Previewing the nine council by-elections of 28th November 2024
"All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order"
Nine by-elections for ten seats on 28th November 2024, in the year's last Super Thursday:
Northbury; and
Village
Barking and Dagenham council, London. The Northbury by-election is caused by the resignation of Darren Rodwell; the Village by-election is for two seats following the resignation of Margaret Mullane and the death of Lee Waker. All were Labour councillors.
Of the ten seats up for election today, eight are being defended by Labour and the other two by the Liberal Democrats. Five of the eight Labour defences are in London, and three of them are in the first London borough alphabetically, Barking and Dagenham.
We're going to visit both town centres today. Northbury ward covers the northern end of Barking town centre and it is centred on Barking railway station, which is a busy junction. Here passengers can board or alight from mainline trains to Fenchurch Street, Tilbury and Southend; Underground trains on the Hammersmith and City line (which terminates here) and the District line; and Overground trains on the Gospel Oak to Barking line.
London Overground is currently in the process of rebranding its various routes, and as a result the Gospel Oak to Barking Line is getting a new name. The "Suffragette line" is a nod to the memory of Annie Huggett, who as an 11-year-old girl moved into a brand-new council house in Barking in 1903. Huggett was active in the suffragette movement and she often hosted members of the Pankhurst family at her home. Once women's suffrage was achieved Huggett kept up her membership of the Labour party for decades afterwards, and in the 1990s she received a lifetime achievement award from the party's then leader John Smith as the Labour party's longest-serving member. Annie Huggett died in 1996 at the age of 103, and the Red Flag was sung at her funeral.
Annie Huggett is also remembered in nearby Dagenham, where the women's centre on the Heathway was renamed in her honour in 2016. The Heathway has now become Dagenham's high street, but the original Dagenham village was further to the east around the ancient church of St Peter and St Paul, which has been here since the early 13th century when all this was fields. Unfortunately most of the old buildings in the village were victims of the wrecking ball in the 1960s. Village ward runs east from the Heathway to include a fair amount of parkland around the River Beam, which is the boundary between Barking and Dagenham and the borough of Havering. Dagenham East underground station lies on the ward's northern boundary.
Barking and Dagenham has been a major destination for immigrants to London in recent years, and its population is now highly multicultural. Northbury ward makes the top 70 wards in England and Wales for residents born in Africa (11.9%) and for residents born in Bulgaria or Romania (7.3%). Village ward is in the top 50 wards for residents born in Africa (12.9%) and in the top 75 for black ethnicity (26.7%). Both wards have a young and working-class demographic profile.
Annie Huggett would no doubt approve of the fact that it's now 16 years since any party other than Labour won a council seat in Barking and Dagenham. Village ward returned a British National Party councillor in 2006 but it has had a full slate of Labour councillors since 2010, when Margaret Mullane gained the BNP seat. She joined as the ward's councillors brothers Lee and Phil Waker, who had even longer service. Phil Waker was first elected at a by-election in October 2004; his brother Lee, who passed away in July at the age of 65 after a long battle with cancer, had service going back to 2002. Lee Waker worked for many years for Royal Mail, and his funeral was deliberately scheduled for a Saturday to allow his work and CWU colleagues to attend.
This by-election has taken rather a long time to organise following Lee Waker's death, but that has enabled the electors to get two new councillors for the price of one. We have a double by-election in Village ward to replace both Waker and his ward colleague Margaret Mullane, who was elected in July as the new Labour MP for the local seat of Dagenham and Rainham. She enjoyed a majority of 7,173 votes over Reform UK, and she succeeds Jon Cruddas whose constituency office she used to run.
The Labour selection for the Barking constituency also came up for grabs this year following the retirement of Margaret Hodge - Baroness Hodge of Barking, as she now is - after 30 years in the Commons. The party's nomination had originally gone to Darren Rodwell, who had served since 2014 as the leader of Barking and Dagenham council. Rodwell's campaign certainly attracted the attention of the press, with lowlights including hanging a campaign banner from gravestones and being forced to apologise for saying at a Black History Month event that he had the "worst tan possible for a black man". (He is not black.)
However, with just a few days to go before the nominations deadline for the general election, Darren Rodwell was forced to pull out of the election after misconduct allegations were made against him. The Labour candidate in Barking on 4th July was instead Nesil Caliskan, who was the leader of Enfield council - more on that story later - and who duly held a safe Labour seat with a majority of 11,054 votes over Reform UK. A few days later, a Labour Party investigation dismissed the misconduct allegations against Rodwell; a separate investigation by the council, which reported in September, also found no case to answer. Rodwell stood down as the council leader in September, and he then quit the council altogether.
