Previewing the 15 council by-elections of 21st November 2024

"All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order"

There are fifteen by-elections on 21st November 2024, with the Liberal Democrats defending six seats, Labour five, independents two and a Residents Association two. It's one of those weeks with something for everyone, so let's dive straight in to consider a very beautiful part of the UK:

Fort William and Ardnamurchan

Highland council, Scotland; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Angus Macdonald.

It's time for the voters of Corrour (if there are any people who live here year-round) to make a healthy, informed, democratic decision - hopefully one not involving heroin. Corrour is part of the Fort William and Ardnamurchan ward of Highland council, which sprawls across a thousand square miles of the Scottish Highlands. To put this into some sort of context, 1,000 square miles is almost exactly equal to one Luxembourg. This large area is very sparsely populated, with 8,905 electors on the roll.

Around a third of those people live in Fort William, at the head of Loch Linnhe. Fort William is the major settlement in the western Highlands and, together with its suburbs of Caol and Corpach which are not part of this ward, it has a larger population than anywhere in the Highland council area except Inverness. The town itself dates from the seventeenth century, having originally been a military fort built by Cromwell's army. It has had a number of names over the years, with the current name commemorating the Butcher himself: Prince William, Duke of Cumberland.

Fort William's location at the foot of the UK's highest point Ben Nevis makes it a major tourist trap, but it also has a lot of industry. For example, the town is home to the UK's only remaining aluminium smelting plant. Aluminium smelting involves a huge amount of electricity, which the Fort William plant derives sustainably from the Lochaber hydroelectric scheme.

To the south of Fort William lies Ballachulish, where an impressive bridge carries the main road to Glasgow over Loch Leven. The south side of Loch Leven was once part of Argyll and is known for the valley of Glencoe, which has gone down in infamy as the site of a 1692 massacre of members of the Clan MacDonald by UK government forces.

There's no bridge over Loch Linnhe, so a rickety ferry crossing at Corran or a long detour out of the ward via Glenfinnan are the only way to Ardnamurchan. Also once part of Argyll, the peninsula of Ardnamurchan leads to Corrachadh Mòr, which at 6 degrees 13 minutes West is the most westerly point of the British mainland. Just to the north of Corrachadh Mòr is the lighthouse at Ardnamurchan Point, which gets a namecheck just before 1am every morning in the Shipping Forecast on Radio 4.

"Ardnamurchan" in this ward name refers to the pre-1975 Ardnamurchan district of Argyll, which covered not just the peninsula itself but the whole area south of Glenfinnan and Loch Shiel. The main population centres here are Acharacle at the foot of Loch Shiel, and Strontian which is the location of the Ardnamurchan High School. Before the high school was built in 2002, Ardnamurchan's secondary school students had to travel from here to Fort William, to Mallaig, or over the water to Tobermory on Mull. Strontian was a lead-mining centre from the 18th century, and it has given its name to the chemical element of strontium. Strontium is one of the alkaline earth metals, and it used to be in major demand for making cathode ray tubes for colour TVs; these are out of fashion now, but strontium salts are also popular in the fireworks industry because they burn with a deep red colour.

That's the Fort William and Ardnamurchan ward, whose boundaries have been unchanged since PR came in for Scottish local elections in 2007. The main benefit of PR in places like the Highlands was to ensure contested elections, and we certainly had that in 2007 when eleven candidates stood for the four seats in this ward. The seats went to the Lib Dems, an independent (Donald Cameron), the SNP and Labour, with Labour having a 55-vote majority over independent Patricia Jordon in the final count. Jordon had done well to get that far, having started in eighth place and overtaken two other independents and the Conservative candidate.

That Conservative candidate was Andrew Baxter, who subsequently stood in the 2012 election as an independent and topped the poll. He repeated the trick again at the last Highland elections in May 2017, being elected on the first count with 37% of the first preferences. The SNP polled 33% and won two seats, while the Conservatives' Ian Ramon polled 13% and won a seat here for the first time. At the decisive count the second SNP candidate Niall McLean finished 120 votes ahead of Labour, with a Conservative surplus of 9 still to distribute. Ian Ramon died in 2021, and the resulting by-election (Andrew's Previews 2021, page 552) was gained from the Conservatives by French-born SNP candidate Sarah Fanet; on first preferences Fanet polled 40% to 21% for the Conservatives, 14% for the Greens and 10% for the Lib Dems, with Fanet going on to defeat the Conservatives by 63-37 in the final count.

Sarah Fanet was the only councillor to seek re-election here in 2022, and while it's understandable that the SNP didn't seek to hold their by-election gain it's slightly surprising that they only stood one candidate, putting two seats up for grabs. The retirement of independent councillor Andrew Baxter also put a lot of votes up for grabs. Just five candidates stood for the four available seats, with the Lib Dems' Angus Macdonald topping the poll on 37%, the SNP's Fanet also elected on the first count with 33%, and the Conservatives' Fiona Fawcett starting on 10% in third place. On those vote shares the Lib Dems and SNP would both have won two seats if they had stood two candidates; instead, their surpluses gave the final two seats to the Greens' Kate Willis who started fourth on 10% and to independent Thomas Maclennan who started fifth with 9%. Maclennan defeated Fawcett for the final seat by the wide margin of 724 votes to 570.

In Holyrood elections this ward is part of the Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency which has no connection with the new Conservative Party leader. This seat has been represented since 2016 by the former SNP leadership contender Kate Forbes, who now serves in John Swinney's cabinet as Deputy First Minister with the economy and Gaelic portfolio.

At Westminster this ward is now split between two constituencies, after the old seat of Ross, Skye and Lochaber was one of the two Scottish seats to disappear in this year's boundary changes. Ardnamurchan and the five polling districts on or around Loch Leven - Onich, Kinlochleven, Glencoe, Ballachulish and Duror - were transferred into the Argyll and Bute constituency, whose name was consequentially changed to Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber. (As already stated, much of this transferred area was part of Argyll until 1975.) This was one of the few Scottish seats to stay with the SNP this year, re-electing its MP Brendan O'Hara.

Fort William, on the other hand, ended up in the newly-drawn seat of Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire. This was the last constituency to declare its result in July, not because the result was particularly close but due to a failure to reconcile the number of votes counted with the number of votes received: this took a full recount, on the Saturday after the election, to resolve. Once the count was eventually settled and the result declared the Liberal Democrats' Angus Macdonald, councillor for Fort William and Ardnamurchan, was declared the winner with a lead of 2,160 votes over the outgoing SNP MP for Inverness Drew Hendry.

Angus Macdonald is off to Westminster so we have a by-election to Highland council, which is run by an SNP-Independent coalition. Defending this seat for the Lib Dems is Andrew Baxter, who was previously an independent and then Conservative councillor for this ward from 2012 to 2022, when he stood for re-election in the faraway Cromarty Firth ward. Baxter, who gives an address in Kinlochleven, is now working as Macdonald's chief of staff. If we rerun the 2022 count for one seat then Macdonald would have led the SNP's Sarah Fanet by 56-44 after transfers, so the SNP's Rebecca Machin may have an uphill struggle here to repeat her party's by-election win of three years ago: she is a former headteacher at Kinlochleven high school. Fiona Fawcett is trying again for the Conservatives after her unsuccessful run here in 2022. Also standing are Marit Behner-Coady for the Greens, Susan Carstairs for Labour and Nathan Lumb for the Scottish Libertarian Party.

