Previewing the 15 local elections of 18th June 2026
"All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order"
This week’s Previews are going out in four parts for length reasons. After separate pieces for the Parliamentary Specials in Aberdeen South, Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, and Makerfield, we now come to the undercard of 15 polls for 18 council seats. Of the seats up for election, the Liberal Democrats are defending four, the Conservatives 3, Plaid Cymru 3, Labour 2, Reform UK 2, the Greens 1, and the other three seats have been vacated by councillors who were elected for the Conservatives and subsequently defected to Reform UK. We have a lot to get through here, but there should be something for everyone. Let’s dive straight in by going to Greater Manchester, but not to Makerfield this time:
Moorside
Bury council, Greater Manchester; postponed from 7th May following the death of Reform UK candidate Victor Hagan.
Today’s three Parliamentary Specials in Aberdeen South, Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, and Makerfield form the Main Event in this week’s elections, but there is also a substantial undercard to cover. Enough time has now passed since May’s elections for us to start covering the fallout and other matters arising from those polls, which includes those wards where a candidate in the election died during the election campaign. The procedure here is that the poll is called off, nominations are reopened to allow new candidates to stand (previously-nominated candidates automatically stay on the ballot), and then a new polling date is set within 35 working days of the original. This year the Grim Reaper called for six of the around 25,000 candidates from May in the weeks between nominations and polling. Four of the resulting postponed polls have been rescheduled for today, with the other two to follow next week.
We’re going to start in a district of Greater Manchester which was one of the brighter spots for Labour in this year’s local elections. Labour retained overall control of Bury council with a net loss of just one seat, with losses of Redvales ward to the Workers Party and Unsworth ward to Reform UK partly balanced by a surprise gain of the affluent North Manor ward from the Conservatives. This left Labour on 30 seats against 7 for Radcliffe First, 6 Reform UK, 3 Conservatives, 2 councillors in the Conservative splinter group Together for Bury, 1 independent and 1 Workers Party councillor, with this result to come.
The 2026 Bury council election will conclude today with the poll for Moorside ward, which covers the north of Bury town and is centred on Clarence Park. Here we have a mix of Victorian terraced housing leading off Walmersley Road, industrial areas close to the River Irwell, and a large chunk of the deprived Dicky Bird estate in eastern Bury. This was laid out in the 1930s with a strip of open land running through the middle of it for a future road connecting Manchester with Rossendale, but that road was eventually built in the late 1970s as a motorway - the M66 - which thunders through the estate at rooftop level on an embankment. There is not much actual moorland in Moorside ward, with the open space on higher ground to the east mostly covered by Clarence Park or a pair of golf courses.
This area is part of the Bury North parliamentary constituency, which has voted for the government candidate in every election since its 1983 creation with the exception of a Labour win in 2017. The winning candidate on that occasion was James Frith, who lost his seat in 2019 by just 105 votes - the second-closest result in the 2019 general election - but easily returned to office in 2024. Frith joined the government ladder in March this year as a junior Cabinet Office minister, with responsibility for digital ID - he took that job over from the now ex-Makerfield MP Josh Simons.
The last time Moorside ward failed to elect a Labour councillor was when the Conservatives won here in 2006. The current ward boundaries date from an all-out election in 2022 and Labour have won all three previous contests on these lines. When Moorside ward was last contested in 2024 it gave 44% to Labour, 31% to a new party called the Bury Independents and 25% to the Conservatives.
The May 2026 poll here had to be postponed after the Reform UK candidate Victor Hagan died during the campaign. Hagan had a very long previous history as an election candidate in this ward, standing for the Lib Dems from 2004 to 2007, as an independent between 2008 and 2011, on the UKIP ticket from 2012 to 2016 and then as an independent in 2018 and 2021 to 2023. He had never won, but he was runner-up here as a UKIP candidate in 2014 and 2016.
The outgoing Labour councillor Sandra Walmsley is seeking re-election for her fifth term of office, having been a councillor here continuously since 2010 when she gained her seat from the Conservatives. Walmsley was the Mayor of Bury in 2024-25, and she has also served on the council’s cabinet. She beat her Labour running-mates from higher up the alphabet to top the poll here at the 2022 all-out election, which is normally a good sign of a personal vote. The ballot paper reveals a split on the Bury Independents side: they have selected Jill Budgen, who is fighting her first election campaign, while the second-placed Bury Independents candidate from last time Aamer Yasin now has the nomination of the Workers Party of Britain. Yasin previously stood for the Conservatives in Redvales ward in 2022, but his political journey pales in comparison to what the Conservative candidate here - who is notable enough for Wikipedia - has been through. Jihyun Park is a native North Korean who managed to escape from the country in 2004 and came to the UK as a refugee four years later: when Park previously stood for the Conservatives in Moorside ward in 2021 she made history as the first, and so far the only, North Korean ever to stand for election in the UK. Completing the ballot paper are the replacement Reform UK candidate Alan Derby, who runs the Bury and District bowling league, and the Green Party’s Conor Priestley.
Parliamentary constituency: Bury North
ONS Travel to Work Area: Manchester
Postcode district: BL9
Jill Budgen (Bury Ind)
Alan Derby (RUK)
Jihyun Park (C)
Conor Priestley (Grn)
Sandra Walmsley (Lab)
Aamer Yasin (Workers Party of Britain)
May 2024 result Lab 1202 Bury Ind 858 C 678
May 2023 result Lab 1429 C 697 Ind 216 Grn 208
May 2022 result Lab 1588/1518/1482 C 1106/1026/907 Grn 321 Ind 259
Previous results in detail
Idle and Thackley
Bradford council, West Yorkshire; postponed from 7th May following the death of outgoing Liberal Democrat councillor Jeanette Sunderland, who was seeking re-election.
There is a suburb of Bradford called Idle. It has a Working Men’s Club.
In case you don’t believe me, here’s a photograph.
Partly because of its name, the Idle Working Men’s Club is bucking the national trend for licensed premises to struggle. I am informed that it has a seven-year waiting list for membership. And it’s known in quizland not just for its name but as a venue: earlier this month the Idle WMC hosted the end-of-season finals night for the Airedale Quiz League, with the venue’s resident team Colonel’s Bogies losing the cup final by a single point.
(I also notice from the results that the “Airebrain” singles competition was won by quizzer Scott Dalgliesh ahead of a star-studded field. Of the other three finalists, Diane Hallagan (who finished second) is one of the four people who have beaten me on BBC Mastermind, Joseph Krol (3rd) was a fearsome quizbowl player in his university days who captained the Corpus Christi Cambridge team in the 2017-18 series of University Challenge, and 4th-placed Barry Simmons may well be known to readers as one of TV’s Eggheads. His list of defeated contestants on Eggheads includes, er, me.)
Idle lies on high ground to the north-east of Bradford city centre, clinging to the side of a steep slope down towards the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Thackley is on lower ground to the north of Idle, although still high enough for the Airedale railway line to need to pass beneath it in a tunnel. The main road from Bradford to Harrogate crosses the Aire valley at Apperley Bridge, whose railway station reopened in 2015 and has half-hourly trains to Leeds and Bradford city centres.
The local authority here is Bradford council, which is now hung after Labour lost control of the district in May’s elections - which were whole-council elections held on new ward boundaries. With results in from 29 of the 30 new wards, Reform UK won 29 seats and have taken the council leadership: they will probably end up running a minority administration against 18 Conservatives, 17 Labour, 9 Greens, 9 councillors elected for the Your Bradford Independent Group which is the local Your Party franchise, 4 other independents and a single Lib Dem. Since the election one of the independent councillors has joined the Your Bradford Independent Group, while Reform UK councillor Daniel Devaney has quit the party to become an independent after being publicly busted for racism before the election; despite that, he still won. As we shall see, Devaney wasn’t the only Reform UK candidate to manage that dubious feat this year.
