Previewing the Normanby, Redcar and Cleveland by-election of 22nd December 2022
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
One by-election on 22nd December 2022:
Normanby
Redcar and Cleveland council, North Yorkshire; caused by the death of Labour councillor Christine Foley-McCormack.
There are three days to go to Christmas, and we have time to bring you one more council by-election to round off the year 2022.
Normanby is a name which has been passed down through aristocracy for years. There is a Marquessate of Normanby, created in 1838 for Constantine Phipps who was at the time Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Phipps was a Whig politician, who served as Home Secretary in the Melbourne government of 1839–41; he had previously held the title of Earl of Mulgrave, and his family seat was at Mulgrave Castle near Whitby. Mulgrave Castle is still in the hands of the fifth and present Marquess of Normanby, who is also called Constantine Phipps.
The Normanby referred to in this aristocratic title was one of the original urban districts created in the 1894 reorganisation of England’s local government. However, Normanby urban district didn’t last long, being merged with Eston urban district in 1915. It’s now a southern suburb of Middlesbrough, being part of that town’s urban area but just outside the borough boundary. The houses stop at the A174 Parkway, a dual carriageway which runs along the southern edge of Middlesbrough; above this is the steep escarpment of Normanby Moor. The slopes are maintained as an open space, called Flatts Lane Country Park.
In the 2011 census Normanby ward made the top 100 wards in England and Wales for lower supervisory/technical occupations (11.6%) and for those employed in mining or quarrying (1.7%). The ward had minor boundary changes in 2019 which will not have significantly changed its character.
Normanby is part of the Redcar parliamentary seat, which has voted for all three main parties since 2010. The local authority here is Redcar and Cleveland council, whose political control is even more complicated. Local elections here in this century have normally resulted in a hung council, with the exception of the 2011 election which returned a Labour majority that subsequently disappeared as a result of defections.
The May 2019 elections in Redcar and Cleveland returned 18 independents and localists, 15 Labour councillors, 13 Lib Dems, 11 Conservatives and 2 UKIP councillors. An alliance of independent and Lib Dem councillors is currently running the show. The Conservative group has subsequently split and the UKIP councillors are no longer in that party.
At other levels of government this area is represented by the Conservatives. The Redcar parliamentary seat was impressively gained by the Conservatives in December 2019, the Cleveland Polce and Crime Commissioner post went the same way in 2021, and the Tees Valley mayoralty has been held by the Conservatives’ Ben Houchen since its inception in 2017.
It will be seen that there have been slim pickings for Labour in this part of Teesside in recent years, and that extended to Normanby ward in May 2019. This is normally a safe Labour ward, but the 2019 poll saw Labour lose one of their seats to UK Independence Party candidate Christopher Gallacher. There aren’t many UKIP councillors left now, and Gallacher is no longer one of them: he is now part of the council’s main independent group. The Normanby shares of the vote in 2019 were rather fractured, with Labour on 32%, UKIP on 30%, the Conservatives on 22% and the Lib Dems coming in last on 17%.
One of the re-elected Labour councillors was Chris Foley-McCormack, who beat the alphabet to finish top of the poll. She had served since 2015. Foley-McCormack suddenly passed away in October, and there is just time to hold a by-election to fill her seat before Redcar and Cleveland’s next local elections in May 2023.
Defending this seat for Labour is Leanne Reed, who is described as a community development worker and local mum. There is no UKIP candidate this time, but since their councillor is now in the independent group I’ll list the two independent candidates at this point: Paul McInnes runs a computer repair firm in Normanby, while Rita Richardson was an independent candidate for the neighbouring Teesville ward in May 2019. The Conservatives have selected Paul Salvin, who works in the energy industry. The Lib Dem candidate is Tracy Jacobs, who last stood for election to the council in 2015 when she contested Eston ward. Those are your five candidates.
Parliamentary constituency: Redcar
ONS Travel to Work Area: Middlesbrough and Stockton
Postcode districts: TS6, TS7
Tracy Jacobs (LD)
Paul McInnes (Ind)
Leanne Reed (Lab)
Rita Richardson (Ind)
Paul Salvin (C)
May 2019 result Lab 736/664/654 UKIP 684 C 497 LD 380
Previous results in detail
The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?
With Christmas fast approaching this weekend, and the New Year of 2023 hot on its heels, it’s time to draw down the shutters on the twelfth year of Andrew’s Previews. As usual, I’ll close down with some personal notes and votes of thanks, as we toast the new year, bid farewell to the old, and wonder whether the change of year will herald an improvement.
Judging from the big story of last week, and with apologies for ending the year on a sour note, there is an urgent and important democratic problem which will need to be sorted out in the new year. Last week I wrote 655 words covering the by-election in Ashton-in-Makerfield to the Ashton ward of Wigan council, which is far higher than the number of people who voted in that election. Wigan’s electoral services team counted just 469 votes, an official turnout of 5.34%.
