Previewing the Wymondham, Melton by-election of 23rd May 2024
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
So, the starting gun was fired yesterday on the long-awaited 2024 general election campaign with polling scheduled for 4th July. Just to go through the admin first, here are the deadlines you need to be aware of. Candidate nominations close at 5pm on Friday 7th June. Intending voters need to be registered to vote by Tuesday 18th June; if you voted in or received a polling card for this month’s local, mayoral and PCC elections then you don’t need to worry about this unless you’ve moved house since, but if you know you’re not registered to vote then get your application in now. If you want to apply for a postal or proxy vote, you have until 5pm on Wednesday 19th June to do so; if you already know you will be unable to vote on person on 4th July, do that now and beat the rush. If you want to vote in person but you don’t have acceptable photo ID, you can apply free of charge for a Voter Authority Certificate; the deadline for this is 5pm on Wednesday 26th June. If you want to stand as a candidate, then get in touch with your local returning officer for the details of what you need to do and be prepared to hand over a £500 deposit and an awful lot of paperwork. Applications to register to vote, for postal or proxy votes or for a Voter Authority Certificate can be done through the gov.uk website.
The fact that Voter ID is required for the general election but not for some other UK electoral events is going to cause problems for three polls which had already been scheduled for 4th July. One of these is a by-election to Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the Council of the Western Isles, to elect a new councillor for Na Hearadh ward (the Isle of Harris): the Scottish Parliament has not legislated for Voter ID in Scottish local elections. Matters are even worse in the City of London, where there is a by-election to the Common Council in Farringdon Within ward and an election for a new Alderman of Cripplegate ward: the City writes a lot of its own electoral procedure, and not only does Voter ID not apply to City elections but the hours of polling are also shorter and the franchise for City elections is very different to the rest of the country. The City authorities may be able to reschedule their polls, because the official notices of election are yet to be published; unfortunately, the returning officer for the Western Isles gave notice for the Harris by-election on Monday.
In England we will probably get a dozen or more local by-elections scheduled to coincide with the general election, and this column intends to go through them thoroughly in an Undercard post which will be published on or slightly before 4th July. If you want analysis of the main event then I will refer you to the capable hands of our genial host Ben Walker, and I recommend that you pay attention to what he has to say.
Before then, the two local by-elections in the rest of the May and the local polls in June might take on a little more significance than they had previously, as election-watchers look for straws in the wind. So let’s see what can be gleaned from the single by-election on 23rd May 2024:
Wymondham
Melton council, Leicestershire; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Malise Graham.
If you want to make Stilton cheese, you’ve got to be careful where you make it. Under Protected Designation of Origin rules, Stilton cheese can only be made in the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. It can’t be made in Stilton itself, a village on the Great North Road in Cambridgeshire where the cheese was traditionally sold.
Legend has it that the birthplace of Stilton cheese was the small Leicestershire village of Wymondham (pronounced as it is spelled, rather than as the Norfolk town of the same name is pronounced). The creation of the modern Stilton cheese is generally credited to local cheesemaker Francis Pawlett in the 1720s. The story then goes that the landlord of Stilton’s Bell Inn visited a small farm near Melton Mowbray in 1730, possibly Pawlett’s farm, and he liked the cheese so much that the Bell Inn was granted exclusive marketing rights to Blue Stilton.
Melton council is England’s smallest second-tier district by population, and the Leicestershire Wymondham, located about 15 miles to the south of Grantham and close to the Lincolnshire and Rutland boundary, is still — as it was 300 years ago — a very small place which is well off the beaten track. Probably the biggest thing to happen here in recent years was when the England footballer Michael Carrick, then playing for Manchester United and now head coach of Middlesbrough, got married in Wymondham’s parish church in the summer of 2007. Wymondham parish has a population comfortably under 700, but it’s still the largest of the four-and-a-bit rural parishes which make up its ward; the electoral ward runs along the B-road east from Melton Mowbray as far as Buckminster. Buckminster itself is an estate village, which expanded in the nineteenth century to serve an aristocratic estate which is still in the hands of the Tollemache family.
This by-election is to replace a very long-serving and high-profile councillor. Malise Graham has represented this area on Melton council continuously since May 1987, and he has held all the local civic offices. Graham was leader of the council on three occasions, most recently in 2001–11; he was deputy leader of the council from 2021 until the Conservatives lost control of Melton council in 2023 to a Labour-Independent coalition; he led the borough’s Conservative group for a total of 18 years; and he served for three years as mayor of Melton (1993–94 and 2019–21). His leadership saw the council recover from a fire in 2008 which destroyed the council offices in Melton Mowbray, while during Graham’s mayoral term he did a tandem parachute jump to raise money for a local hospice. In the 2009 New Year honours list Malise Graham was appointed MBE for voluntary service to the community in Melton Mowbray. He is now 75 years old, and he is retiring after 37 years as a Melton councillor.
Elections in this area are like Stilton cheese: rather blue. Malise Graham had a very safe Melton council ward in which he was often elected unopposed. He did face a contest when seeking his tenth and most recent term of office in May 2023, defeating Labour by 72–28 in what was generally a poor Conservative year. The Wymondham ward is split between two divisions of Leicestershire county council, Belvoir and Melton Wolds, which are both very safely Conservative. The local parliamentary seat of Rutland and Melton is being split into two new seats by the boundary changes, with Melton district being placed within the completely new Parliamentary constituency of Melton and Syston; this is projected to have been safely Conservative in December 2019, and junior justice minister Edward Argar — who is coming off three terms as MP for Charnwood — will be the Conservative candidate here very soon.
Those who were looking to this by-election for clues as to how Melton and Syston might vote may well be disappointed, because this by-election is a straight fight between the Conservatives and an independent candidate. Defending from the blue corner is David Chubb, who is the churchwarden at St Andrew’s in Coston, a village within the ward. The independent challenge comes from Samantha Seaward.
Once Parliament is dissolved next Thursday, the 2010 parliamentary constituencies (2005, in Scotland) will be abolished and will pass into history. Accordingly, starting from next week’s edition of Andrew’s Previews the factfile will refer only to the 2024 lines.
Parliamentary constituency: Rutland and Melton
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Melton and Syston
Leicestershire county council division: Belvoir (Buckminster parish, Garthorpe parish, part of Sproxton parish), Melton Wolds (Freeby parish, Wymondham parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Grantham
Postcode districts: LE14, LE15, NG33
David Chubb (C)
Samantha Seaward (Ind)
May 2023 result C 302 Lab 119
May 2019 result C unopposed
May 2015 result C unopposed
May 2011 result C 459 Lab 161
May 2007 result C 349 Ind 157
May 2003 result C unopposed
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
