Previewing the five local by-elections of 28th September 2023
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Five by-elections on 28th September 2023:
Tain and Easter Ross
Highland council, Scotland; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat candidate Sarah Rawlings.
Last week’s edition of Andrew’s Previews finished in Scotland, in a ward with a medium-sized town, a large rural hinterland and a big distillery. There’s more of the same this week as we start in Scotland’s oldest Royal Burgh.
Tain, one of the largest towns in Ross-shire, was granted its charter in 1066 by King Malcolm III Canmore, thanks to its status as a pilgrimage site for St Duthac. It’s on the main road and railway line up the eastern seaboard from Inverness, and its main export is whisky from the large Glenmorangie distillery. Glenmorangie has for many years been Scotland’s best-selling single malt, but the profits from this no longer stay in Scotland; the distillery was bought in 2004 by the French luxury goods group Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy.
The ward based on Tain also takes in a large section of the relatively flat and fertile countryside of Easter Ross. Here we can find the Seaboard villages (Hilton of Cadboll, Balintore and Shandwick) and the small west-facing harbour of Portmahomack.
Tain and Easter Ross ward is one of those places that appears in this column over and over again. It was created in 2007 when the Highland council went over to proportional representation, and the first poll here re-elected the three previous councillors for the area: Richard Durham as a Lib Dem, Alasdair Rhind and Alan Torrance as independents. Torrance subsequently joined the SNP. He died in 2011 and the resulting by-election was won by independent candidate Fiona Robertson.
The balance of two independents and one Lib Dem was maintained in 2012, but this time the Lib Dem councillor was veteran politician Jamie Stone, who had been the MSP for the local seat of Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross from 1999 to 2011. He had lost his Holyrood seat to the SNP the previous year. Outgoing councillor Richard Durham unsuccessfully sought re-election as an independent, finishing fifth.
In May 2017 independent Fiona Robertson and Lib Dem Stone were re-elected, but Alasdair Rhind lost his seat to the Scottish National Party candidate Derek Louden. A month later councillor Jamie Stone was elected to the House of Commons as the Lib Dem MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. He resigned from the Highland council, and Alasdair Rhind won the resulting by-election in September 2017 easily (Andrew’s Previews 2017, page 257).
Stone was narrowly re-elected to the Westminster parliament in December 2019, finishing just 204 votes ahead of the SNP. He faces a difficult fight for re-election next year, as the boundary changes add a large chunk of the current Ross, Skye and Lochaber to his constituency. That seat is currently represented by the former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, and on the new lines Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross would have likely voted SNP in December 2019. Blackford’s seat disappears in the boundary changes, and he will not seek re-election.
The Scottish National Party hold the similar Holyrood seat of Caithness, Sutherland and Ross, which has returned three different MSPs in its last three elections: the current incumbent Maree Todd, who transferred here in 2021 after being a Highlands and Islands regional MSP in the previous term, is a Scottish Government minister with the social care portfolio.
The Highland council has a long-standing independent tradition, but this has been steadily eroded following the removal of single-member wards in 2007; the previous first-past-the-post electoral system had discouraged competition against strong independent candidates to the point where many wards went uncontested. In the 2022 Highland council election independent councillors fell to second place for the first time: 22 SNP candidates were returned, 21 independents, 15 Lib Dems, 10 Conservatives, 4 Greens and 2 Labour. An SNP-Independent coalition is in place to run the council.
The 2022 election in Tain and Easter Ross saw the balance of SNP, Lib Dem and independent councillors restored following the Lib Dem by-election loss in 2017. The SNP councillor Derek Louden was re-elected on the first count with 31% of the vote, and the other two seats went to the Lib Dems’ Sarah Rawlings with 22% and Alasdair Rhind with 21%. Fiona Robertson polled 16% and lost her seat.
This third Tain and Easter Ross by-election is again a Lib Dem defence following the resignation of Sarah Rawlings, who stood down in June on health grounds after just over a year in office. The defending Lib Dem candidate is Charles Stephen. The Scottish National Party, who are still looking for their first by-election win of the Yousaf era (they have had three seats to defend in this period and lost the lot), have selected Gordon Allison. There is one independent candidate on the ballot, Maureen Ross. Also standing are Veronica Morrison for the Conservatives (who returns from 2022), Andrew Barnett for the Scottish Green Party, Harry Christian for the Libertarian Party and Michael Perera for Labour.
