Previewing the six council by-elections of 6th October 2022
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Six by-elections on 6th October 2022, with the Conservatives and Labour defending two each, and the Lib Dems and independents one. In another varied week with something for everyone, this column pays tribute to a number of very long-serving councillors, veterans of our local government, who have recently passed away. Which brings us to our first poll, for a rare Labour seat in mid-Wales…
Lampeter
Ceredigion council, Wales; caused by the death of Labour councillor Hag Harris.
We start this week by travelling to the UK’s smallest university town. Despite this Lampeter is home to the third-oldest university in England and Wales: St David’s College was founded here in the 1820s by the Bishop of St David’s, Thomas Burgess, as the first university in Wales.
St David’s College was originally a centre for training Anglican priests, but it has brought one other lasting legacy to Wales. In 1850 the theologian Rowland Williams was tempted here from Cambridge to become vice-principal of the college, and he brought with him knowledge of the then-new sport of rugby union. The Wales Rugby Union recognises the Lampeter university XV as the oldest rugby team in Wales.
Lampeter’s population is under 3,000, and the 2011 census here counted just 512 full-time students in the ward — a very small number by the standards of modern universities. The college’s finances have never been that great, and St David’s College has been part of several mergers, demergers and remergers in Welsh higher education over its 200-year history. It currently forms one of the three campuses of the University of Wales Trinity St David, the other two centres being the former Trinity University College in Carmarthen and the former Swansea Metropolitan University. Appropriately for the university’s rugby heritage, Trinity St David counts the Wales legends Barry John and Dewi Bebb among its alumni; however, they studied at Carmarthen. One notable alumnus who did study in Lampeter was Peter Paphides, who read history here before becoming notable as a music journalist.
The St David’s buildings occupy the site of the former Pont Steffan castle in the Teifi valley, which here forms the boundary between Ceredigion to the north and Carmarthenshire to the south. This castle was built by the Normans who also gave the town its English-language name — a mangling of the consonants in the Welsh Llanbedr, or St Peter’s Church. The Norman castle spawned a town beside it, and Lampeter became and remains a centre for the deeply rural area around it. There are no larger towns for a long way in any direction; Aberystwyth and Carmarthen, the main railheads for the area, are both over 20 miles away.
The town is part of the Ceredigion county and parliamentary seat, which is represented by Plaid Cymru in both Westminster and Cardiff Bay; Elin Jones, the MS for Ceredigion who grew up this area, has served since 2016 as Llywydd (presiding officer) of the Senedd.
Plaid Cymru also run Ceredigion council, but local politics in this corner of the county has a very different vibe. This by-election is to replace the long-serving councillor Robert “Hag” Harris, a three-time mayor of Lampeter who formerly ran the town’s music record shop and perhaps did more than anyone to launch Peter Paphides’ music journalism career. Harris was first elected to Dyfed county council as far back as 1981, and he had represented Lampeter on the current Ceredigion county council continuously since its formation in 1995.
Throughout this time Ceredigion council has had just one Labour councillor: that was Hag Harris, who clearly had a massive personal vote in the town given that this is not remotely a Labour area in demographic terms. Harris was also the Labour candidate for Ceredigion in the 1997 general election, finishing as runner-up.
Since 1999 Harris had topped the poll in every council election in Lampeter, with independent candidate John Ivor Williams holding the ward’s other seat. In 2017 the only other candidate to stand here was Elin Tracey Jones of Plaid Cymru, who came a poor third. A boundary review for the 2022 Welsh local elections cut the ward’s representation from two councillors to one, on unchanged boundaries: independent councillor Williams retired, and nobody opposed Hag Harris’ re-election. Harris suddenly passed away just a few weeks later, aged 66.
Four candidates are standing to replace Harris, so we will have a contested election this time. The defending Labour candidate is Dinah Mulholland, who had none other than Mark Drakeford turn up in Lampeter in support of her campaign; Mulholland was the Labour candidate for Ceredigion in the 2017 and 2019 general elections, and she is a former Lampeter town councillor. One independent candidate has come forward: Lee Cowles gives an address over 30 miles away in Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire. The two remaining candidates are more local: Ann Bowen Morgan of Plaid Cymru is a current Lampeter town councillor, while the Lib Dems’ Sandra Jervis gives an address in the nearby village of Llanwnnen. This is a local by-election in Wales, so Votes at 16 applies.
Parliamentary and Assembly constituency: Ceredigion
ONS Travel to Work Area: Aberystwyth
Postcode district: SA48
Lee Cowles (Ind)
Sandra Jervis (LD)
Ann Morgan (PC)
Dinah Mulholland (Lab)
May 2022 result Lab unopposed
May 2017 result Lab 737 Ind 551 PC 270
May 2012 result Lab 884 Ind 637 PC 262 LD 130 C 49
May 2008 result Lab 790 Ind 575/249 PC 263 LD 123 Grn 65 C 55
June 2004 result Lab 785 Ind 643 PC 350
Previous results (2004–17) in detail
Butleigh and Baltonsborough
Mendip council, Somerset; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Nigel Woollcombe-Adams.
St Dunstan, as the story goes,
Once pull’d the devil by the nose
With red-hot tongs, which made him roar,
That he was heard three miles or more.
Our remaining by-elections this week are all in England, and we start with a farewell to the old institutions of local government in Somerset. At the end of March next year Mendip, Sedgemoor, South Somerset, and Somerset West and Taunton councils will disappear in a takeover of the county’s local government by Somerset county council. This must be particularly galling for residents and employees of Somerset West and Taunton council, which is being abolished just four years after it was created in 2019.
Somerset isn’t the only county being subjected to this treatment at the moment. A similar takeover has happened in North Yorkshire, while Cumbria’s local government is being restructured with the division of the county into two new unitary districts. The elections for the replacement councils took place in May this year, with the new régimes set to take over in April 2023. The old councils still exist until then, and by-elections can be held to them; but the local politicians involved generally haven’t seen much point in spending money filling vacancies in councils which will disappear soon.
With this exception. Butleigh and Baltonsborough will be the last by-election to Mendip council, which covers a diverse area of eastern Somerset: the council is based in Shepton Mallet, and includes the tiny city of Wells and the towns of Frome, Glastonbury and Street. This ward covers three parishes on the southern boundary of the district, in a low-lying area south-east of Glastonbury: the two parishes in the name, plus Lydford-on-Fosse to the east. The 2011 census return for the ward makes the top 25 in England and Wales for people in the 45–64 age bracket (37.4%), a statistic with no obvious explanation.
Baltonsborough’s parish church is dedicated to a local man. St Dunstan was born in this area in the early 10th century, and rose to become abbot of Glastonbury, bishop of London and Worcester, and eventually archbishop of Canterbury from 960 to 988. Dunstan was an adviser to the Anglo-Saxon kings of his day and a major clerical reformer of the time; he also devised the first English coronation service, crowning and anointing Edgar as king of the English at Bath Abbey in 973. He is recognised as a patron saint of blacksmiths and other metalworkers, with the legends telling that Dunstan once reshod the cloven hoof of the Devil himself.
Returning to the 21st century, Butleigh and Baltonsborough ward has returned Conservative members of Mendip council since the ward was created in 2007. Nigel Woollcombe-Adams, who had represented the ward since 2011, was a veteran Mendip councillor who had been first elected in 1991 and who had also represented the area on Somerset county council. At his last re-election in 2019 he had a 53–33 lead over the Lib Dems.
That was in the context of a poor set of local election results for the Somerset Conservatives, who lost control of Mendip council. Despite polling fewer votes than the Tories across the district in May 2019, the Lib Dems are now the largest party; they currently hold 23 seats out of a possible 47, and a gain in this by-election will give them an overall majority. Of the other Somerset districts, South Somerset and Somerset West/Taunton also have Lib Dem majorities, leaving the Conservatives only in control of Sedgemoor district.
If the local government reorganisation was intended as a takeover by the Conservatives, who until May controlled Somerset county council, it hasn’t worked out for the party. The backlash against the Tories which had been seen in the 2019 Somerset West and Taunton elections following a council merger was repeated in the 2022 Somerset county elections, and the Lib Dems now have a majority on the county council. This includes Butleigh and Baltonsborough, which is part of the Mendip South county division which the Lib Dems narrowly gained in May.
The defending Conservative candidate for this last Mendip council by-election is a familiar figure to local government watchers. Ken Maddock was the Conservative councillor for this ward until 2011, and was also leader of Somerset county council until he stood down in 2012 to become the Conservative candidate for Avon and Somerset police and crime commissioner. He lost that election, being thumped 65–35 in the runoff by independent candidate Sue Mountstevens. Up against Maddock in a straight fight is the Lib Dems’ Claire Sully, who runs a digital marketing agency and topped the poll in the Mendip South division of Somerset county council in May.
Parliamentary constituency: Somerton and Frome
Somerset county council division: Mendip South
ONS Travel to Work Area: Street and Wells
Postcode districts: BA4, BA6, TA11
Ken Maddock (C)
Claire Sully (LD)
May 2019 result C 427 LD 270 Lab 115
May 2015 result C 831 LD 534
May 2011 result C 668 LD 371
May 2007 result C 597 LD 210 UKIP 86
Previous results in detail
Highcliffe and Walkford
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council, Dorset; caused by the death of independent councillor Nick Geary.
We now travel to another part of south-west England which has been affected by recent local government reorganisation. Dorset’s councils were rearranged in 2019, creating an urban-rural split: the urban council covers the conurbation of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.
Highcliffe and Walkford ward is the easternmost ward of Dorset, covering the point where Christchurch ends at the suburb of Highcliffe-on-Sea. This part of the south coast became very fashionable in the Edwardian era as a resort dedicated to health and leisure. Here can be found the Gothic Revival pile of Highcliffe Castle on the coast, which has been home at various times to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and the American entrepreneur Harry Gordon Selfridge. Despite making extensive modifications to the castle Mr Selfridge didn’t own the place; he rented it from 1916 to 1922.
There may well still be people living in Highcliffe who can remember that far back, for these days it is an elephant’s graveyard. If you live in Highcliffe and are young enough to be of working age, you are in a small minority. In the 2011 census the former Highcliffe ward of Christchurch council ranked number 1 in England and Wales for people aged 85 or over (15.3%), ranked number 2 in England and Wales for those in the 65–84 age bracket (43.1%), and ranked number 4 in England and Wales for those who are retired (41.8% of adults). It also had the highest figures for Christianity of any ward in south-west England (76.1%).
Christchurch council no longer exists. It was one of England’s smallest districts by population until being incorporated into the new district of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole in 2019. This change did not go down well in Christchurch and Poole, who saw it as a takeeover by Bournemouth’s ruling Conservative group. The inaugural elections in 2019 surprisingly resulted in a hung council, largely thanks to a collapse in Chrstchurch’s Conservative vote in favour of an independent slate.
That independent slate included the late Nick Geary, who had previously been a Conservative member of Christchurch council since 2007. This column wrote about Geary in that context in June 2015, when covering part of the last ordinary elections to that council; one of the Labour candidates for his then ward of North Highcliffe and Walkford had died during the 2015 local election campaign, and the poll had to be postponed to 18th June. Geary stood for the new BCP council as an independent in 2019 in the new ward of Highcliffe and Walkford, and his independent slate defeated the Conservatives 49–33.
It should be stressed that this is a surprising result. In normal circumstances Christchurch is one of the safest Conservative areas in the country, and since 1997 it has been a secure base for the Conservative awkward squad MP Sir Christopher Chope. The abolished Christchurch council was also a safely Conservative unit.
The 2019 BCP council elections returned 36 Conservative councillors (who are concentrated in Bournemouth), 15 Lib Dems, 11 independents (including the Christchurch Independents), 7 members of the localist group Poole People, 3 Labour, 2 Greens, 1 UKIP and 1 councillor of the Alliance for Local Living. Astonishingly all the smaller parties except UKIP put together a rainbow coalition to run the council under Liberal Democrat leadership, but that coalition fell in 2020 after two of its councillors died and the COVID pandemic prevented by-elections being held to replace them, giving the Conservatives the numbers for a no-confidence vote. There is now a minority Conservative administration.
Since May 2019 the Christchurch Independents have registered as a political party, and they will be defending this by-election. They have selected Andy Martin, a journalist who is a regional associate editor for a local journalism group and was formerly editor of the Bournemouth Daily Echo. The Conservative candidate is Christopher van Hagen, a barrister. Also standing are Pete Brown for the Lib Dems and David Stokes for Labour.
Parliamentary constituency: Christchurch
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bournemouth
Postcode district: BH23
Pete Brown (LD)
Andy Martin (Christchurch Ind)
David Stokes (Lab)
Christopher van Hagen (C)
May 2019 result Ind 1792/1617 C 1192/1017 LD 379/351 Lab 297/266
Previous results in detail
St Anthony’s
Eastbourne council, East Sussex; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Helen Burton.
We now travel east along the south coast to another seaside resort. Eastbourne is, however, rather politically and demographically different to Christchurch in that it’s part of the Sussex coast. This is dominated economically by Brighton, where housing costs are now so high that places further along the coast are becoming attractive commuter locations. The resulting demographic changes have turned Worthing into a Labour-majority district this year, when just six years ago there were no Labour councillors in Worthing at all and there hadn’t been any for decades.
This Labour advance has not yet reached Eastbourne, which has been closely politically fought for years between the Conservatives and Lib Dems. The parliamentary seat, which covers a slightly larger area than the borough, has changed hands at all of the last four general elections; it is currently represented by the Conservatives’ Caroline Ansell.
Eastbourne council, on the other hand, has had a Lib Dem majority continuously since 2007; the most recent borough elections in May 2019 resulted in an unchanged composition of 18 Lib Dem councillors and 9 Conservatives. In that year St Anthony’s ward, which is in the north-east of the town, gave 52% to the Lib Dem slate, 18% to the Conservatives and 10% to UKIP. The ward has the same boundaries as the St Anthony’s division of East Sussex county council, which in May 2021 had a Lib Dem lead over the Conservatives of 51–34.
The St Anthony’s by-election is to replace borough councillor Helen Burton, who is moving away from the area. Burton is a former deputy mayor of Eastbourne and runs the Volunteers Network community interest company; in the 2022 Birthday Honours she was appointed BEM for services to the community in Eastbourne, particularly during COVID-19. She was in her first term on the council.
Defending for the Liberal Democrats is Hugh Parker, who is seeking to return to Eastbourne council after many years away: he was a borough councillor for Hampden Park ward in the 1908s, and has also served on Polegate town council. The Conservatives have reselected Nicholas Ansell, who is a regular candidate for this ward; he is the husband of the Eastbourne MP Caroline Ansell. UKIP have selected Ian Garbutt, who fought Langney ward in 2019. Rachael Norris completes the ballot paper for the Green Party.
Parliamentary constituency: Eastbourne
East Sussex county council division: St Anthony’s
ONS Travel to Work Area: Eastbourne
Postcode districts: BN22, BN23
Nicholas Ansell (C)
Ian Garbutt (UKIP)
Rachael Norris (Grn)
Hugh Parker (LD)
May 2021 county council result LD 1440 C 961 Lab 188 Grn 150 UKIP 79
May 2019 result LD 1604/1469/1257 C 547/489/484 UKIP 316 Ind 299 Lab 292/275/217
Previous results in detail
Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath East
Birmingham council, West Midlands; caused by the death of Labour councillor Mohammed Azim.
Our final two polls today are in the West Midlands region, and we’ll start with the one in the big city where the Conservative party conference has taken place this week. A couple of miles and a world away from Birmingham city centre we find Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath.
I lived in Balsall Heath in South Birmingham which was a predominantly immigrant area. The first generation of Windrush kids were all my friends, and I grew up with Indian and Jamaican friends. So the music of the streets was Indian music, which I love — Mohammad Rafi and Asha Bhosle and all that — and reggae.
These are the words of Ali Campbell, the former frontman of the Birmingham band UB40. The Balsall Heath and Sparkbrook where Campbell grew up hasn’t just given us reggae music: it’s left a culinary legacy as well. This area is the spiritual home of the balti, a curry style which is claimed to have first been served in a Sparkbrook restaurant in 1977. One corner of this ward is still known as the Balti Triangle.
The name of UB40 derives from a government form for administering unemployment benefit, and this is still a major supporting element of this very poor and very deprived ward. If we look at the census return for the 2004–18 Sparkbrook ward, which covered a similar area to this at the time of the 2011 census, we see that Sparkbrook ranked number 3 in England and Wales for those who had never worked or were long-term unemployed — a massive 28.7% of the workforce. It made the top 90 wards for unemployment (9.6%) and the top 20 wards for those looking after home or family (13.4%).
That last figure gives a clue as to what is going on here. Like Ali Campbell said, this is an immigrant area, with the immigrants being overwhelmingly of Pakistani heritage with smaller proportions from Somalia or the Middle East. We are only just north of Sparkhill, the setting of Citizen Khan, so let’s consider some of the stereotypes set out in that programme. Particularly the Khans’ family situation: relatively large number of kids, mum kept busy running the house and family (although Mrs Khan does have a part-time job on top of that), dad regularly at the mosque, that sort of thing. So what do we see in Sparkbrook’s census return? Well, the 2004–18 ward ranked number 9 in England and Wales for those of the Muslim faith (70.2%), made the top 70 for residents born outside the UK or EU (39.5%), was in the top 50 for Asian (61.4%) and “other” (11.6%) ethnicities, and was in the top 20 for those aged under 15 (30.8%). Sparkbrook’s population in 2011 was over 32,000 — more than the whole of the now-abolished West Somerset district. And if Highcliffe and Walkford earlier has one of the oldest populations of any ward in the country, Sparkbrook has one of the youngest.
This area has been associated with radical politics for a long time. Back in 1791 we had the Priestley riots, in which Joseph Priestley — now perhaps best known as a chemist, but notorious in his day as a religious dissenter — had his Sparkbrook home burned down by a mob. More recently the Sparkbrook parliamentary seat was for over 30 years the political powerbase of Roy Hattersley, who rose to become deputy leader of the Labour Party in the 1980s.
Citizen Khan himself might never have fully achieved the status of community leader he craved, but a look at the life story of the late councillor Mohammed Azim shows what can be achieved. Azim was born in Kashmir, came to Birmingham in the 1960s and found work at a metal-bashing firm in Aston. He rose to become shop steward, got into politics, opened a balti house, ran a supermarket, and was elected in 2004 as city councillor for Sparkbrook ward. Azim was Lord Mayor of Birmingham in 2019–20 and 2020–21. During his mayoral term he travelled to the Vatican, representing Birmingham at a 2019 service for the canonisation of Cardinal John Newman. He passed away in August.
As Labour have found to their cost over the years, you can’t necessarily stand a tub of lard with a red rosette in Sparkbrook and expect it to win. Recall that three weeks ago the Labour party lost another strongly-Muslim ward in Bolton to the Conservatives, rather against the current national polling trend. Strongly-Muslim wards like Sparkbrook can deliver weird results which ultimately boil down to what’s being discussed in the local mosques, or to the biraderi system. Mohammed Azim himself was first elected in 2004 alongside two Liberal Democrat candidates, and then he lost his seat in 2006 to Salma Yaqoob.
This was not a flash in the pan. Yaqoob was the leader of the Respect party, whose most prominent member was the former Labour MP George Galloway and which gained a lot of support from British Muslims. In the 2005 general election she had finished as runner-up, as a Respect candidate, in the Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath constituency. The Respect party went on to gain the other two seats in Sparkbrook ward in 2007 and 2008, with Azim finishing second on both occasions.
One of the Respect councillors, Nahim Khan, then earned himself a place in the Councillors Behaving Badly file after being made the subject of a bankruptcy restrictions order in 2009. This is a disqualification from public office: it’s stronger than normal bankruptcy (which is not a disqualification), and indicates that Khan was being dishonest about his finances. He was forced to resign from the council, and Respect narrowly held the resulting by-election with a majority of 267 votes over Mohammed Azim. Nearly 400 postal votes in that by-election were rejected, mostly for inconsistent voter signatures, and the returning officer called in the police to investigate a possible postal vote fraud operation.
Salma Yaqoob was re-elected for a second term in May 2010, but that was the end of the Respect hegemony in Sparkbrook. Over the following two years Labour gained all three seats in the ward, including a November 2011 by-election after Yaqoob resigned on health grounds. Mohammed Azim triumphantly returned to the council in May 2012 with a massive 86% of the vote.
For the May 2018 election Sparkbrook ward was broken up, with most of it going into the new ward of Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath East. This voted 79% Labour at its first election in 2018, but the May 2022 election had a closer result with 68% for Labour and 23% for the Conservatives.
Following the death of Mohammed Azim, the defending Labour candidate is Saima Ahmed who is an NHS worker from the area; she is the niece of another Birmingham Labour councillor. The Conservatives have selected Zhor Malik, who was elected in 2018 as a Labour councillor for the neighbouring Balsall Heath West ward, defected to the Conservatives in February 2022 after a falling-out with the local Labour party, and lost re-election in Balsall Heath West as a Conservative in May. Three other candidates are standing: Michael Harrison returns from May’s election here for the Green Party; the Liberal Democrats have selected former Birmingham councillor Shaukat Ali Khan who was previously one of the losing candidates in the Bordesley Green 2004 election which resulted in the notorious “banana republic” Election Court judgment; and the Workers Party, the latest political vehicle of George Galloway, have nominated Phil Bevin. Sadly, and despite the fact that they all know him, there is no space on the ballot paper for Citizen Khan.
Parliamentary constituency: Birmingham Hall Green (part: previously in Sparkbrook and Springfield wards), Birmingham Yardley (part: previously in South Yardley ward)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Birmingham
Postcode districts: B10, B11, B12, B13
Saima Ahmed (Lab)
Phil Bevin (Workers Party)
Michael Harrison (Grn)
Shaukat Ali Khan (LD)
Zhor Malik (C)
May 2022 result Lab 2708/2417 C 937/776 Grn 186 LD 173/131
May 2018 result Lab 4257/3950 C 701/665 Grn 237 LD 201/159
Previous results in detail
Bridgnorth West and Tasley
Shropshire council; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Leslie Winwood.
We finish for the week with a ward covering half of one of Shropshire’s smaller towns. Bridgnorth is located about 10–15 miles south of Telford and has been a crossing-point over the River Severn since time immemorial. From the twelfth century the old bridge here was overlooked by Bridgnorth Castle, which founded in 1101 by the earl of Shrewsbury and noted hardman Robert de Bellême.
Your columnist has done a lot of reading into twelfth-century England and Normandy as a result of various failed Mastermind attempts. The aristocrats and nobles who appear in court politics at this point are best understood as Mafia bosses or Game of Thrones characters, and Robert de Bellême was by reputation one of the most brutal of the lot. He was also a supporter of the Duke of Normandy Robert Curthose, which did not endear him to the duke’s younger brother King Henry I. Bridgnorth Castle was built without a royal licence, and Henry eventually stripped Robert de Bellême of his English titles and castles for this and other offences. The castle today is in a rather sorry state, but that’s not Robert or Henry’s fault; the walls are leaning at worrying angles as a result of damage from the English Civil War.
Next to the castle site is the UK’s only inland funicular railway, the Bridgnorth Cliff Railway, which links the bridge to the High Town — the town centre, on a cliff above the Severn. Most of the town centre is outside this ward, but the castle and the cliff railway are here. Also here is the Bridgnorth railway terminus, which is on the preserved Severn Valley Railway.
The West and Tasley ward is based on Bridgnorth’s southern and western suburbs plus the parish of Tasley to the north-west of the town, which has been slated for some significant housing development. In the first three elections to the modern Shropshire council this ward voted Conservative quite comfortably, but in May 2021 Labour recruited Julia Buckley, a high-profile Bridgnorth town councillor, to their slate. Buckley had previously been the Labour candidate for the local Ludlow constituency in the 2017 general election, coming a distant but creditable second in what is one of the weakest Labour constituencies in England. She clearly had a huge personal vote in Bridgnorth, and she topped the poll in Bridgnorth West and Tasley last year with 50% of the vote, gaining her seat from the Conservatives. The Tories’ Les Winwood held the ward’s other seat with 35%.
Until his death in July 2022 Winwood was an institution in Bridgnorth politics, having represented the town on the modern Shropshire council and on the previous Bridgnorth district council for 43 years. He was initially an independent councillor, but his elections to Shropshire council since 2009 had come with the Conservative nomination.
Winwood’s death leaves the Conservatives with a tricky by-election to defend. That task has fallen to Jonathan Holland, who works in the finance industry and finished runner-up as Winwood’s running-mate last year. Also returning from last year is Labour candidate Rachel Connolly, who is the present deputy mayor of Bridgnorth. Completing the ballot paper are regular Lib Dem candidate Richard Stilwell and Clare Nash for the Green Party; Nash polled just nine votes as the Green candidate for the last Shropshire by-election, in Highley ward in June, but this is her home turf.
Parliamentary constituency: Ludlow
ONS Travel to Work Area: Telford
Postcode districts: WV15, WV16
Rachel Connolly (Lab)
Jonathan Holland (C)
Claire Nash (Grn)
Richard Stilwell (LD)
May 2021 result Lab 1321/669 C 920/711 LD 336/282 Grn 70/60
May 2017 result C 1098/873 LD 511/458 Lab 312 UKIP 135
May 2013 result C 830/656 UKIP 530/447 LD 372/259
June 2009 result C 1199/940 LD 564/512 Ind 510/400/272
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
