Previewing the ten council by-elections of 7th July 2022

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Britain Elects

32 min readJul 7, 2022

“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”

Before we start this week, there is one Matter Arising to clear up as respects last week’s piece in the Western Isles, in which I had stated that I hadn’t been able to trace the 1995 election result for the former Barra and Vatersay ward. A correspondent points out that this was because there was in fact no election in the Western Isles that year; instead the islands had polled in 1994 as part of the last Scottish regional council elections. It turns out that Barra and Vatersay ward did not exist then, as in 1994 its area was divided between two single-member wards called Northbay and Castlebay, both of which returned independent councillors (Northbay without a contest). So now you know.

In what’s shaping up as I write this (Wednesday afternoon) to be a busy political week, there’s also lots of action on the local by-election front today. After last week’s Super Thursday, it’s another one today with ten polls taking place on 7th July 2022. The Conservatives only have one seat to defend this week, in Surrey: five of today’s polls are Labour defences, with the other four being two non-partisan elections in the City of London, a Residents Association defence in Surrey, and an independent defence in Derbyshire. With which we start:

Hollingwood and Inkersall

Chesterfield council, Derbyshire; caused by the resignation of independent councillor Mick Bagshaw.

Last week’s selection of by-elections had a definite Northern bias; by contrast, this week it’s the turn of London and the South East. There are five polls today inside the M25 and only one by-election taking place north of the Watford Gap: Hollingwood and Inkersall.

So it is that we travel along the M1 motorway to Derbyshire. Hollingwood and Inkersall ward lies to the east of Chesterfield proper, and is a rather curiously-drawn ward winding around the south of the town of Staveley. The whole ward is within Staveley parish, and it consists of three separate urban centres.

Closest to Chesterfield is Hollingwood, which lies on the main road from Chesterfield to Worksop. This was a very industrial place back in the day, as Hollingwood overlooks the site of the massive Staveley chemical works. The chemicals factories have all gone now, but some of the site was still in operation into the 2010s and gave the 2011 census return for this ward a very working-class profile. There had been a plan for redevelopment of the chemicals site as a depot for the eastern leg of High Speed 2, but this would appear to have fallen by the wayside. Levelling-up in action, there.

Inkersall Green lies to the south of Hollingwood and is effectively a southern extension of Staveley. To the east is a large collection of rather new buildings on the site of the former Markham Colliery, a huge coal-mining complex which survived until 1993. Markham claimed a large number of lives in its century of operation, with major underground explosions in 1937 and 1938 followed by a 1973 disaster in which a winding engine’s brakes failed, killing 18 miners. It was the last deep coal mine in Derbyshire. The regeneration effort following Markham’s closure has given us a new business park next to the village of Duckmanton, with a new junction on the M1 motorway (junction 29A) opening in 2008 to serve it.

This area doesn’t have the politics normally associated with coalfield areas, because it’s included within the borough of Chesterfield which has long had Lib Dem strength at local level. The Liberal Democrats held the Chesterfield parliamentary seat from 2001 to 2010 and controlled Chesterfield council from 2003 to 2011. Hollingwood and Inkersall ward was part of the Lib Dem majority during this period.

The ward’s three Lib Dem councillors from 2003 to 2011 were Mick Bagshaw, Paul Mann and Ruth Perry. After losing their seats to Labour in 2011 they didn’t give up; but they did leave the party, contesting the 2015 and 2019 elections as an independent slate. In 2019 Bagshaw, Mann and Perry won their seats back, gaining Hollingwood and Inkersall ward from Labour by the convincing margin of 53–33. This was the only ward of Chesterfield not to elect Labour or Lib Dem councillors in 2019: the council elections that year returned 28 Labour councillors, 17 Lib Dems and these three independents.

All three independent councillors went on to stand in the 2021 Derbyshire county council elections. Ruth Perry contested the safe-Labour Brimington division, which includes Hollingwood, and finished in a poor fifth and last place with 2.9%. Mick Bagshaw and Paul Mann stood against each other in the Staveley division, which covers Inkersall and Duckmanton, and they split the independent vote allowing Labour to come through the middle and hold the seat: vote shares in Staveley last year were just 31% for Labour, 29% for Mann, 21% for Bagshaw and 19% for the Conservatives. The Tory party performed very well in north-eastern Derbyshire in 2021 gaining all sorts of unlikely-looking divisions around Staveley, but they are so weak in Chesterfield borough that they haven’t even managed to find a candidate for this by-election.

Bagshaw tendered his resignation from the council at the start of June. One independent candidate has come forward to replace him: he is Dean Rhodes, who represents Inkersall Green ward on Staveley town council. The Labour candidate is Debbie Wheeldon. Completing the ballot paper is Louis Hollingworth, who is the first local election candidate here for the Green Party.