The three seats in Idle and Thackley ward are still to declare. This is Bradford’s Lib Dem hotspot, with the party having won every local election here for decades. In 2024 the Lib Dem lead here was 60-21 over Labour; the ward is basically unaffected by this year’s boundary changes.
Former Lib Dem councillors here included one David Ward, who was first elected as a Liberal/SDP Alliance councillor for the predecessor Idle ward all the way back in 1984. (He took over a seat vacated by the 1977-78 Lord Mayor of Bradford Paul Hockney, who was an older brother of the artist David Hockney.) Ward made several attempts to get into Parliament over the years, and he finally made it to the Commons in 2010 by gaining the Bradford East constituency from Labour. After a fiery and controversial term of office, in which he briefly lost the Lib Dem whip for offensive comments about Israel, David Ward lost his seat at the 2015 general election. He returned to Bradford council in 2016 as a Lib Dem councillor for the neighbouring Bolton and Undercliffe ward, but was then kicked out of the party shortly before the 2017 general election for antisemitism. Ward then sought re-election to the council in 2021 as an independent but lost his seat to Labour, returned in 2024 as an independent candidate in Bolton and Undercliffe ward, and then lost his seat there in May as a Your Bradford Independent Group candidate.
In the 2024 general election the Lib Dems finished in sixth place in Bradford East with 1,910 votes, only just saving their deposit and being beaten by the Greens, the Conservatives, Reform UK, an independent and Labour MP Imran Hussain, who has represented the seat since he defeated Ward in 2015. Hussain was one of the MPs who quickly lost the Labour whip in July 2024 for voting in favour of an SNP amendment to the King’s Speech to scrap the two-child benefit cap, but he is now back in the fold.
The 1,910 votes polled by the Lib Dems across the whole of the Bradford East constituency in July 2024 is less than the 2,499 votes which Lib Dem candidate Alun Griffiths polled in Idle and Thackley ward alone two months previously. He was re-elected on that occasion with a 60-21 lead over Labour. The ward is to all intents and purposes unaffected by this year’s boundary changes.
The three outgoing Lib Dem councillors for Idle and Thackley ward were Aislin Naylor who has served since 2022, retired GP Alun Griffiths who was first elected in 2006 and has continuous service from 2011, and political veteran Jeanette Sunderland who had been a Bradford councillor for over three decades, being first elected for the predecessor Idle ward back in 1994 and re-elected on eight further occasions. All three Idle and Thackley ward councillors had been nominated for re-election, but Sunderland died in April during the election campaign and this poll had to be postponed in consequence. She was 69 years old, and she had been diagnosed with cancer in 2024.
For this postponed poll outgoing councillors Griffiths and Naylor are joined on the Lib Dem slate by the replacement candidate Rachel Sunderland, who is Jeanette’s daughter. Rachel has served on Bradford council before, representing Bolton and Undercliffe ward from 2014 to 2018 and again from a February 2019 by-election to 2023. On the Labour slate in this by-election, Evelyne Godfrey is an archaeologist whose most recent election campaigns were in Canada, where she was an unsuccessful candidate for the New Democratic Party in the 2021 Canadian federal election and the 2024 New Brunswick provincial election; Gareth Logan was the Labour candidate for this ward in 2023 and 2024, finishing in a distant second place on both occasions; and Paul Wright appears to be a first-time candidate. The Conservatives have nominated David Bryant, Sally Cook (who gives an address over the border in Leeds) and Richard Wightman; the Green Party candidates Stuart Hurlbut, Melissa Jacobs and Tess Lawrence are clustered in the middle of the alphabetical ballot paper; and Reform UK are contesting this ward for the first time with their slate of Tom Macpherson le Maire, David Mills and John Riley. Those are your 15 candidates. Votes here will be counted on Friday morning, and electors have three votes to match the three seats up for election.
Parliamentary constituency: Bradford East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bradford
Postcode districts: BD10, BD17, BD18, LS19
David Bryant (C)
Sally Cook (C)
Evelyne Godfrey (Lab)
Alun Griffiths (LD)
Stuart Hurlbut (Grn)
Melissa Jacobs (Grn)
Tess Lawrence (Grn)
Gareth Logan (Lab)
Tom Macpherson le Maire (RUK)
David Mills (RUK)
Aislin Naylor (LD)
John Riley (RUK)
Rachel Sunderland (LD)
Richard Wightman (C)
Paul Wright (Lab)
No previous results on these boundaries
Chelmsford Springfield
Essex county council; postponed from 7th May following the death of outgoing Liberal Democrat councillor Michael Mackrory, who was seeking re-election.
We now come to three polls in Essex, starting with another piece of unfinished business from May. Springfield is a north-eastern suburb of the city of Chelmsford, located to the east of the River Chelmer; the original Springfield village was annexed by Chelmsford in 1907, but there is still a Springfield parish which is now entirely built up with a 1970s housing estate. This is the Springfield which gave its name to all the Springfields in the USA, including the one in The Simpsons: William Pynchon, who went over to New England in the early 17th century, named the town of Springfield in Massachusetts after his former home village.
Law and order is a major industry here. The division includes the Essex police headquarters, the adjoining Essex police museum and HMP Chelmsford, a medium-security men’s prison. This was the filming location for the 1979 film version of Porridge (not the TV series, which was made in the BBC studios); the prison was empty at the time of filming because it was being refurbished following a fire in one of the wings. The inmates at Chelmsford prison, of course, are not eligible to vote here.
Those who do vote here have tended to vote Liberal Democrat in recent years. The three wards of Chelmsford council which cover this division returned a full slate of Lib Dem councillors in 2023, and Springfield is also part of the Chelmsford parliamentary seat represented by Lib Dem MP Marie Goldman.
The predecessor Springfield division had been represented since 2005 by county councillor Mike Mackrory, who was leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition on Essex county council going into this election. He was a political veteran who had been first elected to Chelmsford council in 1995, and over the years Mackrory had served as mayor (1999-2000), council leader (2000-03) and opposition leader in Chelmsford. He suddenly died on 22nd April at the age of 80, in the middle of his election campaign to seek a sixth term of office on Essex county council; in consequence, the poll here had to be postponed. The rest of the county polled on 7th May as scheduled, and the new Essex county council has a large Reform UK majority: Reform UK won 53 out of the 77 seats that have already declared, with the Conservatives in second place on 13 and the Lib Dems reduced to 5. However, these figures have already changed as we shall see in the next section.
Mike Mackrory’s last win in Springfield division was in 2021, with a 46-37 lead over the Conservatives - curiously, this was exactly the same Lib Dem and Conservative scores as in 2017. This will not be directly comparable with today’s result because Essex county council got new division boundaries this year. The Springfield division has been reduced in size (it no longer covers all of Springfield North ward), while its name has had the word “Chelmsford” prepended to it.
The replacement Lib Dem candidate for Chelmsford Springfield is Richard Lee, who stood on 7th May in Braintree Town division and got nowhere; this should be a better prospect for him. The Tories have selected David Wilkinson, who works for a nature therapy and environmental charity. Also on the ballot are Adam Kenningham-Brown for Labour, Chris Rees for the Green Party and former social worker Tomy Sebastian for Reform UK. Votes here will be counted on Friday morning.
Parliamentary constituency: Chelmsford
Chelmsford wards: The Lawns, Trinity, Springfield North (part: Springfield parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Chelmsford
Postcode districts: CM1, CM2
Adam Kenningham-Brown (Lab)
Richard Lee (LD)
Chris Rees (Grn)
Tomy Sebastian (RUK)
David Wilkinson (C)
No previous results on these boundaries
Rayleigh West
Essex county council; and
Sweyne Park and Grange
Rochford council, Essex; both caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor Stuart Prior.
We now come to the first by-election caused by a newly-elected councillor from May 2026 resigning their council seat. In fact in this case you buy one, you get one free - I say you buy one, you get one free - because we have two by-elections for the price of one.
Both of these by-elections take place in the Essex town of Rayleigh, which is the main population centre in the Rochford local government district. In mediaeval times Rayleigh was a small town with a Norman motte-and-bailey castle, of which little remains, but housebuilding in the later 20th century and since has caused its population to balloon. Some recent development has spilled beyond the town boundaries into the parish of Rawreth, which separates Rayleigh from the town of Wickford to the west.
Following boundary changes which came in this year, Rawreth parish and the western part of Rayleigh are covered by the Rayleigh West division of Essex county council (above). This is made up of 2½ wards of Rochford district, and the two whole wards have both appeared in this column before. Downhall and Rawreth ward was Previewed in January 2018 and March 2022, Sweyne Park and Grange ward (below) in September 2019. The half is the western half of Wheatley ward, which covers Rayleigh town centre.
Rochford council has turned into a bit of a mess since the Conservative group melted down and lost control of the council in 2023, and a look at the last ten years of results in Sweyne Park and Grange ward reflects this. In 2016 the ward’s three seats split three ways between the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and the Rochford District Residents. The Tories gained the Lib Dem seat in 2018. In 2019 the Rochford Districts Residents councillor resigned and the party did not defend the resulting by-election in September 2019, which was gained by the Conservatives. The Tories then lost all of the ward’s three seats over the 2021-23 cycle, with two seats going to the Rochford District Residents and the third to the Lib Dems. In 2024 one of the Residents councillors was re-elected as an independent candidate.
Then the 2026 Rochford election came along, in which Reform UK nearly swept the board. The only ward in the district which failed to vote Reform UK was Foulness and Great Wakering, which returned an independent candidate, while the Liberal Democrats held on to one of the two seats available in Downhall and Rawreth ward which is the traditional Lib Dem hotspot in the district. Most of the individual ward results were not close, including Sweyne Park and Grange where Reform UK candidate Stuart Prior won with 40% against split opposition: 17% each for the Conservatives and Lib Dems, 15% for the outgoing Rochford District Residents councillor who finished in fourth place and lost her seat.
Reform UK did well enough here to in May become the largest party on Rochford council, and they have formed a minority administration with 12 out of 39 seats plus this vacancy. The opposition councillors are, according to the council website, 8 councillors in a joint Lib Dem and independent group, 7 Conservatives, 5 Lib Dems, 4 councillors in the Rochford and Foulness Wakering Independents group, 3 Rochford District Residents, 3 Associated Independents, and 1 independent.
Stuart Prior also polled 40% of the vote to win the Essex county council division of Rayleigh West and to become party of the Reform UK majority on that council. This is a redrawn version of the former Rayleigh North division, which the Lib Dems had gained from the Conservatives in 2021; the Rayleigh North county councillor, Craig Cannell, then died six months later from complications following surgery at the appallingly early age of 32, and the Lib Dems held the resulting by-election in March 2022 with an increased majority. In 2026 the outgoing Lib Dem county councillor James Newport polled 27% and lost his seat to Prior, while the Conservatives came in third on 18%.
These election results came after Stuart Prior had been publicly busted by Hope Not Hate in the week leading up to polling for racist and homophobic social media. He resigned both his Essex county council seat and his Rochford council seat just four days after May’s election. Reform UK have also chucked him out of the party.
Trying to pick up the pieces of this in Rayleigh West is defending Reform UK county council candidate Denise Martin, who might not be helped by giving an address over the district boundary in Basildon; in May she was an unsuccessful candidate in Billericay for the county council and for Basildon council. The Lib Dems have reselected James Newport, who was the winner of the 2022 by-election in the predecessor Rayleigh North division and lost his seat here in May; he is the leader of the Lib Dem and Independent group on Rochford council. The Conservatives have changed candidate to Stuart Belton, who is a Rawreth parish councillor; he is the husband of Danielle Belton who is their candidate for the Rochford district by-election. Also on the county council ballot here are Liam Lonergan for the Greens, Stephen Cooper for Labour, independent candidate Jamie Burton who has previously sat on Rochford council for UKIP and then the Rayleigh Independents (2014-17), and independent candidate Mike Webb who is an independent and former Conservative member of Rochford council for Hawkwell East ward, currently sitting in the Rochford and Foulness Wakering Independents group.
For the Rochford council by-election in Sweyne Park and Grange ward Reform UK have also selected a candidate from outside the district: Paul Thurgood gives an address in Southend-on-Sea, where he was an unsuccessful candidate for Leigh ward in May. As already noted, standing for the Conservatives is Danielle Belton who won the September 2019 by-election here, lost her seat to the Residents in 2021, lost the Downhall and Rawreth by-election in March 2022, and then returned to Rochford council in May 2022 as Conservative councillor for Hockley and Ashington ward. Mrs Belton was leader of Rochford council from 2025 until she lost her seat to Reform UK in May. The Lib Dems have reselected Dawn Balding who was their candidate here last month. This time the Rochford District Residents are not standing so a fair number of votes are up for grabs, but we do also have candidacies from Liam Lonergan (again) for the Greens and Lorraine Ridley for Labour.
Rayleigh West
Parliamentary constituency: Rayleigh and Wickford
Rochford council wards: Downhall and Rawreth, Sweyne Park and Grange, Wheatley (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Southend
Postcode districts: SS5, SS6, SS11
Stuart Belton (C)
Jamie Burton (Ind)
Stephen Cooper (Lab)
Liam Lonergan (Grn)
Denise Martin (RUK)
James Newport (LD)
Mike Webb (Ind)
May 2026 result RUK 2404 LD 1608 C 1078 Grn 366 Rochford District Residents 361 Lab 233
Previous results in detail
Sweyne Park and Grange
Parliamentary constituency: Rayleigh and Wickford
Essex county council division: Rayleigh West
ONS Travel to Work Area: Southend
Postcode district: SS6
Dawn Balding (LD)
Danielle Belton (C)
Liam Lonergan (Grn)
Lorraine Ridley (Lab)
Paul Thurgood (RUK)
May 2026 result RUK 911 C 387 LD 379 Rochford District Residents 349 Grn 186 Lab 82
May 2024 result Ind 820 C 351 Lab 271
May 2023 result LD 1039 C 387
May 2022 result Rochford District Residents 769 C 408 Lab 261
May 2021 result Rochford District Residents 771 C 696 Lab 186
September 2019 by-election C 702 LD 538 Lab 180
May 2019 result C 702 LD 538 Lab 180
May 2018 result C 784 LD 622 Lab 200
May 2016 result Rochford District Residents 847 C 785/514/464 LD 599 Lab 375
Previous results in detail
Hillingdon West
Hillingdon council, London; postponed from 7th May following the death of Reform UK candidate Sean Cooling.
We now move into Greater London with the fourth and last postponed poll of the week, which is very much in Outer London. Hillingdon West ward lies to the east of Uxbridge town centre and is centred on the open space of Dowding Park, whose name is a clue to the area’s history. It’s a reference to Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, who was the commander of RAF Fighter Command during the 1940 Battle of Britain.
Dowding Park lies on the site occupied until 2010 by RAF Uxbridge, which during the war years was the home of 11 Group RAF who were responsible for the aerial defence of London. The main operations room was underground, and it is now open to the public as a museum: the Battle of Britain Bunker has been restored in recent years with funding from central government and from Hillingdon council, which runs the place. Not far away from the bunker is the 19th-century mansion of Hillingdon House, whose grounds all this once were. Redevelopment work continues around the area, and Hillingdon council have plans to turn some derelict former RAF housing on the western side of the park into an extension of Uxbridge town centre.
Hillingdon council is run by the Conservatives, who have successfully defended their majority in this election. The 2022 result here was quite close with 30 Conservatives and 23 Labour councillors; this time round the Tories have won 30 seats against 16 Labour, 4 Reform UK and 1 Green, with the two seats in Hillingdon West ward to come. The election here was postponed after Sean Cooling, who was to have been a Reform UK candidate for the ward, died during the election campaign.
The Conservatives have a clear opportunity here to increase their council majority in the final reckoning. Hillingdon West was a safe Conservative ward when it was created for the 2022 election, with the Tories defeating Labour here on that occasion by 55-34. Before 2022 this area was mostly part of the larger Uxbridge North ward, which always voted Conservative in local elections. Nonetheless Labour might want to see how much of a fight they can put up here, because this ward is part of the Uxbridge and South Ruislip parliamentary seat whose Labour MP Danny Beales has a majority of just 587 votes from July 2024: Beales had been on the wrong side of a similar margin when he lost the parliamentary by-election here the previous year. Steve Tuckwell, the Conservative MP who Beales defeated in 2024, is now the Hillingdon council leader.
The two outgoing Conservative councillors for Hillingdon West are both seeking re-election. In the case of Reeta Chamdal the prize for winning is a big one: she was elected last month as the mayor of Hillingdon for 2026-27, a post which is presumably conditional on her getting back to the council in this poll. Her running-mate Adam Bennett has worked for over 20 years for British Airways, where he is currently head of Global Online Travel Agents. Bennett and Chamdal were both first elected in 2022. The Labour slate here consists of Tiffany Beales (who I think is the mother of Danny Beales MP) and Imran Razak, who are both first-time candidates. The only other party to stand here in 2022 was the Greens, who have taken advantage of the postponement to nominate a full slate with Alicia Windsor from the cancelled election joined by Ruhi Patel; on the Reform UK side Margaret Forrest remains from the original candidate list while Justin Anderson (who gives an address in faraway Portsmouth) has been nominated to replace the late Shaun Cooling; and the Lib Dem candidates of Muhammad Iqbal and Gautam Sabarwal complete a ballot paper of ten candidates. There are two seats available in this poll, and electors here have two votes.
Parliamentary constituency: Uxbridge and South Ruislip
London Assembly constituency: Ealing and Hillingdon
ONS Travel to Work Area: Slough and Heathrow
Postcode districts: UB8, UB10
Justin Anderson (RUK)
Tiffany Beales (Lab)
Adam Bennett (C)
Reeta Chamdal (C)
Margaret Forrest (RUK)
Muhammad Iqbal (LD)
Ruhi Patel (Grn)
Imran Razak (Lab)
Gautam Sabarwal (LD)
Alicia Windsor (Grn)
May 2022 result C 1124/1014 Lab 704/688 Grn 213/184
Previous results in detail
Crofton Park
Lewisham council, London; caused by the election of Green Party councillor Liam Shrivastava as mayor of the borough.
Having got London’s postponed poll out of the way, we now travel south of the river to the first in a short series of London by-elections triggered by newly-elected Green Party councillors who were unable or unwilling to serve. In this case it’s a result of Liam Shrivastava being too successful at the polls in May and winning two elections at once: he became the fourth elected mayor of Lewisham, and he was also elected to Lewisham council as an ordinary councillor. Mayor Shrivastava can’t do both jobs at once, so his councillor seat has been automatically vacated.
Shrivastava was elected in 2022 as a Labour councillor for Lewisham’s New Cross ward before defecting to the Greens, but he didn’t seek re-election there. Instead we’re going to move two stops down the Windrush line to Honor Oak Park station, which lies on the western boundary of Lewisham borough and serves the western part of Crofton Park ward. The name Crofton Park was an invention of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway which opened Crofton Park station in 1892 on its Catford Loop line; before then the Crofton Park area in the north of this ward was considered to be part of Brockley. The largest open space in the ward is Blythe Hill Fields, a high point which has good views of east and south-east London. In the 2021 census Crofton Park was in the top 50 wards in England and Wales for people of mixed race (8.3%) and in the top 15 wards for residents employed in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector (7.2%).
Crofton Park ward was once the home of the Irish political activist Jim Connell, who wrote the socialist anthem The Red Flag while on a train home to Honor Oak Park in 1889. Connell might well be pleased to note that his old stomping ground is a left-wing area in local elections, and - in common with Lewisham as a whole - Crofton Park ward had a full slate of Labour councillors from 2010 to 2026.
But this year the Labour redwash in Lewisham was broken in spectacular fashion, with the Green Party winning the borough’s mayoralty and an overall majority on the council, with 40 seats to Labour’s 14. Despite the fact that all three Green candidates were at the bottom of the ballot paper, Crofton Park ward followed suit with the Green slate defeating Labour by 52-31 - a swing of 18½% from Labour’s 49-33 win here four years ago.
This might well be causing some concern to this area’s Labour MP, although it would take a bigger Labour to Green swing to oust her. Crofton Park is part of the Lewisham West and East Dulwich constituency, which also takes in territory from Southwark borough to the west. In 2024 it was won by Ellie Reeves, who had represented the predecessor seat of Lewisham West and Penge since 2017. Reeves is a barrister who holds the post of Solicitor General, but she is not the most senior member of her family serving in government: she is the younger sister of Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
As stated above, Liam Shrivastava’s election as mayor and councillor last month has opened up a vacancy on Lewisham council. Defending the resulting by-election for the Greens is Esther Lie, who currently works as a community organiser. Labour’s Alex Brooks was on their unsuccessful slate here in May and he is back for another go. Also standing are Richard Elliott for the Lib Dems, Caitlin Pugh for the Conservatives, Paul Newman for Reform UK and independent candidate Roger Mighton, who finished in eighth and last place in the Lewisham mayoral election last month.
Parliamentary constituency: Lewisham West and East Dulwich
London Assembly constituency: Greenwich and Lewisham
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: SE4, SE6, SE23
Alex Brooks (Lab)
Richard Elliott (LD)
Esther Lie (Grn)
Roger Mighton (Ind)
Paul Newman (RUK)
Caitlin Pugh (C)
May 2026 result Grn 3090/2991/2907 Lab 1809/1804/1709 LD 379/298/252 C 325/268/231 RUK 300
May 2022 result Lab 2457/2411/2147 Grn 1649/1148/933 LD 554/331/240 C 349/319/286
Previous results in detail
Bransgore, Burley, Sopley and Ringwood East
New Forest council, Hampshire; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Richard Frampton.
We now travel from a ward in London which the Green Party gained at its last election, to a ward in Hampshire which the Green Party lost at its last election; from a Park which is full of houses, to a Forest which doesn’t really have many trees. That’s because the New Forest is a forest in the mediaeval sense of royal hunting territory, which encompassed both woodland and heathland. It’s in this heathland that we can find the village of Burley, located to the east of Ringwood around 13 miles north-east of Bournemouth.
Just outside the National Park boundary is Bransgore, whose eponymous parish includes a number of villages just outside Christchurch: Neacroft, Waterditch and Hinton are all part of this ward. Christchurch used to be part of Hampshire, but it was transferred to Dorset in the 1974 reorganisation; as part of that reorganisation the new Hampshire-Dorset boundary was drawn through the middle of what was then Christchurch East parish, and Bransgore parish is the part of that area which remained in Hampshire. The ward includes Hinton Admiral railway station on the northern edge of Christchurch’s built-up area. Not far from the station is the Office Field Solar Farm, which has been generating electricity for the National Grid since 2013.
To the west of Bransgore is the village of Sopley, which lies on the Hampshire Avon a few miles north of Christchurch. This was the home of a Second World War radar station and an associated RAF camp which was used in the 1970s to house Vietnamese boat people. Sopley is also the location of Moorlands College, which is a seminary for evangelical Christians. Finally, the Ringwood East part of the ward name is a reference to the eastern ward of the parish of Ringwood, which covers the area of Ringwood parish within the National Park boundary and doesn’t actually contain anything of the town itself: the main population centre here is the small village of Crow.
The 35 letters of “Bransgore, Burley, Sopley and Ringwood East” introduce one of the few genuinely rural wards in the New Forest district. This is because the New Forest district is generally not as rural as it might at first sound. In fact the New Forest is England’s second-largest second-tier district by population, after East Suffolk, and most of its residents live outside the national park in towns such as Ringwood in the Avon valley, Lymington, New Milton and other retirement towns on the coastal strip, the Southampton suburb of Totton and a very industrial area on the west bank of Southampton Water.
This ward was created in 2023 as a straight merger of the former Bransgore and Burley ward with the former Ringwood East and Sopley ward, with a reduction in the overall number of councillors from three to two but no cut to the number of elements in the ward name. The previous Bransgore and Burley ward was featured in this column in December 2021 as part of the fallout from a scandal involving the long-serving former Conservative leader of New Forest council Barry Rickman, who was prosecuted by the Environment Agency in 2021 for running a scrapyard without the necessary environmental permits and fined £1,000. Rickman was subsequently kicked out of the Conservative group on New Forest council, and the new council leader then proposed to remove him as one of the council’s representatives on the New Forest National Park Authority: that proposal led to the resignation of Bransgore and Burley ward councillor Mark Steele, who made complaints of bullying over the matter which were not upheld by the council’s monitoring officer. The resulting by-election, held two days before Christmas 2021, returned independent candidate and former ward councillor (2014-19) Richard Frampton who had previously sat on New Forest council for the both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems; the defending Conservative candidate actually fell to third place behind the Greens. There were no such shenanigans in the former Ringwood East and Sopley ward, which was very strongly Conservative to the point where it was left uncontested in 2015.
Two long-serving members of the Conservative awkward squad in the Commons, Sir Christopher Chope and Sir Desmond Swayne, live in this ward and are electors in this by-election. Sir Desmond has represented this area in Parliament since 1997 as part of the New Forest West constituency, and even in the carnage of 2024 he had no problem being re-elected for his eighth term of office.
Nonetheless the Conservative vote has been falling here in recent years. The Tories only just managed to keep control of New Forest council at the 2023 election, falling from 46 seats out of 60 to 26 out of 48 - a total which has since fallen to a minority of 23 out of 48, plus this vacancy, as a result of defection losses. Two of the New Forest Tory losses in 2023 came in Bransgore, Burley, Sopley and Ringwood East ward, which turned in a close three-way result. Independent candidate Nigel Linford finished top of the poll with 34%, and the other seat went to Neil Millington of the Green Party on 31%; the Conservatives finished close behind on 28%.
The Green Party councillor Neil Millington stepped down from New Forest council in December 2024 because he was moving away from the area. For the resulting Bransgore, Burley, Sopley and Ringwood East by-election in February 2025 the Conservatives selected Richard Frampton, who had won the 2014 Bransgore and Burley by-election for the Conservatives and the 2021 Bransgore and Burley by-election as an independent candidate - and Frampton did the hat-trick and easily gained the 2025 by-election from the Green Party. His lead over the Greens in the final reckoning was 60-19.
The most recent poll here was the 2026 Hampshire county council election, in which this ward is split between the Brockenhurst and Ringwood divisions. The Conservatives lost their majority on the county council this year, and one of the seats they lost was Ringwood which was gained by Reform UK; Brockenhurst, meanwhile, remained in Conservative hands. Richard Frampton resigned from New Forest council at about the same time, prompting the second Bransgore, Burley, Sopley and Ringwood East by-election of this term.
Defending for the Conservatives this time is Jan Sutherland, who is the vice-chair of Bransgore parish council. The Greens have reselected Barbara Czoch, a carpenter and foster carer who was their candidate in last year’s by-election. A rare all-female ballot paper is completed by Jannette Westgate of Reform UK, Hannah Phillips of the Lib Dems and Bronwen Bridges of Labour.
Parliamentary constituency: New Forest West
Hampshire county council division: Brockenhurst (Bransgore and Burley parishes), Ringwood (Sopley parish and part of Ringwood parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bournemouth
Postcode districts: BH23, BH24
Bronwen Bridges (Lab)
Barbara Czoch (Grn)
Hannah Phillips (LD)
Jan Sutherland (C)
Jannette Westgate (RUK)
February 2025 by-election C 997 Grn 314 RUK 257 LD 52 Lab 42
May 2023 result Ind 805 Grn 725/581 C 649/514 Lab 179/130
Previous results in detail
Morriston; and
Mumbles
Swansea council, Glamorgan; caused respectively by the death of Labour councillor Robert Francis-Davies and by the the resignation of Francesca O’Brien.
The last seven of today’s polls take place in Wales, with all but one of them being a direct result of a recent law change by the Senedd. Welsh local government law has a general principle that you can only wear one political hat at once, so if you’re a councillor in Wales and you are elected to Westminster or to Senedd Cymru, then you are expected to resign your council position. There used to be an exemption from this rule for councillors who were in the last 53 weeks of their term, who would be allowed to see out their last year of office but would then be required to stand down at the following ordinary election. Since local elections in Wales take place a year after Senedd elections, this exemption saved quite a lot of hassle for newly-elected MSs. But the last Senedd abolished that exemption from May 2026 onwards, and we are now reaping the result of that change in the law. Nineteen of the 96 MSs elected in May were local councillors, and that means that 19 by-elections have now been triggered to add to the burden on electoral administrators, electors and this column. Six of those polls take place today, with the other 13 to follow over the coming weeks.
The first of those 19 new MSs we will feature here is Francesca O’Brien, who was top of the Reform UK list for the Gŵyr Abertawe constituency, which covers most of the Swansea council area, at the 2026 Senedd election. Reform UK won two of the six seats in Gŵyr Abertawe at that election, finishing in second place with 27% of the vote: Plaid Cymru topped the poll with 32% and won three seats, Labour won one seat with 14%, and the Conservatives were best of the rest on 10%. Gŵyr Abertawe covers both of the Swansea wards holding elections today.
O’Brien is a fairly recent recruit to Reform UK. She was elected to Swansea council in 2022 on the Conservative ticket, as a councillor for Mumbles ward. The headland known as the Mumbles is a beauty spot which lies at the western end of Swansea Bay: the land behind it is fairly heavily built up, with the villages of Langland, Newton and Oystermouth having fused together into a single urban area. Oystermouth is dominated by the impressive remains of a 13th-century castle, which is now in the care of Swansea council, while the beaches of western Swansea Bay and Langland Bay are a draw for day-trippers and holidaymakers on those occasions when the Welsh summer weather behaves itself.
Oystermouth is the final resting place of a man who died in 1825 but whose name lives on today in the English language. Thomas Bowdler has a chess attack named after him (1. e4 c5 2. Bc4, a reply by White to the Sicilian Defence which is now rarely seen at the top level), but he is mostly remembered as the publisher of The Family Shakespeare, “in which nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family”. What this meant in practice was the compilation of a censored edition of Shakespeare’s plays, with anything deemed too sexy, blasphemous or otherwise unsuitable for Georgian women and children to hear ruthlessly cut out. Ironically this censorship extended to the work’s authorship, as although Thomas Bowdler was credited on its title page the first edition of The Family Shakespeare was in fact edited by his sister Harriet. Its commercial success led to Thomas spending the rest of his years compiling “Bowdlerised” editions of other works, including a family-friendly version of Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire which was unfinished when he died and was completed by his nephew. Bowdler set off a whole genre of expurgated literary works which were popular and generally seen as a Good Thing in the nineteenth century, and it wasn’t until the First World War years that the term “bowdlerisation” started to take on connotations of unwelcome censorship. But in these days of mooted social media bans for children, maybe Thomas Bowdler’s legacy is starting to come fashionable again?
The Mumbles area is still populated by the sort of affluent middle-class families who would have enjoyed Bowdler’s work back in the day. Rather different in character is Morriston, a planned industrial village in northern Swansea which was built for and named after the industrialist Sir John Morris in the late eighteenth century. This is the core of the Morriston electoral ward, which extends along the west back of the River Tawe to take in the villages of Cwmrhydyceirw and Ynystawe. The ward’s largest employer is Morriston Hospital, where many of Swansea’s residents begin and end their lives. Although the Swansea offices of the DVLA are often described as being in Morriston, the DVLA complex is in fact located to the west of here in Mynydd-bach ward; nevertheless it has an effect on Morriston’s census return, with the ward making the top 100 in England and Wales for those working in administrative and secretarial occupations (13.6%).
Morriston is a very large electoral ward which elects five Swansea councillors by first-past-the-post - something which would not be tolerated in England, where the Local Government Boundary Commission caps the size of wards at three councillors. In the 2022 Swansea council election the Labour slate here was guaranteed one of the five seats because only four opposition candidates stood, and Labour went on to elect all five councillors very easily with a 61-15 lead over the Conservatives. This places Morriston within the Labour majority on Swansea council.
At Westminster Morriston is part of the Swansea West constituency, which has only had three MPs - all Labour - in the last 60 years. Alan Williams retired in 2010 as Father of the House, with continuous service from 1964. His successor Geraint Davies represented the seat as a Labour MP for 13 years before being suspended from the party in 2023 over sexual harassment allegations. The Labour party’s investigation into this never seems to have reached a conclusion, and Davies was effectively forced into retirement as he was still outside the fold when the 2024 general election was called. His successor is a Labour Party high-flyer: Torsten Bell came to the Commons in 2024 from nine years running the Resolution Foundation economic thinktank, and he has brought that work into government as a junior Treasury and DWP minister.
The Mumbles ward makes the top 40 in England and Wales for residents in lower managerial, administrative and professional occupations (28.6%). It was created in 2022 as a merger of the previous single-member Newton and Oystermouth wards, plus territory transferred from West Cross ward to the north, with an increase in the overall number of councillors from two to three. Newton and Oystermouth had both returned Conservative councillors for some years previously, and Mumbles continued in that vein in 2022 by giving 42% to the winning Conservative slate, 29% to Labour and 13% to the Greens.
This ward is part of the Gower Westminster constituency, which has been represented since 2017 by the chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs committee Tonia Antoniazzi. In 2019 she narrowly defeated Conservative candidate Francesca O’Brien, who was subsequently elected in 2022 as a Conservative councillor for Mumbles ward before defecting to Reform UK in 2025. O’Brien has now left Swansea council after her election to the Senedd last month, and she has slotted straight onto the Reform UK frontbench in Cardiff Bay as shadow cabinet member for local government, housing and planning.
Today’s other by-election is to replace Swansea’s longest-serving local councillor. Robert Francis-Davies was first elected all the way back in 1983, giving 43 years of unbroken service as a councillor for Morriston. He was Lord Mayor of the city in 2001-02, and he was active in local government right up to the end as the Swansea cabinet member for investment, regeneration, tourism and events. It was a job Francis-Davies had clearly excelled at over many years, with the council leader’s tribute noting his contribution to the planning of the Swansea.com Stadium (home of Swansea City FC) and the National Waterfront Museum, together with bringing events such as Proms in the Park to Swansea. Robert Francis-Davies died in May at the age of 78, with the coroner’s inquest attributing his death to a combination of renal cancer and a fall from a mobility scooter.
The defending Labour candidate in the by-election to replace Robert Francis-Davies is his daughter Rebecca, an HR consultant who was in fourth place on the Labour list for Gŵyr Abertawe last month; in the 2022 Swansea elections she contested Uplands ward. Another unsuccessful Senedd candidate who is straight back on the campaign trail is the Conservatives’ Idin Ghotbi, who made up the numbers in sixth and last place on the Conservative list for Gŵyr Abertawe. The Lib Dem candidate is Hayden Lewis, Reform UK have selected Graham Ashby, Gareth Schofield is the Green candidate and Ioan Warlow stands for Plaid Cymru.
In Mumbles ward Reform UK will want to convert their defection gain into a by-election gain, and hoping to do that is their candidate Emilie Cox: she was an unsuccessful Conservative candidate in the 2022 Swansea elections, finishing as runner-up behind Labour in the neighbouring West Cross ward. The Conservatives will want to recover their loss and they have selected Hannah Williams. Standing for Labour is David Lewis, who sits on Mumbles community council and runs a B&B in the ward. The Green candidate Rich Williams has had a long career in the commercial and charity sector, and he currently runs a Swansea youth work charity. Also on the Mumbles ballot are Plaid Cymru’s Tricia Sanderson who was an unsuccessful candidate here in 2022, the Lib Dems’ Jim Hehir who stood for the Senedd last month in Afan Ogwr Rhondda, and independent candidate Dorian Davies who stood in Oystermouth ward back in 2017 and lists current membership of Reform UK on his nomination papers. Intending Conservative and Green voters should check carefully which Williams they are voting for.
Morriston
Westminster constituency: Swansea West
Senedd constituency: Gŵyr Abertawe
ONS Travel to Work Area: Swansea
Postcode district: SA6
Graham Ashby (RUK)
Rebecca Francis-Davies (Lab)
Idin Ghotbi (C)
Hayden Lewis (LD)
Gareth Schofield (Grn)
Ioan Warlow (PC)
May 2022 result Lab 2741/2665/2487/2471/2366 C 670/668 Ind 546 LD 538
Previous results in detail
Mumbles
Westminster constituency: Gower
Senedd constituency: Gŵyr Abertawe
ONS Travel to Work Area: Swansea
Postcode district: SA3
Emilie Cox (RUK)
Dorian Davies (Ind)
Jim Hehir (LD)
David Lewis (Lab)
Tricia Sanderson (PC)
Hannah Williams (C)
Rich Williams (Grn)
May 2022 result C 1760/1510/1478 Lab 1234/1156/1155 Grn 563 PC 366 LD 273
Previous results in detail
Acton and Maesydre;
Grosvenor; and
Queensway
Wrexham council, North Wales; caused respectively by the resignations of Plaid Cymru councillors Becca Martin, Marc Jones and Carrie Harper.
We now come to the largest settlement in North Wales, the city of Wrexham, where three by-elections are taking place to replace Plaid Cymru councillors who have all been elected to Senedd Cymru. In May Carrie Harper and Marc Jones were the top two candidates on the Plaid list for the Fflint Wrecsam constituency which covers Wrexham, where the main nationalist party polled 26% of the vote and won two out of six seats; while Becca Martin was elected in second place on the Plaid Cymru list for Clwyd, which scored 28% and won two seats. Reform UK were first in both constituencies, and in the first-past-the-post context of these by-elections that’s all-important.
The three outgoing Plaid councillors all represented urban wards in Wrexham proper. Carrie Harper’s ward was Queensway, which is in the east of the city and is one of the five wards covering the massive Caia Park housing estate, whose utterly working-class population drives a remarkable census return. This ward has 31.0% of its population aged under 16: that is the highest figure for any ward in Wales, and only four wards in England (two covering areas of new development in the Thames estuary, and two covering the Jewish enclave in northern Hackney) are higher. Queensway also has the second-highest proportion of social housing in England and Wales at 70.4% of households, behind only Acrefair North ward elsewhere in Wrexham; it also makes the top 100 wards in England and Wales for households living rent-free (0.9%), for adults with no qualifications (35.5%), for adults with between 1 and 4 GCSEs or equivalent (14.2%, the highest figure in Wales), for adults who are looking after home or family (12.3%, the highest figure in Wales), for adults who are long-term sick or disabled (12.2%), for residents employed in manufacturing (18.3%), for residents employed in administrative and support service activities (9.2%, the highest figure in Wales), for semi-routine occupations (19.5%) and for routine occupations (25.1%). This is not a result of immigration: the ward is only 5% non-white with 11% of the the population born outside the UK. Harper was first elected for the ward in 2017, and she won a second term of office in 2022 with a thumping 75-22 lead over Labour.
Also first elected in 2017 was Marc Jones, who was re-elected in 2022 in Grosvenor ward with a 63-26 lead over Labour. Most of this ward’s residents live in the Rhosddu area immediately to the north of the city centre; the name of Grosvenor ward is a reference to the Dukes of Westminster, who we met in last week’s Preview. This ward covers a large chunk of Wrexham city centre, including the Guildhall which is the home of Wrexham council, and it extends north-westwards to take in Wrexham General railway station, the main campus of Wrexham University, and the Racecourse Ground football stadium.
The Racecourse Ground is the home of Wrexham AFC, who have gained a new fanbase and success in recent years thanks to their ownership by US actors Rob McElhinney and Ryan Reynolds. The stadium also claims to be the oldest international football ground in the world. The Welsh national team played their first home match here in 1877, losing 2-0 to Scotland, and the Racecourse Ground has hosted more Wales matches through the years than any other venue. But these days the Cardiff City Stadium is the national football team’s permanent home, and Wales’ last match at the Racecourse was a low-profile friendly against Gibraltar in 2023.
The third Wrexham councillor departing for Cardiff Bay is Becca Martin, who last appeared in this column when she won a March 2021 by-election for Maesydre ward which lies immediately north-east of the city centre. It’s fair to say that I didn’t see that result coming: Plaid had not previously stood a candidate in Maesydre ward this century. Boundary changes for the 2022 election merged Maesydre with Acton ward to the north, creating a two-seat ward of Acton and Maesydre which split its representation between Plaid and Labour: Plaid Cymru polled 37% to 26% for Labour and 22% for an independent candidate. In the 2021 census Acton and Maesydre made the top 100 wards in England and Wales for residents employed in manufacturing (18.1%).
The northern end of Acton and Maesydre ward is covered by the open space of Acton Park, which was once the grounds of Acton Hall before its demolition in the 1950s. Acton Hall was the birthplace of George Jeffreys, the notorious hanging judge who was James II’s Lord Chancellor and presided over the “Bloody Assizes” of 1685. The park includes Britain’s Tree of the Year for 2023, a sweet chestnut tree which is nearly 500 years old; also here is a stone circle, commemorating the visit of the National Eisteddfod to Wrexham in 1977.
Harper, Jones and Martin were a large chunk of the Plaid Cymru group on Wrexham council, which has a plurality of independent councillors. The 2022 elections here returned 23 independents, 14 Labour, 9 Conservatives, 9 Plaid and a Lib Dem councillor; the main independent group heads a coalition which also includes the Conservatives and the Lib Dem. All this is rather different to the 2024 Westminster election in the Wrexham constituency, which was a rather easy gain for Labour: the town’s MP is Andrew Ranger, who has spent most of his career working in hospitality.
On the basis of the previous results Plaid Cymru might be most worried about Acton and Maesydre. Their defending candidate in that ward is Richard Everall, a long-serving former fireman who was also a Fire Brigades Union rep. Labour have selected Salli Edwards, who runs the Flintshire branch of Citizens Advice. We have an independent candidacy from Alex Jones, who was an independent candidate for the city’s Erddig ward in 2017 and 2022. The Conservatives have selected Will Martin, Natasha Morris stands for the Greens, Reform UK’s nominee is Jan Davey, and the Lib Dems’ Beatrice Williams is last on the Acton and Maesydre ballot paper.
The Grosvenor by-election is defended for Plaid by first-time candidate Jonathan Billington. Here the Labour candidate is Brendan Murray who is a driving instructor. Beth Vaughan stands in Grosvenor ward for the Conservatives, Graham Bannister-Kelly for the Greens, Gerald Craddock for the Lib Dems, former community councillor Philip Penk for Reform UK, Sam Regan - who owns and runs a hotel in the city - is standing here as an independent candidate, and Martine Richards makes a bit of electoral history as the first-ever council by-election candidate for Your Party.
For their defence of the Queensway by-election Plaid Cymru have decided to ignore the usual stereotypes by selecting Pol Wong, a 33rd-generation Shaolin monk who makes a living by teaching kung fu. Wong, whose father Jummy opened and ran the first Chinese restaurant in North Wales, was last seen on a ballot paper in 2017 when he stood in Ruabon ward. The Labour candidate Morgan Peters is a Caia Park community councillor who stood on the party’s list in Gwynedd Maldwyn at the recent Senedd election. Also contesting Queensway ward are Geoffrey Sutton for the Conservatives, Robbie Green for Reform UK and Lucy Sutton for the Greens. Intending Conservative and Green voters should check carefully which Sutton they are voting for.
Acton and Maesydre
Westminster constituency: Wrexham
Senedd constituency: Fflint Wrecsam
ONS Travel to Work Area: Wrexham
Postcode districts: LL11, LL12, LL13
Jan Davey (RUK)
Salli Edwards (Lab)
Richard Everall (PC)
Alex Jones (Ind)
Will Martin (C)
Natasha Morris (Grn)
Beatrice Williams (LD)
May 2022 result PC 667/418 Lab 460 Ind 395 C 222 Grn 59
Previous results in detail
Grosvenor
Westminster constituency: Wrexham
Senedd constituency: Fflint Wrecsam
ONS Travel to Work Area: Wrexham
Postcode districts: LL11, LL12, LL13, LL14
Graham Bannister-Kelly (Grn)
Jonathan Billington (PC)
Gerald Craddock (LD)
Brendan Murray (Lab)
Philip Penk (RUK)
Sam Regan (Ind)
Martine Richards (Your Party)
Beth Vaughan (C)
May 2022 result PC 382 Lab 146 C 64
Previous results in detail
Queensway
Westminster constituency: Wrexham
Senedd constituency: Fflint Wrecsam
ONS Travel to Work Area: Wrexham
Postcode district: LL13
Robbie Green (RUK)
Morgan Peters (Lab)
Geoffrey Sutton (C)
Lucy Sutton (Grn)
Pol Wong (PC)
May 2022 result PC 279 Lab 82 C 12
Previous results in detail
Gogarth Mostyn; and
Tudno
Conwy council, North Wales; caused respectively by the resignations of Louise Emery and Thomas Montgomery.
We’ll finish for the week on the seaside, in the Costa Geriatrica of North Wales. Roughly at the centre of the North Wales coast we find the town of Llandudno, which lies on low ground between the twin headlands of the Little Orme and the Great Orme. The town has two beaches, one facing north into the Irish Sea and the other facing west into the mouth of the River Conwy.
Orme is a Norse name, an unusual feature in North Wales, which refers to a sea serpent and is from the same root which gave us the English word “worm”. The craggy limestone of the Great Orme rises to a summit of 207 metres and it is classed as a Marilyn, a British peak which rises at least 150 metres above the surrounding landscape. Its highest point is occupied by a visitor centre, which was once a semaphore station passing messages between Holyhead and Liverpool. This is an excellent viewpoint for the Irish Sea, with views extending on a good day to the Isle of Man and the Lake District; theoretically the summit of Slieve Donard, 103 miles away in Northern Ireland, is also visible from here.
The summit complex is adjacent to the terminus of the Great Orme Tramway, which runs down the steep slope into the town centre. This is operated as two separate funicular railways, meaning that all passengers must change trams at the Halfway station. The lower section of the Tramway runs along public streets to reach its lower terminus.
Not far away from here are the remains of copper mines on the Great Orme which go all the way back to the Bronze Age: metallurgical analysis has demonstrated that during the period 1600 to 1400 BC the Great Orme was the main source of copper in Britain. Also up here on the headland we find a small church dedicated to St Tudno, an obscure saint who lived as a hermit on the Great Orme in the sixth century. This is the church of St Tudno which gives its name to the town of Llandudno below.
Llandudno as we know it today is a creation of the Victorians, who turned it from a copper-mining centre into a seaside resort, and the North Promenade in particular is wall-to-wall Victorian hotels. Behind those hotels we find the town centre, whose main shopping street is Mostyn Street which runs parallel to the North Promenade: this is named after Lord Mostyn, who still owns large chunks of Llandudno to this day.
Holidaymakers here back in the day included Alice Pleasance Liddell, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice novels. To mark this connection a series of statues of characters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass have been erected in the town - this trend started with a depiction of the White Rabbit on Mostyn Street, which was unveiled by Llandudno’s then MP David Lloyd George all the way back in 1933. The annual Victorian Extravaganza, which is normally held over the May bank holiday weekend so you’ve missed it for this year, is quite the experience.
The Gogarth Mostyn ward of Conwy covers Llandudno’s town centre, the western shore and the Great Orme. This ward also includes the town’s railway station, which lies at the end of a branch off the North Wales Coast line.
Immediately to the east of here is Tudno ward, where we find the theatre and conference centre of Venue Cymru on the North Promenade. This is the regular location for the Welsh Open snooker tournament, and it also hosts politicians from time to time. The Welsh Conservative conference was held at Venue Cymru in February, and Plaid Cymru have pencilled Llandudno in as the location for their next party conference in October.
The boundary between Tudno and Gogarth Mostyn wards runs along Vaughan Street, and the T-junction of Vaughan Street and the North Promenade marks the northern end of the A470 road which winds its merry way down the length of Wales to the Senedd building at Cardiff Bay. Today’s by-elections in both of those wards, which between them cover nearly all of Llandudno town, are both caused by Conwy councillors being elected to Senedd Cymru in May. Louise Emery and Thomas Montgomery were respectively ranked second and third on the Reform UK list for the Clwyd constituency, which polled 32% of the vote and won three out of six seats.
Emery and Montgomery are both relatively recent recruits to Reform UK, and they were originally elected to Conwy council on the Conservative ticket. Louise Emery was first elected in 2017 for Gogarth ward which then covered the Great Orme and the west shore, gaining her seat from an independent councillor. Boundary changes for 2022 then merged Gogarth with the town-centre Mostyn ward, and the combined ward turned in a close result with 36% for Labour, 34% for the Conservatives and 30% for independent candidates; the three seats split one to Labour and two to the Conservatives. Thomas Montgomery was in his first term as a councillor for Tudno ward, which in 2022 voted 31% for Labour, 29% for the Conservatives, 25% for independent candidates and 16% for the Liberal Democrats; Labour had only stood one candidate, leaving Montgomery to win the second seat on the Conservative ticket.
Those results were unusually party political for Conwy council, where independent councillors are the largest group and lead the administration. The 2022 Conwy election returned 22 independent councillors, 11 Labour, 10 Conservatives, 7 Plaid Cymru (most of whom were elected from wards in the interior), 4 Lib Dems and a single Green councillor. These are the first by-elections of the present Conwy council term.
Llandudno is one of the major towns in the Westminster seat of Bangor Aberconwy, which was won in 2024 by Labour candidate Claire Hughes. For Senedd purposes that seat is combined with the Isle of Anglesey to form a rather undersized constituency of Bangor Conwy Môn: in May this constituency gave 45% and three seats to Plaid Cymru, 28% and two seats to Reform UK, and 12% and one seat to the Conservatives. Top of the Plaid Cymru list here was their party leader, and now the First Minister of Wales, Rhun ap Iorwerth. Local elections in Wales are not a particularly reliable indicator of party support, but it’s fair to say that Plaid Cymru’s strength in this constituency lies outside Llandudno. Neither of these by-elections has a Plaid candidate.
Whether this means that Reform UK can convert their defection gains into by-election gains remains to be seen. In Gogarth Mostyn the new Reform UK candidate is Gareth Probert, a Conwy town councillor who has recently defected to the party from the Conservatives. The Tories have selected Greg Robbins, who is trying to get back on Conwy council after losing his seat here in 2022: Robbins had represented the former Mostyn ward from 2017 to 2022, and he still sits on Llandudno town council and has served as mayor of the town more than once. He previously appeared in this column as the losing Conservative candidate for a Mostyn ward by-election in 2016. Labour’s David Hawkins is a Llandudno town councillor for Mostyn ward, and he is married to this year’s mayor Mandy Hawkins. There are no independent candidates this time, but Dave Coffin completes an all-male ballot for the Lib Dems.
Finally for this week, we come to the Tudno ward by-election where the Reform UK candidate is Alan Davies. The Tories will want their seat back and they have selected Michael Hall. Standing for Labour is Joanna Stallard, who was top of the Labour list for Bangor Conwy Môn in May; she also stood in the 2024 general election in Dwyfor Meirionnydd. Again there is no independent challenge this time. The Lib Dems are back with James Pethica, who gives an address in Rhos-on-Sea and runs a business selling climbing-related jewellery, and this time we also have an intervention from the Greens whose candidate is Joshua Morris.
This has been an exceptionally long Preview; but if anything, next week will be even busier with 23 local council seats up for grabs on 25th June. You won’t want to miss that.
Gogarth Mostyn
Westminster constituency: Bangor Aberconwy
Senedd constituency: Bangor Conwy Môn
ONS Travel to Work Area: Colwyn Bay
Postcode district: LL30
Dave Coffin (LD)
David Hawkins (Lab)
Gareth Probert (RUK)
Greg Robbins (C)
May 2022 result Lab 924/839 C 870/861/754 Ind 773/557
Previous results in detail
Tudno
Westminster constituency: Bangor Aberconwy
Senedd constituency: Bangor Conwy Môn
ONS Travel to Work Area: Colwyn Bay
Postcode districts: LL30, LL31, LL34
Alan Davies (RUK)
Michael Hall (C)
Joshua Morris (Grn)
James Pethica (LD)
Joanna Stallard (Lab)
May 2022 result Lab 536 C 507/261 Ind 435/141 LD 275
Previous results in detail
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Andrew Teale