Previewing the two local by-elections of 6th July 2023
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Two by-elections on 6th July 2023:
Maidstone Central
Kent county council; caused by the death of Liberal Democrat councillor Dan Daley.
There are only two by-elections taking place today, but they are both in large electoral districts. In electorate terms Maidstone Central is one of the largest around: it returns two members of Kent county council, and the notice of poll for this by-election gives an electorate of around 29,800. This is one of the largest local by-elections we’ll write about this year.
Maidstone is Kent’s county town, located on the River Medway which is the traditional boundary between Kentish Men and Men of Kent. The Central county division does contain most of the town centre — although not all of it, following boundary changes in 2017 — but it is focused on the part of Maidstone on the west side of the Medway, where Kentish Men (and Women) live along the London and Tonbridge roads. This division includes the Barming Heath area on the road towards Tonbridge, the relatively modern village of Allington on the road towards London, and the Maidstone Hospital in between. The railway stations of Maidstone Barracks and Maidstone West link the division to the outside world, via a change at Strood or Paddock Wood.
Allington has seen a lot of development in recent years, but there are bits of it which are old: notably Allington Castle next to the river, whose current buildings date back to the thirteenth century. The castle was restored to a habitable condition in the twentieth century, and it is now the home of Sir Robert Worcester, who will be well-known to election watchers for founding the opinion polling company MORI all the way back in 1969. MORI is still going today, although it was taken over by the global market research company Ipsos in 2005 and now trades under that name; Sir Robert is also still with us, now aged 89. He holds dual American and British citizenship, meaning that his knighthood is a full one and he will be an elector in this by-election. Worcester’s home at Allington Castle is not normally open to the public, although Maidstone’s river cruise firm Kentish Lady advertises occasional guided tours via a return boat trip from the town centre (for a fee).
The Conservatives have a large majority on Kent county council, and they are the laregst party on Maidstone council which they run as a minority. However, they are relatively weak in Maidstone town which has historically been a strong Lib Dem area in local elections. The most recent Kent county council division was in 2021, a good Conservative year: the Tories topped the poll in Maidstone Central with 36% of the vote and won one seat, the Liberal Democrats polled 30% and won the other seat, and Labour were third on 19%. That represents a Conservative gain compared with the previous county elections in 2017, when the Lib Dems won both seats. The division is currently within the Conservative-held parliamentary seat of Maidstone and the Weald; this will be dissolved at the next general election, with Maidstone Central transferred into a new seat called Maidstone and Malling.
All four-and-a-half wards of Maidstone council within the division were also up for election in 2021. With the caveat that this includes votes from the part of the town-centre High Street ward which is outside the division, the Conservatives polled 38% and won Allington, Bridge and Heath wards; the Lib Dems (who didn’t contest Fant ward) polled 27% and won High Street ward; and Labour (who didn’t contest Bridge ward) polled 18% and won Fant ward.
However, the Conservatives have not won any of the wards in the division since. In 2022, on the same basis the Lib Dems topped the poll with 30%, the Conservatives polled 28%, Labour 25% and the Greens 16%; Allington, Heath and High Street voted Lib Dem, Fant voted Labour and Bridge voted Green. Bridge and Heath wards were not up for election this May, but the other three wards in Maidstone Central followed the same pattern this year as in 2022.
County councillor Dan Daley passed away at the end of March, aged 90; his death came just too late for this by-election to be combined with the May local elections. Daley had got in politics in 1985 as an anti-development campaigner in Allington, and he represented Allington ward on Maidstone council continuously from 1990 to 2022 when he retired on health and age grounds. He was leader of Maidstone council from 1992 to 1999, Mayor of Maidstone in 1999–2000, and had also served on Kent county council since 2001. Away from the council Daley was passionate about wind and orchestral music and was a trustee of the Royal West Kent Regimental Museum; before moving to Maidstone he had worked on freight infrastructure projects in his native London, becoming a Freeman of the City of London.
That will be a hard act to follow for Daley’s successor in this by-election. Defending for the Lib Dems is Chris Passmore, a retired naval officer and Barming parish councillor who was their unsuccessful candidate here two years ago; in May’s Maidstone council elections he contested the safe-Conservative ward of Marden and Yalding. The Conservatives have turned to the next generation of political forecasters by selecting Stanley Forecast, who represents Allington ward on Maidstone council; Forecast is only 22 years old, and he has just finished his studies at the University of Kent where he was reading international business. Also in his 20s is the Labour candidate David Collier, who has a background in civil engineering and infrastructure and has previously been elected to the UK Youth Parliament; Collier was the Labour candidate for High Street ward in May. Completing the ballot paper are Stuart Jeffery for the Greens, Graham Jarvis for Reform UK and independent Yolande Kenward, whom readers might remember for her tilt at the North Shropshire parliamentary by-election in 2021; on that occasion Kenward polled just three votes, but Maidstone is her home district so she will hope to do better this time.
Parliamentary constituency: Maidstone and the Weald
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Maidstone and Malling
Maidstone council wards: Allington, Bridge, Fant, Heath, High Street (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Medway
Postcode districts: ME14, ME15, ME16
David Collier (Lab)
Stanley Forecast (C)
Graham Jarvis (Reform UK)
Stuart Jeffery (Grn)
Yolande Kenward (Ind)
Chris Passmore (LD)
May 2021 result C 3484/2562 LD 2880/2207 Lab 1817/1748 Grn 1389/1098
May 2017 result LD 3540/3140 C 2746/2246 Lab 1363/1319 UKIP 647 Grn 470/444
Previous results in detail
East Kilbride West
South Lanarkshire council, Scotland; caused by the resignation of Scottish National Party councillor Ali Salamati.
Our other by-election today takes place north of the border. We’ve come to East Kilbride, the sixth-largest locality in Scotland. This is Scotland’s largest and oldest New Town, designated in 1947 to house overspill from the city of Glasgow to the north.
Last year Andrew’s Previews covered a Glasgow city by-election in Linn ward, based on Castlemilk and running up to the high ground of the Cathkin Braes. East Kilbride West ward lies on the other side of that high ground, covering residential areas on the northern and western edge of the town: Stewartfield, Hairmyres and Mossneuk.
Before the New Town was here, there was Hairmyres Hospital. This opened in 1904 as the Lanarkshire Inebriate Reformatory, but soon on moved from treating habitual drunkards to become a TB sanatorium. Over Christmas 1946 the novelist George Orwell was hospitalised here while in the middle of writing Nineteen Eighty-Four; the hospital staff confiscated his typewriter but did give him a treatment of streptomycin, a newly-discovered antibiotic which is now widely used to treat tuberculosis. Orwell was the first TB patient in Scotland to be treated with streptomycin. Hairmyres Hospital is now surrounded by New Town housing, and it is the main general hospital for East Kilbride. Not far away is the College Milton industrial estate, which for many years was home to the printing presses for the northern editions of the Radio Times. Other listings magazines are available.
East Kilbride West ward was created in 2007 and had minor boundary changes in 2017. IQt elects three members of South Lanarkshire council, which is a rather varied area combining the Glasgow suburbs of Rutherglen and Cambuslang, the major towns of East Kilbride and Hamilton and a large rural area in upper Clydesdale. Proportional representation is in use, and while the Scottish National Party are the largest party on the council they are short of a majority with 27 out of 64 councillors. They are in opposition to a Labour minority administration of 24 councillors, with 7 Conservatives, 3 Lib Dems, 2 independents and a Green holding the balance of power.
The first three of the four local elections to date in East Kilbride West ward gave one seat each to Labour, the SNP and the Conservatives (who do well in Thorntonhall). Labour polled the most first preferences here in 2007 and a 2010 by-election, the SNP in 2012 and the Conservatives in 2017.
The 2010 by-election resulted from the Labour councillor Michael McCann being elected as Labour MP for the local constituency of East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow; Labour held the seat. The Conservative councillor for this ward, Graham Simpson, was elected to Holyrood in 2016 as an MSP for the Central Scotland region, and he stood down from the council in 2017. McCann lost his Westminster seat to the SNP in the 2015 landslide; the SNP have represented East Kilbride in the Scottish Parliament since 2011. The Westminster seat will be redrawn at its next election, losing Lesmahagow.
Then we get to 2022 and everything changed. The Scottish National Party topped the poll on first preferences with 31%, Labour were second on 27%, the Conservatives fell to third place on 20% and long-serving SNP councillor David Watson, seeking re-election as an independent, started on 19%. Labour candidate Monique McAdams, who had been their parliamentary candidate in 2017 and 2019, was elected on the first count. The two SNP candidates were excellently balanced — Ali Salamati started on 1,031 votes and Craig Sloan on 1,041 — but there weren’t enough votes to elect both of them. Salamati picked up just enough transfers from the Labour surplus and minor parties to overtake his running-mate, and Sloan was eliminated four votes behind Salamati. His transfers put Salamati over the quota, and the resulting SNP surplus then went strongly to independent David Watson who was re-elected by a margin of 107 votes over the Conservatives. Effectively, this was an independent gain from the Conservatives.
As can be seen, this was one of those wards where transfers were crucial. In fact, it’s more than that, as we can see by re-running the votes cast last year as if a single seat had been up for election. Watson’s transfers split fairly evenly between the other three parties, while Conservative transfers strongly favoured Labour over the SNP; the effect is that Labour candidate Monique McAdams would have beaten the SNP candidate by the large margin of 3,018 votes to 2,361 (56% to 44%). That SNP candidate in the top two is not Ali Salamati: it’s his running-mate Craig Sloan, because in the single-seat count Salamati doesn’t get the Labour surplus votes necessary for him to beat Sloan. If we re-run the votes cast here last year for two seats, they would have gone to McAdams (Lab) and Sloan (SNP) for the same reason; but once a third seat is available, McAdams started the count over the quota and her surplus votes meant that Salamati overtook Sloan to become the preferred SNP candidate. This is one of the rare circumstances in which the Single Transferable Vote, which has been used in Scottish local elections since 2007, can deliver counter-intuitive results.
Anyway, the point to take away here is that, once transfers are taken into account, the SNP have an uphill struggle to defend this seat in the by-election. Their councillor Ali Salamati resigned his seat in May, after a year in office, because he is now working abroad. The SNP are still looking for their first by-election win of the Yousaf era, while Labour’s recent difficulties in South Lanarkshire are a bit more local: the Labour council leader Joe Fagan was recently handed a two-month suspension by the Standards Board for Scotland for leaking confidential information during the 2021 Holyrood election campaign. Both parties may also be distracted by the ongoing recall petition in another of South Lanarkshire’s constituencies, Rutherglen and Hamilton West: that petition is open until 31st July, and it is the first electoral event in Scotland at which Voter ID is required.
Defending this by-election for the SNP is Robert Gillies, who contested East Kilbride East ward last year. The Labour candidate is Kirsty Williams, who appears to be fighting her first election campaign. The Conservatives have reselected Bill Dorrian, who was a councillor for this ward from 2017 to 2022 when he lost his seat.
There is one independent candidate hoping to follow the success of David Watson, and it’s a name which will be very familiar to long-term readers of Andrew’s Previews. Kristofer Keane, a university librarian, used to be one of the Previews’ genial hosts: this column was written for his former suite of blogs (all of which are now offline) for some years up until about 2016. It’s good to hear you’re doing well, Kris.
To quickly go through the other candidates in this by-election, they are Jake Stevenson for the Liberal Democrats, Jonathan Richardson for the Scottish Family Party and Cameron Eadie for the Scottish Greens. The usual Scottish disclaimers apply: the Alternative Vote is in use, so mark your ballot paper in order of preference; Votes at 16 are in use; and Voter ID does not apply to Scottish council by-elections.
Westminster constituency: East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow
Westminster constituency (from next general election): East Kilbride and Strathaven
Holyrood constituency: East Kilbride
ONS Travel to Work Area: Glasgow
Postcode districts: G72, G73, G74, G75, G76
Bill Dorrian (C)
Cameron Eadie (Grn)
Robert Gillies (SNP)
Kristofer Keane (Ind)
Jonathan Richardson (Scottish Family Party)
Jake Stevenson (LD)
Kirsty Williams (Lab)
May 2022 first preferences SNP 2072 Lab 1780 C 1339 Ind 1248 LD 142 Scottish Family Party 110 UKIP 18
May 2017 first preferences C 2363 SNP 2198 Lab 1315 LD 223 Grn 194 UKIP 49
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