Parliamentary constituency: Chesterfield
Derbyshire county council division: Staveley (Inkersall and Duckmanton); Brimington (Hollingwood)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Chesterfield
Postcode districts: S43, S44

Louis Hollingworth (Grn)
Dean Rhodes (Ind)
Debbie Wheeldon (Lab)

May 2019 result Ind 892/828/774 Lab 561/545/462 C 144 LD 87/65/54
May 2015 result Lab 1803/1685/1507 Ind 971/875/792 C 661 LD 437
May 2011 result Lab 1440/1400/1330 LD 868/827/783
May 2007 result LD 1438/1373/1337 Lab 836/814/806
May 2003 result LD 1325/1279/1260 Lab 1207/1176/1158
Previous results in detail

Woughton and Fishermead

Milton Keynes council, Buckinghamshire; caused by the death of Labour councillor Carol Baume.

We now enter the South East region by way of one of the three new cities which were created in England to mark the Platinum Jubilee year of 2022. Mind, Milton Keynes has for years been calling itself a New City. Back in 1960 there was nothing here but scattered villages and the railway towns of Bletchley and Wolverton; now there is a thriving metropolis. The original plans called for a target population of 250,000 for the New City, and this has been basically achieved.

The Woughton and Fishermead ward lies to the south of Central Milton Keynes and is based around the Milton Keynes University Hospital, opened in 1984 as the general hospital for the New City. Before 1984, locals had to go to Northampton or Aylesbury for major hospital treatment. The housing within the ward, which is divided into areas such as Coffee Hall, Beanhill, Netherfield and Tinkers Bridge, consists almost entirely of 1970s estates.

Nearly all of this was originally council housing, and 49% of Woughton ward’s households were socially rented in 2011 — a figure within the top 100 wards in England and Wales. Milton Keynes has an unusually large proportion of its housing stock in shared ownership, and eight of the top nine wards in England and Wales for shared ownership were in Milton Keynes: Woughton was not one of these, but its shared ownership percentage of 4.5% was comfortably within the top 50 wards. The ward also made the top 100 in England and Wales for those educated to Level 1 (1–5 GCSE passes or equivalent), and was generally one of the most working-class wards in south-east England.

Boundary changes for the 2014 election added Fishermead, previously part of the town-centre Campbell Park ward, to this area along with a third councillor. This hasn’t appreciably changed the political character of what is a very safe ward for Labour. The Milton Keynes elections two months ago gave Labour a 70–20 lead over the Conservatives in Woughton and Fishermead. Woughton is part of the Milton Keynes South constituency while Fishermead is in Milton Keynes North; these are seats which are just outside marginal range but will definitely be in Labour’s sights if they want to form the next government.

2022 was generally a bad election for the Milton Keynes Conservatives, who fluffed a realistic chance to take overall control of what is normally a very balanced council. The Conservatives are still the largest party here with 23 councillors, but a coalition of Labour (19 plus this vacancy) and the Lib Dems (14) has run the New City for a few years now.

This by-election follows the death of Labour councillor Carole Baume, who passed away unexpectedly in April while on holiday. Baume had first been elected to Milton Keynes council in 2015, representing Bletchley East ward, but resigned after just a year when she was given a terminal cancer diagnosis. Three years of pioneering medical treatment later, Baume was well enough to resume her political career by being elected to Woughton and Fishermead ward. Outside politics she had spent her career in education, including working for the Open University, and her passion for the arts was such that she had served on the board of the Hallé Orchestra.

Defending for Labour is Susan Smith, the chair of Woughton parish council — unusually, Milton Keynes has established parish councils throughout its built-up area. The Conservative candidate is Rafal Brewczynski, who appears to be fighting his first election campaign. Lib Dem candidate Raissa Roy, who stood here in 2021 and last May, completes the ballot paper.

Parliamentary constituency: Milton Keynes South (most), Milton Keynes North (Fishermead area)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Milton Keynes
Postcode district: MK6

Rafal Brewczynski (C‌)
Raissa Roy (LD)
Susan Smith (Lab)

May 2022 result Lab 1689 C 488 LD 240
May 2021 double vacancy Lab 1605/1359 C 726/555 Grn 295 LD 156/151
May 2019 result Lab 1419 C 479 Grn 283 LD 170
May 2018 result Lab 1643 C 652 Grn 178 LD 131
May 2016 result Lab 1861 UKIP 488 C 368 LD 115
May 2015 result Lab 3051 C 1059 UKIP 1002 Grn 322 LD 236
May 2014 result Lab 1683/1562/1522 UKIP 744/743/696 C 360/285/279 Ind 219/201/166 LD 176/175/130
Previous results in detail

Hatfield Central

Welwyn Hatfield council, Hertfordshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Glyn Hayes.

From one New Town to another, as we come to what the TV property expert Phil Spencer has ranked as the second-best London commuter town (after St Albans). Hatfield is certainly on the main lines of communication coming north from London: trains from here to Kings Cross take as little as 21 minutes, and the road connection is pretty good too. The A1(M) motorway runs underneath Hatfield Central ward in a 1200-metre-long tunnel, which opened in 1986; the Galleria, Hatfield’s main indoor shopping centre, has been built on top of the tunnel.

The Hatfield Central ward lies on the eastern side of the motorway, taking in the town centre and the Birchwood area to the north. Like Woughton and Fishermead above this is another area full of social New Town housing, but this time it’s dominated by a single industry. In the 2011 census Hatfield Central (which then had slightly different boundaries) ranked number 6 in England and Wales for those employed in the wholesale, retail and vehicle sector; this rather large section of the economy accounted for 27% of the workforce. Some of the five wards ahead of it on this metric have very high student populations; this isn’t so much a factor in Hatfield Central (6.8% full-time students), but Hatfield is the home of the University of Hertfordshire.

