Previewing the eight elections of 19th June 2025

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

Just a reminder before we start today's Previews that there are many more like them - going back to 2016 - in the Andrew's Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). I can reveal that one person named in today's Preview is a satisfied reader. You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).

Eight polls on 19th June 2025:

Cromarty Firth; and
Eilean a' Cheò

Highland council, Scotland; caused respectively by the resignation of independent councillors Maxine Smith and Calum Munro.

This week is going to be another independent special on Andrew's Previews. Of the eight seats up for election today, the Conservatives are defending one, Labour two and independents five - well, at least that's what happened at the last elections, but there have been changes since. Two of those independent seats are in the UK's smallest local authority by acreage, the non-partisan City of London Corporation; but we'll start with two other independent defences in the UK's largest local authority, the Highland Council.

This is also going to be a week with quite a number of repeats, because four of today's eight wards have appeared in Andrew's Previews before - including both Highland council wards up for election. The most recent repeat is from Cromarty Firth ward, which this column last visited in September 2024.

The boundaries of this ward include a large mountainous area, but the population here is concentrated on the coastal strip in the towns of Alness and Invergordon. These are surprisingly industrial places. Alness boomed in population after the Second World War with the building of an aluminium smelter in the area; this closed in the 1980s and whisky is now the town's major export.

Invergordon was an important naval base for many years, and a mutiny here in 1931 led to a run on the pound that caused the UK government to finally abandon the Gold Standard. The town's port is now kept busy servicing the North Sea oil and gas industry: oil and gas rigs are constructed here, floated out to their intended location, and then brought back and parked here once the fossil fuels have been extracted. Particularly at times when the oil price is low, the sheltered waters of the Cromarty Firth are littered with unloved oil rigs waiting for something to happen to them.

All this attracts bored people on the internet doing what bored people on the internet do. The more derelict-looking oil rigs have become a favoured target for YouTubers who should have looked at their dilapidated condition and known better than to start exploring them. Behind the old naval base we have the underground Inchindown oil tanks, which are now drained of their fuel oil; experiments have shown that the resulting empty space has the world's longest reverberation.

And it's not just YouTubers who have had their fun in Cromarty Firth ward. In the ward's interior we have Ardross Castle, which was once owned by the Dukes of Sutherland and is now used for weddings and conferences. It's also the filming location for the hit BBC reality TV series The Traitors. For brass and wind band players, Ardross Castle was known before The Traitors as the opening movement of Philip Sparke's suite Hymn of the Highlands.

In March 2020 Andrew's Previews was on the Highland's west coast, in a ward which - in an unusual move for local government boundary-drawing - hit the UK national front-page headlines when it was created in 2007. This was the year when Scottish local government went over to proportional representation, and the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland proposed that the Isle of Skye and its associated islands should form a single ward electing four Highland councillors. (Previously Skye had been divided between five single-member wards, one of which - Kyle and Sleat - included the mainland town of Kyle of Lochalsh.)

In a nod to the fact that nearly half of the islanders have some knowledge of Scottish Gaelic, the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland settled on a Gaelic name for the ward. Rather than the island's standard Gaelic name, An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, the poetic Eilean a' Cheò (island of the mist) was chosen as the new ward name. This led to some confusion in the run-up to the 2007 election, because an urban myth arose that the Highland council was changing the name of the island as a whole; the Telegraph went so far as to print a story to that effect on its front page, and the council was forced to issue a clarification. The new ward duly came into effect and has had unchanged boundaries ever since. Skye is still Skye.

Skye is the largest of the islands in the Inner Hebrides, and its backbone is, of course, the Cuillins which are some of the most spectacular mountains in the whole of Scotland. Pictures like this have graced many a guidebook and calendar over the years. The Cuillins aren't the tallest hills in Scotland - they include twelve Munros but the highest point, Sgùrr Alasdair, is only 992 metres in altitude - but they are technically demanding, and a traverse of the Cuillin ridge is one of the greatest challenges in British mountaineering. Their difficulty is reflected in the fact that Sgùrr Alasdair is named after Alexander Nicolson, who in 1873 was the first person to climb it; several other peaks in the range were named similarly.

This is an island with a long history, although not much of it was written down until comparatively recent times. Skye was Norse territory until 1266, when the king of Norway ceded Sodor and Man to Scotland under the terms of the Treaty of Perth. By this time the island was effectively controlled by the clan system, which gave us such structures as Dunvegan Castle, home to this day to the chief of the Clan MacLeod.

Many of the clan leaders ended up on the losing side in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, which ended with the lad who was born to be king being ignominiously carried over the sea to Skye. After that the island was taken over by landed estates, and the Highland Clearances started to bite. To some extent Skye still hasn't recovered from that episode: even with some population growth in recent years, the island's headcount now is half of what it was in 1821.

Today a third of Skye's residents are employed in the public sector with tourism also being important. The island's main exports are fish and Talisker whisky, while Dunvegan Castle and the local folk music scene are major draws. The Skye Bridge links the island to the mainland at Kyle of Lochalsh, while ferries cross the sea to Mallaig on the mainland and to Harris and North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. The main centre of population is Portree, a fishing port on the east coast which is home to the island's secondary school and around a quarter of its population.

The Eilean a' Cheò electoral ward also covers islands associated with Skye, including Soay, Scalpay and Raasay. Of these, only Raasay has any population worth speaking of.

At its first contest in 2007 Eilean a' Cheò returned independent councillors Hamish Fraser and John Laing, Drew Millar for the Lib Dems and Ian Renwick for the SNP. Laing retired at the 2012 election and his seat was taken by a new independent, John Gordon, with the other three councillors being re-elected very comfortably.

The 2017 election then saw a clearout of Skye's representation. All four councillors sought re-election, but Millar was this time standing as an independent, having left the Lib Dem group when the party attempted to discipline him for sharing Britain First stuff on his social media. Several new independent candidates stood, including John Finlayson who topped the poll with 29% of the vote and was elected on the first count. Three of the twelve candidates on the ballot paper were called MacLeod, but in the final reckoning there could be only one: Calum MacLeod won the second seat for the SNP, defeating his running-mate Ian Renwick. The SNP had started with 19%, ahead of new independent Ronald MacDonald on 14% and outgoing independent councillors John Gordon and Hamish Fraser on 9% and 7% respectively; and that was the order they finished in, with MacDonald winning the third seat and Gordon being the only Eilean a' Cheò councillor to be re-elected. Overall that was three independents and one SNP councillor elected.

Independent councillor Ronald MacDonald was a professor of macroeconomics and international finance at the University of Glasgow's business school, who had stood for election to Highland council on a single issue of improving health and social care services on the island. In response NHS Highland commissioned a review by Sir Lewis Ritchie which made a number of recommendation, and Professor MacDonald stood down from the council at the end of 2019 to work on getting the recommendations made in the Ritchie report implemented. The resulting Eilean a' Cheò by-election on 12th March 2020 returned another independent candidate, Calum Munro, who defeated the SNP's Andrew Kiss in the final count by 56-44. A major issue in that by-election was the impact of tourism on Skye, with several defeated candidates running or having previously run bed and breakfasts - an industry which was upended by the COVID-19 lockdown before the month was out.

In the 2022 Eilean a' Cheò election independent John Finlayson was again elected at the top of the poll with 32%. The previous SNP councillor Calum Macleod had left the party group following a domestic abuse charge and he didn't seek re-election; his seat reverted to the new SNP candidate, ex-Lib Dem councillor Drew Millar, who was also elected on the first count with 23% of the vote. Calum Munro started with 13% and picked up strong transfers to win the third seat easily, while the Conservatives' Ruraidh Stewart narrowly won the final seat vacated by retiring independent councillor John Gordon. Stewart had started with 11% of the vote and a lead of 227 votes over fifth-placed independent Fay Thomson (who had been the Lib Dem candidate in the 2020 by-election); Thomson got strong transfers during the count, but Stewart eventually prevailed by 22 votes.

Meanwhile on the east coast, Cromarty Firth ward has also elected four Highland councillors since its creation in 2007. Its first two elections both returned two independent councillors and one each for the SNP and the Lib Dems; the Lib Dems lost their seat to the SNP in 2017, but got it back in 2022. Shares of the vote here in 2022 were 29% for the SNP's Tamala Collier, 28% for the Lib Dems' Molly Nolan and 18% for previous SNP councillor Pauline Munro, who was successfully re-elected as an independent candidate. They won the first three seats.

In the race for the final seat nobody had very much to begin with, with the other outgoing previous SNP councillor Maxine Morley-Smith also standing as an independent and starting the count in fourth place on 283 votes to 261 for the Conservatives. She pulled away during the count to win by 575 votes to 397, giving Cromarty Firth a clean sweep of female councillors. Morley-Smith was rather lucky to be re-elected. If the Lib Dems had had two candidates they would have picked up the Conservative transfers and won two seats, while if the SNP had had two candidates then the final seat would have been too close to call between their second candidate and Morley-Smith.

Two of the Cromarty Firth ward councillors, the Lib Dems' Molly Nolan and independent Pauline Munro, then resigned last year and a single by-election was held in September 2024 to replace both of them. This attracted a very large field of 12 candidates, with the first preferences splitting 20% for the Lib Dems, 17% for the SNP, 14% each for independent candidates Sinclair Coghill and Martin Rattray, and 12% for independent Richard Cross with the rest scattered. Once Cross and the candidates below him had had their votes transferred, Martin Rattray was eliminated in fourth place 19 votes behind the SNP; Rattray's transfers gave the two seats to the Lib Dems' John Edmondson on 37% and independent Sinclair Coghill on 35%, with the SNP's Odette Macdonald finishing as runner-up with 28%.

If we recount the votes from 2022 for a single vacancy, then Eilean a' Cheò would have overwhelmingly voted for independent John Finlayson who beats the SNP 64-36 after transfers; Cromarty Firth would have gone to the Lib Dems' Molly Nolan by 52-48 over the SNP. The Liberal Democrats also beat all comers in Cromarty Firth based on the 2024 by-election, but only just: if we redistribute the SNP's votes, then Lib Dem candidate John Edmondson would have beaten independent Sinclair Coghill by 806 votes to 800.

Both of these wards are represented by the Liberal Democrats at Westminster and by the SNP at Holyrood. Cromarty Firth is part of the Caithness, Sutherland and Ross Holyrood constituency represented by Maree Todd, an SNP junior minister with responsibility for sport; last week Todd also took over the drugs and alcohol policy portfolio previously held by the late Christina McKelvie. Eilean a' Cheò's MSP is the deputy first minister Kate Forbes, who is also the cabinet secretary for the economy and Gaelic; she represents the Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency.

