Previewing the North Yorkshire and Highland by-elections of 11th April 2024
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Two by-elections on 11th April 2024:
Stray, Woodlands and Hookstone
North Yorkshire council; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Patricia Marsh.
Last week’s by-elections were all in the Midlands and the South of England. This time our focus is on northern England and Scotland, with two polls defended by the Liberal Democrats.
We’ll start by considering the Stray, 200 acres of unenclosed parkland in the town of Harrogate from which many of the town’s mineral springs rise. This land has been set aside for the public to exercise and take the waters since 1778, and it has been administered by local government since the late 19th century. The original 1778 award by the Inclosure Commissioners also granted grazing rights on the land, and “Stray” is a Yorkshire word for unenclosed grazing land.
It’s the mineral springs, of course, on which Harrogate was built and became very prosperous as a spa town. The first spring to be discovered, in 1571, became known as the Tewit Well — “tewit” being a local word for a peewit or lapwing. The Tewit Well gave its name to a local brass band, whose youth section has a particularly good reputation.
The Stray itself lies at the north-western corner of Stray, Woodlands and Hookstone ward, which is Harrogate’s south-eastern ward and is linked together by the Wetherby Road, Hookstone Drive and Hookstone Chase — those three roads meet at a crossroads known as Woodlands Corner. Much of the south of the ward is taken up by the Great Yorkshire Showground, which every July is the venue for (surprisingly enough) the Great Yorkshire Show. This is England’s largest agricultural show, although not the UK’s: the Royal Welsh and Royal Highland shows are both larger.
This ward also includes the factory and headquarters for the UK’s most popular tea brand. Yorkshire Tea is still in the hands of the family firm Taylors of Harrogate, and it is listed by no less a figure than the Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle as one of two good things to come out of Yorkshire. (The other, of course, being the M62 to Lancashire.) While Yorkshire Tea is a success story now, we should also remember the detrimental effect on Harrogate’s workforce when Taylors closed their UK plantation and moved tea production to India. Who can forget the industrial unrest as thousands of Harrogate’s teapickers suddenly found themselves out of a job — unrest which, of course, culminated in the notorious Betty’s Tearoom Riots?
Teapicking and agriculture are not mainstays of Harrogate’s economy. Stray, Woodlands and Hookstone ward is one of the most strongly middle-class wards in Yorkshire, and almost 50% of its workforce are in managerial, administrative or professional occupations. Hornbeam Park railway station lies on the ward boundary, providing a convenient rail link to Leeds.
Perhaps because of its affluent, middle-class nature, Harrogate has long been North Yorkshire’s Lib Dem hotspot. In the 2022 North Yorkshire council elections the Lib Dems won six of the nine wards covering Harrogate town, and that represented half of their council group. The party have made the Harrogate and Knaresborough constituency their top Yorkshire target for the next general election; they will be attempting to unseat Conservative backbencher Andrew Jones, who was first elected here in 2010 and is to seek re-election for a fifth term.
Perhaps it would help the Lib Dems here if they didn’t have to defend by-elections for seats left behind by controversial incumbents. The outgoing councillor here is Pat Marsh, who was arrested in February on suspicion of “displaying threatening, abusive, or insulting written material with intent or likely to stir up racial hatred”; North Yorkshire police are investigating hundreds of anti-Semitic tweets which she had published over the course of a month. The Lib Dems suspended Marsh, who initially pledged to continue as an independent but then resigned from North Yorkshire council a week later.
It’s a bad end to a long local government career. Pat Marsh was for many years the leader of the Lib Dem group on the former Harrogate council: she had continuous service on that council from 1990 to abolition in 2023, first being elected in 1990 and 1994 as an independent candidate before joining the Lib Dems. At the first election to the modern North Yorkshire council in 2022 Marsh took over the Stray, Woodlands and Hookstone division which succeeded her former Harrogate Hookstone ward, being elected by a 52–35 margin over the Conservatives.
To defend this seat the Lib Dems have gone for youth by selecting 25-year-old Andrew Timothy, who works in a science lab and would become the youngest member of North Yorkshire council if he is elected. The Conservatives have reselected their 2022 candidate John Ennis, who is hoping to resume a long local government career: Ennis previously served on North Yorkshire county council from 2013 to 2022 for Harrogate Oatlands division, and he also sat on Harrogate council from 2010 until abolition — latterly for Harrogate Stray ward. Also standing are Geoff Foxall for Labour, Gilly Charters for the Greens and Jonathan Swales for Reform UK.
Parliamentary constituency: Harrogate and Knaresbroough
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Harrogate and Knaresbroough
ONS Travel to Work Area: Harrogate
Postcode districts: HG2, HG3, HG5
Gilly Charters (Grn)
John Ennis (C)
Geoff Foxall (Lab)
Jonathan Swales (Reform UK)
Andrew Timothy (LD)
May 2022 result LD 1350 C 910 Lab 189 Ind 167
Previous results in detail
Inverness South
Highland council; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Colin Aitken.
For our other by-election of the week we also have a Lib Dem defence in a ward with a lot of green space. Mind, Inverness South has rather more green space than the Stray. This ward takes in a large and mountainous area to the south of the city, running up to the road and rail pass of Slochd Summit from where the A9 and the Highland railway descend into Strathspey. The villages of Moy and Tomatin are the only settlements of any size in this area. The railway descends towards Inverness past the battlefield at Culloden, where the Young Pretender’s forces were routed in 1746.
This is one case where the line drawn by the boundary-drawers is deceptive. Despite all those square miles Inverness South is in fact based on the southern suburbs of Inverness, with housing developments like Slackbuie, Milton of Leys, Inshes and Westhill straggling up the slopes to the south of the city. Most of these are relatively new estates: Inshes was almost entirely built in the 21st century, while Milton of Leys has been growing since the 1990s and became large enough in 2011 to have its own primary school. It’s areas like these which have given Inverness very strong population growth in recent years.
Inverness South ward was created for the 2007 Highland council election and returns four members of Highland council. The Highland council traditionally has a a strong independent vote, but all elections to date here have had the Scottish National Party leading on first preferences. The ward’s four seats split four ways in 2007 between the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, Labour and an independent, with the SNP top on just 27% of the vote. In 2011 the Labour councillor resigned and the Lib Dems won the by-election, overcoming a deficit of 138 votes on first preferences to defeat the SNP in the final count by just seven votes, 1091 to 1084. The Lib Dems then held their second seat in 2012 despite polling just 26% of the vote: again, they were behind the SNP on first preferences but prevailed on transfers.
In 2017 the Liberal Democrats gave up their second seat in Inverness South without a fight, leaving an open seat which went to the Conservatives. The resulting four-way split remained in place after 2022, when shares of the vote were 35% for the Scottish National Party, 25% for independent candidate Duncan Macpherson, 17% for the Conservatives and just 9% for the Lib Dems. Their candidate Colin Aitken started in fourth place, then fell behind the Green Party for much of the count after the Greens picked up the SNP surplus, but eventually got in on the final round of counting thanks to transfers from Labour.
Colin Aitken, a native Canadian who is in his late 20s, has appeared in this column before: he was first elected in an August 2021 by-election for Inverness West ward, coming from behind to beat the SNP on transfers (Andrew’s Previews 2021, page 314), before moving here in 2022. Aitken’s resignation from the council in February is understood to be related to his employer wanting him to take on more responsibilities — which presumably pay better than being a councillor.
This ward will soon be going to the polls in the upcoming Westminster election as part of the Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire constituency. That seat will be defended in due course by the Scottish National Party’s Drew Hendry, who was leader of Highland council before his election to Westminster in 2015. Hendry is the SNP’s economy spokesman at Westmisnter. The local MSP is from a famous nationalist family: Fergus Ewing has represented the Inverness and Nairn constituency and its predecessors since the establishment of the modern Scottish Parliament in 1999, and he enjoyed a large majority at the most recent Holyrood election in 2021. The Scottish National Party also enjoy success here at local level, and they run Highland council in coalition with independent councillors.
The SNP have been on a notably barren run of results since then and we are still waiting for the party’s first by-election win of the Humza Yousaf era. This may be one of their best chances yet, which is ironic given that Inverness South ward includes the site of the battlefield at Culloden. If we rerun the votes from 2022 for a single vacancy then the SNP councillor Ken Gowans defeats independent councillor Duncan Macpherson by the narrow margin of 2,390 votes to 2,359.
The Liberal Democrats have demonstrated that they can attract a lot of transfers from other parties in previous elections here, but starting from fourth place with 9% they have it all to do to hold this by-election. Their candidate Jonathan Chartier does have the benefit of being top of the alphabetical ballot paper: Chartier describes himself on his Twitter as a “slightly bemused English guy living in Scotland”. The Scottish National Party have selected Gordon Shanks, who has appeared in this column before: he was the SNP candidate for a March 2021 by-election in Aird and Loch Ness ward (Andrew’s Previews 2021, page 16), and I described him then as having come to the Highlands over 20 years to study forestry; he never left. Another 2021 by-election candidate who returns for another go is independent Duncan McDonald, who contested the Inverness West poll that year; he has again been endorsed by the main independent group on Highland council. Standing for the Conservatives is Ryan Forbes, who — like McDonald — was an unsuccessful candidate in Inverness West in 2022. A long ballot paper is completed by Ron Stevenson for Labour, Arun Sharma for the Scottish Greens, Alba’s Jimmy Duncan (who finished last here in 2022), and Andrew Macdonald who is a “Sovereignty” candidate. The usual Scottish disclaimers apply, with Votes at 16 and the Alternative Vote in use — and transfers have been crucial here in the past.
Westminster constituency: Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey
Westminster constituency (from next general election): Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire
Holyrood constituency: Inverness and Nairn
ONS Travel to Work Area: Inverness
Postcode districts: IV2, IV13
Jonathan Chartier (LD)
Jimmy Duncan (Alba)
Ryan Forbes (C)
Andrew Macdonald (Sovereignty)
Duncan McDonald (Ind)
Gordon Shanks (SNP)
Arun Sharma (Grn)
Ron Stevenson (Lab)
May 2022 first preferences SNP 1949 Ind 1375 C 936 LD 478 Lab 402 Grn 299 Alba 104
May 2017 first preferences SNP 1663 C 1022 LD 799 Ind 583 Ind 527 Lab 387 Christian 104
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
