Previewing the four local by-elections of 21st September 2023
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Four by-elections on 21st September 2023:
Newport Pagnell South
Milton Keynes council, Buckinghamshire; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Scot Balazs.
Two of our by-elections today are in wards in the south of England which have been the subject of a lot of new housebuilding. The New City of Milton Keynes is the new housing scheme to end all new housing schemes, and that has left its mark on the census in an unusual way. Milton Keynes has England and Wales’ largest concentration of homes in shared ownership, with five of the top ten wards in England and Wales for that form of tenure being here; Newport Pagnell South is not one of those, but its 4.7% of households in shared ownership still places it within the top 80 wards in England and Wales.
There has been manufacturing in Newport Pagnell for longer than Milton Keynes has existed. In the 1950s the town became home to the Aston Martin car factory; Aston Martin cars are now assembled in Warwickshire, but the firm still has some manufacturing presence here. Back in the day many Aston Martin owners would have tried their cars out on the adjoining M1 motorway, which opened in 1959 (making it older than Milton Keynes) and originally had no speed limit.
Manufacturing from a different age can still be found in Newport Pagnell in the form of William Cowley, the UK’s last supplier of vellum. Until 2017 Cowley’s played a major role in the UK’s democracy, because the official archive copies of Acts of Parliament were printed on vellum until then; this wasn’t just for the sake of tradition, but because vellum lasts a lot longer than paper does. Since 2000 the House of Lords, which pays the bill for this service, had been trying to cut costs by ending the vellum contract; they eventually got their way in 2017 over the protests of the Commons, with a compromise being reached that future archive copies of Acts would be printed on paper and bound in vellum.
There was another reason that the Commons were unhappy with this move. Newport Pagnell forms part of the Milton Keynes North constituency, which has been in Conservative hands since its creation in 2010 but is definitely a key marginal seat where the MP — who is currently first-term Tory backbencher Ben Everitt — will want to be seen to promote local jobs and industry, whichever party they represent.
Milton Keynes may be a key Tory-Labour battleground in general elections, but local elections here are more complicated. The city council has been hung since 2006, with all three major Westminster parties having strong representation; the current score is 27 Labour councillors, 15 Lib Dems, and 14 Conservatives plus this vacancy. Labour look well-placed to take a majority here in the 2024 local elections, but for now they govern in coalition with the Lib Dems.
One of the New City’s longest-standing Liberal Democrat wards is Newport Pagnell South, which has voted for the Lib Dems in all but one election over the last 21 years. The May 2023 result here was fairly typical: 46% for the Liberal Democrats, 34% for the Conservatives, 16% for Labour. The only recent year in which the Lib Dems failed to win here was 2021, when the ward returned the Conservative candidate Scot Balazs.
Unfortunately, this by-election has come out of the Councillors Behaving Badly file. On 1st February, Councillor Balazs caused a road accident: he veered across the road, and crashed into a van travelling in the opposite direction. The van, which was owned by Bluebell Flowers, a florist’s shop in Newport Pagnell, was a write-off. Balazs was an uninsured driver, so Bluebell Flowers never received any compensation for the loss of the van.
In May Councillor Balazs pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention, driving without insurance and driving alone while holding only a provisional driving licence. He was fined £660 and given six penalty points on his licence. For some reason, the case was heard by High Wycombe magistrates rather than in the New City, which meant that the Milton Keynes local press initially missed the story. It took until August, when Bluebell Flowers announced that their shop was closing down as a result of the financial loss caused by the crash, for the Milton Keynes Citizen to start asking questions. Once the Citizen had found out about Councillor Balazs’s conviction they approached the leader of Milton Keynes’ Conservative group for comment; it appears that this whole affair came as news to them, too. Within the hour, Scot Balazs had tendered his resignation from the council.
The difficult task of defending the resulting by-election for the Conservatives has fallen to Ade Adeliyi, who has been an unsuccessful candidate in the last three Milton Keynes local elections; in May he contested Bletchley West ward. A loss for Adeliyi would see the Conservatives fall to third place on the council behind the Lib Dems, who topped the poll here in May; they have selected Newport Pagnell town councillor Tony Oyakhire. The Labour candidate is Saskia Soden, a 21-year-old student who is currently reading philosophy, politics and economics at the LSE. Also standing are independent candidate Lynn Cocksedge (he stood here in May on the Reform UK ticket), Gary Lloyd for the Green Party and Jane Whild for the Women’s Equality Party.
Before we leave Newport Pagnell, I should say that a fundraising page has been set up to raise money to buy Bluebell Flowers a new van. I’ve chipped in with a donation myself. If, like me, you’ve been disgusted by this story and want to help get a local business back on track, here’s the link: (link).