Westminster constituency: Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross
Scottish Parliament constituency: Caithness, Sutherland and Ross
ONS Travel to Work Area: Alness and Invergordon
Postcode districts: IV18, IV19, IV20
Gordon Allison (SNP)
Andrew Barnett (Grn)
Harry Christian (Libertarian)
Veronica Morrison (C)
Michael Perera (Lab)
Maureen Ross (Ind)
Charles Stephen (LD)
May 2022 first preferences SNP 1051 LD 739 Ind 726 Ind 554 C 364
September 2017 by-election Ind 1266 SNP 612 LD 372 C 233 Ind 68 Libertarian 13
May 2017 first preferences SNP 831 Ind 708 LD 679 Ind 569 C 558 Ind 139
Previous results in detail
Hutton Rudby and Osmotherley
North Yorkshire council; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Bridget Fortune.
More spectacular countryside awaits in our next by-election, this week’s Conservative defence, which is partly located in the North York Moors National Park. This national park covers relatively high ground to the east of the Vale of York, and it’s at the point where the high plateau stops and the Vale begins that we find Hutton Rudby and Osmotherley division. Travellers on the A19 dual carriageway towards Teesside, which skirts the edge of the National Park, will be familiar with the sight.
For northbound travellers, at the point where the high ground peels away to the right there is a road junction, where there is a choice of staying on the main road towards Middlesbrough or turning right towards Redcar and Cleveland. That junction is named after the hotel here, the Cleveland Tontine. This hotel was built in 1804 during the age when the A19 was a turnpike road, and its name recalls how it was originally financed. A tontine (named after a seventeenth-century Neapolitan banker, Lorenzo de Tonti, who had the original idea) is a form of investment vehicle in which the subscribers to a scheme would get their money back in the form of an annuity; once a subscriber died, the payouts to the remaining subscribers increased because there were fewer people to distribute the annual payments to. Once all the original subscribers were dead, the scheme would be wound up. Tontines were quite popular investments in the 18th and 19th centuries, and a number of eighteenth-century projects including Richmond Bridge over the Thames, the Bath Assembly Rooms and the Tontine Coffee House in New York (the original home of the New York Stock Exchange) owe their existence to this now almost-forgotten form of fundraising.
Not far to the south of the Cleveland Tontine lie the well-preserved ruins of Mount Grace Priory, a Carthusian foundation of 1398 which was the last monastery established in Yorkshire before the Dissolution. Do make sure you visit in spring while the daffodils are in flower — it’s quite a sight. Next to the priory ruins lies a manor house which was restored in the Arts and Crafts style around 1900 by Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, who has appeared in this column before. Bell made his fortune in the Teesside ironworking industry, and was elected to the Royal Society in 1874 for his work on metallurgy; in the same year he was elected as a Liberal MP for North Durham, but this was voided by the Election Court for intimidation by the Liberal campaign. Bell did, however, get back into the Commons fairly quickly: he served as Liberal MP for The Hartlepools from 1875 to 1880.
The villages within this ward north of the Cleveland Tontine are within commuting distance of Teesside, and a number of Middlesbrough FC stars (including Paul Gascoigne at one point) have lived in the largest village within this division. Hutton Rudby, which has around 1,348 electors according to the notice of poll for this election, is the final resting place of Sir Rex Hunt who was governor of the Falkland Islands at the time of the Argentine invasion. Nearby can be found the village of Potto, home of the haulage company Prestons of Potto whose lorries are a familiar sight on the A19 and further afield.
The whole of this division is within the constituency of the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. His Richmond (Yorkshire) seat covers an enormous area, running from the Yorkshire Dales all the way across to the North York Moors here. The seat is also rather misnamed: Richmond has the history but the largest town here is in fact Northallerton, and this will be reflected at the next general election when Sunak’s constituency will be renamed as “Richmond and Northallerton”.
Northallerton is the home of North Yorkshire council, which is the local authority here following a recent reorganisation; Hambleton district council, which once covered this area, was abolished in May. The current North Yorkshire council was elected in 2022 for a five-year term; the Conservatives won a slim majority of 47 out of 90 seats, which has since disappeared as a result of defections and a by-election loss to the Liberal Democrats earlier this year. The latest count has 44 Conservatives plus this vacancy, 17 independent councillors (some of whom are allied with the Conservatives), 12 Lib Dems, 11 Labour, 5 Greens, 1 continuing Liberal, and 1 councillor who left Labour and successfully sought re-election in a recent by-election for his own Social Justice Party. If the Tories lose this by-election, they will be in a minority and no longer able to rely on the casting vote of the chair.
47 Conservative seats in North Yorkshire was a pretty poor return anyway, and it could have been worse as we see from the inaugural result in Hutton Rudby and Osmotherley last year: just 40% for the Conservatives’ Bridget Fortune in what should be true-blue countryside, 29% for independent candidate David Hugill and 24% for the Liberal Democrats. Partly this is explained by a split in the Conservative vote. Fortune and Hugill were both at the time long-serving Hambleton councillors for the area (Fortune representing Hutton Rudby, Hugill sitting for Osmotherley and Swainby), and Hugill was the sitting Conservative county councillor for the predecessor division of North Hambleton.
Bridget Fortune resigned from North Yorkshire council over the summer, following a bizarre incident at the council’s annual meeting in May in which a Conservative whip physically intervened to prevent her casting a vote against the administration. The whip involved, councillor Tom Jones, immediately apologised; but rumour has it that Fortune’s resignation letter, which the council has refused to publish, contains bullying allegations.
Defending for the Conservatives is the independent candidate from last time David Hugill, a farmer and market trader from Faceby (one of the 23 parishes within the ward), who now has the chance to resume his local government career. Also returning from the last election here is the Lib Dem candidate Duncan Ross Russell, a former Army Major with service in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan under his belt; he lives in Osmotherley and now works as a project manager. Lee Derrick stands for the regionalist Yorkshire Party and Allan Mortimer, who is the chairman of Rudby parish council, for the Green Party. Labour also put in a set of nomination papers but their candidate has withdrawn and will not be on the ballot, which leaves a field of four candidates for the electors to choose from. The Northern Echo have interviewed all the candidates, and you can find out more here (link).
Parliamentary constituency: Richmond (Yorks)
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Richmond and Northallerton
ONS Travel to Work Area: Middlesbrough and Stockton (part: Carlton, Faceby, Great Busby, Hutton Rugby, Ingleby Arncliffe, Little Busby, Middleton-on-Leven, Newby, Potto, Rudby, Seamer, Sexhow, Skutterskelfe and Whorlton parishes), Northallerton (part: Crathorne; East Harlsey; Kirby Sigston; Osmotherley; Sowerby-under-Cotcliffe; Thimbleby; West Harlsey; and Winton, Stank and Hallikeld parishes)
Postcode districts: DL6, TS7, TS8, TS9, TS15
Lee Derrick (Yorkshire Party)
David Hugill (C)
Allan Mortimer (Grn)
Duncan Ross Russell (LD)
May 2022 result C 892 Ind 643 LD 535 Lab 186
Previous results in detail
Bushbury South and Low Hill
Wolverhampton council, West Midlands; caused by the death of the Leader of the Council, Labour councillor Ian Brookfield.
Our Labour defence of the week is in the city of Wolverhampton. We’ve come to Bushbury, a former village located a couple of miles north of Wolverhampton city centre which has long disappeared into the urban sprawl of the Black Country. Most of the urban sprawl here comes from Low Hill, which was developed in the 1920s as a very large council estate by Wolverhampton Corporation; more than half of the houses in the ward are still rented, mostly on social terms.
In those days there was a lot of employment in local factories, particularly the large Goodyear tyre plant on the Stafford Road; but manufacturing here isn’t what it used to be. The 2021 census return for Bushbury South and Low Hill ward, which then had different boundaries, placed it within the top 100 wards in England and Wales for unemployment (7.1%) and for children aged under 16 (27.8%). The Goodyear plant is now a redevelopment site, which was transferred out of the ward by boundary changes in May.
