Previewing the Plymouth by-elections of 12th January 2023
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Two polls on 12th January 2023:
Moor View; and
Plympton Chaddlewood
Plymouth council, Devon; caused respectively by the resignations of Conservative councillors Shannon Burden and Dan Collins.
Our two by-elections today take place on the outskirts of the largest city in Devon. Located on the east bank of the Tamar estuary, Plymouth has been a major port for centuries for both commercial and military traffic: Devonport Dockyard is the largest naval base in western Europe, while regular ferries connect the city’s shoreline with Roscoff in Brittany, Santander in Spain and Torpoint in Cornwall.
Devonport itself was once a separate town from Plymouth, and in 1837 it became the very first new borough to be incorporated under the first major local government reform measure, the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. The town had already been enfranchised as a parliamentary borough three years earlier by the First Reform Act, and from 1832 to 2010 there was always a constituency called Devonport or Plymouth Devonport. This seat has had a number of famous MPs, starting appropriately enough with a naval figure. Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, who was a Whig MP for Devonport from 1832 to 1840, had fought at Trafalgar and was the winning commander against the Ottoman fleet at the 1827 Battle of Navarino. He also owned slaves in Antigua, which makes Codrington a bit of a controversial figure these days. When his slaves were freed in 1835 under the terms of the Slavery Abolition Act, Codrington received over £2,500 in compensation from the UK government.
Sir Edward Codrington resigned from the Commons in 1840. Now, one does not simply resign as an MP: instead you have to be appointed to an Office of Profit under the Crown which exists for the sole purpose of vacating your parliamentary seat. There are two such offices of profit in use today, the Chiltern Hundreds and the Manor of Northstead; but other similar offices have been used in the past. Codrington was the last MP to resign by being appointed as Steward of the Manor of East Hendred, and the appointment went through despite the fact that the Crown had actually sold that manor in 1823. It seems that nobody had told the Parliamentary authorities about this at the time, and at least seventeen later appointments were made to the Manor of East Hendred before the penny dropped. Codrington died in 1851, and the post of Steward of the Manor of East Hendred has been vacant ever since.
Other former MPs for Plymouth Devonport include the 1930s transport minister Leslie Hore-Belisha, whose name is still commemorated by the zebra crossing “Belisha beacons” on our streets; the future Labour leader Michael Foot; and the SDP leader David Owen. The current MP for the area is the Conservatives’ Johnny Mercer, a former Army officer who did multiple tours of Afghanistan; for some years now (with a break during the Truss administration) he has been a junior minister with responsibility for veterans’ affairs.
However, Mercer doesn’t represent a seat called Devonport. Boundary changes for the 2010 election transferred Devonport itself into the other Plymouth constituency, Sutton, meaning that the former Devonport seat needed a new name; “Moor View” was chosen.
This refers to the Moor View ward, which lies on the north-east corner of Plymouth. The River Plym is that ward’s eastern boundary, while the ward extends west to the Tavistock Road; this means it takes in the site of the mothballed Plymouth Airport together with Derriford Hospital, the major general hospital for Plymouth and the surrounding area. The rather isolated council estate of Estover is the main residential area of the ward.
The 1832 Reform Act gave representation to Devonport but took the MPs away from Plympton Erle, one of the notorious rotten boroughs of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In its last century of existence Plympton Erle had only one contested election, in 1802, with the two winning candidates polling twelve votes each. Back in the day the tin trade formed a major part of Plympton’s economy, and Plympton was the first major port in this area: the boats only transferred downstream to Plymouth once the Plym estuary started to silt up, many centuries ago. The town wasn’t incorporated into Plymouth until 1967, and it’s not part of either Plymouth parliamentary seat; since 1997 Plympton has formed part of the South West Devon constituency.
Chaddlewood is the eastern of Plympton’s three wards and is one of three Plymouth wards which are undersized, returning just two councillors rather than the usual three. In the 2011 census it made the top 25 wards in England and Wales for people educated to “Level 2”, which means 5+ GCSE passes or equivalent but no higher qualifications.
Plymouth city council elections are often closely-fought contests between the Conservative and Labour parties, and periods of control for either party tend to be short-lived. Since the city gained unitary status in 1997, there have been five separate periods of Labour majority and four separate periods of Conservative majority.