Parliamentary constituency: Milton Keynes North
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Milton Keynes North
ONS Travel to Work Area: Milton Keynes
Postcode districts: MK14, MK15, MK16, MK46
Ade Adeliyi (C)
Lynn Cocksedge (Ind)
Gary Lloyd (Grn)
Tony Oyakhire (LD)
Saskia Soden (Lab)
Jane Whild (Women’s Equality Party)
May 2023 result LD 1475 C 1098 Lab 510 Reform UK 120
May 2022 result LD 1620 C 1068 Lab 520
May 2021 result C 1523 LD 1375 Lab 502 Grn 207
May 2019 result LD 1523 C 622 Lab 434 Grn 241
May 2018 double vacancy LD 1533/1433 C 858/753 Lab 637/628 Grn 151 UKIP 91
May 2016 result LD 1766 C 645 Lab 502 UKIP 331
May 2015 result LD 2328 C 1938 Lab 1006 UKIP 765 Grn 334
May 2014 result LD 1433/1431/1423 C 670/653/600 UKIP 582/561/510 Grn 358 Lab 347/295/254
Previous results in detail
Highwoods
Colchester council, Essex; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Catherine Bickersteth.
Milton Keynes may be the New City but it certainly has no monopoly on new housing in the wider south of England. As we now see by travelling east to reach one of the newest parts of England’s self-proclaimed oldest city.
The Highwoods ward covers a lot of rather new housing on the northern edge of Colchester, running along the main road towards Ipswich and centred on the Gilberd School. This secondary school was named after William Gilberd (or Gilbert), a sixteenth-century physicist who did a lot of important early work on magnetism. Famous former pupils of the Gilberd include the former Norfolk county councillor and Blur drummer Dave Rowntree and the portrait painter Richard Stone, whose 1992 portrait of Elizabeth II was chosen by the BBC for their announcement of her death last year. That portrait was commissioned by Colchester council, to mark the 800th anniversary of the royal charter which was granted to the town by King Richard the Lionheart, and it is now on display in the Moot Hall in Colchester.
Unfortunately, the Gilberd School is in trouble right now. For some reason the current issues over unsafe RAAC concrete in school buildings have hit Essex particularly hard, and the Gilberd is one of 54 schools in the county council area (out of around 550) affected by this issue. At the time of writing, the school is open but the whole of Year 7 has had to move to a neighbouring academy.
RAAC or no RAAC the Gilberd School is a lot older than the housing around it, with much of this ward’s housing dating from the 1980s, the 1990s or the 21st century. We can see this in the age profile of the 2011 census return for Highwoods ward, which has large peaks in the under-16 and 30–44 age groups: this is a ward of young families in new-build homes, many of which are mortgaged or privately rented.
One family which had dominated the area’s politics since before a lot of the houses here were built was the Oxfords. Gerard Oxford was elected in 2000 as a councillor for the Mile End ward of Colchester, which covered this area until Highwoods became a ward of its own in 2002. In that year he was joined on the council by his wife Beverley. Originally they were Liberal Democrat councillors, but later in 2002 the Oxfords left that party and went independent. In 2007 they were joined on the council by their son Phil, and for the following 15 years Highwoods ward was represented by a full slate of Oxfords.
The Oxfords often found themselves holding the balance of power on Colchester council, which has been hung since 1998 apart from a single year of Conservative majority control in 2007–08. The Conservatives became the largest party on the council again in 2015, but for much of the next few years they were shut out of power by a coalition arrangement between the Lib Dems, Labour and the Oxfords. In 2021, however, the Oxfords changed horses and formed a coalition with the Conservatives which controlled a bare majority on the council: 26 of the 51 seats.
At other levels of government this area has split representation. Highwoods ward is part of the Colchester parliamentary seat, which has been held by the Conservatives’ Will Quince since 2015; he is a junior minister in the health and social care department. Quince is standing down at the next general election leaving an open seat; Colchester has only voted Labour once, in 1945, and was Lib Dem-held from 1997 to 2015, but will likely be on Labour’s target list for the next general election. The ward is represented by the Lib Dems on Essex county council, as part of the Mile End and Highwoods division.
The Oxford family’s dominance of Highwoods’ local elections ended last year. Phil Oxford stood down at the May 2022 Colchester council elections, and his open seat surprisingly went to Labour who had never previously finished higher than third in this ward. Gerard and Beverley Oxford then resigned from the council in October 2022; Gerard is a wheelchair user, and the Oxfords got into a row with the council over disability access to the town hall. The resulting double by-election for both of their seats (Andrew’s Previews 2022, page 571) finished in a split decision, with the two seats going to Labour’s Catherine Bickersteth (a former school headteacher) and the Lib Dems’ Alison Jay (the chair of the community council for Myland parish, which covers part of the ward). Jay was re-elected for a second term in May this year, with shares of the vote being 47% for the Lib Dems, 33% for Labour and 17% for the Conservatives.
Colchester council continues to be very balanced. The Conservatives are the largest party with 19 councillors, but they are well short of a majority and, with the Oxfords now off the scene, have no allies. At the time of the December 2022 double by-election there was a traffic-light coalition running the city under Liberal Democrat leadership; but this now seems to have broken down, and the Lib Dem leader of the council now runs a minority administration with 15 councillors. The Labour group of 14 councillors plus this vacancy are in opposition, together with two Greens.
Labour are defending this Highwoods by-election because their by-election winner Catherine Bickersteth stood down in July, just seven months after her election. She is moving away from the city. Her successor will take over the three-year term which originally went to Gerard Oxford in 2021, so whoever wins this by-election will need to seek re-election in May 2024.
The difficult task of holding this seat for Labour falls to Gary Braddy, who is a community councillor for Myland parish which covers part of the ward; he is a Unite rep, and has previously contested Highwoods ward in 2016 and 2018. A loss for Braddy would see Labour fall to third place on the council behind the Lib Dems, who topped the poll here in May; their candidate is Simon Appleton. The Conservatives have selected Paul Smith, who has lived in the area for thirty years and brought his children up here; a win for him could cause some entertaining confusion, because the Lib Dems already have a Colchester councillor (and ex-council leader) who is also called Paul Smith. The Conservative Paul Smith completes a ballot paper of three candidates in the Highwoods by-election, all of whom give addresses within the ward.
Parliamentary constituency: Colchester
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Colchester
Essex county council division: Mile End and Highwoods
ONS Travel to Work Area: Colchester
Postcode district: CO4
Simon Appleton (LD)
Gary Braddy (Lab)
Paul Smith (C)
May 2023 result LD 1029 Lab 722 C 375 Grn 83
December 2022 by-election Lab 653/501 LD 618/366 C 430/413
May 2022 result Lab 833 C 773 LD 435
May 2021 result Ind 780 C 664 Lab 401 LD 188 Grn 131 Reform UK 64
May 2019 result Ind 1119 C 409 Lab 247 LD 196 Grn 155
May 2018 result Ind 926 C 563 Lab 314 LD 161 Grn 75
May 2016 result Ind 1126/1038/954 C 690/588/522 Lab 287/285/283 LD 273 UKIP 251 Grn 139/92/91
Previous results in detail
Bricknell
Kingston upon Hull council, East Riding; caused by the disqualification of Labour councillor Sarah Harper-Riches.
We now travel north to one of England’s least-visited cities. That’s a shame, because Kingston upon Hull has a surprising amount to offer to the casual visitor; particularly the city centre, which has some rather handsome areas. However, it’s normally the job of this column to write about less-heralded areas, which is how we come to Bricknell.
Bricknell ward lies on the north-western edge of the city, centered on the dual-carriageway Bricknell Avenue and running up to the point where the Hull city limits merge imperceptibly into Cottingham. The southern corner of the ward is occupied by the former Ideal Standard factory, which manufactured bathroom fittings and fixtures on this site until quite recently; Ideal Standard still have offices and a showroom here, but it’s no longer a factory shop. The eastern corner of the ward contains Hull’s most expensive housing: this is Newland Park, located just to the south of the University of Hull campus and home for many years to the university’s librarian and noted poet Philip Larkin. Among the 1930s to 1950s housing which predominates in Bricknell ward can be found Hull’s Northern Cemetery, the Kelvin Hall secondary school (whose most notable former pupil is probably the Hull City and England football player Nick Barmby) and the adjacent Wyke Sixth Form College, which takes its name from a former name for the city.
There are two MPs currently in the Commons who took their A-levels at Wyke Sixth Form College, Labour’s Emma Hardy (who represents Hull West and Hessle and was recently promoted to the party’s junior frontbench team), and the Conservatives’ Andrew Percy. Hull city council is a Tory-free zone now, with all current councillors having been elected as either Lib Dem or Labour; the score currently stands at 32–24 to the Lib Dems, plus this vacancy.
This two-party duopoly is of fairly recent origin. The city’s last Conservative councillor was political veteran and former Lord Mayor John Fareham, who had represented Bricknell ward since 1983 and led the city’s Conservative group since 1987; he lost his seat to Labour candidate Sarah Harper in 2022, the most recent time this ward was contested, by a margin of 53–36.
That was a good Labour performance, given that for some years previously Bricknell had been the city’s last Tory redoubt. Andrew Percy MP started his political career by being elected as a Bricknell ward councillor in 2000, serving for ten years alongside Fareham before leaving the city council to become the Conservative MP for Brigg and Goole. That constituency will disappear at the next general election, at which Percy will retire.
Neither Percy nor Hardy represent Bricknell ward in Parliament; it’s part of the Hull North constituency which has been in Labour hands for decades. Dame Diana Johnson, who has represented the seat since 2005 and previously sat on Tower Hamlets council and (briefly) on the London Assembly, is currently chair of the Commons Home Affairs select committee. Her constituency is undersized, and will expand outside the city (and be renamed Hull North and Cottingham) for the next general election; that should improve the Conservative position in the seat but probably not by enough to make it competitive, particularly in the current political climate.
A couple of future Tory MPs have tried and failed to defeat Johnson here in recent years, including an extremely young Dehenna Davison who finished third in Hull North in 2015 while she was a 21-year-old reading politics at Hull University. Davison went on to marry then-councillor John Fareham in 2018 in a wedding which was covered by the Channel 4 reality TV series Bride and Prejudice: at the time she was 24 and he was 59. The marriage didn’t last, and by the time Davison became MP for Bishop Auckland in December 2019 they had separated.
Davison’s ex-partner John Fareham now has a chance to get back onto Hull council rather more quickly than he might have expected, as a result of a rather controversial by-election. Sarah Harper-Riches, as she now is, gave birth to her first child earlier this year; a combination of this and ME means that she had not attended a meeting of the council since the start of the year, and in August she was disqualified under the six-month non-attendance rule.
The local press coverage of this disqualification simmers with a sense of unfairness, and Harper-Riches has clearly been badly let down both by the council and by the city’s Labour group. The council have no discretion in her disqualification — the rules are what they are — but the Labour group could have avoided this by-election by praoctively keeping tabs on the attendance of their councillors and applying for leave of absence for Harper-Riches before the six months ran out. Instead of which, it appears that Labour lazily assumed the council would proactively warn Harper-Riches about her attendance instead; this would also have been a good idea, but Hull council are not obliged to do this. As a result of this failure by anybody involved to be proactive, the returning officer for Hull now has a by-election to organise at a rather large cost to the city’s council-tax payers.
Defending the Bricknell by-election for Labour is local resident Sharon Hofman. For the Conservatives, John Fareham is seeking to get back the seat which he lost last year. Also standing are Kevin Paulson for the Green Party, Lucy Lennon for the Lib Dems (who have a majority on the city council, but finished fourth and last here in 2022), and James Steele for the regionalist Yorkshire Party.
Parliamentary constituency: Hull North
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Hull North and Cottingham
ONS Travel to Work Area: Hull
Postcode district: HU5
John Fareham (C)
Sharon Hofman (Lab)
Lucy Lennon (LD)
Kevin Paulson (Grn)
James Steele (Yorkshire Party)
May 2022 result Lab 1188 C 806 Grn 134 LD 124
May 2021 result Lab 1126 C 964 Grn 169 LD 102
May 2018 result C 1172/1141 Lab 1091/993 LD 117/110 UKIP 66 Yorkshire Party 57
Previous results in detail
Girvan and South Carrick
South Ayrshire council, Scotland; caused by the resignation of Scottish National Party councillor Peter Henderson.
Let’s finish by travelling north of the border. We’ve come to the southernmost ward of Ayrshire, which covers a very large and sparsely-populated area. The only settlement here of any size is Girvan, a small fishing port and minor seaside resort on the coast of the Firth of Clyde with a population of a little over 6,000. Girvan is big enough and remote enough to be recognised by the ONS as the centre of its own Travel to Work Area, which has the same boundaries as this ward.
Fishing isn’t the main industry here now: the town’s major export is instead alcohol from the very large Girvan distillery, which makes Grant’s blended whisky and Hendrick’s gin. For non-alcoholics, Nestlé’s have a factory here which makes milk chocolate crumb; this is shipped over the border to York where it’s turned into KitKats, Yorkie bars and other Nestlé chocolate brands. Girvan’s tourist trade is dwarfed by the traffic passing through: the town is located on the main road and railway line from Glasgow to the Northern Ireland ferries at Cairnryan, and with no bypass here the road goes straight through the town centre.
The large rural area around Girvan is the southern end of the former earldom of Carrick, which was founded in the twelfth century and is still going today: since 1469 the heir to the Scottish throne (currently Prince William) has held the lesser title of Earl of Carrick. The earldom originally merged into the Scottish crown on the accession of Robert the Bruce, who according to legend was born a few miles north of Girvan at Turnberry Castle; history records that he was certainly raised there.
Not much remains of Turnberry Castle these days, but the golf course which surrounds it is another matter. Turnberry golf course has hosted the Open Championship four times, in 1977, 1986, 1994 and 2009; the first Open here is remembered for the so-called Duel in the Sun, in which Tom Watson eventually defeated Jack Nicklaus by one stroke.
It could be a very long time before we get scenes like that at Turnberry again. In 2014 the course fell into the hands of Donald Trump, who is not a popular figure within the R&A — the governing body which organises the Open. For some years thereafter the R&A found excuses not to hold the Open at Turnberry again, but after the storming of the US Capitol in 2021 the governing body came clean and stated in so many words that Turnberry would not host any R&A championship while it is still linked to Trump. Good on them.
The reason there is a golf course at Turnberry in the first place is down to the third Marquess of Ailsa, who owned the stately home of Culzean Castle a few miles further up the coast. This eighteenth century country house used to appear on the Royal Bank of Scotland’s £5 notes, and has been immortalised in film as the castle of Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man. It also has links to a former US President: the fifth Marquess of Ailsa donated Culzean Castle to the National Trust for Scotland in 1945, on condition that they kept an apartment free in the castle for the use of General Dwight Eisenhower. Ike stayed here on a number of occasions, including once while he was US president.
The Marquess of Ailsa takes his title from and still owns Ailsa Craig, a rocky island in the Firth of Clyde located about ten miles west of Girvan. Ailsa Craig is a sanctuary for birds with no permanent human population, although people do come here from the mainland every so often for the purpose of quarrying: the island’s granite is of such high quality that it is one of only two locations in the world where curling stones are sourced from. (The other location is Trefor Quarry, in Wales.)
Girvan and South Carrick ward elects three South Ayrshire councillors. The current ward boundaries date from 2017, and both South Ayrshire council elections here since then have returned independent candidate Alex Clark at the top of the poll, the SNP’s Peter Henderson and one councillor for the Conservatives; in 2022 that was Gavin Scott, who defeated his running-mate Linda Kane for the final seat by just 19 votes. First preferences here in 2022 were 31% for Clark, 28% for the two Conservative candidates and 25% for the SNP.
The ward is represented in the two Parliaments by the Scottish National Party. Allan Dorans MP, who was born within the ward in the village of Dailly, gained the Westminster seat of Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock from the Conservatives in 2019. In Holyrood this ward is part of the rather more left-wing seat of Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley which has returned three different SNP MSPs in the last three Scottish Parliament elections; the incumbent since 2021 has been Elena Whitham, who is a junior minister in the Scottish Government.
The SNP are defending this by-election from third place, after Peter Henderson retired from the council on health grounds at the end of June. He had represented this ward since 2017, and was leader of the council going into the 2022 election at the head of a coalition with Labour and independent councillors; a renewal of this coalition could not be negotiated after the election, and the Conservatives took control of South Ayrshire as a minority administration. The Tories are the largest party on the council: the current composition has 10 Conservatives, 8 SNP councillors plus this vacancy, 5 Labour and 4 independents.
Defending for the SNP is Joseph McLaughlin, who is a community education worker. There is no independent candidate this time so Alex Clark’s votes are up for grabs. Last time round the SNP did best out of Clark’s surplus, but this may be counteracted by Unionist transfers lining up behind the Conservative candidate Alan Lamont, who is a former policeman; Allan Faulds of Ballot Box Scotland has looked at last year’s ballot papers in his preview of the ward (link), and his conclusion is that an SNP versus Conservative head-to-head here in May 2022 would have been very close. Also hoping to make it to the top spot are Nicola Saxton for Labour, Denise Sommerville for the Alba party and Jamie Ross for the Liberal Democrats. This is a Scottish local by-election, so Votes at 16 and the Alternative Vote will be in operation: please rank the candidates on your ballot paper in order of preference.
Westminster constituency: Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock
Holyrood constituency: Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley
ONS Travel to Work Area: Girvan
Postcode districts: DG8, KA19, KA26
Alan Lamont (C)
Joseph McLaughlin (SNP)
Jamie Ross (LD)
Nicola Saxton (Lab)
Denise Sommerville (Alba)
May 2022 first preferences Ind 1277 C 1136 SNP 1008 Lab 358 Ind 230 Alba 47
May 2017 first preferences Ind 1502 C 1211 SNP 876 Ind 429 Lab 428 Ind 85
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
