Previewing the six council by-elections of 2nd March 2023
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Six by-elections on 2nd March 2023:
Hythe West
Kent county council; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Andy Weatherhead.
Let’s start the week on the Saxon Shore. The southern coast of Kent has changed a lot over the last millennium, with extensive silting and a few enormous mediaeval storms creating the flat landscape of Romney Marsh. This has long been recognised as a vulnerable point in any invasion of England, and during the Napoleonic Wars the Royal Military Canal was constructed along the original shoreline, effectively cutting Romney Marsh off from the rest of the country.
At its eastern end the Royal Military Canal passes through Hythe, which was one of the five ancient Cinque Ports charged with defending England from the French in mediaeval times. Hythe is not a port now: its harbour silted up long ago, and vessels crossing the Channel now have to use the ports of Folkestone or Dover to the east. The town, however, remains and is mostly located within the Hythe West division of Kent county council.
This county division also covers a large rural area. Overlooking the Saxon shoreline is the high ground of Lympne, which was the location for a number of early aeronautical records: Amy Johnson set out from here in 1932 on a flight to Cape Town, which broke the record for a solo flight. On the modern shoreline is the fast-growing village of Dymchurch. Both of these were also fortified to guard the shore: Lympne by the Romans, Dymchurch in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
For tourists to the area, Dymchurch is linked to Hythe by the miniature Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, which runs steam trains from Hythe to Dungeness on a narrow track gauge of 15 inches. Lympne is home to the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park, a zoo which has the UK’s largest herd of black rhino; the zoo was originally the grounds of Port Lympne Mansion, a country house built in the early 20th century for the socialite Sir Philip Sassoon.
Hythe was one of the towns which were entitled to return two MPs before the Great Reform Act, and there has been a constituency with Hythe in its name — currently called Folkestone and Hythe — continuously since the fourteenth century. This seat has been held by Conservative or allied MPs since 1895, when the independent Liberal MP Edward Watkin retired; he was a railway magnate whose plan for a nineteenth-century Channel Tunnel was shut down by Parliament on the grounds of national security, but not until after more than a mile of tunnel had been dug. Later Conservative MPs for (Folkestone and) Hythe include the above-mentioned Sir Philip Sassoon, Harry Mackeson — a famous name in Hythe, which was the original home of Mackeson Stout — and Michael Howard, who led the Conservative party at the 2005 general election. Damian Collins, who was chairman of the Commons digital, culture, media and sport committee in the 2017–19 Parliament, has been the MP here since 2010. This Conservative dominance is also seen on Kent county council, which has a large Conservative majority.
The local authority here is Folkestone and Hythe council, where the Conservatives lost their majority in a messy 2019 election. The Tories won 13 seats, the Green Party and Labour six each, the Lib Dems and UKIP two each and the remaining seat went to an independent. The Conservatives still run Folkestone and Hythe council, but they now have to rely on a coalition with UKIP and the independent councillor.
Five of the six Green district councillors represent either Hythe Rural ward, all of which is within this division, or Hythe ward. Dymchurch is covered by Romney Marsh ward, which returned the two UKIP councillors. They are still in that party. UKIP aren’t dead yet, you know.
This good Green performance in Hythe was not a flash in the pan. The Greens had gained the Hythe division of Kent county council in 2013, helped by a split in the right-wing vote between the Conservatives and UKIP. Following boundary changes the Green county councillor was re-elected in Hythe West in 2017, before losing his seat back to the Tories in the good Conservative year of 2021. Shares of the vote that year were 49% for the Conservatives and 38% for the Greens.
The new Conservative county councillor was Andy Weatherhead, in what appears to be a clear failure of the party’s vetting procedures. In November 2022 the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate revealed that Weatherhead had been a member of the far-right group New British Union, providing photographs of him attending their conference and a rally outside the Greek Embassy in 2013; on both occasions he was wearing a black shirt with fascist insignia. The Conservatives immediately suspended Weatherhead from the party, and he resigned from Kent county council and from Dymchurch parish council a week later.
Andy Weatherhead’s side of the story is that he was never formally a member of the New British Union and no longer holds those views. He has decided to seek re-election, as an independent candidate, in the by-election prompted by his resignation from the county council. Weatherhead has also been described in a local press interview as “a good bloke” by the official Conservative candidate in this by-election, former Hythe town councillor John Gabris. The Green Party will have high hopes of recovering a seat which they lost two years ago: they have selected Hythe town councillor Jenni Hawkins. Also standing are Tony Cooper for Labour and Ian Meyers, who is the leader of the UKIP group on Folkestone and Hythe council but is contesting this by-election as an independent candidate. Counting for this by-election will take place on Friday morning.
Parliamentary constituency: Folkestone and Hythe
Folkestone and Hythe council wards: Hythe Rural, Hythe (part: part of Hythe parish), Romney Marsh (part: Dymchurch parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Folkestone and Dover
Postcode districts: CT21, TN25, TN29
Tony Cooper (Lab)
John Gabris (C)
Jenni Hawkins (Grn)
Ian Meyers (Ind)
Andy Weatherhead (Ind)
May 2021 result C 2592 Grn 1997 Lab 499 UKIP 189
May 2017 result Grn 2234 C 2044 UKIP 493 Lab 340 LD 280
Previous results in detail
Voter ID
From May, you will need photo ID to vote in person at a parliamentary election in Great Britain or a local election in England. If you don’t have one of the accepted forms of photo ID, you can apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate or a postal vote from your local council elections office. Do it now and beat the rush.
For more information and to apply for a VAC or postal vote, go to electoralcommission.org.uk/voterid.
Rose Hill and Littlemore
Oxfordshire county council; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Michele Paule; and
Littlemore
Oxford council; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Nadine Bely-Summers.
Never let this column be accused of ignoring the great political issues of the day. Having visited the Kent coast, the landing-place for the small boats that carry immigrants across the Channel, we now travel to the city of Oxford, the home of the so-called “15-minute city” experiment. The idea behind this is to ensure that most Oxford residents can access goods and services within a short walk of their home, which is certainly a laudable aim. However, we also need to bear in mind that your job is not necessarily within a short walk of your home.
Perhaps because of this, in Oxford the whole 15-minute city thing has become conflated with an aggressive and rather complicated plan by the city and county council to reduce congestion on Oxford’s road network. The intention is to transfer as much traffic as possible to the city’s ring road, by fining private vehicles which pass through six “traffic filters” within the city during the day. There will be certain limited exemptions for local residents. This builds on previous work by those councils involving the introduction of low-traffic neighbourhoods.
Now, unlike some other cities, Oxford’s ring road doesn’t necessarily mark the end of the urban area: large parts of Oxford’s south-east fringe are outside the ring road. This includes the former village of Littlemore, which has existed for a very long time but only got a parish church in 1838; its first incumbent was John Henry Newman, who later became a Roman Catholic cardinal and a saint. Newman gives his name to the local primary school. Littlemore ward also takes in the Oxford Science Park and the Kassam Stadium, home of Oxford United FC, both of which are on the southern edge of the city.
Littlemore’s population grew strongly after the Second World War as did Rose Hill within the modern ring road: the Morris/Mini car factory in Cowley a couple of miles to the east has provided a ready source of jobs for many years. Perhaps because of this, Littlemore wasn’t incorporated into Oxford until as recently as 1991 — it was previously part of the South Oxfordshire district — and there is still a Littlemore parish council, which covers an area similar to but not exactly the same as Littlemore ward. Despite the presence of the Oxford Science Park, this is very much a working-class part of Oxford with high levels of deprivation.
At election time, this is a safely Labour area of both the city and county councils. The county council division of Rose Hill and Littlemore last went to the polls in 2021, with Labour polling 52% against 18% for the Conservatives and 13% for the Greens. The Littlemore ward of Oxford city council saw a strong but unsuccessful independent challenge to Labour last year from Sadiea Mustafa-Awan, a solicitor standing on an anti-low traffic neighbourhood ticket: Labour polled 44%, Mustafa-Awan had 34% and the Conservatives polled 11%.
Oxford city council has a long-standing Labour majority, while the county council is hung with a coalition of the Liberal Democrats, Labour and the Green Party running the show. Rose Hill and Littlemore are both part of the Oxford East constituency, a safe Labour seat which has been represented since 2017 by Shadow Cabinet member Anneliese Dodds.
Littlemore ward is entirely within the Rose Hill and Littlemore county division, and by-elections are taking place to both of those units following the co-ordinated resignations of two Labour councillors in May. Michele Paule, who has sat on the county council since 2021, has stood down on health grounds. The county council by-election will be combined with a city council by-election to replace Nadine Bely-Summers, who narrowly gained the city-centre Holywell ward from the Greens in 2018 and transferred to safer pastures here in 2021. Bely-Summers’ successor will need to seek re-election at the next city council elections, which are in 2024; Oxford is one of the few English councils which re-elects half of its membership every two years, so there are no city council elections here in May this year.