We should be in a Conservative-majority period at the moment, but for some years now the Plymouth Conservatives have been in a state of civil war which makes the Republican group in the US House of Representatives look coherent and united. It’s a long story. Let’s join the action immediately after the 2021 local elections (mapped above), at which the Conservatives performed very well and Labour lost their majority on Plymouth council.
The Plymouth Conservatives’ civil war was already in full swing then, and a large number of councillors who had been elected on the Conservative ticket were sitting as independents at the time. Accordingly, I wrote in this column in advance of the May 2021 election that “in the event that Labour lose their majority, the Tories would probably need to sort their own house out first before challenging for the council leadership”.
Well, the Conservatives’ Nick Kelly did take over the council leadership, not that it did him much good. Kelly was briefly suspended from the party in December 2021 and January 2022 for insensitive comments over a local murder, before suffering the indignity of having his budget rejected by the council in February 2022; a Labour amendment was carried to freeze the city’s council tax for 2022–23. The March 2022 full council meeting then no-confidenced Kelly as leader by 29 votes to 23. He was replaced as leader of the council and the Conservative group by Richard Bingley.
Following the May 2022 elections most of the independent ex-Conservative councillors rejoined the party, giving the Plymouth Conservatives a majority on the council. This didn’t last long. Former leader Nick Kelly was suspended from the group in October and deselected by the party. It’s not entirely clear what the reasons for this are, but it might not be a coincidence that Councillor Bingley was recorded last year describing Councillor Kelly as “a weak, two-faced git” — and that’s the family-friendly bit I’m prepared to quote here.
Kelly has now formed an Independent Alliance group on the council which includes other defectors from both the Conservatives and Labour. As we shall now discuss, in November a further Conservative councillor was suspended and two more resigned altogether.
All these shenanigans have left Plymouth council hung again. A further defection earlier this week left Labour as the largest party on the council; the latest composition following a further defection earlier this week gives 24 Labour councillors, 23 Conservatives plus two vacancies, five councillors in the Independent Alliance group (four ex-Conservative, one ex-Labour), two Greens (one of whom was elected as Labour), and an ex-Conservative independent. It’s a very fine balance. Any Conservative losses in these by-elections will mean that Labour increase their lead on the council, although they will remain short of the 29 seats necessary for a majority.
The electoral history of Moor View ward rather mirrors that of Plymouth as a whole. In the twenty years since the current boundaries came in, the Conservatives and Labour have each won seven elections here, with the UK Independence Party also topping the poll in 2014. The UKIP councillor, Maddi Bridgman, was subsequently re-elected in 2018 and May 2022 with the Conservative nomination, but she was then suspended from the party in November 2022. Moor View has clearly swung to the right in recent years and has had a full slate of Conservative councillors since 2021; the May 2022 election here had a Conservative lead of 54–38, so Labour have some work to do if they want to win this seat back.
Over the same period Plympton Chaddlewood ward has normally been a safe Conservative area, but that suddenly changed in 2021 when the Green Party contested the ward for the first time. From literally nowhere the Greens came very close to winning, and they then built on that performance to gain Chaddlewood ward from the Conservatives in May 2022 with a large majority: 58% for the Green Party, 35% for the Conservatives.
The Tories will have to defend both of today’s by-elections following the resignations of Moor View councillor Shannon Burden and Plympton Chaddlewood councillor Dan Collins. Both of them were first elected to the council in 2021, with Burden gaining her seat from Labour. Burden and Collins, who are in a relationship, have since left the city and now live and work in Gloucestershire. This caused some controversy back in Plymouth. Their positions became untenable when November’s full council meeting passed a motion calling for their resignations by 31 votes to nil, with most of the Conservative group abstaining.
Both of the resulting by-elections have attracted a lot of interest with six candidates standing for each vacancy. In Moor View the defending Conservative candidate is Andrea Johnson, who was previously a Plymouth councillor for Compton ward in 2018–22. She didn’t seek re-election last May, and her former ward was gained by 21-year-old Labour candidate Dylan Tippetts who became Plymouth’s first transgender councillor. The Labour candidate for the Moor View by-election is Will Noble, who works as a cleaner at Derriford Hospital. Also standing are Colin Mackenzie for the Lib Dems, Frank Hartkopf for the Green Party, Andrew White for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and independent candidate Gavin Marshall.
