Previewing the six council by-elections of 5th December 2024
"All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order"
Six by-elections on 5th December 2024:
Stirling East
Stirling council, Scotland; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Chris Kane.
Over the last five Andrew's Previews has gone through a huge number of council by-elections, which reflects the massive intake of new MPs in the 2024 by-election. On the day after the general election a total of 142 council seats in England, Wales and Scotland were held by MPs. So far 61 of those seats have been resigned, and 59 by-elections have been held to fill them. This by-election in Stirling East ward is the last poll of the year caused by an MP resigning their council seat, and there is just one more by-election of that type to come in Scotland: that will be held in the new year in East Dunbartonshire. This still leaves 81 council seats in England and Wales held by around 70 MPs (some MPs have seats on both county and district councils), and we will probably get further by-elections for some of those in 2025.
To end this particular series, at least for 2024, we're in the less glamorous part of the city of Stirling. The city’s East ward runs south from Stirling railway station and it is based on the Braehead and Broomridge areas. This is generally postwar housing with good motorway links to both Glasgow and Edinburgh. The ward runs down to the banks of the River Forth, and the riverbank area has been redeveloped as a sports village. Here the Forthbank Stadium is home to both Stirling Albion and the non-league University of Stirling side, while Stirling County's cricket ground next door hosted several matches in the 2015 World Twenty20 qualifying tournament.
Stirling East ward returns three members of Stirling council. At its first election in 2007 the three seats split evenly between Labour, the SNP and the Lib Dems, with Labour gaining the Lib Dem seat in 2012. The ward's SNP councillor Steven Paterson was elected in 2015 as the MP for Stirling and he stood down from the council; the resulting by-election in October 2015 saw the SNP defend their seat by 116 votes over Labour's Chris Kane. At the time, this column described Kane as "the chairman of Braehead community council who runs a media production company".
Kane eventually get in at the 2017 Stirling council elections, defeating the outgoing Labour councillor Corrie McChord who had been the last leader of the Central Regional Council. On that occasion Stirling East ward split its three seats between the SNP, Labour and the Conservatives. That balance was retained in 2022, with the first preferences splitting 39% for the SNP, 23% for the Conservatives and 22% for Labour. Recounting the votes for a single seat gives an SNP lead of 62-38 over the Conservatives.
Overall, the 2022 Stirling council elections returned 8 SNP councillors, 7 Conservatives, 6 Labour, 1 Green and 1 independent. There is a Unionist majority and a left-wing majority, and so Labour run a minority administration - but their ranks are currently down to just four councillors. Chris Kane became leader of the council in 2022, but in July 2024 he was elected as the Labour MP for Stirling and Strathallan - defeating the SNP's Alyn Smith by 1,394 votes despite unfavourable boundary changes for Labour. He stood down as a councillor in September and a special meeting of the council elected veteran Labour councillor Margaret Brisley as the new council leader - but then she suddenly died just six weeks later. Stirling council's next full meeting next week will have to elect another new council leader, while a separate by-election to replace Brisley will take place in Bannockburn ward in the new year.
In the meantime Labour have a difficult seat to defend in Stirling East ward. Their candidate is Anne Kane, who is Chris Kane MP's wife and works as a primary school supply teacher. The SNP, who still hold the Stirling seat in the Scottish Parliament, have selected Willie Ferguson who owns a fire sprinkler company. The Conservatives have selected Jennifer Ure who is an IT project manager. Also standing are independent candidate Gary McGrow (who polled 8% and finished fifth here in 2022), Andrew Adam for the Greens, Christopher Spreadborough for the Lib Dems and William Docherty for Reform UK.
Westminster constituency: Stirling and Strathallan
Holyrood constituency: Stirling
ONS Travel to Work Area: Falkirk and Stirling
Postcode districts: FK7, FK8, FK9
Andrew Adam (Grn)
William Docherty (RUK)
Willie Ferguson (SNP)
Anne Kane (Lab)
Gary McGrow (Ind)
Christopher Spreadborough (LD)
Jennifer Ure (C)
May 2022 first preferences SNP 1483 C 893 Lab 829 Ind 303 Grn 182 LD 91 Scottish Family Party 53
May 2017 first preferences SNP 1594 Lab 1167 C 806 Grn 125 LD 94
Previous results in detail
Partick East/Kelvindale
Glasgow council, Scotland; caused by the death of Scottish National Party councillor Kenny McLean.
Three of today's six Previews are repeats of wards which this column has covered before. When you're been writing about elections in Britain for fourteen years, this sort of thing will happen. Our most recent repeat is of a ward which this column researched in 2021, and I found it sufficiently intriguing to go there myself the following year.
If you were asked to draw the least economically deprived ward within the Glasgow city limits, it would be difficult to do better than Partick East/Kelvindale. Much of this area was once within the burgh of Partick (hence the Partick East part of the name), but this is really the western part of Glasgow's trendy West End. The northern boundary of this ward is the River Kelvin and the Forth and Clyde canal, while the western boundary is the Partick-Anniesland railway line.
Features of the ward include much of the Glasgow Botanic Gardens including the Kibble Palace above, the Hamilton Crescent cricket ground which back in 1872 hosted the first ever international football match (Scotland 0 England 0, since you asked), and the upmarket Byres Road which forms the ward's eastern boundary. The Partick, Kelvinhall and Hillhead subway stations link the ward to the city centre as does its main thoroughfare, the Great Western Road. And it would be remiss of me not to namecheck one of the ward's famous former residents: Hermes, the Hyndland station cat, retired to the countryside in 2018. Since this is the internet and there is nothing which cannot be improved by a cat picture, here is Hermes hard at work before his retirement.
Unfortunately Hermes was never eligible to vote, on account of being a cat. On the other hand, if cats could vote they almost certainly wouldn't, and adding felines to the register is not going to help the severe turnout problem we currently have in local by-elections.
The human voters of Partick East/Kelvindale haven't been particularly well-served by the Boundary Commissions in recent years. This ward is split between two Westminster constituencies (Glasgow North and West) and three Holyrood constituencies (Glasgow Anniesland, Kelvin, and Maryhill and Springburn), giving the ward 2 Labour MPs and 3 SNP constituency MSPs.
The Glasgow North Westminster seat, which covers the part of the ward north of the Great Western Road, is now represented in Parliament by Martin Rhodes who was one of the first councillors for Partick East/Kelvindale ward when it was created in 2017. The ward returns four Glasgow city councillors, and the 2017 election here resulted in a four-way split between the SNP's Kenny McLean, the Conservatives' Tony Curtis, Labour's Rhodes and the Greens' Martin Bartos.
Tony Curtis was a gym owner by trade, and as such the Covid-19 lockdowns were a disaster for him. He quit the Conservative party in 2020 over the issue of support for businesses (like his) which were unable to trade due to lockdowns, and he then stopped logging in to council meetings altogether. After six months Curtis was disqualified from the council for non-attendance, and a by-election was organised for March 2021 to replace him (Andrew's Previews 2021, page 27). The Conservatives came nowhere near defending their seat, and their candidate Naveed Asghar polled 17% of the first preferences and was eliminated in fourth place. Asghar's transfers went strongly to Labour's Jill Brown, who came from 32-28 behind the SNP's Abdul Bostani on first preferences to win by 51-49 in the end.
Labour successfully defended their by-election gain the following year, with Jill Brown re-elected at the top of the poll. First preferences were 32% for Labour, 28% for the SNP, 21% for the Greens' Blair Anderson who was elected on the first count, and 13% for the Conservative candidate who was again Naveed Asghar. The second Labour candidate Lilith Johnstone started on just 3.5% in seventh place, but she was brought into contention by her running-mate Brown's surplus, overtook the second SNP candidate on Lib Dem transfers, and then picked up the SNP surplus in the final count to beat Asghar by 1654 votes to 1535.
If we rerun the 2022 count in Partick East/Kelvindale for one seat then it goes to Labour's Jill Brown, with a 55-45 lead in the final count over the SNP's Kenny McLean. Which gives the Scottish National Party, who run Glasgow city council as a minority, a tricky by-election defence here after Kenny McLean passed away in September. McLean was a long-serving councillor who had been first elected to Glasgow city council in 2007; he originally represented Partick West ward before transferring here in the 2017 boundary changes.
Defending this seat for the Scottish National Party is the wonderfully-named Cylina Porch, who contested the neighbouring Drumchapel/Anniesland ward in 2022. Labour have selected James Adams, a former Glasgow city councillor who represented Govan ward from 2012 to 2017; Adams was also on the Labour list for Glasgow at the 2016 Holyrood elections, and he works as a director of the Scottish branch of the RNIB. The Green candidate Héloïse le Moal came to Scotland from her native France some years ago, and she has experience working in the media, in forestry and for community groups. Earlier this year the Greens won their first-ever Scottish council by-election in the neighbouring Hillhead ward, a poll in which the Conservatives' Faten Hameed finished a poor fourth; Hameed, who was previously the Labour candidate for Glasgow Central at the 2017 and 2019 Westminster elections, will be hoping for better than that as the Conservative candidate this time. The only minor party on the ballot (at least in a Glasgow context) is the Lib Dems, whose candidate Nicholas Budgen completes the candidate list.
Westminster constituency: Glasgow West (south of Great Western Road), Glasgow North (north of Great Western Road)
Scottish Parliament constituency: Glasgow Kelvin (Partickhill and Hyndland), Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn (north of Great Western Road), Glasgow Anniesland (Gartnavel Hospital and housing immediately to its north)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Glasgow
Postcode districts: G11, G12, G13
James Adams (Lab)
Nicholas Budgen (LD)
Faten Hameed (C)
Héloïse le Moal (Grn)
Cylina Porch (SNP)
May 2022 first preferences Lab 3297 SNP 2901 Grn 2138 C 1364 LD 388 Alba 81 Freedom Alliance 62
March 2021 by-election SNP 2084 Lab 1836 Grn 1200 C 1084 LD 259 UKIP 33; final Lab 2927 SNP 2812
May 2017 first preferences SNP 3607 C 2336 Lab 1848 Grn 1727 LD 889 Ind 109
Previous results in detail
Kilgrimol
Fylde council, Lancashire; caused by the resignation of independent councillor Tim Armit.
We now travel to the west coast of England and to a ward which recalls a half-forgotten name of long ago; because nothing now remains of the village of Kilgrimol except myth and legend.
Kilgrimol is an Old Norse name, referring to a church on the site of an ancient burial mound associated with a Norseman called Grim. It was located somewhere on the Fylde peninsula. Depending on who's telling the story, Kilgrimol was variously buried beneath the sand dunes, swallowed up by the Irish Sea following a storm or destroyed in an earthquake; none of which look like particularly likely explanations to the modern eye. Legend has it that the church bells or the monks' chants can still be heard on the eve of the winter solstice, or that coffins from the drowned churchyard would wash up on the shore from time to time in days gone by.
Modern-day scholars have identified Kilgrimol with Cross Slack, a hamlet which took its name from a cross erected around 1199 to mark the northern boundary of the parish of Lytham. This was never a large place, and its 19th-century census returns all record six or fewer households. By the time of the 1911 census just one house remained at Cross Slack, which was home to the Fisher and Steer families: the head of the household was employed as a greenkeeper and golf professional for St Anne's Old Links golf club, whose course had essentially swallowed up the hamlet and the surrounding land. All of Cross Slack's buildings are now gone, and the site of the cross and the old Kilgrimol cemetery are understood to lie under the 10th fairway.
Ironically, when Kilgrimol ward was created in 2023 its boundaries did not include St Anne's Old Links golf club. Instead, we have a narrow ward running along the coastal strip from St Annes town centre to Squires Gate, which is the point where Lytham now ends and Blackpool begins. Squires Gate has seen a fair amount of redevelopment in recent years, with the old Blackpool Pontins holiday camp having been turned into a housing estate. Blackpool FC's training ground is also here.
The ward also has an eastern extension which is dominated by the runway, the apron and what's left of the buildings of Blackpool Airport. This was a reasonably busy small airport, with regular international flights to Dublin, the Isle of Man and to holiday destinations in Spain and Portugal. Its then owners Balfour Beatty closed the airport down in 2014, but it reopened shortly afterwards under new ownership. Scheduled passenger flights have not returned, but Blackpool is a regular destination for private jets and it is kept busy year-round by helicopter traffic to and from the Irish Sea's oil and gas rigs.
Before 2023 this area was the seafront parts of the former Ashton and St Leonards wards of Lytham St Annes, which had notably old age profiles. In the 2021 census Ashton was in the top 100 wards in England and Wales for residents aged 85 or over. The name of Ashton ward refers to Ashton Gardens, which lie in this ward and were gifted to Lytham St Annes by the first Lord Ashton. James Williamson, as he was born, was a Lancastrian who had made a very large fortune from his family's linoleum business, and he served as Liberal MP for Lancaster from 1886 to 1895 before being elevated to the peerage in Lord Rosebery's resignation honours. This led to claims from the Duke of Devonshire, the leader of the Liberal Unionist Party, that Ashton had bought his peerage: everyone involved denied this, but Ashton was never able to shake off the accusation and he ended his days as something of a recluse.
Lytham St Annes is one of the very few areas of northern England to have a Conservative MP, a Conservative district council and a Conservative county council: as well as Lancashire county council, the Tories run Fylde district council and represent the Fylde constituency, which both have Lytham St Annes as their principal town. The main opposition to the Conservatives on Fylde council is independent councillors, and the district's electoral map is unusual in that the Conservative councillors are concentrated in Lytham St Annes while the independents tend to represent rural areas.
The outgoing councillor Tim Armit was St Annes-based but had a foot in both the Tory and independent camps. He was first elected to Fylde council in 2011 as a Conservative councillor for Kilnhouse ward in Lytham St Annes, lost his seat in 2015, returned in 2019 as an independent councillor for Ashton ward, and then transferred to Kilgrimol ward following boundary changes in 2023. Shares of the vote here last year were 40% for Armit, 37% for the Conservatives who won the ward's other seat, and 23% for Labour. The ward is part of the St Annes North division of Lancashire county council, which was safe Conservative when it was last contested in 2021.
Tim Armit tendered his resignation from Fylde council in October, partly due to taking up a new job in London and partly out of clear frustration with the running of the council. His resignation statement recounted that many of his fellow councillors "attend a lot of meetings, drink tea, eat biscuits and sit in silence for years", and he called for local government reform. Rumour has it that the new government may be thinking along similar lines. But any likely local government reform in this corner of Lancashire would probably result in Lytham St Annes being annexed by Blackpool, and saying that this would go down locally like a cup of cold sick does not come close to conveying the scale of local opinion towards that particular idea. If there is any substance in this rumour, buy shares in pitchfork manufacturers.
There is no independent candidate standing to succeed Armit, so we have a free-for-all! The Conservatives have selected Karen Harrison, who is the deputy mayor of Lytham St Annes and was an unsuccessful candidate for the redrawn Ashton ward last year; her husband Gavin is Kilgrimol ward's current Conservative councillor as well as being the present mayor of Lytham St Annes. Labour's Hannah Lane is a former civil servant who now runs her own business. Also standing are representatives of two parties who didn't stand here in 2023, Christine Marshall for the Lib Dems and Gus Scott for Reform UK - who have performed well in recent by-elections on the Fylde peninsula.
Parliamentary constituency: Fylde
Lancashire county council division: St Annes North
ONS Travel to Work Area: Blackpool
Postcode districts: FY4, FY8
Karen Harrison (C)
Hannah Lane (Lab)
Christine Marshall (LD)
Gus Scott (RUK)
May 2023 result Ind 573 C 525/377 Lab 333
Previous results in detail
Splott
Cardiff council, Glamorgan; caused by the death of Labour councillor Jane Henshaw.
For our last Welsh by-election of 2024 we have come to the capital city. Splott was the birthplace of the now-retired Mastermind and Today programme presenter John Humphrys, while Dame Shirley Bassey grew up here. This was a steelworking centre created by the industrial revolution, and even today almost the entire housing stock is late-Victorian terracing. The Splott division also includes the severely deprived Tremorfa area, further out of town.
This column was last in Splott eleven years ago today, to cover a by-election following the resignation of Luke Holland who had been the press officer for the Welsh Labour Party. The Lib Dems ran a close second on that occasion, but their vote in Cardiff has since collapsed and Splott ward is now safe Labour. In 2022 a Labour slate including the council leader Huw Thomas won 65% of the vote here, with second place going to a joint slate of Plaid Cymru and Green candidates which polled 14%. This by-election follows the death in September of the Lord Mayor of Cardiff, Jane Henshaw, who had served Splott ward since 2017.
In the Welsh and UK Parliaments Splott is part of two different constituencies which are both called Cardiff South and Penarth. The Westminster MP since a 2012 by-election has been Stephen Doughty, who is a junior Foreign Office minister. The Senedd member for Cardiff South and Penarth since 2011 has been Vaughan Gething, who recently had his fifteen minutes of fame as First Minister of Wales and once represented the neighbouring Butetown ward on Cardiff council. Both Doughty and Gething have safe Labour seats.
Defending this by-election for Labour is Angharad "Anny" Anderson, who is the daughter of the late Jane Henshaw; she had been supporting her late mother in civic events in the role of Lady Mayoress. The Plaid Cymru/Green pact in Cardiff now appears to have broken down and those two parties are standing separate candidates: the Greens' Sam Coates contested Gabalfa ward in 2022, while Plaid's Leticia Gonzalez is originally from Argentina and has lived in Cardiff since 2018. Also standing are Tomos Llewelyn for the Conservatives, Cadan ap Tomos for the Liberal Democrats, Kyle Cullen for Propel (a group associated with Cardiff councillor and former Plaid Cymru MS Neil McEvoy) and Lee Canning for Reform UK, who will not be helped by having "address in Vale of Glamorgan" next to his name on the ballot paper.
Westminster constituency: Cardiff South and Penarth
Senedd constituency: Cardiff South and Penarth
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cardiff
Postcode districts: CF10, CF24
Anny Anderson (Lab)
Cadan ap Tomos (LD)
Lee Canning (RUK)
Sam Coates (Grn)
Kyle Cullen (Propel)
Leticia Gonzalez (PC)
Tomos Llewelyn (C)
May 2022 result Lab 2079/2058/1984 PC/Grn 437/342/287 C 280/262/256 LD 173/141 Propel 137 TUSC 87
Previous results in detail
Cholsey
South Oxfordshire council; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Ben Manning.
Our two remaining by-elections today are for wards in the Thames Valley. Literally so in the case of Cholsey ward, which covers the west bank of the River Thames to both the north and the south of Wallingford; the Thames-side village of Moulsford lies within the ward. Cholsey is the ward's railhead, lying on a junction between the Great Western main line and the preserved Cholsey and Wallingford railway. This village is the burial-place of Dame Agatha Christie, whose gravestone here identifies her by her married surname of Mallowan.
Other villages within Cholsey ward include East and West Hagbourne to the south of Didcot, and Brightwell-cum-Sotwell to the north of Wallingford. Here can found the country house of Brightwell Manor, which was once home to the theologian and dean of St Paul's W R Inge who was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Dean Inge was no lover of democracy, so no doubt he would disapprove of the entire purpose of this column. Brightwell Manor is now owned by the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who bought it in 2023.
Rather than these titans of English literature, I'll highlight here the poet John Masefield. For a time during the First World War Masefield lived at Lollingdon Farm in Cholsey, and he was inspired by that setting to write a series of sonnets and other poems which were published in 1917 under the name of Lollingdon Downs.
You are too beautiful for mortal eyes,
You the divine unapprehended soul;
The red worm in the marrow of the wise
Stirs as you pass, but never sees you whole.Even as the watcher in the midnight tower
Knows from a change in heaven an unseen star,
So from your beauty, so from the summer flower,
So from the light, one guesses what you are.So in the darkness does the traveller come
To some lit chink, through which he cannot see,
More than a light, nor hear, more than a hum,
Of the great hall where Kings in council be.So, in the grave, the red and mouthless worm
Knows of the soul that held his body firm.
This southern corner of Oxfordshire has swung hard to the Liberal Democrats over recent electoral cycles. South Oxfordshire council used to be Conservative-run, but they have only one seat left now. In 2023 the Liberal Democrats won an overall majority on South Oxfordshire council, but they continue to run the council in coalition with the Green Party with whom they have an electoral pact in the district. This pact did not extend to the recent general election, but that didn't stop the Lib Dems from gaining the Didcot and Wantage parliamentary seat which covers Cholsey ward. The MP here is Olly Glover, who came to Parliament from a career in railway operations management; he defeated the outgoing Conservative MP for Wantage David Johnston.
Cholsey ward is part of the Lib Dem majority on South Oxfordshire council, with the ward giving 46% to the Lib Dem slate last year against 26% for an independent candidate and 23% for the Conservatives. In Oxfordshire county council elections Brightwell-cum-Sotwell is part of the Wallingford county division, which was gained by the Green Party in a 2019 by-election and where the Lib Dems do not stand. The rest of Cholsey ward is divided between two divisions which both voted Conservative in 2021, although the Lib Dems were close in Benson and Cholsey last time.
Councillor Ben Manning was first elected here in 2023, and he quit the council in October due to business commitments. Defending the resulting by-election for the Lib Dems is Crispin Topping, who lives in East Hagbourne and is a chartered surveyor. There is one independent candidate, Karen Shoobridge, who gives an address in Wallingford. The Conservative candidate is Alan Thompson, a Didcot-based former South Oxfordshire councillor and former Oxfordshire county councillor who lost his seats in 2023 and 2021 respectively. Also standing are Kym Pomlett for the Social Democratic Party and Jim Broadbent for Labour. This column likes to highlight pubs which do their democratic duty by serving as polling stations, so a shoutout is due to the Crown in South Moreton.
Parliamentary constituency: Didcot and Wantage
Oxfordshire county council division: Benson and Cholsey (Cholsey and Moulsford parishes), Didcot East and Hagbourne (Aston Tirrold, Aston Upthorpe, East Hagbourne, South Moreton and West Hagbourne parishes), Wallingford (Brightwell-cum-Sotwell parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Oxford
Postcode districts: OX10, OX11, RG8
Jim Broadbent (Lab)
Kym Pomlett (SDP)
Karen Shoobridge (Ind)
Alan Thompson (C)
Crispin Topping (LD)
May 2023 result LD 1624/1387 Ind 912 C 808/697 SDP 188
May 2019 result C 1158/943 LD 1085 Lab 663/573
May 2015 result C 2151/1746 Ind 1323 LD 810 Lab 683/539 Grn 567 UKIP 559/455
Previous results in detail
Shinfield
Wokingham council, Berkshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Sarah Bell.
We finish this week further down the Thames valley. The village of Shinfield lies just off the southern edge of Reading, from which it is divided by the M4 motorway. Shinfield ward also includes part of the built-up area of Reading, whose borough boundaries are woefully out of date: the Reading-Wokingham boundary here still cuts through the houses of Whitley Wood in a way which makes little sense on the ground.
Much of the part of Shinfield ward north of the motorway was once RAF Shinfield Park, which was not an airfield: the Royal Air Force used it for headquarters and administration until they moved out in 1977. By then the site had been taken over by the Met Office College, and meteorology is still important to Shinfield's economy today: within this ward is the headquarters of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Although that building isn't as busy as it used to be, with the Shinfield centre's EU project work being moved to Bonn in 2020 as a Brexit dividend. Also here is the brutalist Shire Hall, built in the 1980s as the headquarters of Berkshire county council; but that council was abolished in the 1980s, and the Shire Hall is now offices for the engineering firm Wood Group.
Perhaps because of the amount of land available and its proximity to the M4 motorway, Shinfield has seriously attracted the attention of developers in recent years. To the south of the motorway, and close to Shinfield village itself, we find the Thames Valley Science Park run by the University of Reading, the Archaelogical Research Collection of the British Museum, and the 18 sound stages of Shinfield Studios, with further research buildings for the Natural History Museum currently on the drawing-board. Both the British Museum building and the studios were officially finished this year, although Shinfield Studios has been open for business for a few years now: film and TV productions already made here include the Star Wars universe TV series The Acolyte, the fourth Ghostbusters film and the forthcoming revival of the ITV gameshow You Bet!, which was recorded here in September and will hit your TV screens on Saturday.
The business rates from all this accrue to Wokingham council, which the Liberal Democrats currently run on the mayoral casting vote after they failed to win a majority here in 2024. All-out elections to Wokingham council in May, with new ward boundaries, returned 27 Liberal Democrat councillors against 19 Conservatives and 8 Labour.
The boundary changes created the present Shinfield ward, as a merger of the single-member Shinfield North ward with Shinfield village from Shinfield South ward. Shinfield South had been part of the Lib Dem advance in recent years but Shinfield North was a Labour gain from Conservative at its last election in 2023, and the combined ward turned into a Labour versus Conservative fight. When the votes came out of the boxes in May the Labour slate polled 44% and won two seats, the Conservatives polled 39% and won one seat, and the Lib Dems trailed in third with 18%.
Two months later, boundary changes at Parliamentary level transferred Shinfield out of John Redwood's Wokingham seat and into a brand-new constituency called Earley and Woodley, which is based on Reading's eastern suburbs. This similarly turned into a Labour versus Conservative fight, with Labour's Yuan Yang prevailing by the narrow margin of 848 votes. Yang was the first person born in China to be elected as a British MP - her parents moved to northern England when she was four years old - and before she joined the green benches she was the Europe-China correspondent for the Financial Times.
A marginal ward in a marginal Parliamentary seat will be difficult for Labour to defend following the resignation of Sarah Bell, for personal reasons, after just four months in office. This defence falls to Becca Brown, who is fighting her first election campaign: she gives an address in Spencers Wood, which is part of Shinfield parish but not within this ward. The Conservatives have selected Jackie Rance, who represented Shinfield South ward from 2021 to 2024: she lost re-election here in May. Another former Shinfield South ward councillor on the ballot is Chris Johnson of the Lib Dems: he contested Spencers Wood and Swallowfield ward in May rather than standing here. Gary Shacklady completes the ballot paper for the Green Party.
Parliamentary constituency: Earley and Woodley
ONS Travel to Work Area: Reading
Postcode districts: RG2, RG7
Becca Brown (Lab)
Chris Johnson (LD)
Jackie Rance (C)
Gary Shacklady (Grn)
May 2024 result Lab 997/923/867 C 881/868/855 LD 405/397/253
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