Boundary changes for the 2024 Westminster election transferred Skye into the same constituency as Inverness. Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire was the last seat to declare its result last year, with multiple issues in its count resulting in a full recount having to be arranged on the Saturday after the election: the eventual result was a fairly comfortable win for the Liberal Democrat candidate Angus Macdonald. He subsequently resigned his Highland council seat, and the Lib Dems held the resulting by-election in Fort William and Ardnamurchan ward. Cromarty Firth's MP since 2017 has been the Lib Dems' Jamie Stone, as MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. Stone is a veteran politician who had previously served in the Scottish Parliament from 1999 to 2011, and following the 2024 Westminster election he became chair of the House of Commons petitions committee.

These Highland council by-elections are to replace two independent councillors. In Cromarty Firth Maxine Smith handed in her notice at the end of March after eighteen years in office, with her resignation statement having some harsh words for online trolls. Her departure means that the SNP's Tamala Collier is the only remaining Cromarty Firth ward councillor from the 2022 election. The Eilean a' Cheò by-election is to replace Calum Munro, the winner of the 2020 by-election, following his resignation at around the same time.

Eilean a' Cheò ward has the shorter ballot paper with eight options for the voters to rank. Only one of the losing candidates here from 2022 has returned: that's Fay Thomson, who was a close runner-up on that occasion as an independent candidate and now has the Liberal Democrat nomination - as she did in the 2020 by-election, where she finished third. Thomson is a former manager for the Federation of Small Businesses, and she has also run a café in Portree. Independent candidates on the ballot are Campbell Dickson, who stood here in 2017 and finished in eighth place with 4.3%; Christine Gillies, who lives on Raasay and is endorsed by the Highland Council's independent group; and Jonathan Macdonald who is editor of the Skye and Lochalsh Echo magazine. The SNP have selected Màrtainn Mac a' Bhàillidh, who was an independent candidate in the 2020 by-election (under the name of Màrtainn Misneachd) and polled just 45 votes; on that occasion Mac a' Bhàillidh had an address in Glasgow, but he now lives in Portree and works at the Sabhal Mòr Ostaig college. The Conservatives have selected George Macpherson. Completing the Eilean a' Cheò ballot are candidates from two parties which did not stand here in 2022, John Coupland for Reform UK and Katy Lawrence for the Greens.

There were 12 candidates for two seats in the last Cromarty Firth by-election nine months ago, and several of them are back for another go including independent candidates Martin Rattray and Richard Cross, who were fourth and fifth here in September and both polled over 12%. Rattray was previously a Liberal Democrat councillor for this ward from 2007 to 2017, when he lost re-election as an independent; Cross has lived in Invergordon for over 50 years and he is the only candidate to disclose his address on the ballot paper. The Lib Dem candidate is Ross Costigane, who graduated from Stirling University in 2022 and has worked in several research and administrative roles since then. Odette Macdonald, who is a caseworker for the party's local MSP Maree Todd, is back for the Scottish National Party after finishing as runner-up in last year's by-election. Also standing here are Anne Thomas for the Scottish Greens, Michael Perera for Labour, Allan Macdonald for Reform UK, Ryan Forbes for the Conservatives and Steve Chisholm for Alba. Votes at 16 and the Alternative Vote are in use for the Scottish by-elections, and intending voters for Reform UK and the SNP in Cromarty Firth should check carefully which Macdonald they are giving their higher preference to.

Picture of the Cuillin Mountains by Stefan Krause, Germany - Own work, FAL, Link. Picture of the Portree harbourfront by DeFacto - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Cromarty Firth

Westminster constituency: Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross
Holyrood constituency: Caithness, Sutherland and Ross
ONS Travel to Work Area: Alness and Invergordon
Postcode district: IV15, IV16, IV17, IV18

Steve Chisholm (Alba)
Ross Costigane (LD)
Richard Cross (Ind)
Ryan Forbes (C)
Allan Macdonald (RUK)
Odette Macdonald (SNP)
Michael Perera (Lab)
Martin Rattray (Ind)
Anne Thomas (Grn)

September 2024 by-election LD 481 SNP 403 Ind 326 Ind 323 Ind 285 Ind 162 Ind 97 Grn 89 Lab 77 RUK 75 C 57; final LD 714 Ind 685 SNP 550
May 2022 first preferences SNP 1127 LD 1079 Ind 679 Ind 283 C 261 Lab 162 Ind 122 Grn 112 Ind 45
May 2017 first preferences SNP 1380 Ind 1108 ind 405 C 346 Ind 322 LD 278 Lab 155 Ind 108
Previous results in detail

Eilean a' Cheò

Parliamentary constituency: Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire
Holyrood constituency: Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch
ONS Travel to Work Area: Portree (north of ward), Broadford and Kyle of Lochalsh (south of ward)
Postcode districts: IV40, IV41, IV42, IV43, IV44, IV45, IV46, IV47, IV48, IV49, IV51, IV55, IV56, PH41

John Coupland (RUK)
Campbell Dickson (Ind)
Christine Gillies (Ind)
Katy Lawrence (Grn)
Màrtainn Mac a' Bhàillidh (SNP)
Jonathan Macdonald (Ind)
George Macpherson (C)
Fay Thomson (LD)

May 2022 first preferences Ind 1450 SNP 1019 Ind 583 C 485 Ind 258 Ind 240 Alba 166 LD 157 Lab 157
March 2020 by-election Ind 911 SNP 874 LD 698 Grn 357 C 314 Ind 45; final Ind 1464 SNP 1135
May 2017 first preferences Ind 1447 SNP 936 Ind 717 Ind 453 Ind 339 C 319 Ind 216 Ind 213 Ind 164 Lab 98 LD 97
May 2012 first preferences Ind 949 SNP 830 Ind 647 LD 641 Ind 254 Lab 157 C 91
May 2007 first preferences LD 960 Ind 795 Ind 734 SNP 669 Ind 498 Lab 351 Ind 338 C 178
Previous results in detail

Eastfield

North Yorkshire council; caused by the resignation of independent councillor Tony Randerson.

Our first by-election is another repeat. And it's a rather unusual one, as this is the second by-election of this North Yorkshire council term which has been triggered by the resignation of councillor Tony Randerson.

Randerson's ward was Eastfield, which is one of the country's more obscure towns. It's effectively a southern suburb of Scarborough, located a few miles to the south of that town in undulating ground to the east of Seamer railway station, and it is the middle of an urban area made up of four villages which have effectively run into each other. And the housebuilding is still going on at pace, as we can see by comparing the 2023 (left) and 2025 (left) maps of this ward from OpenStreetMap.

The town lies immediately to the north of the Eastfield Industrial Estate, a large business park which provides a significant number of jobs here. The McCain's food factory and the Plaxton plant, which makes bus and coach vehicle bodies, both have Eastfield addresses although they lie outside the division boundary.

We can clearly see the effect of all this industry in the 2021 census. Eastfield, which was then a ward of Scarborough council with the same boundaries as now, ranked 3rd in the UK for people with an "English and British only" identity, at 25.5%. It was in the top 40 for semi-routine occupations (19.2%), in the top 70 for lower supervisory and technical occupations (9.1%) and in the top 90 for part-time employment (16.8%).

This working-class area has historically voted for left-wing parties, although earlier in this century Eastfield was often closely fought between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The current councillor Tony Randerson owes his start in elected office in 2013 to a series of fortunate events. In May 2013 the Lib Dem county councillor Brian Simpson sought re-election as an independent candidate, the opposition vote fragmented many ways and Randerson gained what was then Eastfield and Osgodby division for Labour with just 32% of the poll. In November 2013 the Lib Dems were due to defend a Scarborough council by-election in Eastfield ward, but their candidate had to withdraw at the last possible moment due to a family bereavement and there wasn't time to nominate anyone else; that meant that Labour picked up an open seat at the by-election, with UKIP finishing in second place. The two remaining Liberal Democrat seats in Eastfield then went to Labour and UKIP at the 2015 Scarborough council elections.

Tony Randerson then consolidated the Labour position in Eastfield, and in the May 2022 North Yorkshire elections he was elected for a third term of office with a big lead of 73-22 over the Conservatives. In 2023 he quit the Labour party over Sir Keir Starmer's leadership, and he then took the unusual step of resigning his seat to seek re-election to North Yorkshire council as a left-wing independent candidate. The gamble paid off: Randerson was re-elected with 46% of the vote, against 26% for the Lib Dems (standing here for the first time since their 2015 wipeout) and 16% for the new Labour candidate.

Randerson was endorsed in that by-election by the Social Justice Party, who have since registered with the Electoral Commission as a political party, and he was the that party's only member of North Yorkshire council. The Social Justice Party have so far contested one election under that name, standing in the Westminster election for Scarborough and Whitby in 2024, and they made no impact whatsoever: their candidate (who was not Tony Randerson) finished seventh out of eight candidates with 0.6% of the vote, as Scarborough and Whitby was gained by Labour. The seat's new Labour MP Alison Hume comes to politics from a previous career as a TV producer and screenwriter, and she won BAFTA and RTS awards for writing the 2008 CBBC drama Summerhill.

Tony Randerson has now resigned from North Yorkshire council for the second time in two years, citing personal reasons, and this sets up a by-election in a rather different national political context to the last one. It also has an all-new ballot paper, with none of the defeated candidates from 2023 returning for another go.

Defending for the Social Justice Party is Helen Williams, who currently runs literacy events and programmes supporting children and families across the local area. The Liberal Democrats, who were second last time, have selected Mark Harrison who stood in the 2022 North Yorkshire quite a long way away from Eastfield: he contested Romanby ward, outside Northallerton, on that occasion. Labour have changed their candidate to Hazel Smith who was "raised and inspired in Eastfield", according to her Facebook. Also standing are Helen Baker for the Conservatives, Kieran Wade for the Greens and Tom Seston for Reform UK.

Parliamentary constituency: Scarborough and Whitby
ONS Travel to Work Area: Scarborough
Postcode district: YO11

Helen Baker (C)
Mark Harrison (LD)
Tom Seston (RUK)
Hazel Smith (Lab)
Kieran Wade (Grn)
Helen Williams (Social Justice Party)

May 2023 by-election Ind 499 LD 281 Lab 169 C 69 Ind 39 Grn 19
May 2022 result Lab 703 C 215 Grn 41
Previous results in detail

Blundellsands

Sefton council, Merseyside; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Natasha Carlin.

We now travel from the east coast to the west, to arrive at one of the most affluent wards in Merseyside. Blundellsands lies at the very northern edge of Liverpool's built-up area, and it still fulfils its original function as a suburb for wealthy Liverpool businessmen who commute to work in the city centre. Blundellsands and Crosby railway station, on the Southport branch of the Merseyrail Northern line, opened in 1848 with Hall Road station following in 1874. The census district around Hall Road station has the most expensive property prices in the whole of Liverpool's built-up area, with the median house in 2020-21 selling here for £541,000. In Merseyside, only parts of Heswall on the Wirral and Millionaire's Row in Formby are more expensive places to live.

This sort of money will buy you a high-status detached house and garden with easy access to the railway and to Crosby Beach. Since 2005 this beach has been the permanent home of Another Place, a series of 100 iron statues designed by newly-minted Companion of Honour Sir Antony Gormley which look out towards the Irish Sea and watch the ships coming in and out of Liverpool. These ships come quite close to the beach in order to avoid a sandbank to the west, the Great Burbo Bank, and an offshore windfarm behind that sandbank. The statues have weathered over the years, and the movement of the beach and the tides means that at any one time some of the iron men will be half-buried in the sand or mostly submerged beneath the waves; while some may appear to walk on water.

The iron men stop at Liverpool Crosby coastguard station, whose weather readings are read out on Radio 4 every night as part of the Shipping Forecast. Beyond here the beach gives way to a massive pile of rubble more than a mile long, which came from houses and buildings in Liverpool and Bootle that were destroyed by Second World War bombing. Whether this was done to protect against coastal erosion (which was a problem in Blundellsands in the early years of the 20th century) or because this was just a convenient place to dump all the rubble isn't clear, but in the eighty years since the war the sea has rounded off many of the building stones' sharp edges to turn Accrington bricks into rounded red pebbles.

This is also the point where the houses of Liverpool stop. Behind the rubble to the right lie the fairways and the rough of West Lancashire Golf Club, a testing links course which is regularly used for Open Championship qualifying and will co-host the Amateur Championship next year.

In the days when Crosby Beach looked out over ships bringing the fruits of the Empire to the Liverpool docks, Liverpool was a strongly Conservative city. The Conservatives won a majority of Liverpool's Parliamentary seats as late as 1959, and the party still held a majority on the city council up to 1972. After this, the Tory vote in the city fell off a cliff. Part of the reason for this was sectarianism and its decline. In the Liverpool of the early 20th century Protestantism and voting Conservative were all part of the same package; but this faded away as the years went on, and by the 1970s the people for whom sectarian voting was still relevant were elderly and dying off. The Conservatives haven't won a council seat in Liverpool, or even come particularly close to doing so, since the 1990s.

This Tory weakness then started to feed through to Liverpool's suburbs and satellite towns, like Blundellsands. This has never been part of the city of Liverpool, and before the creation of Sefton council in 1974 Blundellsands was covered by the borough of Crosby and its associated parliamentary seat. Crosby (and the predecessor seat of Waterloo) voted for Conservative MPs at every election from 1918 to 1992, with the sole exception of the 1981 by-election which returned Shirley Williams for the SDP; but in 1997 the seat suddenly lurched to the left and voted Labour for the first time. Its successor seat, Sefton Central, has shown no indication of swinging back; and Labour MP Bill Esterson won a fifth term of office in 2024 with a majority of over 18,000 votes. Esterson had been on the Labour frontbench through most of the opposition years, but he is now chair of the Commons energy security and net zero committee.

Blundellsands, with its extremely high property prices by Merseyside standards, was the last ward in the Liverpool urban area to vote Conservative. In fact, this was a safe Conservative ward until 2010, and when the current ward boundaries were first contested in 2004 the Tories enjoyed a 54-28 lead over Labour. But in 2010 this lead suddenly evaporated, and in 2011 Conservative councillor Peter Papworth was re-elected by just 21 votes. Labour then broke through in 2012 in spectacular fashion, gaining Blundellsands ward by 53-36 on the way to gaining control of Sefton council for the first time, and the ward has voted Labour ever since. Sefton council now has a large Labour majority, with the latest composition having 50 Labour councillors plus this vacancy against 9 Lib Dems, 4 Conservatives, 1 Green and 1 independent. The Conservative vote in Blundellsands has continued to fall, and the 2024 local elections here gave Labour a 68-17 lead over the Conservatives - a swing of 38½% to the left in two decades.

The May 2024 poll here came shortly after Labour ward councillor Natasha Carlin had quit the party over its policy direction and the war in Gaza. Carlin had been first elected here at a by-election in May 2021 and she was re-elected for a full term in 2022; following her resignation from Sefton council, her successor will need to seek re-election in May 2026. On that date all of Sefton council will be up for re-election on new ward boundaries, although Blundellsands ward sees little change.

Defending for Labour is local resident David Roscoe, who is hoping to join his wife Diane as a councillor for this ward. The Conservatives have selected Martyn Barber, who represented the neighbouring Manor ward (covering Crosby and Hightown) on Sefton council until his defeat in 2011; Barber previously contested Blundellsands ward in 2019 and 2021, finishing as runner-up on both occasions. Third place here in 2024 went to independent candidate Kieran Dams, who now has the Green Party nomination; the Lib Dem candidate is Keith Cawdron; Irene Davidson is on the ballot as the Reform UK candidate but she has been disendorsed by that party for offensive social media; and on the left flank we also see challenges from Conor O'Neill of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and from left-wing independent Ian Smith, who is a regular candidate in Sefton local by-elections.

Parliamentary constituency: Sefton Central
ONS Travel to Work Area: Liverpool
Postcode districts: L22, L23

Martyn Barber (C)
Keith Cawdron (LD)
Kieran Dams (Grn)
Irene Davidson (RUK)
Conor O'Neill (TUSC)
David Roscoe (Lab)
Ian Smith (Ind)

May 2024 result Lab 2249 C 548 Ind 270 LD 224
May 2023 result Lab 2390 C 663 LD 266 Grn 254
May 2022 result Lab 2301 C 791 LD 394
May 2021 double vacancy Lab 2031/1734 C 1133/927 Grn 509 LD 279/181 Lib 167
May 2019 result Lab 1721 C 931 Grn 390 LD 323 UKIP 187
May 2018 result Lab 2027 C 1166 LD 269 Grn 164
May 2016 result Lab 2202 C 1031 Grn 233
May 2015 result Lab 3105 C 2311 UKIP 532 Grn 448 LD 440
May 2014 result Lab 1625 C 1181 UKIP 537 Grn 216 LD 156
May 2012 result Lab 2117 C 1448 UKIP 179 Grn 138 LD 87
May 2011 result C 1823 Lab 1802 LD 281 Grn 280
May 2010 result C 2438 Lab 2353 LD 1555 UKIP 279
May 2008 result C 1893 Lab 731 LD 578
May 2007 result C 1902 Lab 726 LD 657
May 2006 result C 1852 LD 726 Lab 656
June 2004 result C 2230/2204/2087 Lab 1160/1159/1110 LD 770/732/688
Previous results in detail

Dowgate; and
Vintry

City of London Court of Aldermen; caused respectively by the resignations of Aldermen Alison Gowman and Sir Andrew Parmley.

Today's independent theme continues as we come to two elections for neighbouring wards in the ancient City of London. These are for the City's Aldermen, who are technically elected for life but in practice are expected to seek re-election every six years. This week we're going to consider elections triggered by two long-serving Aldermen, who were both first elected in the early 2000s and are now seeking their fifth terms of office.

One of these elections is over before it began, because when nominations closed nobody had stood against outgoing Alderwoman Alison Gowman who has represented Dowgate ward since 1991 - originally as a Common Councillor before transferring to the Aldermanic bench in 2002. Gowman was appointed CBE in the 2024 Birthday Honours for "public and voluntary services and sustainability"; in her day job she is a commercial property consultant. She was formally declared elected at yesterday's Wardmote for Dowgate ward, which is centred on Cannon Street railway station and runs south from Cannon Street to the riverbank.

Immediately to the west of Dowgate ward is Vintry ward, which as the name suggests was once the centre of London's wine trade. The Worshipful Company of Vintners, one of the twelve great City livery companies, still has its hall here on Upper Thames Street opposite the church of St James Garlickhythe; the original Garlickhythe was a landing-place on the Thames where French garlic and wine was sold in mediaeval times, while the church was and indeed still is a stop for pilgrims on the route to Compostela in Spain. Vintry ward extends north and west from here to take in Mansion House underground station and the Financial Times headquarters on Friday Street, while to the south the City's half of Southwark Bridge is within the ward boundary.

Here the outgoing Alderman is Sir Andrew Parmley, who was the 689th Lord Mayor of London in 2016-17 and was knighted in the following New Year Honours for services to music, education and civic engagement. This column tends to write a lot about Aldermen who work in the City's traditional modern industries of banking and finance, insurance and/or the law; but Parmley has instead combined his democratic duties with a career in education and music. He is the director of the Royal College of Organists, and he can still be found from time to time at the organ console of St James Garlickhythe. In this wonderful video he describes that instrument, and his career, in his own words.

Parmley is seeking re-election for a fourth term. He is challenged by three other candidates: Sarah Loveday is a senior HR consultant who has tried to become an Alderman before (she stood in Bread Street ward in 2023); Alpa Raja is an accountant with a number of failed City election campaigns behind her, who has previously served as a Common Councilwoman for Castle Baynard ward from 2022 until she lost her seat earlier this year; and Paul Singh was elected in 2022 as a Common Councilman for Cripplegate ward before similarly losing re-election in Castle Baynard in March 2025. As this is the City of London, all the candidates are standing as independents; and with Vintry ward having a very low residential population people who work here, rather than live here, will form most of the electorate.

Dowgate

Parliamentary constituency: Cities of London and Westminster
London Assembly constituency: City and East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: EC4N, EC4R

Alison Gowman (Ind) elected unopposed

Previous results in detail

Vintry

Parliamentary constituency: Cities of London and Westminster
London Assembly constituency: City and East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: EC4M, EC4N, EC4R, EC4V

Sarah Loveday (Ind)
Andrew Parmley (Ind)
Alpa Raja (Ind)
Paul Singh (Ind)

Previous results in detail

Ashford Town

Spelthorne council, Surrey; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Olivia Rybinski.

We remain for now within the M25 motorway for the week's only Conservative defence, which is in Ashford in the county of Surrey. Or is it? The Spelthorne local government district is the only part of Surrey which lies north of the River Thames; historically it was thus part of the county of Middlesex, until Middlesex ceased to exist in local government with the creation of Greater London in 1965. At that point Spelthorne was one of the few areas of Middlesex which escaped becoming part of Greater London, and seemingly for want of better ideas it then became part of Surrey.

This change of county hasn't been accepted by everyone, and unfortunately that creates a lot of confusion because of the need to disambiguate this Ashford from the larger and more important town in Kent with the same name. To take a couple of examples, the local railway station (on the line from Waterloo to Staines) appears in the National Rail timetable with the name "Ashford (Surrey)", while the local non-league football team (who have just been relegated to the Combined Counties League Premier Division North, five levels below the EFL) are registered with the FA as "Ashford Town (Middlesex)". Royal Mail have basically given up on counties these days and just tell letter-writers to use the postcode instead. No doubt this confusion warms the heart of the Lord of the Manor of Ashford Russell Grant, the well-known TV astrologer, who bought that title in the 1990s a few years after he founded the Association of British Counties.

The Surrey/Middlesex Ashford may have escaped being absorbed by Greater London, but it is nonetheless very much part of the capital's urban sprawl located about a mile or two to the east of Staines. The census return paints a picture of a lower middle-class area whose economy is heavily dependent on Heathrow Airport to the north: Ashford Town ward is within the top 60 wards in England and Wales for those working in the transport or storage sector (12.8%) and in the top 75 wards for what the ONS class as "intermediate" occupations (16.2%). The ward takes in the town centre and lies mostly to the south of the railway line: this means that within the ward boundary is HMP Bronzefield, which is the largest women's prison in Europe with capacity to hold over 500 of the UK's most notorious female prisoners.

The local authority here is Spelthorne council which, Russell Grant notwithstanding, is a district under Surrey county council. As this column has related on a few previous occasions, Spelthorne council has had a lot of political instability over the last few years as a result of the majority Conservative group elected in 2019 suffering a damaging split. The May 2023 Spelthorne elections then returned a very balanced council, with the Tories remaining the largest party but well short of a majority: they won just 12 seats against 10 Lib Dems, 8 independents, 7 Labour and 3 Greens.

A coalition of the Lib Dems and independent councillors was set up under an independent leader, but whether they are still running the show is a matter of debate. Spelthorne is one of those councils that did a lot of property speculation in the last decade, in their case focusing their investments on large office and commercial buildings within the borough and the surrounding area: the council's largest asset is the extensive BP office complex in Sunbury, on the books at over £380 million. The upside of this is that the council has a very healthy rental income; the downside is that they are servicing over £1,000 million in debt. When this column last looked at Ashford Town ward in September 2023, I wrote that "with recent interest rate rises it remains to be seen whether this will be sustainable in the long-term". The success of this can be gauged by the fact that central government have now lost patience, and last month the Commissioners were sent in with instructions to deliver value for money, achieve financial sustainability and reduce the council's debt.

Spelthorne is not the only Surrey council with serious financial problems: the Commissioners have also been sent in to run Woking which is even more heavily indebted, and the county council has his own budgeting issues. Partly because of this, Surrey is being fast-tracked for local government reorganisation in the next few years and the 2025 Surrey county council elections were cancelled. So the 2021 county councillors for Ashford Town ward remain in place. The Ashford county division was gained from the Conservatives in that year by independent candidate Joanne Sexton, who is now the leader of Spelthorne council; while the Staines South and Ashford West division (which covers part of this ward) remained in Conservative hands.

Until 2024 Spelthorne was the constituency represented by one of the people most responsible for the pathetic plight the current Conservative party finds itself in, Liz Truss' chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. He retired from the Commons in 2024 and the Conservatives did just about manage to hold the Spelthorne constituency, which has the same boundaries as the council. The new MP is Lincoln Jopp, a former Scots Guards colonel who won the Military Cross in 1997 for service in Sierra Leone.

The current boundaries of Ashford Town ward date from 2003, and the ward returned three Conservative councillors at all of the elections from 2003 to 2019 with the exception of 2011, when the Conservative slate was opposed only by a single independent candidate who topped the poll. Things changed in May 2023, when the ward's three seats split three ways: independent candidate Michelle Arnold topped the poll with 29% of the vote, the Tories held just one of their seats with 26%, and the third seat went to the Green Party with 24%. The other 21% went to Labour.

Ashford Town ward's Green councillor Andrew McLuskey didn't last very long following his election in May 2023: his resignation letter went in at the end of July, by which point he had already quit the council's Green group and was sitting as an Independent Green. The resulting by-election in September 2023 saw his seat revert to the Conservatives, whose candidate Paul Woodward won with 37% of the vote; second place went to an independent who polled 28%, while the Greens finished in third place with 17% and lost their seat.

We have already had two wards this week, Cromarty Firth and Eastfield, where the voters are being called out for their second by-election of this term. Here is another one, because Conservative councillor Olivia Rybinski handed in her notice in May after ten years in office. Rybinski, who has recently moved to Cornwall, is expecting her third child and she blamed her resignation on the lack of maternity leave for councillors.

Defending for the Conservatives is a candidate with previous local government experience: Alex Balkan was elected to the neighbouring Runnymede council as councillor for Egham Hythe ward in 2021, but he stood down from that council last year. Philip Baldock is standing as an independent candidate and he has been endorsed by Spelthorne council's ruling independent group; he finished as runner-up in a by-election to the neighbouring Ashford East ward on general election day last year, and he will be hoping for better this time. After their disappointment in the last by-election the Green Party have decided not to stand this time, and that puts a fair number of votes up for grabs: also hoping to pick those votes up are Labour's Rhiannon Lewis, Reform UK's Jason Gelver and the Liberal Democrats' Gregory Neall.

Parliamentary constituency: Spelthorne
Surrey county council division: Ashford (part), Staines South and Ashford West (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Slough and Heathrow
Postcode district: TW15

Philip Baldock (Ind)
Alex Balkan (C)
Jason Gelver (RUK)
Rhiannon Lewis (Lab)
Gregory Neall (LD)

September 2023 by-election C 562 Ind 420 Grn 252 Lab 212 RUK 35 TUSC 19
May 2023 result Ind 801/519/499 C 725/653/651 Grn 677/548 Lab 571
May 2019 result C 988/896/874 Grn 691/641 Lab 444/354 UKIP 324
May 2015 result C 1926/1451/1329 UKIP 1242 Lab 952/710 Spelthorne Ind 739/716 Grn 683
May 2011 result Ind 1273 C 1186/1165/1055
May 2007 result C 1156/1123/1084 LD 420/399 Lab 366/341
May 2003 result C 937/899/865 Lab 443 LD 416/410
Previous results in detail

Buckingham

Adur council, West Sussex; caused by the death of Labour councillor Nigel Jenner.

Our last by-election this week is in England's first local government district, as listed alphabetically. Adur takes its name from a Sussex river which floes into the sea at Shoreham, between Brighton and Worthing. Here we find Buckingham ward, which covers the north of Shoreham around the Buckingham Park recreational ground, together with a large section of the South Downs National Park to the north of the A27 Shoreham bypass. Buckingham ward is one of the better-off parts of Shoreham, with high rates of owner-occupation and part-time working.

Shoreham is the main town in the small Adur district. The current ward boundaries here date from 2004, and since then Adur has been one of the few local government districts which elects half of its councillors every two years. The council had had a Conservative majority since 2002, and Buckingham ward was very much part of that majority to the extent that nobody opposed the Conservatives here in the 2006 election.

Adur council shares a chief executive and a large number of its services with the neighbouring Worthing council, where the Labour party came from nothing in May 2017 to win overall control in 2022. The 2022 local elections also saw Labour top the poll across Adur district for the first time, although an unfavourable vote distribution meant that the 14 Adur council seats up for election that year split seven to the Conservatives, five to Labour and one each to the Green Party and an independent councillor (who was not opposed by the Conservatives).

A repeat of that result would have delivered no overall control on Adur council in 2024. But in fact, the Conservative vote here completely collapsed that year: from an overall majority, the Tories held only one of the seats they were defending and it wasn't Buckingham ward. In a result completely out of kilter with everything that had gone before, Labour won 13 out of 16 seats up for election here last year, and took overall control of Adur council for the very first time. Buckingham ward, which had voted over 50% Conservative at every local election up to 2018, finished with a Labour lead over the Conservatives of 51-32.

Labour followed up on this result two months later by gaining the East Worthing and Shoreham parliamentary seat from the Conservatives; the local MP Tom Rutland had been so confident of victory that he had resigned his seat on Lambeth council before being elected to the Commons. The Conservatives do still hold all of Adur's seats on West Sussex county council, but at the last election in 2021 they only narrowly held the Shoreham North division which covers Buckingham ward.

The Labour candidate who won Buckingham ward in 2024 was (Arthur) Nigel Jenner, who came to politics from a long career working in youth services for East Sussex county council and then for Brighton and Hove council; his last role before retirement was working with inmates leaving Lewes prison. He passed away in April, eleven months after joining the council.

Nigel Jenner's partner Kate Davis is trying to take over his old seat as the defending Labour candidate in this by-election: she is also retired from a career in public service, and she is a governor at a local primary school. Davis was one of the few unsuccessful Labour candidates in last year's Adur election, when she contested Shoreham's Marine ward. The Conservatives' Leila Williams, a senior manager in the NHS, previously appeared in this column in December 2021 when she won a by-election in the neighbouring Hillside ward; in 2022 Williams attempted to transfer to Southwick Green ward but she was defeated, and she went on to be the Conservatives' losing Parliamentary candidate in East Worthing and Shoreham last year. Also standing are Ian Jones for the Lib Dems, David Bamber for Britain First and a candidate who is notable enough for Wikipedia. Mike Mendoza is best known to the outside world as a radio presenter - he did overnight shows for Talksport from 2004 to 2008 - but he has a long political career in Sussex, having previously been elected to the old Hove council as a Conservative and to Adur council both as an independent and as a Conservative candidate. In this by-election Mendoza has the Reform UK nomination.

Parliamentary constituency: East Worthing and Shoreham
West Sussex county council division: Shoreham North
ONS Travel to Work Area: Worthing
Postcode district: BN43

David Bamber (Britain First)
Kate Davis (Lab)
Ian Jones (LD)
Mike Mendoza (RUK)
Leila Williams (C)

May 2024 result Lab 681 C 424 LD 164 Grn 70
May 2022 result C 520 Lab 442 LD 288
May 2021 result C 646 Lab 364 Grn 149 LD 140
May 2018 result C 634 Lab 315 Grn 105 LD 67
May 2016 result C 520 Lab 195 UKIP 133 LD 69 Grn 68
May 2014 result C 678 UKIP 250 Lab 171 Grn 101 LD 67
May 2012 result C 577 Lab 167 UKIP 128 LD 77
May 2010 result C 1301 LD 828 UKIP 197
May 2008 result C 760 LD 127 Lab 93 Grn 91
May 2006 result C unopposed
June 2004 result C 872/871 Lab 327
Previous results in detail

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Andrew Teale