Westminster constituency: Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber (Ardnamurchan and Loch Leven areas); Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Fort William)
Holyrood constituency: Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch
ONS Travel to Work Area: Fort William
Postcode districts: PA38, PA80, PH30, PH33, PH36, PH37, PH38, PH49, PH50

Andrew Baxter (LD)
Marit Behner-Coady (Grn)
Susan Carstairs (Lab)
Fiona Fawcett (C)
Nathan Lumb (Libtn)
Rebecca Machin (SNP)

May 2022 first preferences LD 1500 SNP 1341 C 404 Grn 385 Ind 373
December 2021 by-election SNP 905 C 485 Grn 328 LD 231 Ind 194 Ind 88 Ind 56; final SNP 1182 C 688
May 2017 first preferences Ind 1550 SNP 1369 C 530 Lab 344 LD 192 Ind 177
May 2012 first preferences SNP 980 Ind 647 Lab 574 Ind 468 Ind 448 LD 180 C 175
May 2007 first preferences LD 1059 Ind 939 SNP 778 Lab 501 C 372 Ind 322 Ind 317 Ind 271 Ind 241 Ind 195 Ind 194
Previous results in detail

Drumchapel/Anniesland;
Maryhill; and
North East

Glasgow council, Scotland; caused respectively by the resignations of Labour councillors Patricia Ferguson, Keiran O'Neill and Maureen Burke.

We now come to the first three of our Labour defences today, which are all for seats on Glasgow city council. Two of the city's Labour MPs, Maureen Burke and Patricia Ferguson, were elected in July as the new Labour MPs for Glasgow North East and Glasgow West respectively; both Burke and Ferguson turn 66 this year, making them among the oldest members of the new Labour intake. Our third poll today is to replace Keiran O'Neill, who stood down in September due to changes in his personal and professional life.

Of the three outgoing councillors, Patricia Ferguson has the longest political history. She served in the Scottish Parliament from 1999 to 2016, as Labour MSP for Glasgow Maryhill and then (after boundary changes) for Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn. Ferguson became the first Deputy Presiding Officer of the revived Parliament in 1999, before joining the Labour frontbench in 2001; five and a half years in the Scottish Executive saw her hold first the Parliamentary business then the tourism portfolio.

After losing her Scottish Parliament seat in 2016, Ferguson was elected in 2022 as a Labour councillor for Drumchapel/Anniesland ward in the north-west corner of Glasgow. This ward is neatly divided into two halves by the Forth and Clyde Canal and generally lies north of the Great Western Road. Anniesland lies nearer the city centre, and it includes Scotland's tallest Grade A listed building: the 22-storey Anniesland Court tower block, completed in 1968. Drumchapel, the city's north-west corner, boomed in population in the 1950s with the building of a massive housing estate for Glasgow overspill - a young Billy Connolly was one of the thousands of people rehoused here. The course of the Antonine Wall - once the northern limit of the Roman empire - cuts through an undeveloped corner of the ward. That wall was of course built to keep the barbarians out, but with its fall Drumchapel has developed a bit of a reputation for being a rough part of town.

Drumchapel/Anniesland was left almost untouched by ward boundary changes in 2017. At its first election in 2007 it returned three Labour councillors including the council leader Steven Purcell, plus Bill Kidd for the SNP. On the same day Kidd was elected to Holyrood as a regional MSP for Glasgow, and he stood down from the council in 2009 prompting a by-election which was won by Labour's Anne McTaggart. She stood down in 2012 having herself been elected to Holyrood the previous year, and the SNP got their seat back.

In 2017 and 2022 Drumchapel/Anniesland returned two Labour and two SNP councillors, although there was some churn in between. McTaggart, having returned to the council in 2017, defected to the SNP and was re-elected under her new colours, while outgoing SNP councillor Elspeth Kerr sought re-election as an independent and was defeated. Starting shares of the vote here in 2022 were 38% each for Labour and the SNP against 10% for the Conservatives; rerunning the count for one seat gives an equally close final result of 3,256 for Labour's Paul Carey against a total of 3,235 for the top two SNP candidates.

Kieran O'Neill has vacated his seat in Maryhill ward. The eponymous Mary Hill was an eighteenth-century figure who inherited some land in an area north of Glasgow, then known as Gairbraid, when her father died with no male heirs. The family's fortunes perked up when the Forth and Clyde Canal was driven through the Gairbraid estate, leading first to large compensation payments and then to the development of a canalside village: Mary and her husband saw an opportunity, and they granted further land for development on condition that it would be "in all times called the town of Mary Hill". The town thrived, and it was an independent burgh for a time in the nineteenth century before eventually being absorbed into Glasgow: the Burgh Halls still exist and are well-used by the local community.

Later developments in Maryhill include the large Summerston housing estate on the northern edge of the city, and the West of Scotland Science Park along the road towards Bearsden, while the southern fringes of the ward around Queen Margaret Drive are starting to become infected by the trendiness of the West End. The old BBC Broadcasting House on Queen Margaret Drive is just outside the ward boundary, and perhaps because of this Maryhill has attracted the attention of TV over the years: much of Chewin' the Fat and Still Game were filmed here, while on the commercial side of TV Maryhill CID detective Jim Taggart and his successors on Taggart spent many years investigating murrrderrrs in the area.

The present Maryhill ward was created in 2017 as a cut-down version of the former Maryhill/Kelvin ward, and it returns three Glasgow councillors. In both 2017 and 2022 those three seats split two to the SNP and one to Labour, with first preference shares in 2022 being 42% for the SNP, 34% for Labour and 12% for the Green Party. The two-party preferred vote between the SNP and Labour comes out at 52-48 in the SNP's favour, so this is definitely a marginal ward to watch. Kieran O'Neill had served the ward since 2022.

Maureen Burke has made the step up to the Glasgow North East constituency from the rather smaller North East ward of Glasgow. This ward lies entirely north of the M8 motorway and it is based on Easterhouse, one of the most notorious and least successful of Glasgow's postwar housing developments. A large part of the reason for this is that Easterhouse was originally built with large amounts of housing but with no amenities to serve all those people. Glasgow city centre was a long busride away.

If the residents couldn't get to the shops, then Glasgow's businessmen reached the obvious conclusion that the shops should instead come to the people - and into this gap hurtled the stop-me-and-buy-one man. The humble ice cream van became a lifeline for the people of Easterhouse, turning into an effective general store which served a heck of a lot more than just 99s from its window. Some of this business was decidedly, er, flakey, and several of the ice cream firms ended up as fronts for organised crime with all the turf wars and gang violence that entailed.

The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars culminated in 1984 with an arson attack on an ice cream man's home on the Ruchazie estate, now part of North East ward, in which six people died. Strathclyde Police's response to the Ice Cream Wars had never been particularly effective, but on this occasion the Serious Chimes Squad seriously messed up their murder investigation: two men were convicted of murder, but they had their convictions quashed by the Court of Session twenty years later. Perhaps Taggart would have done a better job.

The Ice Cream Wars have melted away over the years as has Easterhouse's population, which is still measured in hundreds and thousands but has halved since the 1960s. North East ward also includes the fifteenth-century manor house of Provan Hall, the Hogganfield and Provanmill areas closer to the city centre and one of the few genuine villages within the Glasgow city boundary, Gartloch. Robroyston railway station, a park-and-ride site opened in 2019, lies on the ward boundary.