Since 2010 your columnist has written thousands of by-election previews. The Local Elections Archive Project database, at the time of writing, contains 76,010 ward results for over 352 thousand candidates. After spending a lifetime looking at this stuff it takes a lot to shock your columnist, but a turnout of 5.34% is shocking. The Britain Elects team believe that this is a record low.
Now, Ashton is not a ward noted for particularly low turnouts. The May 2022 poll here had 27.1% of the electorate cast a vote. That’s above the average for Wigan borough (26.9%) and not much different from the overall turnout for May’s local elections in England (33.6%).
And Ashton certainly has none of the usual demographic indicators for very low turnouts, by which I basically mean “lots and lots of university students”. Here are some examples to illustrate the point. The previous low-turnout record-holder, University and Scotforth Rural ward in Lancaster (7.1% at a 2016 by-election) has been discussed in this column on a number of occasions: it consists of the Lancaster University campus and very little else. The Britain Elects editor Ben Walker has pointed to a recent turnout of 8.3% in an ordinary local election for the former Carfax ward in Oxford: this ward covered much of Oxford city centre and a majority of its electors were students at various Oxford colleges. At the May 2002 election to Coventry city council I was the poll clerk for the Warwick University campus polling station, with an electorate which was something like 99% student; from memory, we had an on-the-day turnout of 8.4%.
So, we need to look for other reasons why the Ashton turnout was so low. The winter weather and the dark nights were not conducive to a walk to the polling station: there was no rain last Thursday, indeed there was sunshine from dawn to dusk, but the outside temperatures barely rose above freezing throughout. That will have depressed on-the-day turnout. However, there’s one other explanation which immediately comes to mind.
Our elections have a hard reliance on Royal Mail. The major form of absent voting in this country is postal votes, and these have become a very popular way of casting a vote. Again taking figures from the May 2022 local elections, across England around 20% of the electorate are registered for postal votes, and around two-thirds of those are returned. This makes it very difficult for turnout in UK elections to fall below a floor of around 13%.
In Ashton ward in May 1,797 postal votes were sent out, and 1,033 were included in the count. Last week we can safely assume that a similar number of postal votes were sent out. I am grateful to local democracy reporter George Lythgoe, who attended and reported from the Ashton count, for informing me that 174 of them came back by the deadline — the close of polls.
The reason for this is not hard to seek. It’s the present series of strikes which have crippled Royal Mail’s service, as the Communication Workers Union walk out over pay. Royal Mail workers were on strike on polling day last week and the day before.
There is a specific electoral offence of “causing a communication relating to a postal or proxy vote or containing a postal ballot paper not to be delivered to the intended recipient”: Representation of the People Act 1983, section 62A(2)(d) (or, in Scottish local elections, section 62B(3)(d)). This is a corrupt practice under electoral law, meaning that the penalty is a five-year disqualification from elected office and being struck off the electoral register for five years. In addition, Royal Mail officials are under an official duty relating to elections in the same way as the returning officer and their staff are; a breach of this official duty without reasonable cause is an offence (Representation of the People Act 1983, section 63) for which the penalty is an unlimited fine.
The Ashton by-election result is highly unlikely to come before the Election Court, because the winning councillor Andrew Bullen will need to seek re-election in May anyway, the Court probably wouldn’t reach a decision by then and there certainly isn’t time for another by-election before then. But if it turns out that there were hundreds of postal votes for the Ashton by-election stuck uncounted in the Wigan sorting office, because all the sorting office staff who should have fulfilled their official duty by delivering them to the returning officer had instead gone on strike, then that would put the legitimacy of Labour’s win in the by-election into question. The Ashton result wasn’t close, but if the postal strikes continue then a future by-election in a more marginal ward could well end up with the wrong winner. That’s not good for democracy.
On a personal level, I have little doubt that the Wigan returning officer and her staff will be deeply disappointed that the effort they put into organising this by-election has resulted in such a low turnout. So, as we look forward to the new year, will the change of year herald an improvement? What measures are on the horizon to enthuse the electorate and to make the voting process easier and more accessible?
Not much, would appear to be the answer to the second half of that question. Instead, the Elections Act 2022 increases barriers to voting by introducing a requirement to show photographic ID in order to cast a vote at a polling station. No ID, no vote, no comeback. For those who don’t have photo ID, you will be able to apply for a free-of-charge electoral identity document in advance from your local council, but the scheme for applying for these and indeed the form of the document is yet to be set up. There are less than five months to go before this is intended to come into force at the May 2023 local elections.
Not surprisingly given their official duty as alluded to above, returning officers are deeply concerned about the timescale which they will be expected to implement within their council’s budget. Their professional body, the Association of Electoral Administrators, has for much of the last year been trying to flash warning signs up to whichever cabinet minister was responsible for local government that week. The AEA and the Local Government Association went on record earlier this month to call for a delay to voter ID, on that grounds that it’s simply not ready for implementation in May. To quote from Peter Stanyon, the AEA chief executive:
It is good to see the Local Government Association speaking out about the challenges facing Returning Officers and electoral administrators. Their concerns around voter ID reflect ours and those of the wider electoral community.
The timescales to introduce voter ID in May 2023 are incredibly tight. The proposed timetable brings huge risks and jeopardises our members’ ability to ensure every elector can cast their vote without issue.
With less than five months to polling day across 200+ councils in England, election planning is already underway. However, final voter ID legislation and guidance, a new application system for free voter ID certificates, and a vital public awareness campaign are not due until January.
We would support a government decision to delay voter ID introduction until after May’s elections, while acknowledging this would require careful thought and mitigation. Introducing voter ID for the first time at a potential May 2024 general election would bring its own risks; and as voter ID is just one of many Elections Act 2022 changes, the whole implementation timetable would need to be reviewed.
Whenever voter ID is introduced we will continue to support electoral administrators to do the best job possible, and continue to call for the funding and resources they need.
The May 2023 local elections, which hopefully will not descend into farce one way or another, form what’s normally the busiest year of the UK’s electoral cycle because it’s the year when most of England’s non-metropolitan district councils come up for election. In England elections will be held to 32 of the 36 metropolitan boroughs (mostly by thirds), 46 unitary councils and 151 shire districts, with the vast majority of those shire district and unitary councils holding whole-council elections. There will be mayoral elections in Bedford, Leicester, Mansfield and Middlesbrough, using first-past-the-post for the first time because mayors having the support of a majority of their voters is no longer seen as important. There will also be whole-council elections for the eleven district councils in Northern Ireland, where Voter ID has been a requirement for many years. However, unlike in England, local elections in the Six Counties use the Single Transferable Vote, because fair representation in local government there is seen as important. No local elections are scheduled next year for London, Wales or Scotland.
Looking back upon the old year, in 2022 this column brought you six Parliamentary Specials, covering the constituencies of Southend West, Birmingham Erdington, Tiverton and Honiton, Wakefield, the City of Chester, and Stretford and Urmston. A quick countup reveals that Normanby is the 239th and final council by-election of the calendar year. That’s not as busy as 2021, but there were reasons for that and I hope never to see a year like 2021 again.
Those 245 by-elections attracted around 1,000 candidates between them and saw over half a million votes cast. These are real elections, with real outcomes and real consequences. They might not tell quite the same story as the national opinion polls, but those are intended to representative of the whole country; this column prefers instead to make detailed analyses of a few areas each week and explain why they are not representative. It’s a unique role in British politics, and judging from the tone of the responses I get on Twitter it seems to be a winning formula. I’ve had a lot of fun turning the spotlight on areas of the country which you might never have heard of, and I hope you’ve had fun reading it.
Looking forward, the sheer number of councillors up for election in May means that the first half of next year will be unusually quiet for Andrew’s Previews. However, we will have time to bring you the Parliamentary Special for the West Lancashire parliamentary by-election once a date in the new year is set for this.
This quiet period should give me some time to edit for publication the seventh annual collection of these columns, Andrew’s Previews 2022. It’ll be ready when it’s ready. In the meantime, the six earlier paperback volumes in their fetching teal covers are and will remain available from Amazon at your convenience. The royalties from the books will go towards future Previews, while you are also welcome to donate to the Local Elections Archive Project (link) if you want to contribute a smaller or more regular sum towards the research. Which is of course fine, but if you go down that route you won’t have the permanent reminder of your donation on your bookshelves.
In the meantime, thanks are due yet again to our wonderful hosts at Britain Elects for kindly continuing to give this column a home. Ben Walker, the head honcho here, has this year put a lot of his experience and data into State of the Nation, a website published under the auspices of the New Statesman, and he’s working on prediction models for the next general election which currently seem to be holding up pretty well against the parliamentary by-election results from this month. And Walker has set this column an impartiality challenge for when I get around to writing the preview for the May 2023 local elections: as I discussed in this column three weeks ago, he’s been selected to stand as a candidate in those elections.
Ben may well have better things to worry about on the day of his count, but the Britain Elects team will of course be prepared for the 2023 local elections as they happen, and so will this column. We stand ready, yet again, to go through the same procedure as every year.
“The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?”
“The same procedure as every year, James!”
To play us out for the year, here’s some music from this year’s (and last year’s) National Brass Band Championship winners, Foden’s Band. In a year when Christmas parties are back after a few years off, it’s time to finish on an celebratory note by hitting the dancefloor with an inspired reworking of a favourite Christmas carol. Featuring the arranger John Barber on trombone, my local secondary school’s own Mr Poole on soprano cornet, and possibly the longest conga solo in brass band music, here is God Rest Ye Merry Cha Cha Men. Fab-u-lous.
There’s only one thing left for Andrew’s Previews to do now, and that is to close down for the year in the form of words which has become traditional. This column will return in time for the first local by-elections of 2023, to be held in Essex and Staffordshire on Thursday 5th January; until then, on behalf of all at Britain Elects may I wish you a very merry Christmas, and may your 2023 be an improvement on your 2022.
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 and will make an excellent Christmas present for the discerning psephologist (link). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale
