Adele New, who was first elected here in 2018 and was re-elected in May 2023 at the top of the poll. She has indicated a change in priorities for her resignation.
Defending for Labour is Frances Cosby, who stood in May in the neighbouring Manor ward of Sale without success. The Conservatives have selected Paul Lally, a former Trafford councillor who represented Flixton ward to the north from 2012 to 2021. Also standing are Rodrigo Capucho Paulo for the Green Party, Matthew Sellars for the Lib Dems and Paul Swansborough for Reform UK.
Parliamentary constituency: Stretford and Urmston
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Stretford and Urmston
ONS Travel to Work Area: Manchester
Postcode district: M31, M33, M41, WA13
Rodrigo Capucho Paulo (Grn)
Frances Cosby (Lab)
Paul Lally (C)
Matthew Sellars (LD)
Paul Swansborough (Reform UK)
May 2023 result Lab 1163/916/872 C 336/315/308 Grn 178/158/158 LD 99
Previous results in detail
Kilnhurst and Swinton East
Rotherham council, South Yorkshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Stuart Sansome.
We now cross to the wrong side of the Pennines for our Yorkshire by-election of the week. The village of Kilnhurst lies on the western side of the Don valley between Rotherham and Doncaster, and has effectively merged with Swinton to the north. We’re away from the main roads between Rotherham and Doncaster, which take a more direct route to the south, but there has been plenty of passing trade here for centuries via the River Don Navigation and the railways. Swinton is a railway junction, with local trains going south to Rotherham and Sheffield, east to Doncaster and north to Leeds. Heavy industry is the order of the day here: Kilnhurst and Swinton were part of the Yorkshire coalfield back in the day, and the steelworks at Aldwarke and Thrybergh just to the south are still very much in operation.
This ward of Rotherham council was created by boundary changes in 2021. It had previously been the eastern two-thirds of Swinton ward, which had voted Labour at every election this century with UKIP in second place from 2007 onwards. There was no UKIP candidate when the present ward was created in May 2021, and Kilnhurst and Swinton East returned the Labour slate with a 58–31 lead over the Conservative candidate. The local MP here is the shadow defence secretary John Healey, who has sat in the Commons since 1997 and currently represents the marginal constituency of Wentworth and Dearne; his seat will be redrawn for the next election with the new name of Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, and with a slightly smaller notional Labour majority over the Conservatives.
The outgoing councillor here is retired steelworker Stuart Sansome, who brought his council career crashing down in September after nine years in office: he was first elected for the old Swinton ward in 2014. Sansome submitted his resignation from both the council and the Labour party after he was told that he would not be reselected for the next Rotherham elections in 2024.
Defending the resulting by-election for Labour is another retired steelworker, Nigel Harper, who gives an address in the ward. The Conservatives have selected Patricia Collins, an accountant who contested the neighbouring ward of Swinton Rockingham in 2021. Also standing are John Gelder for the Lib Dems, Peter Key for the regionalist Yorkshire Party, Paul Martin for the Greens and Adam Wood for Reform UK; readers may recognise some of those names as unsuccessful candidates in other recent Rotherham by-elections.
Parliamentary constituency: Wentworth and Dearne
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Rawmarsh and Conisbrough
ONS Travel to Work Area: Sheffield
Postcode district: S64
Patricia Collins (C)
John Gelder (LD)
Nigel Harper (Lab)
Peter Key (Yorkshire Party)
Paul Martin (Grn)
Adam Wood (Reform UK)
May 2021 result Lab 1119/989 C 597 LD 126 SDP 103/84
Previous results in detail
Asfordby
Melton council, Leicestershire; caused by the resignation of Green Party councillor Charlotte Pitt Miller.
We’re now going on the Wreake. Specifically, the River Wreake, which flows west through the town of Melton Mowbray to meet the Soar north of Leicester. Just to the west of Melton Mowbray, on the north side of the Wreake, we find the village of Asfordby.
This is a surprisingly industrial area, which ranks in the top 70 wards in England and Wales for “lower supervisory and technical occupations”. Asfordby is a colliery town, and one of quite recent vintage: a modern deep coal pit was in operation here until 1997. Today it’s a railway engineering centre, the home of the Old Dalby Test Track where new train designs are put through their paces. Not all of the tests are as dramatic as this one from 1984, where the structural integrity of a nuclear flask was tested by deliberately crashing a train into it.
