Andrew's Previews 2020: The year 2020, told through local by-elections

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ONS Travel to Work Area: Slough and Heathrow (Denham and Fulmer parishes), High Wycombe and Aylesbury (Gerrards Cross East parish ward of Gerrards Cross parish) Sitting as part of the Residents for Guildford and Villages group is Guildford’s Green councillor, Diana Jones. She was returned here in Tillingbourne ward, where she gained the ward’s second seat from the Conservatives by just eleven votes. The shares of the vote quoted by the Local Elections Archive Project were 37% for the Conservatives, 33% for the Greens and 30% for the Lib Dems, but this overstates the Green and Lib Dem scores because they had only one candidate each through what might have been an electoral pact. There seem to have been a lot of electoral pacts going on in the 2019 Guildford elections, with the two localist groups in particular not opposing each other. Suddenly that 27-point Conservative lead from two years ago in Swadlincote South isn’t looking all that safe. And the Conservatives will have to defend that lead in this county council by-election following the death of Roger Redfern in June, at the early age of 61. Redfern had started his career in the coalmines, before working for over 30 years as a pub landlord at the Miners Arms in Church Gresley. Five of the six Green district councillors represent either Hythe Rural ward, all of which is within this division, or Hythe ward. Dymchurch is covered by Romney Marsh ward, which returned the two UKIP councillors. They are still in that party. UKIP aren’t dead yet, you know.

In the 2021 census Poulton North made the top 50 wards in England and Wales for those working in the water, sewerage or waste management sector. Warrington is the home of North West England’s water company United Utilities, and one wonders whether the census enumerators might have got a bit confused by that; UU do have their fingers in a number of other pies. We finish for the week in the big city of Newcastle upon Tyne. Byker can be found just over a mile to the east of Newcastle city centre, from which it is separated by the deep valley of the Ouse Burn; this valley is crossed by a number of impressive viaducts carrying the East Coast Main Line, the Tyne and Wear Metro and the main road from Newcastle city centre towards North Shields and the coast. The latter of these is known as the Byker Bridge. Regrettably, there has been a late change to today’s lineup of by-elections following the sad death late last month of Toby Murcott. He was an independent candidate for the Golden Valley South by-election of Herefordshire council, which was scheduled for today. That poll has now been postponed and will take place at a later date. This column sends its condolences to Mr Murcott’s family and friends. The Tillingbourne valley used to be a major industrial area, with the river providing a reliable source of water power. This industry included the Chilworth gunpowder factory, which was established in 1625 and supplied explosives to the East India Company and other customers for nearly three centuries. Further up the valley is Shere, which has a lot of unspoilt Tudor architecture and is a favourite location for artists and film-makers. Shere is the centre of a large parish which includes Gomshall and some beautiful North Downs landscape.May 2003 result Lab 1040/963/958 C 728/670/588 LD 535/475/434 Plymouth Party 365/264/242 Grn 172 Ind 118 The Conservatives performed well last year to take overall control of Southampton by a narrow margin: they have 25 council seats against 23 for Labour, so one net loss and that majority is gone. The ward map is in their favour as the Conservatives are only defending seven wards this year; following a by-election gain in Coxford ward, Labour are defending the other nine wards.

This urban bias translates into a Labour-voting bias. Most of the seats up this year were last contested in 2018, and the Local Elections Archive Project database shows that that year (in England only) 41.2% of the votes were cast for Labour, 31.8% for the Conservatives, 14.0% for the Liberal Democrats, 6.7% for the Green Party, 2.1% for independent candidates, 1.3% for UKIP and the remaining 2.9% for localists and other parties. In terms of council seats, Labour won 2,359, the Conservatives 1,338, the Liberal Democrats 540, the Greens 39, independents 61, UKIP 3 and localists and the rest won 84.At the time of writing the Wikipedia entry for Penmaen states that the ward is represented on Caerphilly council by two Plaid Cymru councillors, a statement which is more than a decade out of date. In fact Penmaen has been in Labour hands since 2012, and the Labour slate was re-elected last year with a 64–36 lead over Plaid Cymru in a straight fight. Those two parties are the only parties represented on Caerphilly council, which has a large Labour majority with Plaid and independent councillors in opposition. Which brings us to the five by-elections on 20th October 2022. It’s a very different set to last week, with the Conservatives defending three seats and the Lib Dems and Labour one each. Let’s start on the south coast, with the Lib Dem defence: Portchester East Andy Weatherhead’s side of the story is that he was never formally a member of the New British Union and no longer holds those views. He has decided to seek re-election, as an independent candidate, in the by-election prompted by his resignation from the county council. Weatherhead has also been described in a local press interview as “a good bloke” by the official Conservative candidate in this by-election, former Hythe town councillor John Gabris. The Green Party will have high hopes of recovering a seat which they lost two years ago: they have selected Hythe town councillor Jenni Hawkins. Also standing are Tony Cooper for Labour and Ian Meyers, who is the leader of the UKIP group on Folkestone and Hythe council but is contesting this by-election as an independent candidate. Counting for this by-election will take place on Friday morning. St Helens is the smallest of England’s 36 metropolitan boroughs in terms of council size, with a total of 48 councillors. All of them were up for re-election in May with new ward boundaries being introduced; this resulted in an increased Labour majority with 35 council seats against 4 Lib Dems and three seats each for the Conservatives, Greens and independents. Moss Bank ward was left almost untouched by the boundary changes so we can read its political history over quite a long period: it was a safe Lib Dem ward until the Merseyside Lib Dem vote evaporated in 2010 on the formation of the Coalition, and has been a safe Labour ward since then. In May the Labour slate polled 52% here with the Conservatives and Lib Dems on 17% each.

Our other English by-election takes place in the centre of the country, as we are only a few miles from Coton in the Elms, the hamlet generally recognised as the point in England furthest from the sea. Swadlincote is the southernmost town in Derbyshire, and it’s traditionally a mining centre as the town’s civic motto E terra divitiæ — “riches from the earth” — might suggest. As well as coal, the town lies on clay deposits of unusually high quality which were particularly suitable for manufacture of large pipes. Outgoing councillor Baker-Smith doesn’t appear to have completely left her Isle of Wight roots. She was working remotely in an NHS job which is nominally based there, and she quit Manchester council in July to spend more time on the island caring for a family member. Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Beaconsfield (Denham and Fulmer parishes); Chesham and Amersham (Gerrards Cross East parish ward of Gerrards Cross parish) Russell is now seeking re-election for a third term of office as Alderman. This time he faces a bakeoff in Bread Street from Sarah Loveday, a chartered HR professional whose puntastic election slogan is “Knead for Change”. As normal, both candidates are Independent. The City’s electoral process started yesterday with the Wardmote, a public meeting-cum-hustings which has been adjourned for the poll, and which will reconvene tonight for the declaration of the result.In the UK, we ensure that the public have oversight of all this through regular local government elections. Every year, on the first Thursday in May, new councillors are elected while old councillors retire. In 2022 the UK’s local elections will most likely be the biggest electoral event of the year. Let’s have a look at what we might expect from them. Setting the scene