The vast majority of this ward is within the Hatfield North division of Hertfordshire county council, which the Conservatives gained from Labour in 2021. Hatfield North’s county councillor is James Bond. No, I am not making this up. On the same day Bond was also elected to Welwyn Hatfield council, with an unexpected majority of 009 votes for the Conservatives in what is normally a safe Labour ward. As we can see from the subsequent 2022 Welwyn Hatfield elections, in which Labour held Hatfield Central with 56% of the vote against 36% for the Conservatives.

The 2021 Welwyn Hatfield election was a curious one, as district elections here in recent years had tended to be rather balanced. By 2019 this reached the point where the Conservatives lost their majority on the council: the 2019 election returned 8 Conservatives, 5 Lib Dems and 5 Labour. The two Welwyn Hatfield elections since have turned in very different results: the Conservatives won nearly everything in 2021 to regain their overall majority, before holding on to only four seats in May this year. The latest council composition has 26 Conservatives, 12 Lib Dems and 9 Labour plus this vacancy. This volatility will not have gone unnoticed by the local MP: Grant Shapps served in the Coalition cabinet from 2012 to 2015 as Conservative Party chairman, and he has [correct as of 16:00 Wednesday] been Secretary of State for Transport throughout the Johnson premiership.

The Hatfield Central by-election follows the resignation of Glyn Hayes, who had served as a councillor for this ward since 2014 and was due for re-election next year. In 2017 Hayes was involved in a motorcycle accident, which left him in a wheelchair and unable to continue with his previous job as a motor mechanic. He has now managed to get back into the world of work in a different field by taking up a new job, which is politically restricted.

Defending for Labour is Kieran Thorpe, a former councillor for Hatfield South West ward who lost his seat to the Lib Dems in May; he is seeking to make a quick return to the council. The Conservatives have reselected Mark Smith who stood here in May. Also standing are Richard Griffiths for the Lib Dems and Melvyn Jones, who is campaigning on the single issue of abolishing the TV licence.

Parliamentary constituency: Welwyn Hatfield
Hertfordshire county council division: Hatfield North (most), Hatfield East (small part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City
Postcode districts: AL9, AL10

Richard Griffiths (LD)
Melvyn Jones (Abolish the BBC Television Licence)
Mark Smith (C‌)
Kieran Thorpe (Lab)

May 2022 result Lab 736 C 466 LD 102
May 2021 result C 580 Lab 571 LD 122 Abolish the Town Council Party 86
May 2019 result Lab 582 C 435 LD 274
May 2018 result Lab 756 C 446 LD 205
May 2016 result Lab 786/742/683 C 455/392/371 LD 171/166/127
Previous results in detail

Worthing West

West Sussex county council; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Beccy Cooper.

Our third Labour defence of the week is rather different to the previous two, and is a story which this column has brought you before on a couple of occasions over the last five years: the sudden lurch to the left of Worthing.

Worthing has a very long history. In the fourth millennium BC this was Britain’s largest flint-mining area, and archaeologists have had a lot of fun excavating the local prehistoric hill forts. The town as we know it started up as a seaside resort in the eighteenth century.

But there’s more to Worthing than the beach. The town has managed to escape the fate of many seaside resorts — of decline and deprivation, as holidaymakers decide that taking their chances at an airport is more fun than braving the Great British Weather — by successfully diversifying its economy. The local water company Southern Water, the pharmaceutical giant Glaxo SmithKline and a large HM Revenue and Customs office provide year-round employment. And the town has changed demographically in recent years too: it has become a popular place to live for people of working age who have been priced out of London and Brighton. A number of the seaside resorts in Sussex are forgotten towns, elephants’ graveyards or both: Worthing is neither.

This column covered Worthing in detail on 3rd August 2017, for a by-election in the town’s Marine ward. This ward runs from Marine Gardens on the seafront inland along Grand Avenue and George V Avenue, with its northern boundary being the West Coastway railway line. A long-serving Conservative councillor for a long-standing Conservative ward had passed away. The Tories had a very large majority on Worthing council, Sir Peter Bottomley (now the Father of the House) had just been re-elected as the local Tory MP for the safe seat of Worthing West, and the Conservatives held the Worthing West county council seat (which was based on Marine ward) with a similarly large majority three monthy previously. Conservative councillor Joan Bradley had resigned on health grounds, and unfortunately passed away very shortly afterwards. You can find what I wrote then in Andrew’s Previews 2017, page 211, and wonder why I didn’t see what was coming.

The 2017 Marine by-election was the poll which broke the mould of Worthing politics. The Labour candidate Beccy Cooper, fresh from contesting the Worthing West parliamentary seat in the general election two months previously, pulled off a stunning swing of 17% from the Conservatives to win the by-election by a 47–39 margin. Let’s put this result into context: Labour had never polled over 20% in this ward before, never mind over 40%, and the last time a Labour councillor had been elected in Worthing was in 1973.

Suddenly Labour became the main challengers in a number of the town’s wards, and the Worthing Conservatives seemed to have no answers. Labour made gains in the town at the Worthing elections in 2018, 2019 and 2021, and Cooper was elected to West Sussex county council in May 2021. She enjoyed a 46–39 lead over the Conservatives in the Worthing West county division, a swing of 18½% since May 2017. In May 2021 Worthing became a hung council, and the Conservative administration continued as a minority.

This column was back in Marine ward last December, after one of the ward’s Conservative councillors, Tim Wills, was revealed to be a supporter of a far-right nationalist group. The Conservative leader of the council had some options for dealing with this. Wills could have been allowed to resign his party roles and the leader could say that was punishment enough. Some way might have been found to fix things so that Wills could escape any recommendations from the council’s standards committee or monitoring officer, or to try and cover up bad behaviour in some other way. The Conservative leader of Worthing council chose none of those options, instead giving Wills an ultimatum: deny the allegations or resign. Wills resigned. The resulting Marine ward by-election in December 2021 was an easy Labour gain — for context, this was on the same day that the Conservatives held the Old Bexley and Sidcup parliamentary by-election.

This by-election gain was followed by large Labour gains in the May 2022 local elections in Worthing. Worthing council now stands at 23 Labour councillors, 13 Conservatives, a Lib Dem and an independent. Less than five years after becoming Worthing’s first Labour councillor for decades, Beccy Cooper is now the first Labour leader of Worthing council. She has stood down from West Sussex county council, which has a Conservative majority and where Labour are in opposition. to concentrate on her district council role.

Which gives us a by-election in the Worthing West county division, which covers all of Marine ward plus the northern part of Heene ward around West Worthing railway station. Both of these voted Labour in May, with the party holding Heene ward and gaining the final Conservative seat in Marine. The 2021 result was 46–39 for Labour and the Conservatives; if May’s results are anything to go by, this by-election should see a significant swing to Labour.

Defending for Labour is Graham McKnight, who contested Durrington ward in May’s Worthing elections. The Conservative candidate is Michael Cloake, a former county councillor who lost his seat to Labour in Worthing Pier division last year. Also standing are Jo Paul for the Greens and Hazel Thorpe for the Lib Dems.

Parliamentary constituency: Worthing West
Worthing wards: Marine; Heene (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Worthing
Postcode districts: BN11, BN12

Michael Cloake (C‌)
Graham McKnight (Lab)
Jo Paul (Grn)
Hazel Thorpe (LD)

May 2021 result Lab 1824 C 1540 Grn 285 LD 171 Ind 114
May 2017 result C 1605 Lab 681 LD 372 Grn 264 UKIP 189
Previous results in detail

Charlwood

Councillor resigns from Charlwood years into term, replacement wanted (7, 7).

The Conservatives are only defending one council seat this week, which is rather odd given that there are five polls today in the South East region or the Home Counties — the party’s traditional heartland. This defence is for the village of Charlwood, which lies within the Mole Valley local government district on the southern boundary of Surrey. And thereby hangs a tale.

Charlwood is immediately outside the northern boundary of Gatwick Airport, which is one of the busiest airports in Europe and drives the area’s economy. In particular, Gatwick is the major employer for the New Town of Crawley, a few miles to the south of Charlwood. However, before the 1970s the airport lay within Charlwood parish and was therefore part of the county of Surrey, while Crawley was over the county line within Sussex.

The 1974 reorganisation of England’s local government intended to sort this out by transferring Charlwood and the nearby town of Horley into the county of West Sussex, where they would form part of the district based on Crawley. This went down so badly in Charlwood and Horley that the Heath government was forced into a last-minute U-turn, resulting in Parliament passing the Charlwood and Horley Act 1974 which is still on the statute book today. The effect of the Act was that Gatwick Airport itself would go to West Sussex but Charlwood and Horley would remain in Surrey; Horley became part of the Reigate and Banstead district, while the rump of Charlwood parish was tacked onto the new district of Mole Valley which is administered from Dorking.

The new county boundary was carefully drawn around the airport perimeter, but Charlwood ward does include the Gatwick Aviation Museum near the village itself and a number of large airport hotels in the village of Hookwood, behind Gatwick’s north terminal. Also here is Farmfield Hospital, a secure unit treating male patients detained under the Mental Health Act. Farmfield has a long history as an asylum, having been originally opened in 1900 by the London County Council under the Inebriates Act 1898, as a reformatory for habitual drunkards.

Charlwood ward has had unchanged boundaries since 1976, returning an independent councillor until 1995 (without Conservative opposition) and Conservatives since 1999. From 2011 onwards the ward’s councillor was Charles Yarwood, who has resigned after eleven years in office. Yarwood was last re-elected in May 2019 in an unusually close result for the ward: he polled 46% against 28% for the Green Party and 14% for UKIP.

We have now gone through almost a whole electoral cycle of terrible local election results for the Surrey Conservatives, which started in 2019 when the Tories lost 120 council seats in the county. Mole Valley has historically been one of the weaker Conservative districts in Surrey because there has always been a large bloc of independent councillors here, and the Liberal Democrats have been active since the 1990s; hung councils have been the norm in this district. However, in 2019 Charlwood was one of only two wards which the Conservatives won across the whole district; they lost ten seats in Mole Valley that year, nine of them going to the Liberal Democrats who have had majority control of the council since. They had only previously had a council majority here for one year, 1994–95.

Following further Conservative losses in the May 2022 Mole Valley elections there are now 24 Liberal Democrat councillors, 9 Conservatives plus this vacancy, and 7 councillors for the localist Ashtead Independents. Suddenly that 18-point majority in Charlwood from May 2019 looks a bit shaky. Charlwood might be the weakest Lib Dem ward in the district, but don’t forget the Green Party who start in second place — in the last year a number of wards in rural southern England not dissimilar to this have fallen to the Greens in by-elections.

Defending for the Conservatives is Corinna Osborne-Patterson, who is looking to make a quick return to the council after losing her seat in May in the neighbouring ward of Capel, Leigh and Newdigate. The Green candidate is local resident Lisa Scott, who fought the local county council division (Dorking Rural) last year. UKIP have not returned, so completing the ballot paper are Mike Ward for the Lib Dems and the ward’s first Labour candidate since 2000, Laurence Nasskau.

Parliamentary constituency: Mole Valley
Surrey county council division: Dorking Rural
ONS Travel to Work Area: Crawley
Postcode districts: RH5, RH6

Laurence Nasskau (Lab)
Corinna Osborne-Patterson (C‌)
Lisa Scott (Grn)
Mike Ward (LD)

May 2019 result C 282 Grn 171 UKIP 86 LD 69
May 2015 result C 770 UKIP 219 LD 143 Grn 78
May 2011 result C 510 LD 140 UKIP 93
May 2007 result C 367 LD 183
May 2003 result C 287 LD 179
May 2000 result C 310 LD 145 Lab 48
May 1999 result C 347 LD 110 Lab 90
May 1995 result Ind 470 Ind C 106 LD 102 Lab 66
May 1991 result Ind 463 LD 92 Lab 61
May 1987 result Ind 596 Lab 103
May 1983 result Residents 544 All 96
May 1979 result Ind unopposed
May 1976 result Ind unopposed
Previous results (2003-) in detail

West Ewell

Epsom and Ewell council, Surrey; caused by the death of Residents Association councillor Clive Smitherham.

We now cross inside the M25 motorway for the rest of this week’s Previews, but remain within the Surrey county council area for the moment. Similarly to how Charlwood and Horley managed not to be transferred into Sussex at the 1970s reorganisation, Epsom and Ewell remained within the Surrey county council area in the 1960s when the London suburbia around it — Chessington to the west, Sutton and Cheam to the east — became part of Greater London. Despite this, it can be hard to see the join between Greater London and Epsom and Ewell.

In many ways West Ewell is just another suburb. The ward runs westward from Ewell West railway station, on the Waterloo-Epsom line, with its northern boundary being open space around the Hogsmill River. The census return is middle-class, and the ward is part of a safe Conservative parliamentary seat represented by international laughing stock Chris Grayling.

In local elections, however, this is not an ordinary place. Epsom and Ewell has been an urban district since the 1930s when much of the housing in this ward was built, and its council has been controlled throughout the last nine decades by Residents Association councillors. The Residents hoover up local votes that would go to Conservative candidates pretty much anywhere else, to the extent that after the 2019 local elections the Conservatives only held one council seat in the entire borough.

2019 was a particularly good year for the Residents Associations of Epsom and Ewell, as we can see from the fact that in West Ewell ward their slate polled 71% of the vote against Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative opposition. The West Ewell division of Surrey county council, which is larger than this ward, is also safe for the Residents. Clive Smitheram, who passed away in April at the age of 76, had represented West Ewell ward since 1999, and in every election from 2003 onwards he had beaten other Residents candidates higher up the alphabet to top the poll — a clear sign of a large personal vote. Smitheram was mayor of Epsom and Ewell in 2010–11.

Defending this by-election for the Residents Associations of Epsom and Ewell is Alan Williamson, who has pursued a career in financial services; he was educated locally, and returned to West Ewell in 2011 after living in Greater London for 24 years. He is up against candidates from the same three parties as last time: Mark Todd for Labour, Marian Morrison for the Lib Dems and Kieran Persand for the Conservatives.

Parliamentary constituency: Epsom and Ewell
Surrey county council division: West Ewell
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode district: KT19

Marian Morrison (LD)
Kieran Persand (C‌)
Mark Todd (Lab)
Alan Williamson (Res Assocs of Epsom and Ewell)

May 2019 result Res Assocs of Epsom and Ewell 1005/992/967 Lab 155/147/142 LD 132/124/112 C 118/111/96
May 2015 result West Ewell and Ruxley Res Assoc 1610/1563/1338 C 770/734/654 Lab 525/495/472 LD 345
May 2011 result West Ewell and Ruxley Res Assoc 908/854/714 LD 634/410/500 C 322/311/293 Lab 253/241/235
May 2007 result West Ewell and Ruxley Res Assoc 924/889/886 C 313/243/207 Lab 135/133/125 LD 114/110/108
May 2003 result West Ewell and Ruxley Res Assoc 784/757/710 C 303 Lab 185/177/165 LD 100
Previous results in detail

De Beauvoir

Hackney council, London; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Tom Dewey.

We now finally enter Greater London for two early by-elections to the new London borough councils, which were only elected two months ago. The curious name of De Beauvoir ward comes from the de Beauvoir family, who were the landowners here in the 1820s when a developer, William Rhodes, decided to make some money by building spacious new houses for the upper classes a few miles north of the City. He was spurred on by the opening of the Regent’s Canal, which had made the area accessible for development.

Unfortunately the whole project got mired in legal trouble over Rhodes’ lease which occupied the courts for years, and by the time this was sorted out the upper classes were no longer interested in moving to Hackney. So De Beauvoir Town ended up as scaled-down housing for the middle classes, with some industry around the canal. Not all of the Victorian Jacobethan-style terraces survive: parts of De Beauvoir Town have been redeveloped for council housing since the Second World War, with the De Beauvoir Estate in the south-west corner of the ward including five large tower blocks. Opposition from residents saved the rest of the area from the wrecking ball, and much of the rest of the ward is now a conservation area.

There has been a De Beauvoir ward continuously since Hackney borough was created in the 1960s, and in the 2011 census the ward made a number of England and Wales Top 100 lists: 22nd for those employed in the professional, scientific and technical sector (20.3%), 27th for households in shared ownership (5.2%), 90th for mixed-race population (6.8%). Parts of the ward had unusually large Turkish and Nigerian populations. At the time De Beauvoir ward extended over the Regent’s Canal into Shoreditch: this area was removed by boundary changes in 2014 which also cut the number of councillors from three to two.

De Beauvoir Town may have been built as housing for the middle classes but there is certainly a radical political history here. In 1907 the Brotherhood Church, a building on Southgate Road (the western boundary of this ward) which no longer exists today, was the venue for the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which was attended by Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and a host of other Russian Communist figures, all trying to work out their strategy for a Communist revolution in Russia. The modern politics of De Beauvoir is also left-wing, and this is a safe Labour ward. In May the Labour slate polled 57% of the vote here, with the Greens’ 22% best of the rest. The Conservatives had no candidate here in May but were on the ballot in the 2021 GLA elections, with Sadiq Khan defeating Shaun Bailey here 57–15 and the London Members ballot going 49% Labour, 19% Green and 13% Conservative. There’s not much love for Communism in De Beauvoir now: the Communist list polled just ten votes here last year in the London Members vote.

The voters here are being called out again so soon after May’s London borough elections because newly-elected Labour councillor Tom Dewey resigned less than two weeks into his term of office. Dewey had previously been an important figure in Hackney Labour, as the election agent for the local MP Dame Meg Hillier.

Defending this by-election for Labour is Joe Walker, who is the co-founder of a charity for street children called Street Action; he contested Springfield ward, a heavily Jewish area of Hackney, in 2018 but failed to dislodge the Conservatives there. The Green candidate is Tyrone Scott, who fought the neighbouring Dalston ward in May and is also seeking the deputy leadership of the Green Party of England and Wales in a separate election at the moment; Dalston elected one Green councillor two months ago, but it wasn’t Scott. Also standing are Thrusie Maurseth-Cahill for the Lib Dems, Kelly Reid for the Independent Network, Kristal Bayliss for the Women’s Equality Party and Oliver Hall for the Conservatives.

Parliamentary constituency: Hackney South and Shoreditch
London Assembly constituency: North East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: E8, N1

Kristal Bayliss (Women’s Equality)
Oliver Hall (C‌)
Thrusie Maurseth-Cahill (LD)
Kelly Reid (Ind Network)
Tyrone Scott (Grn)
Joe Walker (Lab)

May 2022 result Lab 1400/1102 Grn 538/288 LD 302 Ind Network 205
May 2018 result Lab 1448/1153 Grn 451/210 LD 336/316 C 168/138 Duma Polska 24
May 2014 result Lab 1336/1245 Grn 476/418 C 433/342 LD 189/150 TUSC 58
Previous results in detail

May 2021 GLA results (excludes postal voters)
Mayor: Lab 1141 C 305 Grn 240 LD 59 Women’s Equality 48 Omilana 32 London Real 32 Reclaim 29 Let London Live 25 Count Binface 18 Farah London 17 Rejoin EU 17 Animal Welfare 12 Obunge 9 Heritage Party 8 Fosh 6 Renew 5 UKIP 5 Burning Pink 4 SDP 4
London Members: Lab 1012 Grn 394 C 267 Women’s Equality 110 LD 95 Animal Welfare 27 Rejoin EU 23 London Real 22 CPA 19 UKIP 16 Heritage Party 14 TUSC 13 Let London Live 11 Comm 10 Reform UK 8 Londonpendence 7 SDP 5 Nat Lib 2

Hampstead Town

Camden council, London; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Adrian Cohen.

We now come to the district which the original developers of De Beauvoir Town wished it had become, the byword of the middle classes which is Hampstead. Lying on one of the first significant hills north of the Thames, Hampstead’s height and relatively clean air made it attractive to well-off Londoners looking to escape the smog of the city below, and its accessibility was improved in 1907 by the opening of the Golders Green branch of the Northern Line to provide quick access to the West End. Because of the height of the hill, Hampstead tube station is the deepest station on the London Underground network: the main access to the platforms is via a 181-foot lift shaft.

Much of Hampstead Town ward is the open space of Hampstead Heath, taking in the village of North End and the so-called Vale of Health. Hampstead itself is a well-preserved London suburb with some of the most expensive housing in the country: in one of this ward’s census districts the median house price last year was over £3 million. One of the houses here, the 17th-century Fenton House, is in the hands of the National Trust; a house in the east of the ward from a slightly later era was once the home of the poet John Keats, and is now a museum dedicated to him.

The 2011 census found that 2,630 households in this ward were owner-occupiers, which means that the vast majority of those lucky people will be millionaires. And this ward shows up in a lot of other 2011 census lists too. A massive 69% of Hampstead Town’s workforce were in the ONS’ two managerial and professional occupational groups, with the ward ranking 4th in England and Wales for the higher group and 6th for the lower group. 68.3% of adults living here had degree-level qualifications, the 4th-highest figure for any ward in England and Wales. Interestingly, Hampstead Town also made fourth place for people who did not state their religion (22.0%). The ward was in the top 30 for people working in the professional, scientific and technical sector (19.8%) and the top 70 for the financial and insurance sector (15.0%). Its proportion of self-employed people (21.1%) was the highest of any ward in London. Finally, Hampstead Town was in the top 50 wards for the White Other ethnic group (26.4%) and people born in the pre-2001 EU states (9.4%); there is a large population of Americans here as well.

The ward was the subject of boundary changes this year which lopped off its southern end, around the Royal Free Hospital, together with one of its three councillors. In its previous incarnation Hampstead Town had generally voted Conservative, although the Liberal Democrats had a significant vote and were capable of winning seats here in the pre-Coalition era.

Which is rather important for why this by-election is taking place. For the 2022 election Labour had selected Adrian Cohen and Alexander Sufit as their candidates for the redrawn Hampstead Town, a ward where the party had never won or come particularly close to winning before. Cohen, who worked before the election as a lawyer in the banking and finance sector, is a senior figure in the Jewish Leadership Council and sits on the Board of Deputies of British Jews, representing Highgate synagogue. For the 2022 Camden elections he was a so-called “paper candidate” — somebody standing in a ward they do not expect to win, who does little or no campaigning on their own behalf but does serve a purpose of giving your party’s supporters somebody to vote for. All parties do this, all the time.

After polling day was over Cohen decided to go to bed rather than go to the count, and he was rather surprised to be woken up at 4 o’clock the following morning and told that he would now be a Camden councillor. Hampstead Town had split its two seats. The Conservatives polled 40% and won one seat, which went to Stephen Stark. Labour polled 38% and won the other seat, Cohen finishing with a majority of 59 votes over his running-mate Sufit. The Liberal Democrats finished in third place with 22%. This was very much in line with results in the rest of Camden borough and in inner London more generally; Camden Labour finished with a massive 47 seats, against 4 Lib Dems, just 3 Conservatives and a Green. It might have helped that Sir Keir Starmer is one of the borough’s MPs, although Hampstead is not part of his constituency.

Because he had not expected to win Cohen had given no thought to how he might actually fulfil his democratic duties, and he had instead agreed to take up a new job after the election was over. After considering his position, he decided that he couldn’t do both and the new job was more important. Cohen submitted his resignation to the council three weeks after his election.

So we have a tricky by-election for Labour to defend. They have reselected their losing candidate from May Alex Sufit, who works as director of public affairs and diversity, inclusion and equity at a Swiss music/technology company. The Conservative candidate is Alex Andrews; she was on the losing Tory slate in Primrose Hill ward two months ago. Standing for the Lib Dems, and favourite in the betting at the time of writing, is Linda Chung who won a by-election to the previous Hampstead Town ward in 2008 and served until 2014. Completing the ballot paper are independent candidate Jonathan Livingstone, Patrick McGinnis of the recently-formed National Housing Party (an anti-refugee group, judging from their ballot paper description) and Peter McGinty for the Green Party.

Parliamentary constituency: Hampstead and Kilburn
London Assembly constituency: Barnet and Camden
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode district: NW3

Alex Andrews (C)
Linda Chung (LD)
Jonathan Livingstone (Ind)
Patrick McGinnis (National Housing Party)
Peter McGinty (Grn)
Alex Sufit (Lab)

May 2022 result C 1089/887 Lab 1030/971 LD 609/435

Bridge and Bridge Without; and
Walbrook

City of London Court of Aldermen; caused by the resignations of Aldermen Sir Alan Yarrow and John Garbutt respectively.

Today’s Previews finish in the Square Mile, where the pandemic backlog is now starting to unwind as we continue with some more of the Aldermanic elections which should by custom have taken place over the last couple of years. Two Aldermen have retired, so we have some open seats on the bench of senior councillors from whom the Lord Mayor of London is chosen.

One of today’s Aldermanic elections takes place in the very centre of the City. Walbrook ward covers four of the six sides of the Bank road junction, including the Bank of England to the north and the Mansion House and the City of London Magistrates Court to the south. The ward is named after one of the lost rivers of London, which gave its name to the church of St Stephen Walbrook behind the Mansion House, on the eastern side of the pedestrian street called Walbrook. In 1953 the rector of St Stephen Walbrook was Revd Chad Varah, who founded a telephone hotline run from the church for people contemplating suicide: thus was born the Samaritans.

The polling station for Walbrook ward is the Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London. Bridge and Bridge Without ward, as well as being lower down physically given its riverside location, is also clearly lower down socially because its polling station is a Portakabin parked on Monument Street for the occasion. This ward takes in Pudding Lane, the street where the Great Fire of London broke out in the summer of 1666, together with the Monument to that fire. The north-east corner of the ward is 20 Fenchurch Street, the skyscraper known as the Walkie Talkie; the south-west corner is Fishmongers Hall, home to the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers and the scene of an Islamic terrorist stabbing in 2019. Deep underneath the ward is what remains of the City’s first tube railway station: King William Street station, the original northern terminus of what is now the City branch of the Northern Line, operated from 1890 to 1900, and its platform tunnel recently saw use as a contractors’ site during the upgrade of the Bank underground station.

The Bridge of the ward name is London Bridge, which is interesting enough to have previously been a Mastermind subject in its own right: David Clark, the author of the Life After Mastermind blog (link), won the 2008 series final with the History of London Bridge as his specialised subject. Life After Mastermind has mentioned your columnist a few times, so it’s only fair that I return the favour here. In its current incarnation London Bridge is a 1973 concrete and steel structure which replaced a nineteenth-century bridge that now stands in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Contrary to popular belief, the Americans knew exactly what they were buying.

The nineteenth-century bridge replaced the twelfth-century Old London Bridge, which was almost a town in itself with its many tiny arches supporting not only the roadway but also houses and other buildings. These included a church, the Chapel of St Thomas on the Bridge, which was dedicated to St Thomas Becket and was the traditional start of the pilgrimage to Canterbury. With all those buildings and the fact that before the 18th century there were no other bridges across the Thames below Kingston, congestion on the bridge was chronic from the word go. London’s traffic problems have been going on for longer than you might have thought. And the congestion was just as bad below: the many arches obstructed the flow of the Thames so badly that the upstream side was prone to freezing over during a bad winter. Hence the “frost fairs”.

In mediaeval times the City Corporation owned three manors in Southwark on the south bank of the Thames, and these were given representation in 1550 by creating the new ward of Bridge Without, with the previous Bridge ward renamed as Bridge Within. Bridge Without never had Common Councilmen nor did it even have any voters, but all the way up to 1978 there was an Alderman for the ward who was co-opted by the other Aldermen. The City now has no responsibility for any of the former Bridge Without ward, but because the 1978 reform technically merged the Bridge Within and Without wards the name still survives.

Both of the outgoing Aldermen for these wards are retiring. Bridge and Bridge Without is vacated by Sir Alan Yarrow, who is now 71 years old and over the customary retirement age for Aldermen of 70. Yarrow was the 687th Lord Mayor of London, serving in 2014–15; he worked for 37 years for the bank Dresdner Kleinwort, finishing as chair of its UK banking operations. Another former Kleinwort employee on the Court of Aldermen was John Garbutt, who has vacated Walbrook ward; he had spent his career in the pensions industry.

So we have two open seats on the Court of Aldermen. The Bridge and Bridge Without vacancy has two candidates, both of whom are sitting Common Councilmen. Timothy Levene, an entrepreneur, has represented Bridge and Bridge Without ward since 2017 and was re-elected there without a contest at the last City elections in March; Andrew McMurtrie has represented Coleman Street ward on the Common Council since 2013. Whoever wins this one will generate more work for this column, because a by-election will be held for their Common Council seat in due course.

Walbrook has attracted more interest with five candidates standing, none of whom are currently on the Common Council. Timothy Becker, a barrister who chairs the Public Access Bar Association, has turned up in a number of City by-elections over the last decade and sometimes reaches the dizzy heights of ten votes; however, he didn’t manage that in his last attempt at an Aldermanic election, polling just two votes in Cheap ward in 2018 (Andrew’s Previews 2018, page 235). Nigel Biggs is a chartered surveyor for the commercial property firm CBRE, who wants to reinvigorate the City by bringing its office workers back. Edward Goodchild is described as a serial entrepreneur. Jennette Newman has recently finished her one-year term as president of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers. Last alphabetically is a young man from a family which has been associated with this ward for four generations: Philip Palumbo is a grandson of Lord Palumbo, the property developer and former Arts Council chairman, and Philip runs the private members’ Walbrook Club immediately behind St Stephen Walbrook church. As usual for the City of London, all the Aldermanic candidates today are independents.

Bridge and Bridge Without

Parliamentary constituency: Cities of London and Westminster
London Assembly constituency: City and East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: EC3M, EC3R, EC3V, EC4R

Timothy Levene (Ind)
Andrew McMurtrie (Ind)

Previous results (2010-) in detail

Walbrook

Parliamentary constituency: Cities of London and Westminster
London Assembly constituency: City and East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: EC2N, EC2R, EC2V, EC3V, EC4N

Timothy Becker (Ind)
Nigel Biggs (Ind)
Edward Goodchild (Ind)
Jennette Newman (Ind)
Philip Palumbo (Ind)