To take the county council by-election first, the defending Labour candidate is saxophonist and part-time music teacher Trish Elphinstone. The Conservatives have selected Tim Patmore, who previously contested Rose Hill and Littlemore division in 2013. Standing for the Greens is David Thomas, a former leader of the Green group on the city council; Thomas works as an engineer in the water industry. Also standing are independent candidate and Littlemore parish councillor Michael Evans who also contested this county council seat in 2021, Theo Jupp for the Lib Dems and Callum Joyce for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.
For the city council by-election the defending Labour candidate is Sandy Douglas, an associate professor at Oxford University who works in vaccine development; he was one of the team which developed the manufacturing process for the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. There is a lot of crossover between the county and city council ballot papers, with independent Michael Evans, the Conservatives’ Tim Patmore, the Greens’ David Thomas and the Lib Dems’ Theo Jupp all contesting both polls; the strong independent candidate for Littlemore ward last year is not standing again and she has signed Evans’ nomination papers. The only party other than Labour to nominate a different candidate for the city council is the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, who have selected Rachel Cox for the Littlemore by-election.
This section has been corrected — Littlemore became part of Oxford in 1991, not 1974 as originally stated.
Rose Hill and Littlemore
Parliamentary constituency: Oxford East
Oxford council wards: Littlemore, Rose Hill and Iffley (part), Cowley (small part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Oxford
Postcode districts: OX3, OX4, OX44
Trish Elphinstone (Lab)
Michael Evans (Ind)
Callum Joyce (TUSC)
Theo Jupp (LD)
Tim Patmore (C)
David Thomas (Grn)
May 2021 result Lab 1537 C 516 Grn 385 Ind 341 LD 158
May 2017 result Lab 1410 C 462 LD 259 Grn 196
May 2013 result Lab 1051 C 274 Grn 255 LD 76
Previous results in detail
Littlemore
Parliamentary constituency: Oxford East
Oxfordshire county council division: Rose Hill and Littlemore
ONS Travel to Work Area: Oxford
Postcode districts: OX3, OX4, OX44
Rachel Cox (TUSC)
Sandy Douglas (Lab)
Michael Evans (Ind)
Theo Jupp (LD)
Tim Patmore (C)
David Thomas (Grn)
May 2022 result Lab 718 Ind 557 C 186 Grn 106 LD 55
May 2021 result Lab 711/686 C 334/236 Grn 216/170 LD 140/66
Previous results in detail
Watling South
Staffordshire county council; and
Belgrave
Tamworth council, Staffordshire; both caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Richard Ford.
Travelling north from Oxford we come to another town which is hosting both county and borough council by-elections, although in this case the two districts border each other but do not overlap. We’ve come to Wilnecote, a Tamworth suburb which straddles the B5404 road. This is called Watling Street; as that name and its arrow-straight alignment might suggest this is a Roman road, and it was part of the A5 until a dual-carriageway bypass for Wilnecote was opened in 1995. Wilnecote railway station lies on Watling Street, with trains going north towards Derby and south towards Birmingham. The Watling South county division lies to the south of Watling Street, with Belgrave ward being on the north side.
Perhaps appropriately for the political home of Sir Robert Peel, Tamworth is firmly in the Conservative column at the moment. The parliamentary seat has been held since 2010 by Chris Pincher who enjoys a 2019 majority of almost 20,000 votes. Pincher’s behaviour as deputy chief whip was the final straw that led to the removal of Boris Johnson as prime minister last year; it also led to Pincher losing the Conservative whip and speculation of a possible parliamentary by-election. This column will believe that when it sees it.
Tamworth council, which is slightly smaller than the parliamentary seat, has had a Conservative majority since 2004, and it’s a large Conservative majority because politically there’s little to distinguish most of the borough’s ten wards from each other. Indeed, in 2021 the Conservatives scored a clean sweep in Tamworth, winning all of the borough’s ten wards and six county council divisions.
The Watling South division of Staffordshire county council has been in Conservative hands since Labour were nearly wiped out on the county council in 2009. Richard Ford took the seat over in a by-election held on general election day in 2019, and his winning total was over 4,300 votes. He was re-elected for a full term in 2021 with a 67–29 lead over Labour.
Tamworth’s Belgrave ward is usually Conservative-inclined but much more marginal than that. Since the current boundaries were introduced in 2002 it has voted Labour in 2002, 2003 and 2010–12. Belgrave last went to the polls in 2022, voting 42% for the Conservatives, 36% for Labour and 16% for an independent candidate. Richard Ford had represented the ward since 2016, originally gaining his seat from Labour.
Richard Ford resigned from both the county and borough councils at the end of December, so the Conservatives have to defend two by-elections to replace him. I’ll take the county by-election first. Defending Watling South for the Conservatives is Alex Farrell, who represents the town-centre Castle ward on Tamworth council; he also sits on the council’s cabinet, with the homelessness prevention and social housing portfolio. The Labour candidate is Carol Dean, who was the last Labour county councillor for this division until she stood down in 2009; last year she stood for Tamworth council in Amington ward, where she lives. We have a rare opportunity here to test the poll ratings for Reform UK against real-life elections; Reform UK don’t usually bother with local by-elections, which doesn’t say much for their ground game, but they are standing in both Tamworth polls today. Their county council candidate is Barry Gwilt, who is a Lichfield councillor for the neighbouring Fazeley ward; he was elected in 2019 as a Conservative and has recently defected to Reform UK. He completes the county ballot paper along with the Lib Dems’ Helen Miller-Viney.
Unlike in Oxford earlier, there is no crossover between the county and borough by-election candidates in Tamworth. For Belgrave ward the defending Conservative is Paul Thompson. The Labour candidate is Craig Adams, who stood for the council last year in Mercian ward. Charlie Taylor is standing as an independent candidate, and the ballot paper is completed by Adam Bayliss for the Greens and Ian Cooper for Reform UK. Counting for both Tamworth by-elections will take place on Friday morning.
Watling South
Parliamentary constituency: Tamworth
Tamworth council wards: Trinity (part), Wilnecote (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Birmingham
Postcode district: B77
Carol Dean (Lab)
Alex Farrell (C)
Barry Gwilt (Reform UK)
Helen Miller-Viney (LD)
May 2021 result C 2182 Lab 942 UKIP 154
December 2019 by-election C 4304 Lab 1493 LD 580
May 2017 result C 1780 Lab 723 UKIP 307 LD 132 Grn 68
May 2013 result C 1414 Lab 1117 LD 185
Previous results in detail
Belgrave
Parliamentary constituency: Tamworth
Staffordshire county council division: Watling North (most), Bolebridge (part north of A5)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Birmingham
Postcode district: B77
Craig Adams (Lab)
Adam Bayliss (Grn)
Ian Cooper (Reform UK)
Charlie Taylor (Ind)
Paul Thompson (C)
May 2022 result C 637 Lab 538 Ind 237 Grn 92
May 2021 result C 925 Lab 504 UKIP 91
May 2019 result C 610 Lab 419 UKIP 290 Ind 136 Grn 97
May 2018 result C 769 Lab 540 UKIP 199 Grn 75
May 2016 result C 628 Lab 583 UKIP 406 Ind 75
May 2015 result C 1451 Lab 1166 UKIP 827
May 2014 result C 635 Lab 542 UKIP 464 Grn 72
May 2012 result Lab 694 C 679
May 2011 result Lab 994 C 930
May 2010 result Lab 1625 C 1553
May 2008 result C 785 Lab 587 Ind 196
May 2007 result C 776 Lab 569 Ind 245
May 2006 result C 921 Lab 694
June 2004 result C 575 Lab 544 Ind 443
May 2003 result Lab 468 C 374 Ind 200
May 2002 result Lab 658/630/608 C 542/472/460
Previous results in detail
Byker
Newcastle upon Tyne council, Tyne and Wear; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Stephen Sheraton.
We finish for the week in the big city of Newcastle upon Tyne. Byker can be found just over a mile to the east of Newcastle city centre, from which it is separated by the deep valley of the Ouse Burn; this valley is crossed by a number of impressive viaducts carrying the East Coast Main Line, the Tyne and Wear Metro and the main road from Newcastle city centre towards North Shields and the coast. The latter of these is known as the Byker Bridge.
You might not guess this from looking at the riverside housing of St Peter’s Marina on the Tyne bank, just round a bend from the Millennium Bridge, but Byker is a seriously deprived part of the city. The entire ward is located within the 10% most deprived census districts in England. Social housing rates in the ward are very high: in the 2021 census 54.5% of households were socially rented, a figure within the top 30 wards in England and Wales. This is a legacy of 1960s to 1980s redevelopment by the council which cleared the old slum terraces away but left the community as intact as possible. The result of this is the Byker Wall estate, which includes a long, unbroken block of 620 flats close to the Metro station. It’s listed at Grade II*, and has recently been refurbished. Some older buildings remain at the eastern end of the ward next to the Newcastle Stadium, which hosts greyhound racing and until recently was a venue for speedway races.
The effect of this deprivation can clearly be seen by the state of the local high street, the arrow-straight Shields Road, which has clearly declined a long way from the days when Byker was upmarket enough to support a department store. In 2019 Shields Road was voted as the worst high street in the UK, for the second time. We can also assume from this rather old TV clip that anti-social behaviour in Byker has been a bit of a problem for a while.
In one sense, this area being on the edge of civilisation is nothing new. Construction work for the East End swimming pool, which opened in 2000 a few yards to the south of Shields Road, gave archaeologists the chance to prove something which had been long suspected: that the buildings adjoining the south side of Shields Road were built on top of Hadrian’s Wall. Some buildings on Shields Road next to the pool were cleared for a future public square, and excavations began. Below the modern street level, the foundations of the Roman Wall were found along with evidence for a number of defensive pits on the northern side of the wall, which would have originally contained sharp spikes to injure anyone or anything which got too close. Today Hadrian Square is surfaced with a representation of Wall foundations on the original alignment, together with a large Roman-inspired mosaic of dolphins. The wall’s Milecastle 3 is thought to lie close to the modern Byker Bridge, but to date its location has eluded archaeologists.
In local elections Byker is a safe Labour ward of Newcastle upon Tyne city council, which has a Labour majority. The current ward boundaries date from 2018, when long-serving councillor George Allison was re-elected at the top of poll. Allison died of cancer in March 2020, on the day after he was awarded the freedom of the city by the council; because of the pandemic, his seat was vacant for more than a year before a by-election could be held as part of the 2021 local elections. This was won by Stephen Sheraton, who finished Allison’s term and was then re-elected in 2022 for a full term of his own. Last year Sheraton polled 65% of the vote, with the Conservatives’ 15% best of the rest.
Byker ward is part of the Newcastle upon Tyne East parliamentary seat, which has been held since 1983 by another person who holds the freedom of the city of Newcastle. Nick Brown is one of the longest-serving MPs in the Commons as one of seven survivors from the 1983 intake; only Sir Peter Bottomley (1975 by-election), Barry Sheerman (1979) and Harriet Harman (1982 by-election) have longer continuous service. He has been chief whip for six different Labour leaders, and also served as agriculture minister for three years in the first Blair government; since 2021 he has chaired the Commons finance committee. Nick Brown has a very safe Labour seat, but he lost the Labour whip in September 2022 for reasons which remain unclear.
Labour councillor Stephen Sheraton resigned from Newcastle city council on health grounds in January, and this by-election will fill his seat on the council; the winner will not need to seek re-election until 2026. Defending for Labour is Hayder Qureshi, who might well have been distracted during the by-election campaign: selections for the next general election are in full swing at the moment, and Qureshi was reportedly shortlisted for the Labour nomination in Carlisle when that contest took place last month. He didn’t get it, but might have better luck here. The Conservative candidate is Aaron Whelan Harvey, who is a student reading international politics at Northumbria University; in last year’s Newcastle elections he contested North Jesmond ward. Also standing are Nick Hartley for the Green Party and Mark Ridyard for the Lib Dems.
Parliamentary constituency: Newcastle upon Tyne East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Newcastle
Postcode districts: NE6, NE7
Nick Hartley (Grn)
Hayder Qureshi (Lab)
Mark Ridyard (LD)
Aaron Whelan Harvey (C)
May 2022 result Lab 1241 C 286 Grn 274 LD 108
May 2021 double vacancy Lab 1175/1170 C 450/406 Grn 297/264 LD 107/86
May 2019 result Lab 1109 UKIP 339 Ind 200 Grn 194 C 103 LD 83
May 2018 result Lab 1436/1297/1294 Grn 223 C 185/171/166 Ind 185 UKIP 183 LD 122/90/87
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