North East ward was cut down in size and lost a councillor in the 2017 Glasgow boundary changes, becoming a closely-fought three-seat ward. In 2022 Labour gained a seat from the SNP here, to leave the seat count at 2-1 in Labour's favour based on a first preference lead of 44-43. Labour's Maureen Burke had served the ward since 2012 and topped the poll in each of her three elections; she would have won a single-seat contest here by 53-47 over the SNP after transfers.

Maureen Burke and Patricia Ferguson both represent their former wards in Parliament, respectively as part of the Glasgow North East and Glasgow West constituencies. In the previous Parliament Drumchapel/Anniesland was part of the Glasgow North West seat, which disappeared in this year's boundary changes as Glasgow lost an MP overall. The SNP, who held all of Glasgow's parliamentary seats at the time, manoeuvred to ensure that the outgoing MP who didn't get reselected was Patrick Grady whose Glasgow North seat then, as now, included Maryhill. Grady's seat had survived the boundary changes relatively unscathed, but he had spent a period without the SNP whip in 2022 for breaches of Westminster's sexual misconduct policy and he was clearly seen by the party as damaged goods. As a result, the defending SNP candidate for Glasgow North in July was the outgoing Glasgow Central MP Alison Thewliss, who lost the seat to Labour candidate Martin Rhodes. Rhodes had served in the past as a Glasgow councillor for Partick East/Kelvindale ward, which this column will visit next month.

At Holyrood level these three wards are in three different constituencies which all have SNP MSPs. Glasgow Anniesland is represented by former Drumchapel/Anniesland ward councillor Bill Kidd; Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn's MSP is Bob Doris; while North East ward is covered by Ivan McKee's Glasgow Provan constituency. McKee is a junior finance minister in the Scottish Government, while Doris and Kidd are on the backbenches. The SNP are the largest party on Glasgow city council, which they run as a minority with Green support.

So, we have three Glasgow by-elections which all look set to be fairly close fights on the basis of what happened in 2022. The closest of these is clearly Drumchapel/Anniesland where the defending Labour candidate is Davina Rankin. Interestingly, her previous attempts at elected office came some years ago for the Conservatives: Rankin was their Holyrood candidate for Glasgow Cathcart in 2007 and she was a Westminster candidate in the 2008 Glasgow East by-election and for Glasgow South in 2010. It takes all sorts to make a world. The SNP's Adekemi Giwa, who runs a play centre in Drumchapel, will not be helped by having "(address in South Lanarkshire)" on her nomination papers. The Conservatives have selected Steven Morrison, who contested the neighbouring Garscadden/Scotstounhill ward in 2022. Also standing here are Christopher Lavelle for the Greens, former SNP ward councillor Elspeth Kerr as an independent candidate, Michael Shields for the Lib Dems and Allan Lyons for Reform UK.

On paper the best chance of an SNP gain is in Maryhill, where the defending Labour candidate Marie Garrity is seeking to get back on the council: Garrity previously served as a Labour councillor for East Centre ward from 2017 to 2022. The SNP's Lorna Finn contested Dennistoun ward in both 2017 and 2022, finishing as runner-up on both occasions. The Greens' Ellie Gomersall was also an unsuccessful Glasgow candidate in 2022, when she contested Cardonald ward on the south side of the city. Also standing here are Susan McCourt for the Conservatives, Daniel O'Malley for the Lib Dems, Nick Durie for Alba and David McGowan for Reform UK.

Finally, in North East ward the Labour defence is led by Mary McNab who contested the neighbouring Baillieston ward in 2022. Another losing 2022 candidate here is the young SNP candidate Kilian Riley, who stood in East Centre ward then. As in Drumchapel/Anniesland and Maryhill, we have a ballot paper of seven candidates: also standing for North East ward are Thomas Haddow for the Conservatives, Hayley McDonald for the Greens, Anne McAllister for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, Robert McGregor for Reform UK and Peter McLaughlin for the Liberal Democrats. The usual Scottish disclaimers apply here, with Votes at 16 and the Alternative Vote in use so please rank the candidates on your ballot paper in order of preference.

Drumchapel/Anniesland

Westminster constituency: Glasgow West
Holyrood constituency: Glasgow Anniesland
ONS Travel to Work Area: Glasgow
Postcode districts: G13, G15, G61

Adekemi Giwa (SNP)
Elspeth Kerr (Ind)
Christopher Lavelle (Grn)
Allan Lyons (RUK)
Steven Morrison (C)
Davina Rankin (Lab)
Michael Shields (LD)

May 2022 first preferences Lab 2758 SNP 2741 C 689 Grn 438 Ind 376 LD 118 SSP 106
May 2017 first preferences SNP 3347 Lab 2812 C 873 Grn 322 UKIP 94 SSP 51 Solidarity 35
Previous results in detail

Maryhill

Westminster constituency: Glasgow North
Holyrood constituency: Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn (nearly all)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Glasgow
Postcode districts: G20, G23, G61

Nick Durie (Alba)
Lorna Finn (SNP)
Marie Garrity (Lab)
Ellie Gomersall (Grn)
Susan McCourt (C)
David McGowan (RUK)
Daniel O'Malley (LD)

May 2022 first preferences SNP 2385 Lab 1925 Grn 696 C 463 LD 136 Freedom Alliance 58
May 2017 first preferences SNP 2733 Lab 1631 C 606 Grn 505 LD 255
Previous results in detail

North East

Westminster constituency: Glasgow North East
Holyrood constituency: Glasgow Provan
ONS Travel to Work Area: Glasgow
Postcode districts: G33, G34, G69

Thomas Haddow (C)
Anne McAllister (TUSC)
Hayley McDonald (Grn)
Robert McGregor (RUK)
Peter McLaughlin (LD)
Mary McNab (Lab)
Kilian Riley (SNP)

May 2022 first preferences Lab 1979 SNP 1917 C 389 Grn 136 TUSC 52 Libertarian 28
May 2017 first preferences SNP 1710 Lab 1518 C 524 Ind 427 Grn 102 Solidarity 34
Previous results in detail

Litherland

Sefton council, Merseyside; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Paul Tweed.

Our only by-election today in northern England comes in one of the former towns which has been absorbed into the urban sprawl of Liverpool. But Litherland has never been administratively part of Liverpool, and it was an independent urban district within Lancashire until 1974 when it was absorbed into the metropolitan borough of Sefton.

The modern Litherland ward lies on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, to the east of the railway line to Southport (Seaforth and Litherland railway station lies on the ward boundary), and generally to the south of Church Road which is the main road artery to the Seaforth container terminal. It makes the top 70 wards in England and Wales for those employed in administrative or secretarial occupations, which reflects how much this area's employment profile has tilted away from industry.

Litherland is part of the Bootle parliamentary constituency, which these days is one of the safest if not the safest Labour seats in the land. Labour backbencher Peter Dowd has represented the seat since 2015, and before then he was leader of Sefton council which has been under Labour control since 2012. In local elections Labour's vote here is not counted but weighed, with the party polling 74% here in May against widely split opposition.

Mind, this by-election is out of the Councillors Behaving Badly file in circumstances where no majority is safe. This poll is to replace Labour councillor Paul Tweed, who had been a Sefton councillor since 1992 and was mayor of Sefton in 2008-09. He resigned from the council in disgrace in October, after pleading guilty before Wirral magistrates to charges of making or possessing child pornography. Earlier this month Liverpool magistrates sentenced Tweed to nine months in prison, suspended for 18 months.

The defending candidate Julia Garner, who appears to be fighting her first election campaign, has the job of trying to pick up the pieces of this for Labour. She is up against Ian Smith, who was a very distant runner-up here in May as an independent candidate and now has the nomination of the Workers Party; Jack Colbert of the Greens; Katie Burgess of the Conservatives; Darcy Iveson-Berkeley of Reform UK, who might note that UKIP have polled fairly well here in previous years; and Conor O'Neill for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.

Parliamentary constituency: Bootle
ONS Travel to Work Area: Liverpool
Postcode districts: L20, L21, L30

Katie Burgess (C)
Jack Colbert (Grn)
Darcy Iveson-Berkeley (RUK)
Julia Garner (Lab)
Conor O'Neill (TUSC)
Ian Smith (Workers Party)

May 2024 result Lab 1526 Ind 249 Grn 142 C 99 LD 47
May 2023 result Lab 1556 Ind 262 Grn 155 C 110
May 2022 result Lab 1703 Ind 285 C 121 Northern Independence Party 97
May 2021 result Lab 1484 Ind 507 C 154 Grn 146 Ind 34
May 2019 result Lab 1659 LD 192 C 155
May 2018 result Lab 1851 C 192 Grn 148
May 2015 result Lab 1753 C 160 Grn 154
May 2014 result Lab 1713 UKIP 483 C 143
May 2012 result Lab 1705 UKIP 174 C 159 LD 95
May 2011 result Lab 2132 C 235 LD 151
May 2010 result Lab 3278 LD 625 C 347 UKIP 312 BNP 132
May 2008 result Lab 1078 UKIP 458 C 288
May 2007 result Lab 1292 UKIP 209 C 209 BNP 133
May 2006 result Lab 1110 LD 321 C 260
June 2004 result Lab 1609/1602/1601 LD 614/565/450 C 433
Previous results in detail

Oakham North East

Rutland council; caused by the death of Liberal Democrat councillor Hannah Edwards.

We now travel to England's self-proclaimed "smallest" "county", a phrase which Andrew's Previews always puts in scare quotes. This is because it's actually quite difficult to construct a definition of "county" which includes Rutland but wouldn't also apply to City of London, which has a smaller resident population and a far smaller acreage than Rutland. Modern Rutland was officially set up in the 1990s as a non-metropolitan county without a county council and the present council has the legal status of a non-metropolitan district, which led to some contortions as the local residents tried to set Rutland council up as something it legally isn't.

The hilariously-titled "Rutland County Council District Council" is run from Oakham, which is the traditional county town. North East ward is one of three wards covering Oakham (four wards if you include Barleythorpe, which is essentially a modern extension of Oakham) and its boundaries take in most of the town centre together with Oakham Castle and the fee-paying Oakham School, which propels this ward into the top 20 wards in England and Wales for residents aged 16 or 17 and into the top 40 wards for residents educated to Level 2 (5 or more GCSE passes or equivalent) but not yet further. Oakham North East also makes the top 100 for residents who work in the education sector.

Rutland has been represented by Conservative MPs continuously since 1867, when Liberal MP Gilbert Heathcote succeeded to his father's titles and entered the Lords as the second Lord Aveland; the Conservatives won the resulting by-election without a contest. (Heathcote later served as Lord Great Chamberlain to Queen Victoria, and was raised to the title of Earl of Ancaster.) Since 1918 Rutland has been seen as too small for an MP of its own and it has been linked with either Stamford in Lincolnshire or with Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire; the Rutland and Stamford constituency was recreated in this year's boundary changes, but this time with three Leicestershire wards and with boundaries which extend all the way to the Leicester city boundary. This new seat was won easily in July by the outgoing Rutland and Melton MP Alicia Kearns, who is currently a shadow junior Foreign Office minister.

The 1867 Rutland by-election was part of a 42-year streak of uncontested parliamentary elections in the county, and even today Rutland council elections suffer from a chronic lack of candidates with several wards normally being left uncontested. The Conservatives had won a majority here in the 2019 local elections but their ruling group subsequently fell apart with defection and by-election losses all over the place, and the Tories went on to suffer big losses in the 2023 elections to Rutland County Council District Council. The Lib Dems became the largest party with 11 seats against 7 independents, 6 Conservatives, 2 Labour and 1 Green, and they run a minority administration in coalition with the Green councillor.

The Lib Dem tally includes both seats in Oakham North East ward, whose previous two councillors - one Conservative, one independent - didn't stand again in 2023. Indeed the Lib Dem slate here last time was opposed only by a single Conservative candidate, who lost by the wide margin of 72-28.

This by-election is to replace councillor Hannah Edwards, who worked as a physics teacher at Oakham School alongside her democratic duties until she suddenly and unexpectedly passed away in September. Defending this seat for the Lib Dems is Linda Chatfield, who is an Oakham town councillor representing the town's South ward; her husband Mark is the other Rutland councillor for this ward. Another South ward town councillor on the ballot is the Conservatives' Christopher Clark, who contested Oakham North West last year and previously stood in a 2018 by-election for the former Oakham South East ward (Andrew's Previews 2018, page 102). Reform UK's Ben Callaghan and Labour's Katie Ross complete the ballot paper.

Parliamentary constituency: Rutland and Stamford
ONS Travel to Work Area: Peterborough
Postcode district: LE15

Ben Callaghan (RUK)
Linda Chatfield (LD)
Christopher Clark (C)
Katie Ross (Lab)

May 2023 result LD 497/427 C 197
May 2019 result C 377 Ind 347 Grn 225
Previous results in detail

Bennetts End; and
Hemel Hempstead Town

Dacorum council, Hertfordshire; caused respectively by the death of independent councillor John Birnie and the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Sadie Hobson.

We now come to two polls in the New Town of Hemel Hempstead, which is the main town in the curiously-named Dacorum local government district. The Hemel Hempstead parliamentary seat was a Labour gain in July, with David Taylor taking the seat from the Conservatives by 4,857 votes. However, Dacorum council was taken over by the Liberal Democrats in 2023.

Well, that was the case; but Dacorum council's Lib Dem administration has fallen apart recently in dramatic fashion. The issues started in late April 2024, when formal complaints were made by two councillors against the council leader Ron Tindall. Tindall was replaced as leader in May 2024 by Adrian England, and he was then suspended from the Lib Dem group in July pending an investigation by the party.

The council were also investigating the complaints against Tindall, and the council's standards committee met in September to discuss the matter. They voted to dismiss both complaints, finding that one complaint was too vague to properly respond to and that the allegations in the other complaint were either not made out or did not amount to a breach of council code of conduct. At the next full council meeting a couple of weeks later, eight female councillors resigned the Lib Dem whip accusing England of failing to deal with bullying and sexual harassment allegations. This wiped out the Lib Dem majority on the council, and England is now trying to run a minority administration with the rump Lib Dem group of 18 councillors (twelve men and six women) against 17 Conservatives, 10 independents and 2 vacant seats.

Today's by-elections are to fill those by-elections in respect of an independent and a Lib Dem councillor, neither of whom are Ron Tindall. Lib Dem councillor Sadie Hobson tendered her resignation from the council in September just before the party split, while independent councillor John Birnie passed away in August.

John Birnie was originally elected as a Conservative councillor for Bennetts End ward in 2015, transferred to Adeyfield East ward in 2019, and went back to Bennetts End in 2023 to win re-election for his final term as an independent candidate. He had been Mayor of Dacorum in 2022-23. Before entering politics Birnie had had a varied career which included lecturing in linguistics at the University of Ghana, serving as managing director of a cargo and charter airline, and running a currency exchange firm.

Birnie's Bennetts End ward covers New Town housing in the south of the town and it tends to be closely fought between the Conservative and Labour parties. The Tories normally come out on top here, but in 2023 there was a fragmented result with 31% for Labour, 30% for Birnie, 22% for the Conservatives and 10% for the Greens; Labour and Birnie split the ward's two seats. Bennetts End ward is part of the Hemel Hempstead South East county division, which returned an independent county councillor in 2021.

Hemel Hempstead Town ward covers the New Town centre in the Gade valley and housing immediately to the east and north of it, including the Old Town area. This was a three-way marginal ward in 2019 before the Lib Dems came through the middle in 2023 to win very easily: vote shares then were 47% for the Lib Dems, 27% for Labour and 26% for the Conservatives. This by-election is to replace Lib Dem councillor Sadie Hobson while the other councillor elected last year, Victoria Santamaria, is one of the eight who have resigned the Lib Dem whip. The ward is split between the county divisions of Hemel Hempstead St Pauls and Hemel Hempstead Town, which both voted Lib Dem in 2021 and whose county councillors are respectively Ron Tindall and Adrian England.

Defending for the Lib Dems in Hemel Hempstead Town is Aatish Pattni, who is a cybersecurity sales director as well as being an advocate for the Stroke Association, having suffered a stroke himself during surgery. The Labour candidate Mohamed Fawzi is seeking to come to local politics from 35 years of working in local government, commercial and voluntary sectors. The Conservatives' Neil Harden is a former long-serving Dacorum councillor seeking to return: he previously represented Adeyfield East ward from 2003 to 2007, Boxmoor ward from 2007 to 2019 and Leverstock Green ward from a 2021 by-election to 2023. Also standing are Silvi Sutherland for Reform UK and Christine Talbot for the Greens.

The same five parties are standing in Bennetts End, which means that there is no defending independent candidate. We have a free-for-all, I repeat we have a free-for-all! Labour hold the ward's other seat, and they have selected Lin Greenfield who was runner-up to the late John Birnie here last year. The Conservatives' Margaret Griffiths is trying to resume a council career that started all the way back in 1991; Griffiths, who also lost her seat in Leverstock Green ward in 2023, was deputy leader of Dacorum council for 24 years. The Green Party candidate is Andrew Lambert, who gives an address in the ward. The ballot in Bennetts End is completed by Lloyd Harris for the Lib Dems and Christopher Morris for Reform UK.

Bennetts End

Parliamentary constituency: Hemel Hempstead
Hertfordshire county council division: Hemel Hempstead South East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Luton
Postcode district: HP3

Lin Greenfield (Lab)
Margaret Griffiths (C)
Lloyd Harris (LD)
Andrew Lambert (Grn)
Christopher Morris (RUK)

May 2023 result Lab 500/391 Ind 483 C 359/313 Grn 166 LD 129/124
May 2019 result C 538/529 Lab 485/479 LD 248/192 Grn 238
May 2015 result C 1193/1014 Lab 889/824 UKIP 701 Grn 281 LD 229/141
May 2011 result C 701/639 Lab 593/515 LD 210/204 English Democrats 195
May 2007 result C 721/655 Lab 537/525 LD 206/175 Grn 128
Previous results in detail

Hemel Hempstead Town

Parliamentary constituency: Hemel Hempstead
Hertfordshire county council division: Hemel Hempstead St Pauls (part), Hemel Hempstead Town (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Luton
Postcode districts: HP1, HP2

Mohamed Fawzi (Lab)
Neil Harden (C)
Aatish Pattni (LD)
Silvi Sutherland (RUK)
Christine Talbot (Grn)

May 2023 result LD 621/555 Lab 358/337 C 351/307
May 2019 result C 364/356 Lab 349/314 LD 345/306 Grn 193 UKIP 177
May 2015 result C 998/746 Lab 790/696 UKIP 442 LD 287/239
May 2011 result C 573/550 Lab 534/522 LD 242/214
May 2007 result Lab 404/388 C 396/358 LD 183/181 Grn 112
Previous results in detail

Swanscombe and Greenhithe

Kent county council; and

Greenhithe and Knockhall

Dartford council; both caused by the death of Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association councillor Peter Harman.

We have now reached the third week of November, so (a little later than usual, for which I apologise) it is time to read out the following notice from the pulpit.

The six-month rule is now in effect in advance of the next ordinary local elections, which will take place on Thursday 1st May 2025. If any councillors who are up for re-election in May 2025 die, resign or otherwise leave office between now and then, then there will be no by-election and their seats will be left vacant for the voters to full at the ordinary election in May.

With the exception of 2020 which we do not talk about here, next May's ordinary elections will be the quietest set for some years. This is the year when the 21 remaining county councils come up for election, together with some unitary councils which are descended from county councils and two areas (Doncaster and Thurrock) which have non-standard electoral arrangements. The mayors of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Doncaster, North Tyneside and the West of England will also be up for re-election, and we are likely to see elections for new mayoral posts covering Greater Lincolnshire, and Hull and East Yorkshire. There will additionally be a general election for the Common Council of the City of London Corporation with polling on 20th March 2025, because of course the City is different.

This doesn't add up to all that many council seats, and there are only three vacancies at present which are for seats which will be up in 2025. One of those is in Essex, where a Conservative who sat on both Essex county council and Chelmsford city council has recently died and where by-elections for both seats will be held on 12th December. Your column has a list of 40 by-elections in the diary before Christmas, which includes the 15 today, and those are the only two Conservative defences remaining this year.

The only other county council seat which might yet see a by-election before May is in Hertfordshire, where Conservative county councillor James Bond passed away at the start of November just before the six-month rule kicked in. The campaigns officer for the Welwyn Hatfield Conservatives must have thought that was no time to die, because Bond's Hatfield North division is very marginal with a majority of just 0080 votes - and that was in May 2021, since when Conservative fortunes have taken a bit of a skyfall. If a by-election is called for Hatfield North, all parties might end up throwing the living daylights at it.

So, our penultimate or antepenultimate county council by-election of the 2021-25 term comes on the southern bank of the Thames estuary in a county division which is changing very, very rapidly. Greenhithe is a minor port on the Thames from which HMS Erebus and HMS Terror departed in 1845 on Franklin's ill-fated expedition to the north-west passage. In 1862 Greenhithe became home to the Merchant Navy College, HMS Worcester, and the Cutty Sark was based here for a time as part of the college. Shore facilities for the college were then provided at Ingress Abbey, a 19th-century country house which has had a number of uses over the years: it's currently home to the very rich Canadian-born oil and gas tycoon Samuel Malin and his wife, the Cameroon-born singer and model Irène Major.

Greenhithe residents of an earlier age include Isabella Beeton, whose Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management is still in print today. Mrs Beeton died in Greenhithe in 1865, at the age of just 28, from puerperal fever after giving birth to her fourth child. One reason she ended up here was that her husband was not a great businessman, and the Beeton family's chronic financial difficulties eventually forced them to move out of London.

Swanscombe lies away from the riverbank, and its economy was historically based on quarrying. The local chalk is excellent for cement-making, and massive quarries pockmark the landscape around Swanscombe. The main road east from Swanscombe towards Northfleet and Gravesend has had the land on either side of it quarried away so that it runs on top of a sheer chalk cliff, which collapsed last year - and the road has been closed ever since.

The quarry to the south of this collapsed road has been transformed out of all recognition into Ebbsfleet International railway station, a junction on High Speed 1 which was built as a stop for international Eurostar trains to Brussels, Paris and beyond - but no international trains have stopped here since the Covid pandemic. Despite this, Ebbsfleet is a busy stop for domestic high-speed trains to St Pancras, and it's getting busier with the ongoing development of the Ebbsfleet Valley new town in the space between Swanscombe and the A2 Watling Street. Ebbsfleet became a Dartford council ward of its own in 2019, and the electorate of Ebbsfleet ward increased by 140% in the following four years.

With the caveat that this might well be out of date by now given the development since, the 2021 census tells the story that the developers clearly wanted to sell: that Ebbsfleet ward is full of middle-class family homes. It is the number 1 ward in England and Wales for households in shared ownership (12.0%), ranks at number 3 for full-time employment (60.3%) which is of a far more middle-class nature than the surrounding wards, ranks at number 4 for residents aged 30-44 (38.9%) and at number 40 for residents aged under 16 (28.2%), and comes in at number 7 for households with precisely one car or van (55.1%). Neighbouring Swanscombe ward, by contrast, is in the top 100 wards in England and Wales for adults with Level 1 qualifications (that is, 1-4 GCSE passes or equivalent). As well as the quarries, the nearby Bluewater shopping centre is a major employer.

One of Swanscombe's quarries revealed some of the UK's oldest human remains. Over the years the Swanscombe Skull Site, a former gravel quarry, has yielded three fragments of a fossilised Neanderthal human skull, Stone Age axes and the bones of several animals - the auroch, the straight-tusked elephant and the Barbary macaque, to name a few examples - which are now long extinct in Britain. "Swanscombe Man" - although the skull fragments are now thought to belong to a woman - lived around 400,000 years ago.

Swanscombe was an urban district of its own from 1926 to 1974, and the old UDC area is now the parish of Swanscombe and Greenhithe. This has its own Residents Association which has been contesting elections since the 1980s with quite a lot of success, but it's fair to say that in recent years the Residents haven't had at all their own way at election time with both the Conservatives and Labour mounting strong challenges. In the 2021 Kent county council elections the Residents' Peter Harman held the Swanscombe and Greenhithe county seat with 40% of the vote, against 32% for Labour and 26% for the Conservatives.

Peter Harman had served on Kent county council since 2013 and on Dartford council since 2019, coming to politics from a 35-year career in the fire brigade. When he passed away in August he was the only remaining elected representative of the Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association on Kent county council or Dartford council. The SGRA did poorly in the 2023 elections to Dartford council, with the three wards covered by the Swanscombe and Greenhithe county division returning a total of four Labour councillors, three Conservatives and Harman; vote shares across the division were 38% for Labour, 37% for the Conservatives, 23% for the Residents (who didn't stand in Ebbsfleet ward, which is outside Swanscombe and Greenhithe parish) and 3% for Britain First's Paul Golding, who stood in Swanscombe ward. Greenhithe and Knockhall, the Dartford ward up for election today, gave 45% to the Residents, 36% to the Conservatives (who won the other two seats) and 19% to Labour.

Overall the 2023 Dartford council election was one of the best Conservative results in what was generally a very poor year for the party. The Tories successfully defended their majority and came out with the same number of seats - 29 out of 42 - that they had won in 2019.

Despite this, the Dartford constituency's record as a bellwether - it has voted for the government at every general election since 1964 - remains intact. Boundary changes for the July 2024 election took one strongly-Conservative ward out of the Dartford constituency, and that might have made the difference in the final result: Labour's Jim Dickson, who served as leader of Lambeth council many years ago and still sits on that council, defeated the Conservatives' Gareth Johnson by just 1,192 votes.

The Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association have no choice but to go all-in with their defence of these two by-elections. They have nominated Dawn Johnston, the new party chair, as their defending candidate for both seats. For the county by-election the Labour candidate is Victoria Akintomide-Akinwamide, who is a Dartford councillor for Ebbsfleet ward and works in financial regulation. Another Dartford councillor on the ballot is the Conservatives' Carol Gale, who represents Greenhithe and Knockhall ward. Also standing for the county seat are Thomas Mallon for Reform UK, Laura Edie for the Greens and James Willis for the Lib Dems.

In the Greenhithe and Knockhall district by-election the challenge to the Residents' Dawn Johnston will come from different Conservative and Labour candidates. The Conservatives have selected Edith Nwachukwu, who was an unsuccessful candidate for Ebbsfleet ward last year. The Labour candidate Peter Summers is a former trade union official; in 2023 he contested the very safe Conservative ward of Joydens Wood. Also standing are Michael Brown for Reform UK and Green Party candidate Sacha Gosine, who was elected in 2019 as a Labour councillor for Ebbsfleet ward before falling out with the party.

Swanscombe and Greenhithe

Parliamentary constituency: Dartford
Dartford wards: Ebbsfleet, Greenhithe and Knockhall, Swanscombe
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: DA9, DA10, DA11

Victoria Akintomide-Akinwamide (Lab)
Laura Edie (Grn)
Carol Gale (C)
Dawn Johnston (Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association)
Thomas Mallon (RUK)
James Willis (LD)

May 2021 result Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association 1421 Lab 1130 C 911 RUK 55
May 2017 result Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association 1093 C 634 Lab 634 UKIP 208
Previous results in detail

Greenhithe and Knockhall

Parliamentary constituency: Dartford
Kent county council division: Swanscombe and Greenhithe
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: DA9, DA10, DA11

Michael Brown (RUK)
Sacha Gosine (Grn)
Dawn Johnston (Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association)
Edith Nwachukwu (C)
Peter Summers (Lab)

May 2023 result Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association 623/354/335 C 499/359/345 Lab 270/224/205
May 2019 result Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association 538/536/406 C 473/365/343 Lab 209/158/157 UKIP 134
Previous results in detail

Murston

Swale council, Kent; caused by the disqualification of independent councillor James Hall.

We now travel east along the Kent coast to the town of Sittingbourne. Murston is Sittingbourne's north-eastern ward, and it's quite an industrial area with a working-class demographic profile. The ward also includes Central Park Stadium, which was built in 1990 for the non-league football team Sittingbourne FC; however, they ran into financial difficulties as a result of the construction costs, and they ended up selling the stadium to Swale council. The football club moved out in 2002 and Central Park is now used for greyhound racing.

Sittingbourne is the home of Swale council, named after the waterway which divides the Isle of Sheppey from the mainland. Swale has been hung since 2019, and a Labour-led coalition is currently in control which includes the Swale Independents (there is a long history of success for localist councillors here) and the Green Party. Labour also control the Sittingbourne and Sheppey parliamentary seat, which has voted for the government at every election since its creation in 1997; the seat's MP Kevin McKenna, who came out on top of a three-way photofinish against the Conservatives and Reform UK, was an NHS nurse before entering politics.

Murston ward took on its current boundaries in 2015, and since then one of its councillors had been James Hall who was originally elected for UKIP in 2015 and then re-elected for the Swale Independents in 2019 and 2023. The ward's other seat went to the Conservatives in 2015 and 2019 and to Labour in 2023. Topline vote shares here last year were 41% for the Swale Independents, 27% for Labour and 14% for the Conservatives, although this is distorted by the top two parties only running one candidate each. James Hall had also been the Swale Independents candidate for Sittingbourne North, which includes this ward, at the 2021 Kent county council elections: he finished third with 23%, while the Conservatives held the seat easily.

Unfortunately, this by-election may be out of the Councillors Behaving Badly file. James Hall is currently awaiting trial after being charged with 31 sexual offences in respect of five complainants, including children, over the period 1986 to 2005. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. His wife has also been charged with rape and child cruelty, while his son stands accused of attempting to pervert the course of justice. England's broken criminal justice system being what it is, a trial date has been set for October 2026. Hall has not attended a meeting of Swale council since April, and in October he was disqualified from office under the six-month non-attendance rule.

Trying to pick up the pieces of this for the Swale Independents is their defending candidate Carrie Pollard. Labour have selected Rakel Eseku; she is a mental health nurse. Standing for the Conservatives is Mariusz Bencych, who is a parish councillor in Bobbing to the west of Sittingbourne. Also on the ballot are Alexander Stennings for the Lib Dems and Ian Bobbett for Reform UK.

Parliamentary constituency: Sittingbourne and Sheppey
Kent county council division: Sittingbourne North
ONS Travel to Work Area: Medway
Postcode districts: ME9, ME10

Mariusz Bencych (C)
Ian Bobbett (RUK)
Rakel Eseku (Lab)
Carrie Pollard (Swale Ind)
Alexander Stennings (LD)

May 2023 result Swale Ind 593 Lab 397 C 211/171 LD 139/127 Grn 119
May 2019 result Swale Ind 705 C 314 Lab 297/275 Ind 227 LD 124
May 2015 result C 892 UKIP 876 Lab 621/466 LD 324
Previous results in detail

Denne

Horsham council, West Sussex; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor John Milne.

We now travel south of London into West Sussex. Denne ward covers the town centre of Horsham, which is based around a series of shopping streets known as the Carfax. South from the Carfax the Causeway runs to the parish church and the River Arun, while main roads radiate west to Guildford, east towards Brighton and north towards London.

As well as the usual services, Horsham town centre has been the traditional administrative base for Sun Alliance Insurance which is now part of the RSA Insurance Group. RSA's global headquarters are in the Walkie Talkie building in City of London, but the company registered office of RSA Insurance Group was still in Horsham town centre until very recently.

Denne ward was expanded in boundary changes for the 2019 election, taking in the New Town area to the south-east of the town centre and going up from two councillors to three. The previous ward had been marginal between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats before turning safe Conservative in 2015, but the Lib Dems made a comeback here in 2019 to take all three seats in the revised Denne ward fairly comfortably. The Liberal Democrats also hold the Horsham Riverside division which covers nearly all of this ward, and they made that division safe at the 2021 West Sussex county elections.

Denne ward continued to be safe for the Lib Dems at a March 2022 by-election (Andrew's Previews 2022, page 116) and in 2023 when shares of the vote here were 50% for the Lib Dems and 29% for the Conservatives. The Lib Dems won an overall majority on Horsham council at that election, and they followed up in July 2024 by gaining the Horsham parliamentary seat, breaking a streak of Conservative representation which went all the way back to 1880.

The new Lib Dem MP for Horsham John Milne was previously a creative director in advertising, and he had been a Horsham councillor since 2019 (originally representing Roffey North ward before transferring to Denne ward in 2023) and a West Sussex county councillor since 2021 (for Horsham Riverside division). Milne's county council term expires in May next year and it appears he is intending to see that out, however he has now stood down from Horsham council provoking this by-election, the second Denne ward by-election in three years.

Defending this seat for the Lib Dems is Ben Hewson, who runs a pub in Horsham town centre. The Conservatives have selected Cheryl Sweeney, who is originally from the US state of Virginia and has lived in Horsham for 20 years; she's not happy about the council increasing car parking charges in the town. Also standing are Cameron McGillivray for Labour and Jennifer Nuin Smith for the Green Party.

Parliamentary constituency: Horsham
West Sussex county council division: Horsham Riverside (most), Horsham Hurst (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Crawley
Postcode districts: RH12, RH13

Ben Hewson (LD)
Cameron McGillivray (Lab)
Jennifer Nuin Smith (Grn)
Cheryl Sweeney (C)

May 2023 result LD 1337/1204/1153 C 790/780/752 Lab 327/287/253 Grn 237/219/210
March 2022 by-election LD 832 C 628 Lab 241 Grn 107
May 2019 result LD 1287/1221/1216 C 871/849/780 Lab 368/312/280
Previous results in detail

Harbourside and Town

Gosport council, Hampshire; caused by the death of Labour councillor Alan Durrant.

Our final Labour defence of the week comes on the south coast. We're in the town centre of Gosport, whose history is inextricably linked with the Royal Navy; in that sense Gosport is essentially a western extension of Portsmouth, which it faces across the narrow entrance to Portsmouth Harbour. There is a well-used and frequent ferry service between the two towns, and Portsmouth Harbour railway station is the most convenient railhead for Gosport. It says a lot that Gosport's high street makes a beeline for the ferry terminal.

Harbourside and Town ward takes in the town centre, the Newtown and Seafield areas to the west and the Gosport and Haslar marinas to the north and south of the town centre. It's one of the most working-class parts of a town which - thanks to the military influence - has always been far more politically right-wing than its demographic would suggest. Gosport has an unbroken streak of Conservative representation going all the way back to 1880, when the Liberals' William Cowper-Temple retired as one of the two MPs for South Hampshire. The town has been a parliamentary seat of its own since 1974 and it has only had two MPs in that time, Sir Peter "duck house" Viggers and Dame Caroline Dinenage. Even amid the carnage of July 2024 when her Tory colleagues were falling like ninepins, Dame Caroline was re-elected for her fifth term of office very comfortably. Since 2023 she has chaired the Commons culture, media and sport select committee.

Dinenage certainly outperformed her local government colleagues, because Gosport council has had a Liberal Democrat majority since 2022. Following the 2024 elections there were 15 Lib Dem councillors here against 10 Conservatives and 3 Labour. That Labour total was reduced to two in September following the death of Alan Durrant, who was first elected in 2022 and had only just been re-elected in Harbourside and Town ward for a full four-year term. His re-election in May 2024 was by the narrow margin of 30 votes over the Conservatives - 41-38 in percentage terms. Harbourside and Town ward is part of the large Leesland and Town division of Hampshire county council, which safely returned two Conservatives in 2021 and where Labour barely figure.

With that small majority to defend, there is a lot of work to do here for the Labour candidate Tynan Bryant. He is an Australian who moved from Sydney Harbour to Portsmouth Harbour for work in 2022, and he gives an address on Gosport's high street. Also resident in the ward is the Conservatives' Lesley Meenaghan, a Royal Navy, RAF and Hampshire police veteran who is one of the Hampshire county councillors for the ward and who represented the predecessor Town ward on Gosport council from 2021 to 2022. The ballot paper here is completed by independent candidate Dale Fletcher who stood here in 2022 and finished in sixth and last place, Mike Ewin for the Liberal Democrats, Paddy Bergin for Reform UK and Lisa Englefield for the Heritage Party.

Parliamentary constituency: Gosport
Hampshire county council division: Leesland and Town
ONS Travel to Work Area: Portsmouth
Postcode district: PO12

Paddy Bergin (RUK)
Tynan Bryant (Lab)
Lisa Englefield (Heritage Party)
Mike Ewin (LD)
Dale Fletcher (Ind)
Lesley Meenaghan (C)

May 2024 result Lab 465 C 435 Ind 107 LD 96 Grn 43
May 2022 result Lab 751/626 C 474/374 LD 166 Ind 75
Previous results in detail

Blackmoor Vale; and
Rowbarton and Staplegrove

Somerset council; caused respectively by the resignations of Liberal Democrat councillors Sarah Dyke and Dixie Darch.

We'll finish for the week in one of our newest local authorities, created in April 2023 as a takeover of Somerset's local government by the county council. Judging from the fact that the new Somerset council has immediately ended up in serious financial trouble, this might not have been the good idea that its backers thought it would be.

Perhaps there are still some economies of scale which could be made. This column doesn't like to criticise electoral administrators, but Somerset's electoral services departments (and I deliberately use that word in the plural) do seem to be a bit of a mess. Nineteen months on from the council reorganisation date, it appears that there are still five separate electoral services offices in the council area corresponding to the four former local government districts - one of which had only been created in 2019 from the merger of Taunton Deane and West Somerset councils.

A look at the legal notices for these two by-elections reveals that the Blackmoor Vale poll is being run out of the old South Somerset council offices in Yeovil. The administration of the poll in Rowbarton and Staplegrove, a division which covers the north-western part of Taunton town and the rural parish of Kingston St Mary to the north of it, is being done by the old West Somerset council offices in Williton some miles to the north. In a move of which Kafka himself would have been proud, nomination papers for the Rowbarton and Staplegrove by-election were available from the Williton office but had to be delivered to a third Somerset Council office, the old Taunton Deane council headquarters in Taunton. Four candidates did successfully navigate that process and are on the Rowbarton and Staplegrove ballot.

The modern Somerset council was first elected in 2022 in what was actually the final election to Somerset county council. The present ward boundaries were originally drawn up for the 2013 county council elections, and were essentially retained for the 2022 county/unitary council elections but with twice as many councillors as previously. Somerset county council had previously been under Conservative control, but the Liberal Democrats won a majority at the 2022 election.

Things then continued to go well for the Somerset Liberal Democrats. In July 2023 there was a by-election in the Somerton and Frome parliamentary seat, after Conservative MP David Warburton resigned over a scandal involving cocaine use and alleged sexual harassment; his former seat was won very convincingly by the Liberal Democrat candidate Sarah Dyke. Somerton and Frome was subsequently divided into two new seats for the 2024 general election, and Dyke was re-elected in July by the electors of Glastonbury and Somerton. With the next general election not expected until 2028 or 2029, Sarah Dyke now clearly feels that she has enough job security in Westminster to finally relinquish her seat on Somerset council.

The Glastonbury and Somerset constituency includes Dyke's former Somerset council ward of Blackmoor Vale, which is the county's south-eastern corner and is a rural ward of eleven parishes. The largest population centre here is Milborne Port, which was one of the rotten boroughs disenfranchised by the 1832 Reform Act thanks to its low electorate and the control of its elections by the Marquess of Anglesey. This is an old town which had its own mint in Alfred the Great's reign, and the Domesday Book of 1086 listed its market as the most profitable in Somerset. Blackmoor Vale ward's railway station is at Templecombe on the line between Salisbury and Yeovil, whose unusual name recalls that the village was once owned by the Knights Templar. The ward boundary extends north to the A303 and includes the ancient and mysterious Bronze and Iron Age hillfort of Cadbury Castle.

Milborne Port’s Grade II-listed town hall, which is a polling station for today's by-election, was the scene for the events of 1770 that led to the "flying squib" lawsuit, Scott v Shepherd. A man called Shepherd had thrown a lit squib (a small explosive) into a market being held in the building, two other people in the market then threw the squib away to protect themselves and the explosion eventually happened in front of a man called Scott, who lost an eye. In a landmark tort law decision, the majority of the judges held that Shepherd was fully responsible for the damage.

As stated, Rowbarton and Staplegrove ward covers north-western Taunton and the rural parish of Kingston St Mary. Staplegrove itself appeared in this column in October 2019, when a by-election to Somerset West and Taunton council in Norton Fitzwarren and Staplegrove ward was previewed (Andrew's Previews 2019, page 311); the Rowbarton area is further into Taunton, immediately north-west of the intercity railway station. This ward includes the fee-paying Taunton School, which educated one current MP: Jeremy Wright, who served in Cabinet from 2014 to 2019 as Attorney General and then Culture secretary, is an Old Tauntonian.

The Liberal Democrats now hold all the parliamentary seats wholly or partly in the Somerset council area with the exception of Bridgwater, which stayed in Conservative hands in July. Rowbarton and Staplegrove is part of the Taunton and Wellington constituency which was gained this year by Lib Dem MP Gideon Amos, an architect, urban designer and a former Oxford city councillor of many years ago. Amos served from 2000 to 2010 as chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association, and he was appointed OBE in 2009 for services to sustainable development. He defeated Conservative MP Rebecca Pow at his third attempt with a majority of 11,939 votes.

Both wards up for election today were Conservative in 2017 but gained by the Lib Dems in 2022. Rowbarton and Staplegrove was marginal Conservative in 2017 and safe Lib Dem in 2022, with a 57-31 lead over the Conservatives. The Conservatives are stronger in Blackmoor Vale, which was a straight fight in 2022 with the Lib Dems prevailing by 56-44.

That ward won't be a straight fight this time. Defending Blackmoor Vale for the Lib Dems is Howard Ellard, who is the mayor of Wincanton and runs a firm which, according to their website, "provides consultancy services to the waste, resource management and renewable energy sectors". The Conservatives have selected Hayward Burt, who previously represented the smaller Blackmoor Vale ward of the old South Somerset council and was runner-up here in 2022. Also standing are Gregory Chambers for Labour and Peter Ebsworth for the Green Party.

The Rowbarton and Staplegrove poll is to replace Lib Dem councillor Dixie Darch, the council's cabinet member for climate change, who is standing down to spend more time with her family. Darch is a retired further education teacher who was first elected in 2019 to Somerset West and Taunton council and transferred to Somerset council in 2022. Here the defending Lib Dem candidate is Nick O'Donnell, a semi-retired teacher and chair of the South Somerset astronomical society who represents the Rowbarton part of the ward on Taunton town council. The Conservatives' Pete Prior-Sankey contested Bishop's Hull and Taunton West ward in 2022. Also standing here are Moya Doherty for Labour and Alan Debenham for the Green Party.

Blackmoor Vale

Parliamentary constituency: Glastonbury and Somerton
ONS Travel to Work Area: Yeovil
Postcode districts: BA8, BA9, BA22, DT9, DT10

Hayward Burt (C)
Gregory Chambers (Lab)
Peter Ebsworth (Grn)
Howard Ellard (LD)

May 2022 result LD 1814/1590 C 1443/1328
May 2017 result C 1905 LD 752 Grn 188 Lab 173
May 2013 result C 1410 LD 412 Lab 224
Previous results in detail

Rowbarton and Staplegrove

Parliamentary constituency: Taunton and Wellington
ONS Travel to Work Area: Taunton
Postcode districts: TA2, TA5

Alan Debenham (Grn)
Moya Doherty (Lab)
Nick O'Donnell (LD)
Pete Prior-Sankey (C)

May 2022 result LD 1627/1378 C 880/783 Lab 367
May 2017 result C 1125 LD 1080 Ind 290 Lab 250 Grn 119
May 2013 result LD 791 C 685 UKIP 504 Lab 353 Grn 140
Previous results in detail

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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