Andrew’s Previews previously came here ten years ago to preview a November 2014 by-election to Melton council. I wrote then that “The industrial legacy is reflected in the fact that Labour are the best-organised party here”, which may have been true then but is no longer the case: Labour lost the 2014 by-election to the Conservatives by a large margin and hadn’t been seen here since. However, the Tories lost one of their two seats in Asfordby to an independent candidate in 2019 and the other to the Greens in May 2023. Shares of the vote six months ago were 46% for the independent councillor, 30% for the Green candidate and 24% for the Conservative slate.
The local authority here is Melton council, which is England’s smallest second-tier district by population; for now, Leicestershire seems to have escaped the mania for local government reorganisation. The Conservatives are the largest party on the council, but they are short of a majority with 11 out of 28 councillors; there are ten independents, five Labour councillors, one Lib Dem and this vacancy, and Labour run the administration in coalition with the main independent group.
The Conservatives do better in Asfordby at other levels of government. The local Leicestershire county council division, Melton Wolds, voted Conservative in 2021 with a large majority. Melton district is currently paired with Rutland for parliamentary elections: the Rutland and Melton seat is represented by first-term Tory MP Alicia Kearns who is chair of the Foreign Affairs select committee. But this link will be broken at the next general election, with Asfordby placed in a brand-new constituency called Melton and Syston.
This by-election is being defended by the Green party after the resignation in September of their only Melton councillor, Charlotte Pitt Miller. She has stood down on health grounds, having suffered a serious fall while abroad.
The Greens’ defending candidate is Issy Taylor, who is an arts professional from Melton Mowbray. There is one independent candidate standing, Peter Faulkner: he was the Mayor of Melton in 2021–22 and is a former Conservative councillor for the neighbouring Melton Egerton ward, but lost re-election as an independent candidate there in May. The official Conservative candidate is Chris Gray, who was an unsuccessful candidate in Melton Dorian ward six months ago. Completing the ballot is the ward’s first Labour candidate for nine years, Margaret Clay.
Parliamentary constituency: Rutland and Melton
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Melton and Sysonby
Leicestershire county council division: Melton Wolds
ONS Travel to Work Area: Leicester
Postcode district: LE14
Margaret Clay (Lab)
Peter Faulkner (Ind)
Chris Gray (C)
Issy Taylor (Grn)
May 2023 result Ind 454 Grn 299 C 239/218
May 2019 result Ind 374 C 288/235
May 2015 result C 901/739 UKIP 645
November 2014 by-election C 265 Lab 129 UKIP 94
May 2011 result C 470 Lab 420/394 Ind 342
May 2007 result C 448 Ind 383 Lab 378/237
May 2003 result Lab 431/396 Ind 269 C 217
Previous results in detail
Buckingham East
Buckinghamshire council; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Warren Whyte.
We now travel to one of England’s more obscure county towns. A millennium ago Buckingham was considered important enough to be the centre of its own county; but its population has stalled at comfortably under 15,000 and there are now far more important towns in Buckinghamshire. The county is now administered from Aylesbury, High Wycombe also has a much larger population, and then of course there is the New City of Milton Keynes.
This has left Buckingham as a small but historic market town on the River Great Ouse. The Buckingham East division takes in the half of the town north of the river, including the town centre and the campus of the University of Buckingham. This is a rather curious institution: it’s a private university which receives no government funding, awards its degrees based on just two years of teaching, and has strong links with the Conservative Party. Margaret Thatcher served as the second chancellor of the university after leaving 10 Downing Street, and three current Tory MPs including the Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis are alumni.
The East division also takes in eight parishes to the north and east of Buckingham. Here we find the southern half of the Silverstone racing circuit, which straddles the border with Northamptonshire. Visitors who would prefer something more tranquil might wish to visit the large stately home of Stowe House and its associated landscape gardens. This used to be the seat of the Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos, but since 1923 Stowe House has instead been home to a rather expensive public school. The presence of Stowe School propels Buckingham East into the top 60 wards in England and Wales for residents aged 16 or 17 (4.2%).
The Buckingham East division was created in 2013 for elections to what was then Buckinghamshire county council: this was dissolved in 2020 when the county’s local government was reorganised, and the lines were reused for the replacement Buckinghamshire council at its first election in May 2021. All three elections on these lines to date have been safely Conservative, with shares of the vote here in 2021 being 44% for the Conservatives, 18% for an independent candidate and 16% for Labour. The next ordinary elections here are due in 2025, at which point this division will be replaced by a new division covering all of Buckingham town and the north-west corner of the county; that could make things more politically competitive, because the present Buckingham West division has a Labour councillor with a very large personal vote.
This sense of things being about to get politically competitive also carries through to parliamentary level. The current Buckingham MP is first-term Tory backbencher Greg Smith, who took over the seat vacated by Speaker Bercow in 2019. However, Smith’s seat will be split up at the next general election: this area will become part of a brand-new constituency called Buckingham and Bletchley, which will combine this Tory countryside with much more friendly Labour territory in southern Milton Keynes. Labour were competitive in the Buckingham parliamentary seat back in the days when Milton Keynes was small enough to fit into it: no less a figure than Robert Maxwell was the Labour MP for Buckingham in 1964–70. We might see another hard-fought parliamentary race here soon.
Before then we have a local by-election to fill the seat on Buckinghamshire council left behind by Warren Whyte, an architect who has represented this division on the county council since 2013. He was also an Aylesbury Vale councillor from 2015 until that council’s abolition in 2020, representing the Luffield Abbey ward which covered the rural parts of this division. Whyte has relocated to the Isle of Wight.
Defending for the Conservatives is Jane Mordue, who is hoping to join her husband Howard as a councillor for this division; Mordue is the chair of the Buckinghamshire branch of the Citizens Advice Bureau. The independent candidate from last time has not returned. Labour have selected Fran Davies, who is a chef and Buckingham town councillor. Also standing are the present Mayor of Buckingham Anja Schaefer for the Lib Dems, and Michael Culverhouse for the Greens.
Parliamentary constituency: Buckingham
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Buckingham and Bletchley
ONS Travel to Work Area: Milton Keynes
Postcode districts: MK18, MK19, NN12
Michael Culverhouse (Grn)
Fran Davies (Lab)
Jane Mordue (C)
Anja Schaefer (LD)
May 2021 result C 1385/1226/953 Ind 564/327 Lab 494/411/278 LD 370/364/338 Grn 352/313/301
May 2017 county council result C 1326 Lab 506 LD 201 Grn 120 UKIP 119 Ind 99
May 2013 county council result C 838 UKIP 520 Lab 449 LD 87
Previous results in detail
Cripplegate; and
Langbourn
City of London Corporation; caused respectively by the resignations of Common Councilman Mark Bostock and Alderman Sir David Wootton.
We now travel into central London to consider that most curious of local government bodies, the City of London Corporation. This is essentially the mediaeval body which administered the Square Mile in times gone by, and which has somehow managed to escape every local government reorganisation since. The City Corporation’s 25 wards are directly descended from their mediaeval predecessors, and it is the only UK electoral body to retain Aldermen and business voters.
The City’s residential population is well under 10,000, roughly equivalent to a largish parish council, and most of its residents are corralled into four “residential” wards. This leaves the other 21 wards, like Langbourn, dominated by business voters. Langbourn consists mostly of business and other buildings on the northern side of Lombard Street and Fenchurch Street, with the main exception being the ward church of St Mary Woolnoth on the corner of Lombard Street and King William Street. This is an eighteenth-century church designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, which was nearly demolished in 1897 when Bank underground station was built; after public outcry, the church was saved and the Underground ticket hall was constructed in its crypt. The other main feature of Langbourn ward is the southern half of Leadenhall Market, a site which has been used for commerce for a very long time: the Forum of Roman Londinium was sited here.
The election in Langbourn ward is to replace long-serving Alderman Sir David Wootton, who is standing down after eighteen years in office. He was the 684th Lord Mayor of London, serving in the Diamond Jubilee year of 2011–12; for many years he was a partner in the City law firm Allen and Overy.
Aldermen of the City are technically elected for life but are expected to seek re-election at least every six years. Nobody challenged Wootton’s re-elections in 2011 or 2017, so this is the first contested Aldermanic election in Langbourn ward for nearly two decades. It’s attracted a very big field of nine candidates, who I’ll take in ballot paper order. Michael Barrington-Hibbert is a recruitment specialist who runs an eponymous firm trying to get more black people into senior City roles. Nigel Biggs is a director of the international property consultants CBRE. Rita Bologna is a serial entrepreneur who helps small and medium-sized businesses — something which may appeal to the electorate here, which is dominated by shopowners and sole traders. Sally Bridgeland is an actuary who spent seven years running the BP pension scheme; she finished third in the election for a new Alderman for Castle Baynard ward in July. Peter Denison-Pender is a director of 10 companies and a trustee of the Royal Albert Hall. Timothy Gocher runs the Dolma Foundation which invests in education, health, sustainable businesses and other worthy causes in Nepal, for which he was appointed OBE last year. Simon Pryke is an investment fund manager. Amanda Scott is an executive at Willis Towers Watson who also runs a mental health charity. And at the bottom of the ballot paper is the only candidate who already sits as a Common Councilwoman: Dawn Wright has represented Coleman Street ward since winning a by-election in July 2019. At least two of the candidates above have links to the Conservative Party, but all nine candidates here are on the ballot paper as independents because that’s how City elections work.
There’s a rather different dynamic in Cripplegate ward, which this column has visited on a couple of occasions over the last 13 months, most recently in March. This is one of the City’s residential wards, taking in the Golden Lane estate and the eastern half of the modernist Barbican estate, including the Barbican arts centre. I said above that City Corporation elections are normally non-partisan, but Labour have started taking an interest in the residential wards in recent years: in the 2022 City elections the eight seats in Cripplegate split five to independent candidates and three to Labour.
This by-election is to replace independent Common Councilman Mark Bostock, who had represented Cripplegate ward since 2017 and was re-elected for a second term in fourth place at the 2022 election. He resigned from the Common Council on health grounds at the end of July, and passed away from cancer three weeks later at the age of 84. Bostock was important enough on the national stage that he received an obituary in the Times; it was his vision that resulted in the London end of High Speed 1 being sent to Stratford and St Pancras rather than Waterloo, resulting in huge amounts of redevelopment at both locations.
Again, I’ll take the four candidates for Cripplegate in ballot paper order. Adam Hogg is the chair of the Barbican Association, the recognised tenants’ association for the Barbican estate. Arne Mielken was an unsuccessful candidate in the 2022 City elections in Farringdon Within ward, and is the only candidate for Cripplegate to live outside the City. Jan-Marc Petroschka is an architect and local resident. Another Barbican resident is Jacqui Webster, who runs the Shoreditch Trust (a charity working for the community in east London); she is the official Labour candidate and she completes the ballot paper.
Cripplegate
Parliamentary constituency: Cities of London and Westminster
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Cities of London and Westminster
London Assembly constituency: City and East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: EC1M, EC1Y, EC2Y
Adam Hogg (Ind)
Arne Mielken (Ind)
Jan-Marc Petroschka (Ind)
Jacqui Webster (Lab)
Langbourn (Alderman)
Parliamentary constituency: Cities of London and Westminster
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Cities of London and Westminster
London Assembly constituency: City and East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: EC3M, EC3V, EC4N
Michael Barrington-Hibbert (Ind)
Nigel Biggs (Ind)
Rita Bologna (Ind)
Sally Bridgeland (Ind)
Peter Denison-Pender (Ind)
Timothy Gocher (Ind)
Simon Pryke (Ind)
Amanda Scott (Ind)
Dawn Wright (Ind)
Molesey East
Elmbridge council, Surrey; caused by the resignation of Molesey Residents Association councillor Peter Pope.
For our final poll of the week we stay within the M25 motorway, but cross just outside the Greater London boundary and ULEZ. We are in an area visited by many tourists, who get off the train from London at Hampton Court railway station and immediately walk straight over the River Thames towards Hampton Court Palace.
Let’s not do that. Instead we’ll turn left on leaving the railway station and have a look at East Molesey. What we have here is some London outer suburbia of a rather professional bent: slightly over half of Molesey East ward’s workforce are educated to degree level. The River Thanes forms the northern boundary of the ward, and most of the riverside is given over to parkland: this is Hurst Park, which was home to a racecourse until 1962. From here, in season (which we are not), you can catch a ferry over the river to the Middlesex town of Hampton: the Hampton Ferry has been in operation for over 500 years and is one of the UK’s 20 oldest companies.
Local politics in this corner of Surrey is complicated by the presence of strong Residents Associations. The local authority here is Elmbridge council, which is traditionally a Residents versus Conservative battle. In this century Molesey East ward has tended to be quite closely fought between the Conservatives and the Molesey Residents Association, with the Residents normally having the upper hand.
One party which tried to break this duopoly in an innovative way was the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Jason “Chinners” Chinnery, the party’s deputy leader, used to live in this ward. In the 2012 local elections Chinners put together a slate of nine Loony candidates for Elmbridge council — all of whom were chasing one available seat in Molesey East ward. Sadly, this valiant effort at expanding voter choice went generally unrewarded by the voters: the Loony candidates polled 57 votes between them, ranging from 21 for Chinners to one vote for the last-placed candidate “Badger”. It does seem that all those Loonies might have split the vote and let the Molesey Residents Association candidate come through the middle with their winning score of 914.
The Molesey Residents Association hold the Surrey county council seat of West Molesey, which covers part of this ward, but in the 2021 county council elections they stood down in East Molesey and Esher which instead went to the Conservatives. The Residents Associations don’t stand in general elections, where the local seat of Esher and Walton is normally a safe Conservative seat. Except in December 2019, when the Liberal Democrats had a go at unseating the local MP — prominent Brexiteer Dominic Raab, who was Boris Johnson’s deputy — and came up just short. Raab subsequently served as Deputy Prime Minister to both Johnson and Sunak, but he was forced to resign from the frontbench earlier this year for bullying civil servants in the Department of Justice; he will leave the Commons at the next election of his own accord.
This brings us to our second, and more successful, attempt to break the Residents versus Conservatives battle in Molesey East. The Liberal Democrats have a long-standing coalition agreement with the various Residents Associations on Elmbridge council, but in recent years they have started contesting some Resident-held wards and winning them. In 2023 the Lib Dems became the largest party on Elmbridge council for the first time: the composition now stands at 19 Liberal Democrat councillors, 16 Residents plus this vacancy and 12 Conservatives.
The improvement in the Lib Dem vote has made Molesey East ward particularly volatile in recent local elections. In the three polls this decade the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and Molesey Residents Association have all finished first once, second once and third once; the most recent poll, in 2023, gave 42% to the Lib Dems, 32% to the Reisidents and 21% to the Conservatives. The Conservatives won the ward in 2022, and the Residents in 2021. This by-election is to replace the Molesey Residents Association councillor Peter Pope, who handed in his resignation in August for personal reasons. Goodness knows what will happen this time.
Defending for the Molesey Residents Association is Pat Gormley, a retired accountant who finished second here in May. The Lib Dems have selected local resident Kevin Whincup. Standing for the Conservatives is Freddie Ingle, a speechwriter who also lives in the ward. Andrew Dillon completes the ballot paper for the Green Party.
Parliamentary constituency: Esher and Walton
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Esher and Walton
Surrey county council division: East Molesey and Easher (part), West Molesey (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Slough and Heathrow
Postcode district: KT8
Andrew Dillon (Grn)
Pat Gormley (Molesey Res Assoc)
Freddie Ingle (C)
Kevin Whincup (LD)
May 2023 result LD 1236 Molesey Residents Assoc 920 C 615 Lab 129
May 2022 result C 1125 LD 1120 Molesey Residents Assoc 637 Grn 117 Lab 94
May 2021 result Molesey Residents Assoc 1014 C 892 LD 553 Grn 245 Lab 186 UKIP 27
May 2019 result Molesey Residents Assoc 1268 C 790 LD 252 Grn 208 Lab 125
May 2018 result C 1337 Molesey Residents Assoc 1048 Lab 265 Grn 183 Loony 22
May 2016 result Molesey Residents Assoc 1576/1517/1437 C 1159/925/888 Grn 314 Lab 314 UKIP 199
Previous results 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). The 2022 edition is out now! You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale
