Previewing the Newham and Cambridge by-elections of 23rd November 2023

Andrew Teale
Britain Elects
Published in
10 min readNov 23, 2023

All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order

Two by-elections on 23rd November 2023:

Plaistow North

Newham council, London; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Daniel Lee-Phakoe.

Newham, Plaistow North

Our two polls today are in urban wards, and they don’t got much more urban than this particular corner of East London. Plaistow (pronunciation guide: “Plah-stow”) can be found on the District Line of the Underground, not far beyond West Ham, and it’s one of those London suburbs whose history reads like the stuff of urban legend. Even the name is up for dispute: “stow” is an Old English word for “place”, but the “Plai” has been variously interpreted as a reference to the former lords of the manor (the de Plaiz family) or a place where plays — specifically miracle plays — were performed.

Whatever the history of this particular place, Plaistow really got going with urbanisation and industrialisation in the 19th century. Upton Park underground station, at the eastern end of Plaistow North ward, opened in 1877 at the behest of a local property developer, and is now served by the District and Hammersmith and City lines of the Underground; Plaistow underground station is just outside the boundary of this ward. Healthcare was a major employer here, with Plaistow becoming home to a number of hospitals which eventually merged into Plaistow Fever Hospital; this closed in 2006, and its site has been redeveloped for housing. The new houses are of mixed tenure, as is Plaistow North ward’s housing stock as a whole: about two-thirds of households here are rented, with an even split between social and private renting.

It says something for just how densely populated this area was in the early twentieth century that in the inter-war period the old West Ham county borough had four members of Parliament. The result of this was a Plaistow parliamentary seat, which was one of the safest Labour seats in the country throughout its 1918–50 existence. Its first contest in 1918 set the tone: trade unionist Will Thorne, who had represented the predecessor seat of West Ham South since 1906, polled almost 95% of the vote against Arnold Lupton, a mining engineer and prominent antivaxxer who had spent time in prison during the First World War for distributing pacifist leaflets. Although Lupton had previously been the Liberal MP for Sleaford from 1906 to 1910, he did not get the party’s endorsement on this occasion and stood as an independent Liberal. Will Thorne was re-elected six more times as MP for Plaistow — in the Labour nadir year of 1931 he was elected unopposed — and eventually retired from the Commons in 1945, when he was 87 years old. It was during his time as Plaistow’s MP, in 1924, that he founded the trade union which we now call the GMB.

The single West Ham constituency we have today is just as safe for Labour as the Plaistow seat of old, and it’s been a safe berth for Labour’s Lyn Brown since she took over the seat from Tony Banks in 2001. Brown has been on the Labour frontbench continuously since 2018, currently holding the title of shadow minister for Africa; she was briefly shadow home secretary on an acting basis in 2017, covering for Diane Abbott who was on sick leave. Strong population growth this century means that West Ham and East Ham are now some of the largest constituencies in the UK by enrolment, and Lyn Brown’s seat will be rather severely cut down for the next election with the new name of “West Ham and Beckton”.

The traditional boundary between West and East Ham is Green Street, part of which is now the eastern boundary of this ward following boundary changes in 2022; this meant that Queen’s Market transferred from Boleyn ward (and the East Ham constituency) into Plaistow North ward (but still the East Ham constituency: the new parliamentary seats were drawn using the old ward boundaries). Plaistow North is the only Newham ward to straddle the District Line, and the northern part of the ward around Selwyn primary school has rather confusing boundaries which cut through residential streets seemingly at random.

The London Borough of Newham is one of the safest councils in the country for Labour, who won every seat at the 2010, 2014 and 2018 council elections and have held the Newham elected mayoralty since it was established in 2002. In 2022 Plaistow North ward returned the Labour slate with a 67–17 lead over the Green Party. But the Newham redwash was broken in 2022 when the brand-new ward covering the Olympic Park voted Green, and then Labour lost a by-election in Boleyn ward to independent candidate Mehmood Mirza in July this year.

Which adds a bit of extra interest to the Plaistow North by-election, which borders Boleyn ward. In addition, this is the first local by-election where the current nastiness between Israel and Hamas could be a significant factor. Plaistow North ward is 43.4% Muslim, a figure which just creeps into the top 100 wards in England and Wales for Islam.

Labour’s local government base, particularly the Muslim part thereof, has been in some turmoil over the last month as a result of the conflict in Gaza. Defections have cost the party control of Burrnley council, where the Labour council leader — after calling for Keir Starmer’s resignation — walked out of the party, took half of the Labour group with him, and has formed a new coalition of the Labour splinter group, the Green Party and the Lib Dems to run Burrnley. Labour have also lost their majority on Oxford city council for the first time in many years.

The Labour party have to defend this by-election — not surprisingly, this is Newham after all — following the resignation of Daniel Lee-Phakoe who had represented Plaistow North ward since 2018. His resignation was for personal reasons, and he had been on sick leave for some time before leaving the council.

The defending Labour campaign has got off to a bad start by apparently misspelling their candidate’s name on his nomination papers: he is listed on the ballot paper as Aktharul Alam but his first name in fact appears to be Akthural. He is from the local Bengali community. The Greens have selected Zahra Kheyre, who is an autism campaigner. The only other party to stand here in 2022 were the Conservatives whose candidate is James Clifford. Three independent candidates, all ex-Labour, put in nomination papers but one of them has withdrawn and will not be on the ballot; of the two who remain, Sophia Naqvi is allied with independent Boleyn ward councillor Mehmood Mirza, while Anas Khan is alleged to be a spoiler candidate looking to split Naqvi’s vote. We’ll see if there’s any substance in that accusation when the votes come out of the boxes. David Terrar completes the ballot paper for the Lib Dems.

Parliamentary constituency: West Ham (most); East Ham (part previously in Boleyn ward)
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): West Ham and Beckton (most); East Ham (part previously in Boleyn ward)
London Assembly constituency: City and East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Polling districts: E13, E15

Akhtarul Alam (Lab)
James Clifford (C‌)
Zahra Kheyre (Grn)
Anas Khan (Ind)
Sophia Naqvi (Ind)
David Terrar (LD)

May 2022 result Lab 2151/2022/1936 Grn 560/518/390 C 523/522/390
Previous results in detail

Queen Edith’s

Cambridge council; caused by the resignation of independent councillor Sam Davies.

Cambridge, Queen Edith’s

For our other by-election this week we have come to the southern edge of the city of Cambridge, to a ward named after a Queen Edith. But which one?

Well, back in 1066 this area was owned by Edith the Fair or Edith Swanneck, a very wealthy woman who may have been the wife and was certainly the mistress of King Harold Godwinson. When Harold was killed at the Battle of Hastings, Edith Swanneck identified his body. But Edith the Fair was not Harold’s queen: that title went instead to Ealdgyth or Edith of Mercia, who had no known connection with Cambridge. Edith of Mercia was at different points in her life a queen of two kingdoms, because she had previously been married to Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, king of Gwynedd and Powys; Gruffydd was the only Welsh king to unite the whole of Wales, an achievement which died with him in 1063.

One or possibly both of those Ediths gave their name to Queen Edith’s Way, a road in southern Cambridge which has borne this name since the 1920s and gave its name to this ward. Most of the housing in this area lies off either Queen Edith’s Way or Hills Road, which runs north towards the city centre.

In the 2021 census, Queen Edith’s ward ranked 11th in England and Wales for those working in professional occupations (49.4%), 20th for those working in the health or social work sector (27.1%) and 69th for those working in education (18.8%). It’s also around 24% student.

The reasons for this economic makeup are pretty easy to see on the map. Off the Hills Road we have one of the constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. Homerton College, which moved here from the Homerton district of Hackney in 1881, is one of Cambridge’s largest colleges with around 600 undergraduates and 750 postgraduates on its roll; it has traditionally specialised in teacher training. It is technically the University’s newest college, not having been awarded full college status until 2010. For those who aren’t old enough to get to university yet, Queen Edith’s ward also has a large number of sixth-form colleges: between them, their enrolment covers more than half of Cambridgeshire’s A-level students.