Those boundary changes mean that the western boundary of this ward is now defined not by the Stafford Road but by railway lines and canals. Trains approaching Wolverhampton from the north reach a three-way junction at Bushbury; all passenger trains head for the city centre station, but the original line here is actually the south-eastern route towards Bescot. This was the original route of the Grand Junction Railway between Birmingham and Newton-le-Willows, which opened in 1837 and took a route between the high ground of Bushbury Hill, Low Hill and Wolverhampton city centre. Back in the day this was a busy intercity route; but now passenger trains only use it as a diversion.
This area is within the Wolverhampton North East parliamentary seat, which was one of the 40 seats named within the original Red Wall and was a Conservative gain in the 2019 general election. Its MP is Jane Stevenson, a Tory backbencher and former opera singer.
However, in local elections Wolverhampton city council is normally a Labour-controlled authority; there has been a few years of Conservative leadership over the 50 years since the modern metropolitan borough council was first elected in 1973, but the Tories have never had a majority here. The council has had a Labour majority continuously since 2011, and in 2019 Labour’s Ian Brookfield took over as leader of the council.
Brookfield was first elected here as long ago as 1995, gaining what was then Bushbury ward from the Conservatives. He was re-elected in 1999 in Oxley ward, lost his seat to the Conservatives there in 2007, returned in 2012 as councillor for Fallings Park ward, served as Mayor of Wolverhampton in 2015–16, and transferred back to Bushbury South and Low Hill in 2021. His council leadership also came with a seat on the West Midlands Combined Authority, on which Brookfield held the economy and innovation portfolio. By trade Brookfield was a nurse; politically he was red, but in football he was a blue — an Evertonian.
Despite a diagnosis of cancer, Ian Brookfield was re-elected easily five months ago in Bushbury South and Low Hill which is one of the safest Labour wards in the city. The Labour slate defeated the Conservatives here 65–23; on the previous 2004–23 boundaries, Labour had never lost this ward and fell below 50% only once. Overall Labour won 44 seats on Wolverhampton council, the other 16 going to the Conservatives. But in the end Brookfield couldn’t defeat his cancer; he passed away in July at the age of 57.
Ian Brookfield had won the second out of three seats this year’s all-out election, behind his wife Paula who topped the poll, so the winner of this by-election will take over a three-year term and will need to seek re-election in 2026. The defending Labour candidate in this by-election is their son, Paul Brookfield. Standing for the Conservatives is Rob Williams, who stood in the neighbouring Fallings Park ward in May and runs a fitness-themed YouTube channel, Burpees and Bells. Also on the ballot are Ian Jenkins for the Lib Dems and Mohammed Nassem for the Green Party.
Parliamentary constituency: Wolverhampton North East
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Wolverhampton North East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Wolverhampton and Walsall
Postcode district: WV10
Paul Brookfield (Lab)
Ian Jenkins (LD)
Mohammed Nassem (Grn)
Rob Williams (C)
May 2023 result Lab 1002/979/931 C 351/303/292 LD 198
Previous results in detail
Mulbarton and Stoke Holy Cross; and
South Wymondham
South Norfolk council; caused respectively by the resignation of Julian Fulcher and the death of Julian Halls. Both were Liberal Democrat councillors.
Let’s finish up in Norfolk, where the Liberal Democrats are defending two seats today on South Norfolk council. The better-connected of these seats is South Wymondham, which is one of three seats covering the town of Wymondham on the main road from Norwich to Newmarket. As well as the southern fringes of the town itself and Wymondham railway station, South Wymondham ward takes in a number of villages to the south of the town which are or were in the Wymondham parish; in the last few years some of these settlements have declared independence as the new parish of Spooner Row.
Immediately to the east of Wymondham, and to the south of Norwich, is the large rural ward of Mulbarton and Stoke Holy Cross which this column has visited quite recently. Mulbarton is the largest village in the ward, while Stoke Holy Cross is perhaps best known as the original home of Colman’s mustard.
The local authority here is South Norfolk council, which is still Conservative-controlled following the May 2023 local elections but only just: the current composition has 24 Conservative councillors against 9 Lib Dems plus these two vacancies, 9 Labour and 2 independents. The Tories will be hoping for a gain or two in these by-elections to give their position some breathing space. The Conservatives also control Norfolk county council, while boundary changes for the next general election will unite both wards within the South Norfolk parliamentary seat represented by long-serving Tory backbencher Richard Bacon. The South Norfolk seat is being heavily redrawn for the next general election, and Wymondham will be transferred into the constituency from its current location in Mid Norfolk.
South Wymondham ward has voted safely for the Lib Dem slate at both elections since the current ward boundaries were drawn up in 2019. Shares of the vote in May were 47% for the Liberal Democrats, 28% for the Conservatives and 25% for Labour. Mulbarton and Stoke Holy Cross split its three seats between two Conservatives and a Lib Dem in 2019. The Lib Dem councillor resigned in 2022 and the party held the resulting by-election, then went on to gain the two Conservative seats in 2023 by a 48–35 margin.
The two wards together roughly correspond to the Forehoe division of Norfolk county council, which was safely Conservative when it was last contested in May 2021. There are corners of three other Norfolk county council divisions voting today, of which two are Conservative-held. The other county division, West Depwade, was the subject of a by-election in July which saw the Conservatives lose a safe county council seat to the former Green Party MEP Catherine Rowett. Rowett’s division includes the small parish (715 electors) of Ashwellthorpe and Fundenhall, which is part of Mulbarton and Stoke Holy Cross ward.
In July Liberal Democrat councillor Julian Halls passed away after a short illness, not long after being re-elected for a second term as district councillor for South Wymondham ward. He was also a Wymondham town councillor, and the by-election to replace him there will be combined with this one. Councillor Halls’ death has had some knock-on effects, with town councillor Julian Fulcher having to step up to take over Halls’ role as chair of Wymondham’s finance committee. Fulcher was also elected in May to the district council for Mulbarton and Stoke Holy Cross ward, and he has a full-time job on top of all that. He found himself unable to juggle all his responsibilities: something had to give, and Fulcher resigned his district council seat.
Hoping for the wheel of fortune to turn in her favour is Carmina McConnell, the defending Lib Dem candidate for South Wymondham. The Conservatives will be hoping to make lemonade with their selection of Martyn Lemon, a semi-retired health and safety officer who sat on Spooner Row parish council until his resignation in June — the parish council’s website is a bit of mess at the time of writing, and it appears that the council has been rather consumed by a row over who should control the website. The Labour candidate is Lowell Doheny, a teacher who sits on Wymondham town council. Victoria Walters completes the South Wymondham ballot paper for the Green Party.
In Mulbarton and Stoke Holy Cross the defending Lib Dem candidate is Robert McClenning, who was an unsuccessful candidate for his home ward of Forncett in May. The Conservative nomination has gone to former mayor of Wymondham Tony Holden, who lost his seat on the district council in May. Labour have selected Geraldine Smith-Cullen; former Conservative ward councillor Nigel Legg, who lost his seat here in May after attracting controversy for saying that affordable housing could bring “feral youths” to communities, is standing as an independent; and Claire Sparkes is the Green candidate. This column likes to highlight pubs which do their bit for democracy by acting as polling stations, so a shoutout is due to the Bird In Hand in Wreningham.
Mulbarton and Stoke Holy Cross
Parliamentary constituency: South Norfolk
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): South Norfolk
Norfolk county council division: Forehoe (most), Henstead (Stoke Holy Cross parish), West Depwade (Ashwellthorpe and Fundenhall parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Norwich
Postcode districts: NR4, NR9, NR14, NR15, NR16, NR18
Tony Holden (C)
Nigel Legg (Ind)
Robert McClenning (LD)
Geraldine Smith-Cullen (Lab)
Claire Sparkes (Grn)
May 2023 result LD 1460/1342/1307 C 1055/893/819 Lab 497/467/399
May 2022 by-election LD 1202 C 969 Lab 402 Grn 183 Reform UK 107
May 2019 result C 1275/1040/915 LD 981/786/692 Lab 470/469/360
Previous results in detail
South Wymondham
Parliamentary constituency: Mid Norfolk
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): South Norfolk
Norfolk county council division: Forehoe (most), Wymondham (part of Wymondham)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Norwich
Postcode district: NR18
Lowell Doheny (Lab)
Martyn Lemon (C)
Carmina McConnell (LD)
Victoria Walters (Grn)
May 2023 result LD 752/661 C 443/356 Lab 392/313
May 2019 result LD 712/639 C 457/448
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