We have the same party lineup in Plympton Chaddlewod. The difficult task of holding that ward for the Conservatives has fallen to Ashley Ward, who runs an electrical services company. He is likely to face a strong challenge from the Greens’ Lauren McLay, who describes herself as a local communications specialist. The other candidates for Chaddlewood are Lindsay Gilmour for Labour, Benjamin Davy of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, Mike Gillbard of the Lib Dems and independent candidate Andrew Hill. The Plymouth Herald have received statements from all the candidates in today’s by-elections except for the Lib Dems, and you can read more here for Moor View (link) and here for Plympton Chaddlewood (link).
Before this column leaves Plymouth, a tribute is due to Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher of the Local Government Elections Centre, who for many years have been professors of politics at Plymouth University. The study of British local elections owes an immeasurable debt to Rallings and Thrasher, who have collected and analysed local election results from this country for decades. Their dataset is second to none with over 900,000 candidacies, and I do refer to it quite a lot on the occasions when I need to consult results from before my own records start in 2002. Michael Thrasher has generously described this column in my hearing with the words “wonderful reports”, and I’d like to return the favour by putting on the record here my thanks to Rallings and Thrasher for their decades of hard work. I look forward to hearing their insights and analysis for many years to come.
Moor View
Parliamentary constituency: Plymouth Moor View
ONS Travel to Work Area: Plymouth
Postcode district: PL6
Frank Hartkopf (Grn)
Andrea Johnson (C)
Colin Mackenzie (LD)
Gavin Marshall (Ind)
Will Noble (Lab)
Anderw White (TUSC)
May 2022 result C 1929 Lab 1303 LD 158 Grn 143 TUSC 39
May 2021 result C 2530 Lab 1170 Grn 173 LD 91 TUSC 19
May 2019 result C 1311 Lab 1233 UKIP 670 Ind 171 LD 168
May 2018 result C 1832 Lab 1474 UKIP 242 LD 156
May 2016 result Lab 1220 C 1134 UKIP 654 LD 126 Plymouth Ind 111 TUSC 27
May 2015 result C 2417 Lab 1912 UKIP 1457 LD 283 Grn 184 Ind 39 TUSC 26
May 2014 result UKIP 1397 Lab 1269 C 875 TUSC 38
May 2012 result Lab 1703 C 919 UKIP 573 LD 117
May 2011 result Lab 2049 C 1655
May 2010 result Lab 2206 C 1966 LD 1123 UKIP 591 Grn 109
May 2008 result C 1453 Lab 1153 LD 311 UKIP 297 Grn 111
May 2007 result Lab 1506 C 1444 LD 357 Ind 292 Grn 136
May 2006 result C 1320 Lab 1214 LD 740
June 2004 result Lab 1344 C 1074 LD 921
May 2003 result Lab 1527/1489/1474 C 899/863/829 LD 491/408/401
Previous results in detail
Plympton Chaddlewood
Parliamentary constituency: South West Devon
ONS Travel to Work Area: Plymouth
Postcode district: PL7
Benjamin Davy (TUSC)
Mike Gillbard (LD)
Lindsay Gilmour (Lab)
Andrew Hill (Ind)
Lauren McLay (Grn)
Ashley Ward (C)
May 2022 result Grn 1273 C 770 Lab 163
May 2021 result C 1111 Grn 1010 Lab 215
May 2018 result C 1051 Lab 532 LD 132
May 2016 result C 786 UKIP 376 Lab 373 TUSC 33
May 2014 result C 764 UKIP 707 Lab 401 TUSC 69
May 2012 result C 704 Lab 478 UKIP 411
May 2010 result C 1816 LD 970 Lab 781 UKIP 393
May 2008 result C 1133 Lab 300 UKIP 233 LD 223
May 2006 result C 964 LD 457 Lab 315
June 2004 result C 795 LD 385 Lab 362 UKIP 338 Ind 107
May 2003 result C 601/572 LD 377/312 Lab 352/308 Ind 211
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