The south-west corner of the ward is one of the UK’s largest centres for healthcare and medical research. Here we find the sprawling site of Addenbrooke’s Hospital, the Royal Papworth Hospital, the Rosie maternity hospital and the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. Many of the major players in medical research have bases here, including AstraZeneca who recently moved their global headquarters to a striking new building on the campus.

Which makes it appropriate that for many years this area was represented in Parliament by the Conservatives’ health lead. Queen Edith’s is the the only Cambridge ward which is not covered by the Cambridge parliamentary seat; instead it’s part of the South Cambridgeshire constituency which was represented from 1997 to 2015 by Andrew Lansley. Lansley was the shadow health secretary from 2004 until he became full health secretary from 2010 to 2012, a length of tenure which cabinet ministers today can only dream of. However, his tenure in government is now remembered for the controversial Health and Social Care Act 2012.

Andrew Lansley retired to the Lords in 2015 and passed a safe Conservative seat over to Heidi Allen, whose parliamentary career was derailed by Brexit; she was one of the Conservative MPs to join the Independent Group or Change UK or whatever it was they were called that week. Allen eventually ended up in the Liberal Democrats before standing down in 2019; her Tory successor Anthony Browne, who was born in this ward, was elected only narrowly against a strong Liberal Democrat challenge. Browne joined the Conservative frontbench in last week’s reshuffle: he is now a junior transport minister, with his portfolio covering aviation, decarbonisation of transport and the future of transport.

The South Cambridgeshire result in December 2019 rather reflects the politics of South Cambridgeshire district, which has a strong Liberal Democrat majority. Queen Edith’s ward is part of the city of Cambridge, which has a Labour majority on the council, but since the Cambridge Tories collapsed in the 1990s this ward has also voted Lib Dem with a couple of exceptions. Labour won the ward in 2012, but their councillor fell out with the Labour group and resigned a couple of years later; the Lib Dems got the seat back in the resulting by-election. And in 2021, when all three seats for Queen Edith’s ward were up on slightly realigned boundaries, independent candidate and local community organiser Sam Davies was elected at the top of the poll with a massive personal vote. Davies was the only independent candidate to be elected to Cambridge city council that year.

Cambridge, 2023

The Liberal Democrats still hold the other two seats in Queen Edith’s ward, topping the poll last May with 38% of the vote against 24% for Labour and 19% for the Conservatives. That was a good score for the Tories, who campaigned against a proposed and now-dropped citywide congestion charge; the Conservatives went on to win a by-election to the city council in July in King’s Hedges ward, very much against the national trend.

Independent councillor Sam Davies is moving out of the city, and she resigned just in time for a by-election to held before her term expires in May 2024. So whoever wins this by-election will not be able to rest for long.

There is no new independent candidate to succeed Davies, so we have a free-for-all! The Liberal Democrats may well be best-placed to get back the seat which Davies gained from them in 2021; they have selected Immy Blackburn-Horgan, who works at Addenbrooke’s and was a co-founder of the Redcross Areas Residents Association whose area roughly covers this ward. Labour have reselected Thomas Ron who fought this ward in May; he has recently finished a PhD at York University and is now on the staff of the Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner. The Conservative candidate is David Carmona. Oliver Fisher completes the ballot paper for the Green Party.

Parliamentary constituency: South Cambridgeshire
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): South Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire county council division: Queen Edith’s (most), Trumpington (Addenbrooke’s Hospital and Homerton College)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cambridge
Polling districts: CB1, CB2, CB22

Immy Blackburn-Horgan (LD)
David Carmona (C‌)
Oliver Fisher (Grn)
Thomas Ron (Lab)

May 2023 result LD 1131 Lab 709 C 580 Grn 306 Ind 261
May 2022 result LD 1202 Lab 881 Grn 396 C 382
May 2021 result Ind 1874/536 LD 1074/816/709 Lab 647/647/554 C 512/279/199 Grn 473/377/318
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

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