Darren Rodwell leaves behind a safe seat in Northbury ward, which was created by boundary changes in 2022 as a cut-down version of the former Abbey ward. (The present Abbey ward covers only a minority of the old one.) His Labour slate enjoyed a 69-17 lead over the Conservatives here at the last London borough elections in 2022. The Labour lead in Village ward was even more emphatic, at 78-22 over the Conservatives in a straight fight.
So there should be little to worry about for the defending Labour candidates here. In Northbury ward Labour have selected Val Masson. The Conservative candidate Angelica Olawepo was once the "young mayor" of Barking and Dagenham: she now works in the law, she contested Heath ward for the Conservatives in 2022, and she was also a semi-finalist in the 2024 edition of Miss England. Also standing are Simon Anthony for the Green Party, Olumide Adefeya for the Lib Dems and Ryan Edwards for Reform UK.
In Village ward we have eight candidates standing for the two available seats. Here the defending Labour slate consists of Ajanta Deb Roy (who works in Margaret Mullane's office) and Julia Williams. The Conservatives have gone for Graham Gosling and Ben Suter; according to the excellent website whocanivotefor.co.uk, their favourite biscuits are respectively rich tea and chocolate digestives. Also standing here are Kim Arrowsmith and Tope Olawoyin for the Greens, and George Elebiju and Herbert Munangatire for the Lib Dems.
Northbury
Parliamentary constituency: Barking
London Assembly constituency: City and East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode district: IG11
Olumide Adefeya (LD)
Simon Anthony (Grn)
Ryan Edwards (RUK)
Val Masson (Lab)
Angelica Olawepo (C)
May 2022 result Lab 1500/1398/1364 C 363 Grn 317/221/209
Previous results in detail
Village
Parliamentary constituency: Dagenham and Rainham
London Assembly constituency: City and East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode district: RM10
Kim Arrowsmith (Grn)
Ajanta Deb Roy (Lab)
George Elebiju (LD)
Graham Gosling (C)
Herbert Munangatire (LD)
Tope Olawoyin (Grn)
Ben Suter (C)
Julia Williams (Lab)
May 2022 result Lab 1690/1675/1647 C 471/431
Previous results in detail
Junction
Islington council, London; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Kaya Comer-Schwartz.
Our third London poll today takes place at the northern end of the London Borough of Islington. In August this column previewed Hillrise ward; now we're back to consider the neighbouring Junction ward. This ward name refers to Junction Road, which runs south from the busy Archway road junction on the A1. There is also a railway junction here, where freight trains from the Midland main line join the Gospel Oak to Barking Suffragette line of the Overground, and until the 1980s this junction was controlled from a signalbox with the wonderfully redundant name of Junction Road Junction. The Suffragette line has one station within the ward boundary, Upper Holloway.
The Archway road junction has always been busy. Back in the day it was a terminus for horse-drawn trams and for Europe's first San Francisco-style cable tramway, which ran from here up the steep Highgate Hill towards Highgate village from 1884 until it was converted to electric operation in 1909. Shortly before then what is now Archway underground station opened: this station was originally named Highgate and was a branch-line terminus of what became the Northern Line, but that branch was extended to High Barnet and Mill Hill East in the late 1940s and the Highgate name was transferred to a new station then. The Archway junction was named after the Archway Tavern, which has been in and out of business in recent years but is still in operation for the moment, and it gave its name to what was originally Archway Tower, a 1960s skyscraper which was converted to residential use in the 2010s and renamed as Vantage Point. Further large towers are proposed for the area.
Junction ward's biggest single employer is the Whittington Hospital, a general hospital which has been operating here since 1848 and was originally as an isolation and vaccination unit for smallpox patients. The Whittington is also a teaching hospital affiliated with UCL and Middlesex University, and it's named after Sir Richard Whittington, the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century three-time Lord Mayor of London. However, the hospital doesn't really show up in the ward's census return: Junction ward makes the top 100 in England and Wales for mixed-race ethnicity (8.5%), residents born in the EU-14 states (12.4%), households with no access to a car or van (65.7%) and those working in the arts, entertainment or recreation sector (6.0%).
This ward has existed since the creation of Islington council in 1964. A look at historic election results in inner London often turns up a famous name or two, and the list of previous councillors for Junction ward includes Candy Atherton, who sat here from 1986 until she left London in 1992; Atherton subsequently served from 1997 to 2005 as the Labour MP for Falmouth and Camborne, and she was a Cornwall councillor when she died in 2017. Chris Skidmore, who later co-wrote the book Britannia Unchained (alongside Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab and Liz Truss) and who would go on to serve as the Conservative MP for Kingswood from 2010 to 2024, contested Junction ward on the Conservative slate in 2006 and finished in fourteenth and last place.
In recent years this has been a safe Labour ward following the collapse of the Islington Lib Dems, who performed well in Junction ward in the early years of this century. The 2022 Islington elections returned 48 Labour councillors against three Greens, and Junction ward was safely in the Labour column with a 62-22 lead over the Green slate.
The outgoing councillor here is Kaya Comer-Schwartz, who had served since she gained a by-election from the Lib Dems in February 2013 (under her previous surname of Makarau-Schwartz). Comer-Schwartz became leader of Islington council in 2021, and she served in that role until quitting the council last month. She is off to work for Sadiq Khan in City Hall as a deputy mayor of London, with responsibility for policing and crime. This is a politically-restricted post, and as such Comer-Schwartz had to resign her council seat in order to take up her new job.
Unlike today's other London by-elections, Junction ward is in a parliamentary seat which Labour do not hold. It's included within the Islington North constituency, which has returned Jeremy Corbyn to Parliament at each election since 1983; Corbyn was re-elected for his eleventh term of office in July as an independent candidate, after being kicked out of the Labour party. Four Islington Labour councillors have since walked out of the party and formed an independent group on the council.
Defending this seat for Labour is James Potts, who works as a planning consultant and has previously enjoyed a few minutes of fame as a contestant on the ITV quiz show The Chase. The Greens have selected Devon Osborne; she is a contemporary artist who contested Tufnell Park ward in the 2022 Islington elections. Also standing are John Wilkin for the Conservatives, Rebecca Jones for the Liberal Democrats, independent candidate Jackson Caines who has been endorsed by Corbyn and by the council's Labour splinter group, independent candidate Brian Potter (no, not that one) who is chair of the Islington leaseholders association, and Bill Martin of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
Parliamentary constituency: Islington North
London Assembly constituency: North East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: N4, N6, N7, N15, N19, NW5
Jackson Caines (Ind)
Rebecca Jones (LD)
Bill Martin (Socialist Party of GB)
Devon Osborne (Grn)
Brian Potter (Ind)
James Potts (Lab)
John Wilkin (C)
May 2022 result Lab 2111/2004/2001 Grn 761/545/507 C 279/252/240 LD 240/194/182
Previous results in detail
Jubilee
Enfield council, London; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Nesil Caliskan.
There are only two wards in London whose names begin with the letter J, and by coincidence both of them are up for election today. Enfield's Jubilee ward takes its name from Jubilee Park in Lower Edmonton, which was intended to commemorate George V's Silver Jubilee in 1935. However, the park didn't actually open until 1939, by which point we were two kings down the line from George V.
The late 1930s were a time of major development in this part of the Lea Valley, as it was at this point that the William Girling Reservoir started construction. This is one of the two Chingford Reservoirs, and it is mostly within the boundaries of Jubilee ward. Next to the reservoir is the Lee Valley Leisure Complex, which - under its former name of Picketts Lock - was intended to be home to the National Athletics Stadium which would host the 2005 World Athletics Championships. This never happened, and the IAAF moved the Championships to Helsinki. A scaled-down athletics centre did eventually get built here, and the Lee Valley Leisure Complex boasts the only indoor six-lane 200m track in southern England. This area is rather cut off from the rest of the ward by the West Anglia railway line, while the Lea Valley Weaver line of the Overground forms Jubilee ward's western boundary. Neither railway has a station here.
This area is a centre of London's Turkish and Cypriot communities. Jubilee ward makes the top 10 wards in England and Wales for residents born in non-EU European countries (9.7%), for residents born in Cyprus or Malta (3.7%), and for "other" ethnic groups (17.6%); it also makes the top 100 for "other" religions (4.0%, most of whom will be Alevis) and for black ethnicity (26.6%).
Which made this ward an appropriate political base for Nesil Caliskan, who is herself of Turkish-Cypriot descent and who was first elected here in a May 2015 by-election (under her maiden surname of Cazimoglu). Her mother, Alev Cazimoglu, is also a councillor for Jubilee ward. Caliskan had served as leader of Enfield council since 2018, taking on that role at the age of just 29, and she joined the Labour Party's National Executive Committee last year. In July, as previously stated, Caliskan made the step up to Parliament by being elected as the new Labour MP for Barking.
Nesil Caliskan leaves behind a Labour majority on Enfield council and a safe seat for her party to defend in this by-election. She was re-elected in 2022 at the top of the poll, as the Labour slate enjoyed a 53-23 lead over the Conservatives. Jubilee ward is part of the Edmonton and Winchmore Hill constituency represented by Labour backbencher Kate Osamor, who was first elected for the predecessor Edmonton seat in 2015.
Defending this seat for Labour is Ian Barnes, a former deputy leader of Enfield council who previously served one term as councillor for Winchmore Hill ward; he was elected there in 2018, and didn't seek re-election in 2022. Barnes applied for the Labour nomination in Coventry East for the last general election, without success. The Conservatives have selected Masud Uddin, who is running a campaign based on being a local candidate. Also standing are Katie Knight for the Green Party and three candidates who stood in Edmonton and Winchmore Hill at July's general election: independent Khalid Sadur, Lib Dem Tim Martin and Reform UK's Neville Watson.
Parliamentary constituency: Edmonton and Winchmore Hill
London Assembly constituency: Enfield and Haringey
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: EN1, EN3, N9
Ian Barnes (Lab)
Katie Knight (Grn)
Tim Martin (LD)
Khalid Sadur (Ind)
Masud Uddin (C)
Neville Watson (RUK)
May 2022 result Lab 1980/1855/1852 C 864/786/676 Grn 378 Ind 263/129/121 LD 230
Previous results in detail
Frampton Cotterell
South Gloucestershire council; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Claire Young.
The only English ward up for election today which can reasonably be described as rural is in south Gloucestershire. Frampton Cotterell is a village just off the northern edge of Bristol's built-up area; it has seen huge population growth in recent years, and it has essentially merged with the neighbouring village of Coalpit Heath which is still part of a separate parish. The Frampton Cotterell ward, which is clearly the bits that were left over after the Boundary Commission had satisfactorily sorted the neighbouring wards out, takes in three other parishes to the north: this area includes the industrial western fringe of the town of Yate together with the village of Tytherington.
The names of the villages of Coaplit Heath and Iron Acton indicate that there is coal and iron in the local rocks, and a number of villages in what is now Frampton Cotterell ward once had iron or coal mines. Tytherington's economy is still dominated by a large limestone quarry next to the M5 motorway. Today the nearby big city of Bristol provides most of the area's employment, and for commuters Yate railway station lies on the ward boundary.
Frampton Cotterell ward's current boundaries date from 2019, and previous wards of that name were substantially smaller than the present ward. The 2019 boundary changes brought in both part of the abolished Westerleigh ward and long-serving Lib Dem councillor Claire Young, who had first been elected in 2007 for Westerleigh ward. On its present boundaries Frampton Cotterell has proven to be safe Liberal Democrat, with Young enjoying a substantial personal vote: shares of the vote here in 2023 were 52% for the Lib Dems and 34% for the Conservatives. The Conservatives lost control of South Gloucestershire council in 2023, and Young became leader of the council at the head of a Lib Dem-Labour coalition.
Claire Young also had Parliamentary ambitions, and in July 2024 she was elected at her third attempt as the Liberal Democrat MP for Thornbury and Yate - the seat which includes Frampton Cotterell ward. She defeated Luke Hall, the previous Conservative MP, by the narrow margin of 3,014 votes. Following her election to Westminster, Young stood down as the leader of South Gloucestershire council before tendering her resignation as a councillor.
Defending this seat for the Lib Dems is David Goodwin, who sits on Frampton Cotterell parish council (where he chairs the climate and nature committee) and works for Rolls-Royce. Another candidate who has worked in the local aerospace industry is the Conservatives' Tim Niblett, who was an unsuccessful candidate here in 2023 and is back for another go. Also standing are Alan Lankester for the Greens and Jonathan Trollope for Labour. This column likes to highlight pubs which do their bit for democracy by serving as polling stations, so a shoutout is due to the Codrington Arms in Yate.
Parliamentary constituency: Thornbury and Yate
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bristol
Postcode districts: BS35, BS36, BS37, GL12
David Goodwin (LD)
Alan Lankester (Grn)
Tim Niblett (C)
Jonathan Trollope (Lab)
May 2023 result LD 2556/2331/2190 C 1664/1615/1592 Grn 444 Lab 283/247
May 2019 result LD 2174/1979/1855 C 1590/1481/1458 Ind 340 Lab 268/226/215
Previous results in detail
Woodhouse
Sheffield council, South Yorkshire; caused by the death of councillor Paul Wood.
We now come to two polls in Yorkshire, starting in the city of Sheffield. Well, more accurately we're in a small-town area on the eastern edge of Sheffield. Woodhouse itself is a former mining village a few miles to the east of Sheffield city centre, to which it is linked by a railway station on the line towards Retford and Lincoln. This line may gain a new station here in the near future, to serve the large and very new Waverley development on the former site of Orgreave colliery; Waverley itself is however in Rotherham borough, on the far side of the railway. Woodhouse ward also includes much of Handsworth, the area where the actor Sean Bean grew up. Handsworth used to be an urban district of its own, with boundaries which covered Woodhouse, before it was annexed by Sheffield in 1938.
Today this area is working-class suburbia with a very strong Labour vote in local elections. In May Labour enjoyed a 58-14 lead over the Conservatives here; in July Woodhouse ward polled as part of the Sheffield South East constituency, which re-elected its Labour MP Clive Betts for his ninth term of office by a slightly less commanding margin. Sheffield South East was one of the few constituencies which had no Reform UK candidate this year, because the party had an electoral pact with the Social Democratic Party and stood down here in the SDP's favour. Not that this did the SDP much good: their candidate finished in seventh and last place and lost his deposit.
Sheffield city council is hung, with the latest composition having 36 Labour councillors, 27 Lib Dems, 14 Greens, 1 independent and 5 seats for the Sheffield Community Councillors, a group associated with the former council leader Terry Fox. Fox was effectively forced out of the Labour group leadership by the national party in May 2023 for his role in the 2014-18 Sheffield tree felling scandal, and in September 2023 he was one of seven Sheffield Labour councillors to be suspended by the party.
Paul Wood was not one of those seven, but he subsequently quit Labour and joined the Sheffield Community Councillors group. Wood had spent most of his career on the cabaret circuit, managing household names and touring with pop stars; he had entered local politics in 2014 as a Labour councillor for Sheffield's Richmond ward, before transferring to Woodhouse ward in 2016 following boundary changes. In the 2014 Birthday Honours Wood was awarded the British Empire Medal, for his political service as a board member of Labour's Yorkshire and Humber region. He passed away in September at the age of 67.
The Sheffield Community Councillors are not registered as a political party, and there is no defending independent candidate in this by-election. So Labour will be hoping that Wood's seat will now revert to their candidate Saj Ghafur, who works as a taxi driver and has chaired local tenants and residents' associations. The Conservatives have turned to the next generation with their candidate Samuel Hemsley, who is a student reading politics and international relations at the University of Sheffield. Also standing are Hannah Nicklin for the Greens, Willis Marshall for the Lib Dems, Joshua Crapper for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, Andy Hizzard for Reform UK (who will note that UKIP had a good result here in 2019) and Matthew Leese for the Social Democratic Party. We can infer from this candidate list that the Reform-SDP pact has broken down.
Parliamentary constituency: Sheffield South East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Sheffield
Postcode district: S13
Joshua Crapper (TUSC)
Saj Ghafur (Lab)
Samual Hemsley (C)
Andy Hizzard (RUK)
Matthew Leese (SDP)
Willis Marshall (LD)
Hannah Nicklin (Grn)
May 2024 result Lab 1810 C 453 Grn 311 Ind 272 LD 195 TUSC 89
May 2023 result Lab 1706 C 643 LD 293 Grn 290 TUSC 140
May 2022 result Lab 1745 C 620 Ind 319 Grn 263 LD 207 TUSC 70
May 2021 result Lab 2106 C 1155 Grn 337 LD 213
May 2019 result Lab 1359 UKIP 933 Grn 526 C 393 LD 191
May 2018 result Lab 1994 C 713 Grn 476 LD 202
May 2016 result Lab 2041/1790/1696 UKIP 1022/856 Grn 415/205/180 LD 302/202/185 TUSC 94
Previous results in detail
Haxby and Wigginton
York council, North Yorkshire; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Ed Pearson.
Our second Lib Dem defence of the week is in Haxby, a small York commuter town which lies just outside the ring road to the north of the city. Haxby has seen strong population growth in recent decades which has effectively caused it to merge with the neighbouring village of Wigginton to the west, and the Haxby civil parish became a town in 1992. Together, Haxby and Wigginton have a commuter profile with high levels of owner-occupation and a rather older population than average.
This area was annexed by York as recently as 1996, when York became a unitary council. The pre-1996 York city council had very tight boundaries which excluded many of the city's suburbs and outlying villages, and until then Haxby and Wigginton were administered from Malton as part of the Ryedale district.
The present city of York is the right size for two parliamentary seats, and it duly got two MPs in 2010 with a curious bullseye arrangement: the York Central constituency, covering a similar area to the old city, is completely surrounded by the suburban seat of York Outer. The Outer seat voted Conservative in the 2010s but was a very emphatic gain in July 2024 for the Labour candidate Luke Charters, who had previously stood here in 2017 as a 21-year-old. Charters had been elected in 2022 to Newham council in London, but he gave that seat up the following year after winning the Labour nomination for York Outer (Andrew's Previews 2023, page 280).
Labour have a much more narrow overall majority on York city council, which they gained in 2023 following a controversy over the previous Lib Dem-led administration banning blue-badge disabled parking in pedestrianised areas of the city centre. Last year's elections resulted in 24 Labour councillors, 19 Lib Dems, 3 Conservatives and an independent, with the Green Party group being wiped out.
That's a Labour majority of one seat, which is not at risk in this by-election. It's unlikely that Labour will increase their council lead here because they are normally also-rans in Haxby and Wigginton ward, which in 2023 voted 53% for the Liberal Democrats, 23% for the Conservatives and 14% for Labour. The Tories actually won two out of three seats here in 2015, but they are going to have to come back from a long way behind to repeat that performance now. This by-election is to replace Lib Dems councillor Ed Pearson, who had served the ward since 2019; he stood down last month to concentrate on his career on the railways and to spend more time with his family.
Defending this seat for the Lib Dems is Richard Watson, who is seeking to make a political comeback. Watson, who has recently retired from a long legal career, was first elected all the way back in 1987 as a Liberal/SDP Alliance councillor for the former Haxby North East ward of Ryedale district; he then represented Haxby West ward of Ryedale council from 1991 to 1995, Haxby ward of York council from 1999 to 2003 and this ward of York council from 2003 to 2011 when he stood down. The Conservatives have selected Jessie Secker, who is a Haxby town councillor. Another former York city councillor on the ballot is Labour's James Flinders, who previously represented the city-centre Guildhall ward from 2015 to 2019. The Greens' Ian Lowson and Reform UK's John Crispin-Bailey complete this candidate list.
Parliamentary constituency: York Outer
ONS Travel to Work Area: York
Postcode district: YO32
John Crispin-Bailey (RUK)
James Flinders (Lab)
Ian Lowson (Grn)
Jessie Secker (C)
Richard Watson (LD)
May 2023 result LD 2056/2023/2013 C 887/828/735 Lab 562/537/500 Grn 203/196/121 Ind 177
May 2019 result LD 2872/2819/2806 C 810/725/673 Ind 515/422 Grn 284/200/155 Lab 274/227/216
May 2015 result LD 2707/2432/2113 C 2640/2582/2395 Lab 1129/963/926 Grn 606/414/344 Ind 420
Previous results in detail
West Fife and Coastal Villages
Fife council, Scotland; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Graeme Downie.
We finish for the week with two Labour defences in Scotland, both of which are to replace newly-elected Labour MPs. On the north side of the Forth estuary we come to the rural ward of West Fife and Coastal Villages, which covers a number of scattered villages to the west of Dunfermline. The largest of these is Kincardine, at the northern end of the Kincardine Bridge which was the lowest road crossing of the Forth when it opened in 1936. The bridge originally dumped all of its traffic into Kincardine town centre, which was finally relieved in the 2000s with the opening of both a southern bypass for the town and the new Clackmannanshire Bridge. The name of that bridge is rather misleading, because as can be seen from the map no part of the Clackmannashire bridge is actually in Clackmannanshire.
Historically, this ward's largest employer was the massive Longannet power station, which was the largest coal-fired power station in Europe when it came online in 1970; by the time of its closure in 2016 it had been overtaken by Bełachtów in Poland and Drax in Yorkshire. The power station buildings were demolished in 2021 and the site is now being redeveloped. Much of the coal which Longannet consumed was mined locally, and the adjacent Longannet coal mine was Scotland's last deep coal mine. It ceased operations in 2002 after the underground workings flooded, and the colliery company folded shortly afterwards.
West Fife's economy was historically based on the coalfield, and so was its politics. The old West Fife constituency (which was far larger than this ward) actually returned a Communist MP, Willie Gallacher, to Parliament in both 1935 and 1945. This year's parliamentary boundary changes united West Fife and Coastal Villages ward within a constituency called Dunfermline and Dollar, which was easily won in July by the Labour candidate Graeme Downie.
The local authority here is the large Fife council, which administers the area from Glenrothes. In the 2022 elections Fife returned 34 Scottish National Party councillors, 20 Labour, 13 Lib Dems and 8 Conservatives; that's a narrow Unionist majority, and Labour run a minority administration. Graeme Downie was previously one of the three councillors for West Fife and Coastal Villages ward, which split its seats between the SNP, Labour and the Conservatives in both 2017 and 2022. First preference shares here in 2022 were 36% for the SNP, 33% for Labour and 17% for the Conservatives; Labour's Graeme Downie polled the most preferences of any candidate, and he would have won a single-seat election on those votes with a 53-47 lead over the SNP. He was in his first term on the council.
The Scottish National Party do, however, represent this ward at Holyrood. West Fife and Coastal Villages is part of the Dunfermline Scottish Parliament constituency, which has been held since 2016 by SNP MSP Shirley-Anne Somerville. She has been in the Scottish Cabinet since 2018, and currently holds the social justice portfolio. Somerville had previously stood here in a Holyrood by-election in October 2013, but she lost the seat to Labour on that occasion; the previous SNP MSP Bill Walker, who had previously represented this ward on Fife council from 2007 to 2012, had been forced to resign after being convicted of assault against three of his ex-wives and a stepdaughter.
There is no such unpleasantness about this West Fife and Coastal Villages by-election, which is to fill the council seat vacated by Graeme Downie who is off to Westminster. Defending for Labour is Karen Beaton, whose varied career has involved working as a community police officer and in child protection, banking and finance. The SNP's Paul Steele works locally in Dunfermline and is from a coalmining family. Standing for the Conservatives is David Ross, who is seeking to get back onto Fife council: he previously represented Dunfermline North ward from 2017 to 2022. Also seeking your first (or later) preference are Paul Buchanan-Quigley for the Lib Dems, Fiona McOwan for the Greens, Danny Smith for the Scottish Family Party and independent candidate George Morton, who wants Fife to become an independent country; he stood in Dunfermline and Dollar in July and finished in ninth and last place.
Westminster constituency: Dunfermline and Dollar
Holyrood constituency: Dunfermline
ONS Travel to Work Area: Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy (most), Falkirk and Stirling (Kincardine area)
Postcode districts: FK10, FK14, KY4, KY12
Karen Beaton (Lab)
Paul Buchanan-Quigley (LD)
Fiona McOwan (Grn)
George Morton (Ind)
David Ross (C)
Danny Smith (Scottish Family Party)
Paul Steele (SNP)
May 2022 first preferences SNP 2138 Lab 1940 C 1017 LD 399 Grn 246 Scottish Family Party 94 Alba 83 Ind 46
May 2017 first preferences Lab 2220 SNP 2074 C 1186 LD 360 Ind 220 Grn 151
Previous results in detail
Kilpatrick
West Dunbartonshire council, Scotland; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Douglas McAllister.
Last week Andrew's Previews travelled to Drumchapel/Anniesland in the north-west corner of Glasgow. (A ward which also includes the garden suburb-style development of Knightswood, as I should have pointed out then.) This week it's time to consider the neighbouring Kilpatrick ward of West Dunbartonshire.
The name of Kilpatrick ward refers to the Kilpatrick Hills, an area of high ground to the north of Clydebank. The highest point of the Kilpatrick Hills and their only Marilyn is Duncolm, with an elevation of 401 metres; Duncolm's summit is within the ward boundary. The ward includes territory which was mostly in the parish of Old Kilpatrick, but it does not take in the village of Old Kilpatrick itself.
The main settlements here are Duntocher, Hardgate and Faifley which have effectively merged together into a single suburban area; all of these villages were greatly expanded in the late twentieth century thanks to large housing developments by Clydebank council. Duntocher lies on the Antonine Wall and was thus the northern boundary of the Roman empire for the brief period that that wall was in operation; the earthworks of a Roman fort can still be seen in Goldenhill Park.
Kilpatrick is one of the few Scottish wards where Labour have polled the most votes at all four elections since the introduction of PR in 2007, although boundary changes in 2017 mean that previous results are not fully comparable. Until now it has been the political fiefdom of Labour's Douglas McAllister, who scored a massive 49% of the first preferences here in in 2022; overall the scores on the doors here last time were 56% for Labour and 38% for the SNP. The ward has consistently returned two Labour councillors and one for the SNP, and since a 2011 by-election the two Labour councillors had consistently been McAllister and Lawrence O'Neill.
Douglas McAllister's council career actually goes back into the first-past-the-post era, when he was first elected as the councillor for Hardgate ward in 2003. In the 2021 Holyrood elections he sought higher office as the Labour candidate for the Clydebank and Milngavie constituency, which covers this ward; however, he lost on that occasion to the SNP's Marie McNair.
Labour won an outright majority on West Dunbartonshire council at the May 2022 elections, winning 12 seats against 9 for the SNP and one for the West Dunbartonshire Community Party. The latter seat is held by long-serving left-wing councillor Jim Bollan, who had previously been one of the few elected representatives for the Scottish Socialist Party.
Following the 2022 elections McAllister became the Provost of West Dunbartonshire, a position similar to a ceremonial mayor in England and Wales but with a five-year term (English and Welsh mayors normally serve for only one year) and with more of an expectation of political leadership. In particular, the Provost has the casting vote in the event of a tie. This would have been necessary from September 2022, when Labour lost their council majority after expelling one of their West Dunbartonshire councillors who had been charged with child porn offences. He eventually resigned his council seat in 2024, just before he went to prison, and Labour got their majority back in the resulting Clydebank Central ward by-election in June.
In July 2024 Douglas McAllister was elected as the Labour MP for the West Dunbartonshire constituency, which covers the whole of the council area plus a small corner of Glasgow. He defeated the previous SNP MP, Martin Docherty-Hughes, by 6,010 votes. McAllister then resigned his council seat to concentrate on his duties in London.
This set off a bizarre series of events. McAllister's resignation meant that West Dunbartonshire needed a new Provost, and the Labour leadership put forward Michelle McGinty for the role. She is a councillor for Leven ward which covers Alexandria, Renton and other locations in the Vale of Leven north of Dumbarton. This selection annoyed the two Labour councillors for Clydebank Waterfront ward, apparently on the grounds that they felt Clydebank was being overlooked, and those two councillors quit the Labour group and went independent.
When the meeting to elect a new Provost came around in August, the Clydebank Waterfront ex-Labour councillors voted for the SNP's nominee Karen Murray Conaghan who was elected by 12 votes to 10. This changed the balance of power on the council, because - as already stated - the Provost has the casting vote in the event of a tie. The Labour administration concluded from this from they had lost the confidence of the council, so the council leader Martin Rooney resigned and invited the SNP to take over the administration. However, the SNP declined to do so after concluding that they did not have the numbers to run the council, and so Labour are now back in control as a minority.
A Labour hold in the Kilpatrick by-election would help with that. Defending this seat for Labour is William Rooney, who is a scientist working in virus research and is also the son of the council leader Martin Rooney. In 2022 the two SNP candidates here were called Gordon Scanlan and Marina Scanlan; Gordon was elected, while Marina missed out. Marina Scanlan went on to contest a by-election in the neighbouring Clydebank Central ward earlier this year, and she is now standing again in Kilpatrick ward. Last time the Conservatives were the only other party to contest Kilpatrick ward; this time the electors have a wider choice with the ballot paper completed by Ewan McGinnigle for the Conservatives, Paula Baker for the Greens, Dylan McAllister for the Communist Party of Britain, Andrew Muir for the Scottish Family Party, Kai O'Connor for the Lib Dems and David Smith for Reform UK.
Westminster constituency: West Dunbartonshire
Holyrood constituency: Clydebank and Milngavie
ONS Travel to Work Area: Glasgow
Postcode district: G81
Paula Baker (Grn)
Dylan McAllister (Comm)
Ewan McGinnigle (C)
Andrew Muir (Scottish Family Party)
Kai O'Connor (LD)
William Rooney (Lab)
Marina Scanlan (SNP)
David Smith (RUK)
May 2022 first preferences Lab 2175 SNP 1472 C 229
May 2017 first preferences Lab 2071 SNP 1765 C 346
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) and would make an excellent Christmas present. You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale