Previewing the English local by-elections of 20th April 2023
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Two by-elections on 20th April 2023:
Bullsmoor
Enfield council, London; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Esin Gunes.
You were warned. Those readers who might have had nothing better to do with their Good Friday might well have spotted me as a contestant on the long-running quiz show Eggheads, currently showing on Channel 5. Unaccountably, our episode is not currently on Channel 5’s catchup service, so you’ll just have to make do with a picture. Even more unfortunately, this picture doesn’t show our fifth team member: Nicki’s guide dog James, who was out of view behind the desk.
Spoiler alert: we didn’t win. The Eggheads are on the other side of the studio because they’re difficult to beat. Indeed, Beth was on a team which beat Nicki and myself in a non-televised quiz over the weekend.
The question which did for us on this occasion was:
Which London borough shares its name with a fictional creature that has the head of a fox, the talons of an eagle, the body of a lion and the hindquarters and tail of a wolf?
Which brings us to
When life gives you lemons the sour taste left in the mouth can last for some time, and as luck would have it the first place I have to write about after failing to get that quiz question is the London Borough of Enfield. Specifically, we’ve come to Bullsmoor, which lies on the very northern edge of Greater London next to the line of the M25 motorway. However, the housing in Bullsmoor doesn’t suffer as much from traffic noise as you might expect: the motorway is sunk into the six-lane Holmesdale Tunnel, a cut-and-cover tunnel with a green space on top which divides Enfield from Broxbourne.
Bullsmoor ward was created in 2022 and is based on the former Turkey Street ward, which was named after the local railway station. This is a stop on London Overground’s Enfield and Cheshunt line, one of the Lea Valley lines which radiate from Liverpool Street.
Turkey Street was an apt name, as we can see from Bullsmoor ward’s 2022 census return. 10.3% of the ward’s population were born in a European country outside the EU, which is the third-highest figure for any ward in England and Wales; here that basically means Turkey. Enfield is the centre of the UK’s Turkish community, and this by-election has had some coverage in London’s Turkish-language press. Bullsmoor also makes the top 15 wards in England and Wales for residents born in Cyprus or Malta (2.6%). 5.5% of the population practice “other” religions, the fourth-highest figure for any ward in England: almost all of these are Alevis, a religious tradition similar to Islam and found primarily in Turkey.
Politically, Enfield has swung a long way to the left in this century. Up until 2006 Turkey Street was a safe Conservative ward, but a by-election in August 2006 saw Labour suddenly come within three votes of winning. Labour won all three seats narrowly in 2010 and have since made the ward safe. Bullsmoor ward has only two councillors compared to three for the former Turkey Street; at its first election in May last year the Labour lead over the Conservatives was 51–30; not that much different to the 2019 general election result in the local Enfield North constituency.
This by-election follows the resignation of Labour councillor Esin Gunes, who was first elected in 2022 and had been appointed as chair of Enfield’s licensing subcommittee. She is relocating away from the borough after less than a year in office.
Defending for Labour is Destiny Karakus — now there’s a name to conjure with. Karakus has recently finished her politics and international relations studies at Portsmouth and Greenwich universities, which included a year as an officer of the Portsmouth students’ union. The Conservatives have reselected Christine Bellas, who was runner-up in this ward last year: she works for the local branch of a well-known supermarket. Also standing are Isobel Whittaker for the Greens, Tim Martin for the Lib Dems and John Dolan for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.
Parliamentary constituency: Enfield North
London Assembly constituency: Enfield and Haringey
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: EN1, EN3, EN8
Christine Bellas (C)
John Dolan (TUSC)
Destiny Karakus (Lab)
Tim Martin (LD)
Isobel Whittaker (Grn)
May 2022 result Lab 1307/1192 C 761/703 Grn 241 LD 193 TUSC 50
Previous results in detail
Latchford West
Warrington council, Cheshire; caused by the death of Labour councillor Les Morgan.
Our other by-election this week takes place on the southern bank of the River Mersey. Traditionally, that places us in Cheshire; but it’s a bit more complicated than that. Latchford lies immediately to the south of Warrington town centre, to which it is connected by the Warrington Bridge and the Warrington New Bridge. Today both bridges form part of what is effectively a roundabout, at which the three main roads going south from Warrington (towards Whitchurch, Knutsford and Chester) all converge.
There’s a fair amount of industry in Latchford West ward, which in the past was exemplified by the presence here of the Greenalls brewery. As well as the usual selection of beers, Greenalls also distilled harder stuff: as well as claiming to be England’s oldest gin distillery, they were the original manufacturer of Vladivar vodka, which readers of a certain age might recall being advertised as “Wodka from Varrington”. Vladivar is made in Scotland these days, while the beer and gin brands have also been sold off and are now manufactured elsewhere in Warrington. The Greenalls company itself is still going, but they quit the pub and alcohol business in the 1990s and now trade as De Vere hotels.
Not far from the old distillery site is Priestley College, which provides sixth-form education for Warrington’s A-level students: it’s named after the polymath Joseph Priestley, who is credited with the discovery of oxygen and also worked as a teacher in Warrington in the 1760s. Further into the town centre can be found the former site of Wilderspool Stadium, which used to host top-flight rugby league: Wilderspool was home to the Super League side Warrington Wolves until the Wire moved to the Halliwell Jones stadium, north of the town centre, in 2004. The old stadium was demolished in 2014, and its site awaits redevelopment.
Latchford West ward is surrounded by water. The meandering River Mersey lies to the north, with its modern replacement the Manchester Ship Canal cutting an arrow-straight line along its southern boundary. There are two crossings of the Ship Canal within the ward: the A49 towards Whitchurch runs over a swing bridge which closes to road traffic when a ship passes, while the Latchford High Level Bridge is tall enough to be a permanent crossing but currently has a rather severe weight limit. When Latchford was incorporated into Warrington in the 1890s the new borough boundary was drawn along the line of the Ship Canal; this had the effect of transferring Latchford into Lancashire for eighty years, before the 1970s reorganisation returned it to Cheshire.
Warrington council has had a Labour majority since 2011. It’s on the list of councils which have borrowed very heavily to fund investments, and it is currently in debt to the tune of £1.8 billion. The council’s leadership has made a full-throated defence of this, pointing out that its investment portfolio is not in negative equity and generates enough income to cover the debt repayments with a surplus on top to help fund essential services; but this level of debt doesn’t look like a sustainable long-term position at first sight.
The borough of Warrington is not part of this year’s local elections. It has whole-council elections on a non-standard cycle, and is due to poll next in 2024. The last polls here were in May 2021 — a good year for the Conservatives, who sharply cut the Labour lead in Latchford West ward to 48–42. This ward is part of the key marginal parliamentary seat of Warrington South, which voted Labour in 2017 and Conservative in 2019.
Les Morgan, who had represented this ward since 2014, was re-elected for a third term in 2021 with a majority of just 66 votes over the lead Conservative candidate. On a personal level, this might have been depressed by some bad publicity in Morgan’s mayoral year 2017–18, which came to a premature end in March 2018: he was forced to resign as mayor following a row over derogatory comments he made online about two Warrington rugby league players. Morgan passed away in January 2023 at the age of 80.
Defending for Labour is Denis Matthews, who works in the area and also volunteers with a local community group in his spare time. The Conservative candidate is local resident Stephen Taylor, who has previously been a Warrington councillor: he sat for Stockton Heath ward, on the other side of the Ship Canal, from 2015 to 2016. Also standing are Sharon Harris for the Lib Dems and independent candidate Amanda Bowles, who is a parish councillor in Walton parish to the south-west.
These will be the last English elections at which photo ID is not required to cast a vote at a polling station. The legal situation is slightly more complicated than this and I do get correction tweets when I say what I’m going to say, but for the sake of simplicity you, as the voter, should assume that all English elections from May onwards will require photo ID. If you do not have one of the forms of photo ID which will be accepted at a polling station (link), then the deadline to apply for a postal vote in May’s local elections has now passed; you have until 5pm on Tuesday 25th April to apply for a Voter Authority Certificate, which can be done free of charge at gov.uk (link). If you fail to so, you will lose your vote in May’s local elections, it will be your fault and you will have no recourse. Don’t let that happen to you.
Parliamentary constituency: Warrington South
ONS Travel to Work Area: Warrington and Wigan
Postcode district: WA4
Amanda Bowles (Ind)
Sharon Harris (LD)
Denis Matthews (Lab)
Stephen Taylor (C)
May 2021 result Lab 909/859 C 793/787 LD 207/169
May 2016 result Lab 1068/991 C 321/317 LD 283/272 TUSC 88
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). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale
