Previewing the Calderdale and Eastleigh local by-elections of 8th May 2025
"All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order"
Two by-elections on 8th May 2025:
Skircoat
Calderdale council, West Yorkshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Mike Barnes.
As the world waits for the white smoke to appear from the Sistine Chapel, it's time for Andrew's Previews to start the new municipal year of 2025-26. Andrew's Previews has been known to cover polls with an even more opaque and self-selecting electorate than the College of Cardinals (yes, City of London Corporation, I'm looking at you here), but on the menu for today we have some larger and more inclusive democratic contests.
We'll start by travelling to Halifax, one of the classic mill towns of West Yorkshire lying in the foothills of the Pennines. Skircoat ward covers the southern end of Halifax, including the upmarket Skircoat Green area overlooking the Calder valley. Also here is a rather more inner-city area to the north of Savile Park and Skircoat Moor, closer to the town centre.
Overall this is a middle-class ward and a desirable place to live, and Skircoat ward ranks number 1 in Yorkshire for residents employed in the financial and insurance sector at 9.2% of the workforce. In fact, all of the top nine Yorkshire wards for that statistic are in Calderdale, reflecting that the Halifax bank (now part of Lloyds Banking Group) is still a major employer in the town from which the bank took its name.
The middle-class nature of Skircoat ward - which increasingly extends to its Asian community - can be seen in its election results, which we can trace over an unusually long length of time because Calderdale's ward boundaries haven't changed since 2004. Skircoat was strongly Conservative in the 2004 election, but it then developed into a close fight between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats: the Lib Dems won the ward twice, in 2007 and 2010. The Lib Dem vote then faded away over the next decade and Labour moved into second place in 2014; Labour then gained all three seats in Skircoat ward from the Conservatives in 2018-21 and they have pulled away further since then. At the last Calderdale elections in 2024, Skircoat ward remained part of the Labour majority on Calderdale council with vote shares of 52% for Labour, 25% for the Conservatives and 15% for the Green Party. The ward gave 17% to UKIP back in 2014, which might give Reform UK - who are standing here for the first time - something to build on.
Skircoat ward is part of the Halifax parliamentary seat, which has has been in Labour hands continuously since 1987 but has often turned in close results over that period: however, the 2024 result which elected first-term Labour MP Kate Dearden was not close for first place. Dearden had been a figure in the Community union before her election, and she is now an assistant government whip.
This by-election is to replace Dearden's election agent, Labour councillor Mike Barnes, who gained his seat from the Conservatives in 2019 and was re-elected in 2023. Barnes has resigned from the council for personal reasons; his resignation statement stressed that he remains on good terms with the Labour party, and he has signed the nomination papers for the new Labour candidate. His successor will only serve until May 2026, when a new ward map for Calderdale will see Skircoat ward disappear: as such, the winner of this by-election will not be able to rest on their laurels for long.
Defending this seat for Labour is Dave Mendes da Costa, who works a principal policy manager for Citizens Advice with responsibility for consumer policy. The Conservatives have selected Vishal Gupta, who has been a regular losing candidate in Calderdale local elections in the last few years: in 2024 he contested the neighbouring Town ward. The Greens' Roseanne Sweeney, who is described by the party as a dedicated community and environmental activist, is fighting her first election campaign. Also on the ballot are the Lib Dems' Stephen Gow, who was previously a councillor for this ward from 2007 to 2011, and retired police inspector Paul Hawkaluk for Reform UK.
Parliamentary constituency: Halifax
ONS Travel to Work Area: Halifax
Postcode districts: HX1, HX3
Stephen Gow (LD)
Vishal Gupta (C)
Paul Hawkaluk (RUK)
Dave Mendes da Costa (Lab)
Roseanne Sweeney (Grn)
May 2024 result Lab 1932 C 950 Grn 558 LD 309
May 2023 result Lab 2285 C 1049 LD 200 Grn 188
May 2022 result Lab 2227 C 1270 LD 235 Grn 209
May 2021 result Lab 2143 C 1524 Grn 378 LD 268
May 2019 result Lab 1725 C 1257 Ind 625 LD 239 Grn 231
May 2018 result Lab 2017 C 1963 LD 196 Grn 127
May 2016 result C 1660 Lab 1113 LD 507 UKIP 293 Grn 136 Yorkshire First 56
May 2015 result C 3185 Lab 1740 LD 1033 Grn 622
May 2014 result C 1252 Lab 780 LD 696 UKIP 628 Grn 300
May 2012 result C 1496 LD 1104 Lab 778 Grn 251
May 2011 result C 1584 LD 1401 Lab 993 Grn 339
May 2010 result LD 2748 C 2334 Lab 1124 Grn 324
April 2009 by-election C 1327 LD 1209 Lab 274 Ind 238 BNP 235 Ind 229 Grn 92
May 2008 result C 2132 LD 1305 Lab 308 Grn 202
May 2007 result LD 1716 C 1301 Lab 449 BNP 317 Grn 159
May 2006 result C 1419 LD 1410 Grn 343 Lab 330
June 2004 result C 2367/2167/1948 LD 1002/782/561 Lab 862/759/754 BNP 582
Previous results in detail
Eastleigh Central
Eastleigh council, Hampshire; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Bhavin Dedhia.
From one of the more middle-class parts of the Yorkshire mill towns, we now travel south to one of the more working-class parts of south-east England. Lying in the Itchen valley north of Southampton, Eastleigh as a town is a creation of the railways. In the nineteenth century it became home to the carriage works of the London and South Western Railway, and in 1909 that railway's locomotive works were transferred here from Nine Elms in London. Eastleigh railway station is still a major junction on the London-Southampton line, with trains branching off here towards Fareham and Salisbury.
It says something for how new Eastleigh town is that history records who named it. The railway station opened in 1838 with the name of Bishopstoke Junction, in a rural area near the village of Barton. Barton parish merged in 1868 with the neighbouring parish of Eastley, and a local celebrity donated £500 towards the construction of a new parish church. She was Charlotte Yonge, a novelist who was well-regarded in Victorian times but is rather forgotten now. In exchange for her donation Yonge was asked to choose whether the new parish should take Barton or Eastley's name; she went for the latter, but with a new spelling. Thus Eastleigh was born.
In its shortish life the town of Eastleigh has given us characters as diverse as the BBC radio presenter Scott Mills, the naked rambler Stephen Gough and Chrystabel Leighton-Porter, who was the model for the Jane comic strip during the Second World War. Given the presence of the last two, perhaps it's appropriate that this area is also associated with Benny Hill, whose early job as a milkman in Eastleigh inspired the 1971 Christmas Number One. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the modern pop classic which is Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West).
There is even a street called Benny Hill Close in the modern Eastleigh Central ward, which takes in the railway station, the town centre and part of the railway works. The latter lies just off the north end of the runway for Southampton Airport, which had caused a political row when this column last covered Eastleigh Central ward three years ago. The airport had put in a planning application for an extension to the runway; the council's Eastleigh area committee voted to reject, but this was overruled by full council who granted planning consent in April 2021. Following an unsuccessful Court of Appeal challenge, the runway extension was duly built and it opened for business in September 2023, enabling larger planes to use Southampton Airport.
For Eastleigh council's ruling Lib Dem group, this planning decision came at the short-term political cost of two councillors for Eastleigh Central ward. Tina Campbell quit the party to become an independent councillor, while the wonderfully-named Jephthe Doguie resigned from the council and endorsed the Labour candidate in the resulting by-election in February 2022. That by-election ended up as a Lib Dem hold with an increased majority over Labour, while Campbell sought re-election to the council as an independent candidate in May 2022 and finished in third place.
It will be seen that Eastleigh Central ward is part of the impregnable Lib Dem majority on Eastleigh council, whose council leader Keith House has been in situ since 1994 making him one of the UK's longest-serving political leaders. (We will be visiting House's ward, Hedge End South, for a further Eastleigh council by-election in two weeks' time.) UKIP had some strong second places here a decade ago on previous ward boundaries, but recent Reform UK candidates for Eastleigh Central have done poorly and every contest to date on the current lines has had Labour in second place - often a rather close second place. In May 2024 this ward was marginal with 37% for the Lib Dems, 33% for Labour and 14% for the Conservatives. Two months later the Liberal Democrats gained the Eastleigh parliamentary seat from the Conservatives. Eastleigh Central ward is divided between the Eastleigh North and Eastleigh South divisions of Hampshire county council, which voted Lib Dem with the Conservatives close behind when they were last contested in 2021: Hampshire was one of the counties whose scheduled May 2025 elections were postponed.
We now need to find a replacement for resigning Lib Dem councillor Bhavin Dedhia, who won the February 2022 by-election and was re-elected for a full term in 2023. His resignation was for undisclosed reasons, although reports suggest that Dedhia had been unwell in recent months.
Mark Harding is the defending Lib Dem candidate. Labour have changed their candidate to Zak Southward, who has previously managed a group of local hospitality businesses; he contested Chandler's Ford ward in 2024. Also from Chandler's Ford is the Conservatives' Albie Slawson who is a parish councillor in Boyatt Wood, just to the north of this ward; he stood for Hiltingbury ward in 2023 and 2024. The Reform UK candidate Sukhdev Raj owns a shop in the ward, and he completes the ballot paper along with independent candidate Venkhata Priya Varadharajan who is an engineering leader for a retailer based in Eastleigh.
Parliamentary constituency: Eastleigh
Hampshire county council division: Eastleigh North (most), Eastleigh South (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Southampton
Postcode district: SO50
Mark Harding (LD)
Sukhdev Raj (RUK)
Albie Slawson (C)
Zak Southward (Lab)
Venkhata Varadharajan (Ind)
May 2024 result LD 866 Lab 774 C 319 RUK 184 Grn 175
May 2023 result LD 979 Lab 610 C 342 Grn 234
May 2022 result LD 716 Lab 557 Ind 384 C 365 Grn 136 RUK 70
February 2022 by-election LD 802 Lab 433 C 362 Grn 140 RUK 64
May 2021 result LD 943 Lab 735 C 641 Hants Ind 146 Reform UK 88
May 2019 result LD 1111 Lab 400 UKIP 318 C 267 Grn 175
May 2018 result LD 1163/1090/976 Lab 649/640/463 C 469/394/360 UKIP 306 Grn 295
Previous results in detail
If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them - going back to 2016 - in the Andrew's Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale