Previewing the ten local by-elections of 10th July 2025
"All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order"
Ten by-elections on 10th July 2025, Super Thursday:
Woking South
Surrey county council; and
Hoe Valley
Woking council, Surrey; both caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Will Forster.
Of the ten seats up for election this week, the Lib Dems are defending four, Labour two, the Conservatives and Greens one each, and the other two are free-for-alls. Two of the Lib Dem defences today have been triggered by the resignation of the same councillor, and that brings this column back to what has been a common theme of the last political year: by-elections have been triggered by MPs who were newly elected in the 2024 general election resigning their previous council seats.
There were over 100 of these polls in the first 12 months of the current Parliament, and here are two more. These are to replace Will Forster who was elected last year as the first Liberal Democrat MP for Woking, resoundingly defeating the previous Conservative MP Jonathan Lord at his third attempt on the seat.
Forster has now vacated his seats both on Surrey county council and on Woking council, where he was mayor of the borough in 2018-19. These are bodies with very different political profiles. Surrey county council has a Conservative majority, mainly because it last went to the polls in 2021 and is yet to fully experience the Tory collapse of the intervening four years.
The 2025 Surrey county elections were postponed pending local government reorganisation, which is seen as urgent here because of the dire financial position of a number of district councils in the county. This column has previously mentioned the debts racked up by Spelthorne council on a number of occasions, partly because Spelthorne council tends to generate a lot of by-elections. We haven't previously said so much about Woking council which is even further in the red, with the Commissioners having been sent in in May 2023 to try and reduce debts estimated at over £2,000 million. Over the following two years the council has banned non-essential spending, cut services and increased its council tax by 9.9% in April 2024, but it still looks likely that central government will have to bail it out at some point.
The electors of Woking have been pretty clear as to who they blame for this: that would be the previous Conservative administration which ran up all this debt in the first place. Woking council - which has the same boundaries as the Woking parliamentary seat - is now a Tory-free zone, with the latest composition having 23 Liberal Democrat councillors plus this vacancy against five independents and a Labour councillor.
Both the county division and the district ward up today are safe Lib Dem units now, but the outgoing councillor Will Forster had originally gained both his county and district council seats from the Conservatives. He had been the county councillor for Woking South since 2009. In its current guise Woking South extends south from the town's railway station along the road and railway line towards Guildford, taking in the suburbs of Westfield and Mayford together with Worplesdon railway station and the more rural village of Sutton Green. In 2021 Forster enjoyed a 58-26 lead over the Conservatives here.
In May 2011 Forster - listed by the Local Elections Archive Project under his full name of William Forster-Warner - joined Woking council by gaining the Kingsfield and Westfield ward from the Conservatives. This was redrawn in 2016 as Hoe Valley ward, taking in Woking Park and Westfield from the South county division together with Old Woking and a marshy, low-lying area to the east from the Woking South East county division (which still has a Conservative county councillor). The ward is named after the Hoe Stream, which mostly forms the ward's western and northern boundary.
At the last Woking council elections in 2024 the Lib Dems were defending two seats in this ward due to a casual vacancy, and they crushed the Conservative slate 71-16. This margin will have been inflated a bit by a personal vote for Forster, who was re-elected for his fifth term of office more than 250 votes ahead of his running-mate. The ward and county division boundaries completely fail to match up here, but all three wards covering part of Woking South division had big Lib Dem leads in 2024.
One of Forster's former Woking council ward colleagues in Hoe Valley is Louise Morales, who is now seeking to step up to county level as the defending Lib Dem candidate for the Woking South by-election. Morales, who was mayor of Woking in 2024-25, is a self-employed gardener. For the county by-election the Conservatives have selected Martin Benstead, who was on their slate for Hoe Valley ward last year and finished behind his running-mate from lower down the ballot paper - this is not normally a promising sign. Also standing in the county by-election are Sean O'Malley for Labour, Paul Hoekstra for the Greens and Richard Barker for Reform UK.
To defend the Hoe Valley by-election the Lib Dems have selected Deborah Hughes, who was previously a councillor for this ward from 2016 until she stood down in 2022 and is now seeking to return. The Conservatives' Robert Kwiatkowski, who came to the UK from his native Poland around a decade ago, is a writer, tutor, volunteer, event organiser and law student. Also standing here are Samar Chaudhary for Labour, Sean Flude for Reform UK and Paul Hoekstra again for the Greens.
Woking South
Parliamentary constituency: Woking
Woking council wards: Heathlands (part), Hoe Valley (part), Mount Hermon (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Guildford and Aldershot
Postcode districts: GU3, GU4, GU22
Richard Barker (RUK)
Martin Benstead (C)
Paul Hoekstra (Grn)
Louise Morales (LD)
Sean O'Malley (Lab)
May 2021 result LD 2747 C 1210 Lab 360 Grn 327 Heritage Party 94
May 2017 result LD 2271 C 1423 Lab 343 UKIP 193
May 2013 result LD 1449 C 963 UKIP 575 Lab 270 Peace Party 75
Previous results in detail
Hoe Valley
Parliamentary constituency: Woking
Surrey county council division: Woking South (part), Woking South East (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Guildford and Aldershot
Postcode district: GU22
Samar Chaudhary (Lab)
Sean Flude (RUK)
Paul Hoekstra (Grn)
Deborah Hughes (LD)
Robert Kwiatkowski (C)
May 2024 double vacancy LD 1569/1311 C 358/298 Lab 273/239
May 2023 result LD 1477 C 347 Lab 199 Grn 153
May 2022 result LD 1506 C 484 Lab 221 Grn 148
May 2021 result LD 1451 C 586 Lab 187 Grn 136 Heritage Party 59
May 2019 result LD 1147 C 374 Lab 204 UKIP 159 Grn 137
May 2018 result LD 1096 C 739 Lab 312 UKIP 86
May 2016 result LD 1126/1022/967 C 614/567/506 UKIP 322/315 Lab 276/275/249
Previous results in detail
Bookham East and Eastwick Park
Mole Valley council, Surrey; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Paul Kennedy.
Staying within Surrey, we travel east to another district which has been the subject of a Lib Dem takeover in the last few years. Like Woking, Mole Valley now has an impregnable Liberal Democrat majority: the latest composition has 30 Lib Dem councillors plus this vacancy against 6 Ashtead Independents and 2 Conservatives.
The villages of Great Bookham, Little Bookham and Fetcham, on the road and railway line to the west of Leatherhead, have merged together over the years into a single urban area. Part of this is due to the development in the 1950s of Eastwick Park, which was previously a country house and associated estate built for the Howards of Effingham family. By 1924 the house had been turned into a boys' school (except during the Second World War when Canadian soldiers were accommodated here), but it was demolished in 1958 to make way for the new development. The housing ends at Polesden Lacey primary school, after which the ward extends south into North Downs countryside much of which is part of the Surrey Hills National Landscape.
This electoral ward was created for the 2023 Mole Valley council elections, when the number of wards covering Bookham and Fetcham was reduced from four to three. It has been safely Lib Dem at both polls to date, with the 2024 Mole Valley elections here giving 63% for the Lib Dems and 31% for the Conservatives. The ward has no obvious predecessor, but the former Bookham North ward normally voted Conservative up to 2019 while Bookham South was closely fought between the Conservatives and Lib Dems. Most of Bookham East and Eastwick Park ward is part of the Bookham and Fetcham West division of Surrey county council, which voted Conservative in 2021 with the Lib Dems close behind; a small corner is in Leatherhead and Fetcham East which was safe Conservative in 2021. The local Dorking and Horley parliamentary seat was gained from the Conservatives in 2024 by Lib Dem MP Chris Coghlan, whose recent support for assisted dying legislation appears to have got him excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.
Today's by-election is to replace Lib Dem councillor Paul Kennedy, who was first elected for Fetcham West ward in 2016 and transferred here in 2023 following boundary changes. Kennedy was the Lib Dem's parliamentary candidate for Mole Valley in 2015, 2017 and 2019 and he stood in the Ayr constituency in 2024. He now lives in Cornwall, where in May's local elections Kennedy was elected unopposed to St Ives town council and stood unsuccessfully for election to Cornwall council.
Defending this seat for the Lib Dems is Lawrence Penney, a retired accountant who has been involved for many years in the running of the Bookham tennis club. The Conservatives' Louise Calland is back for another go after finishing second here last year: Calland is a former member of Wandsworth council in London, representing Northcote ward in Wandsworth from 2018 to 2022 (she was originally elected there under her previous surname of Nathanson), and she was the Conservative candidate for Hemsworth in the 2019 general election and for Merton and Wandsworth in the 2021 London Assembly elections. Also standing here are Gerard Bolton for the Green Party and Richard Granville for Reform UK.
Parliamentary constituency: Dorking and Horley
Surrey county council division: Bookham and Fetcham West (most), Leatherhead and Fetcham East (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Crawley
Postcode districts: KT22, KT23
Gerard Bolton (Grn)
Louise Calland (C)
Richard Granville (RUK)
Lawrence Penney (LD)
May 2024 result LD 1426 C 696 Grn 101 Lab 56 May 2023 result LD 1577/1568/1467 C 994/834/800 Grn 176 Lab 80
Previous results in detail
Horam and Punnetts Town
Wealden council, East Sussex; caused by the resignation of Green Party councillor Cornelie Usborne.
Our tour of the south-east continues with a trip to East Sussex. Here we find Horam, a village in the High Weald which lies south of Heathfield on the road towards Hailsham; while Punnett's Town (which seems to be variously spelled with or without an apostrophe) is located east of Heathfield on the road towards Battle. The ward covers a number of other tiny settlements, most of which are within the High Weald National Landscape and originally grew out of the Wealden iron industry, from Broad Oak in the north (the ward's second-largest settlement after Horam) to Cowbeech in the south. Appropriately given the presence of a village here called Vine(')s Cross, there is a vineyard in this ward: Hidden Spring, located just to the east of Horam, has received positive reviews for its still and sparkling wines.
This ward was created in 2019 as a merger of the former Horam ward with most of the former Heathfield East ward. Both predecessor wards were both so strongly Conservative that they were often left uncontested at local election time, so it must have been a shock to the local Conservatives when this ward fell as part of the Tory rout on Wealden council in 2023. The two outgoing Conservative councillors Bob Bowdler and Susan Stedman both lost their seats to the Green Party, being thumped by 65-35 in a straight fight; and the Tories are now in third place on Wealden council. This is run by a Green-Lib Dem coalition, making Wealden one of 13 local authorities across the country which are under Green Party leadership.
The outgoing Green councillor Cornelie Usborne was a history professor at Roehampton University in London before entering elected politics. She had also stood here in 2019 and at the last East Sussex county elections in 2021, coming a close second to Bowdler as the Conservatives held the Wealden East division. However, the Greens finished fifth in the Sussex Weald constituency at last year's general election, with Conservative MP Nus Ghani being re-elected comfortably enough against split opposition. Following the 2024 election Ghani became Chairman of Ways and Means, the senior Deputy Speaker of the Commons, which by custom means that she presides over the Budget speech.
With Usborne having resigned her council seat due to "unexpected, difficult personal problems", the Green Party have to defend this by-election in Horam and Punnetts Town. Their candidate is Diane Gould, a Pearly Queen who runs a smallholding in the ward: she previously also ran a fishery until its stock was wiped out last year by water pollution. The Conservatives have reselected Susan Stedman, who was the district councillor for Horam ward from 2003 to 2019 and then represented Horam and Punnetts Town from 2019 to 2023; Stedman is seeking to return to the council after losing her seat to the Greens two years ago. This time there will not be a straight fight, with Hailsham town councillor Barry Carpenter standing as an independent candidate (possibly with Lib Dem support, given that his election agent is a Lib Dem councillor) and Stephen Potts contesting the seat for Reform UK.
Parliamentary constituency: Sussex Weald
East Sussex county council division: Wealden East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Tunbridge Wells (Punnets Town parish ward of Heathfield parish), Eastbourne (Horam and Warbleton parishes and Trolliloes parish ward of Herstmonceux parish)
Postcode districts: BN27, TN19, TN21
Barry Carpenter (Ind)
Diane Gould (Grn)
Stephen Potts (RUK)
Susan Stedman (C)
May 2023 result Grn 1720/1697 C 933/812
May 2019 result C 989/913 Ind 730 Grn 700 Lab 256/199
Previous results in detail
Wroxall, Lowtherville and Bonchurch
Isle of Wight council; caused by the resignation of independent councillor Rodney Downer.
We now travel offshore for the first independent defence of the week, which is to the Isle of Wight council. The cumbersomely-named ward of Wroxall, Lowtherville and Bonchurch lies in the island's south-east corner: Bonchurch and Lowtherville are respectively eastern and northern suburbs of Ventnor, while the village of Wroxall lies in downland to the north of the town. In between is the 242-metre summit of St Boniface Down, which is the highest point on the island and commands a view of much of the English Channel on a clear day. The B-road through Wroxall was for some time recently the only way in or out of Ventnor following a major landslip at Bonchurch in December 2023, although the main road to Shanklin over the top of the landslip has now reopened.
The Isle of Wight council elections in 2025 were cancelled on the grounds of pending local government reorganisation, which is a rather bizarre decision given that the only possible local government reform here would involve either splitting the island up or creating a cross-Solent council. Neither of these are options which make much sense.
Cross-Solent parliamentary seats have been repeatedly rejected by the Parliamentary Boundary Commission as a way of dealing with the island also being an awkward case on their criteria: its electorate is in the annoying range of being very large for one MP but not really big enough for two. Change did come to the island's general elections in 2024 when the Isle of Wight was split into two very undersized constituencies, with this ward placed in Isle of Wight East. That new seat was won by the Conservatives last year. Wight native Joe Robertson MP, who has just come to the end of his first year in office, was a legal adviser to the charity Dementia UK before his election.
The obvious options for local government reorganisation here might look infeasible at first sight, but on the other hand the island's political culture in recent years clearly hasn't been conducive to stable government. Control of the Isle of Wight council has lurched between Conservative and independent leadership at each of the last four elections - and the fact that no fewer than three separate localist parties won seats here at the last Wight elections suggests that the independent councillors may have had some trouble playing nicely with each other.
The 2021 Wight council elections returned 18 Conservative councillors, 13 independents, 2 for the Green Party, 2 for the Island Independent Network and one each for Labour, the Lib Dems, "Our Island" and the Vectis Party. In 2022 the Conservative councillor for Brighstone, Calbourne and Shalfleet resigned and the Lib Dems gained the resulting by-election. In February 2023 the Vectis Party councillor Daryll Pitcher was jailed for 27 months for raping a girl while he was a teenager, although he didn't actually send a resignation letter from his prison cell until July of that year; once he was finally off the council, the Lib Dems gained the resulting by-election in Wootton Bridge ward. Three by-elections were held on the island on 1st May, with two of them (in Central Rural and Lake North) being Reform UK gains from Conservative councillors. Add defections into the mix, and the latest Isle of Wight council composition doesn't bear much resemblance to what the people voted for four years ago: there are now 14 Conservative councillors, 11 councillors in the Alliance Group which runs the island as a rather precarious minority and which includes the Green Party, Island Independent Network and Our Island councillors, 4 Lib Dems, 3 councillors in the Empowering Islanders group, 2 other independents who are not part of the Alliance Group, 2 Reform UK, 1 Labour, 1 Independent Socialist and this vacant seat.
Which brings us to this by-election to replace long-serving independent councillor Rodney Downer, who was first elected in 2009 for Godshill and Wroxall ward before transferring here following boundary changes in 2021. Downer had a strong personal vote in Wroxall in particular, and he was elected for his final term in 2021 with a 67-20 lead over the Conservatives. He indicated in his resignation statement that he was not willing to serve for another year following the postponement of the scheduled 2025 Wight council elections.
Downer's retirement has officially left a free-for-all in this by-election, because no new candidate has come forward with the independent label. In practice he was part of the ruling Alliance Group on the council, which means that the defending candidate is Mark Jeffries, a Ventnor town councillor who works in the building trade. Jefferies, who contested Ventnor and St Lawrence ward in 2021, is standing with the nomination of the Island Independent Network. (Technically this is one of a number of localist parties across the country which share a single "Independent Network" party registration; the Electoral Commission's records show that the Independent Network is led by Lincolnshire Independents figure Marianne Overton and it has a postal address in Hertford.) In an interesting move the Conservatives have selected David Groocock, a Ventnor hotelier who was last seen on a ballot paper when he was an independent candidate for Isle of Wight East at last year's general election. Also standing are Christopher Lloyd for Labour, Rachel Lambert for the Lib Dems, Bill Nigh for Reform UK and Graham Perks (a former councillor for Ventnor East ward, elected for UKIP in 2013 and for the Conservatives in 2017) for the Vectis Party, which appears to be trying to make a political comeback now that Daryll Pitcher has served his prison sentence. Pitcher is himself disqualified from being a councillor until 2033 due to being on the sex offenders' register, but that hasn't stopped him from being appointed as Perks' election agent.
Parliamentary constituency: Isle of Wight East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Isle of Wight
Postcode district: PO38
David Groocock (C)
Mark Jefferies (Island Ind Network)
Rachel Lambert (LD)
Christopher Lloyd (Lab)
Bill Nigh (RUK)
Graham Perks (Vectis Party)
May 2021 result Ind 862 C 259 Lab 157
Previous results in detail
Botley and Sunningwell
Vale of White Horse council, Oxfordshire; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Debby Hallett.
Our tour of England's south-east comes to an end to the west of Oxford. Botley is effectively an Oxford suburb on the far side of the River Thames, which divides into a number of channels here which are crossed by the only road west from Oxford city centre. It has effectively merged with the older village of North Hinksey, which lies just to the south; the combined parish of Botley and North Hinksey accounts for 77% of this ward's electorate. The village is an important junction on the UK's road network, with main roads running north from here towards the Midlands, south towards the Solent and west towards Swindon.
The Botley and Sunningwell ward also includes three other parishes in a long and thin shape to the west of Oxford. At the southern end of the ward is Sunningwell parish, which takes in a number of hamlets to the north of Abingdon plus the summit of Boars Hill, from where Matthew Arnold saw the view that inspired him to write (in his 1865 poem Thyrsis) of Oxford's dreaming spires. So many people then settled in Boars Hill on the basis of that poem that many of those views are now blocked by housing; but some of those vistas still survive.
To the north is the small village of Wytham in the bend of the river . Here can be found Wytham Woods, which are owned by Oxford University who conduct research on climate change and zoology there. In particular, Wytham Woods is the subject of long-term monitoring of great tits.
Mind, when it comes to election time perhaps yellowhammers would be more appropriate, because this area is in the hands of the Liberal Democrats at all levels of government. Since 2017 the MP here has been the Lib Dems' Layla Moran, who represents the Oxford West and Abingdon constituency and now chairs the Commons' health and social care committee. In the county elections two months ago the county divisions of North Hinksey, which covers most of this ward, and Kennington and Radley were both safely in the Lib Dem column as the party took overall control of Oxfordshire county council. And Vale of White Horse council, which is the local authority here, is a Tory-free zone with a large Liberal Democrat majority; Botley and Sunningwell ward is no exception to that, and the 2023 elections here returned the Lib Dem slate with a 64-18 lead over the Conservatives.
So the Liberal Democrats probably shouldn't worry too much following the retirement from politics of long-serving councillor Debby Hallett, who was first elected in 2011 for the predecessor ward of North Hinksey and Wytham. The party's defending candidate Ben Potter is described as having a background in engineering. The Conservatives have selected Charlotte Adlung, who was last seen on a ballot paper in the 2021 Oxfordshire county elections when she contested Abingdon North. Only one other candidate has come forward: that's Thomas Gaston for the Green Party.
Parliamentary constituency: Oxford West and Abingdon
Oxfordshire county council elections: Kennington and Radley (South Hinksey and Sunningwell parishes), North Hinksey (Botley and North Hinksey, and Wytham parishes)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Oxford
Postcode districts: OX1, OX2, OX13
Charlotte Adlung (C)
Thomas Gaston (Grn)
Ben Potter (LD)
May 2023 result LD 1184/1155 C 327/316 Lab 323/284 Grn 27
May 2019 result LD 1336/1329 C 338/319 Grn 288 Lab 271/222
May 2014 result LD 1521/1387 C 1106/893 Lab 643 UKIP 403
Previous results in detail
Northway
Tewkesbury council, Gloucestershire; caused by the death of independent councillor Elaine MacTiernan.
We now cross from the Thames valley to the Severn valley, as we come to what is still the Tewkesbury council area. Tewkesbury itself is a rather small corner of its district, and last year the council voted to change its name to "North Gloucestershire" with effect from December 2024. However, with the future of the council up in the air this change was first postponed to March 2025, then scrapped altogether by January's full council meeting.
Northway is effectively an eastern suburb of Tewkesbury which declared independence in 2008 to become a parish of its own. Northway ward and parish has a rectangular shape, with the county boundary to the north, the A46 road to the south, the M5 motorway to the west and the Birmingham-Gloucester railway line to the east; here can be found Ashchurch for Tewkesbury railway station, which is served mostly by local trains between Gloucester and Worcester. The part of the ward next to the motorway junction and railway station is given over to industry, with housing to the north.
Northway ward has returned councillors from all three of the main Westminster parties this century, but since 2011 the Conservatives have had the upper hand here in Tewkesbury council elections. Elaine MacTiernan had served continuously since then and Pauline Godwin had been her ward colleague since 2015. Both of them were originally Conservative councillors and Godwin is still in that party, but in 2023 MacTiernan sought re-election as an independent candidate and she topped the poll in a rather fragmented result; vote shares were 31% for MacTiernan, 24% each for the Conservatives and the Lib Dems with Godwin being re-elected by six votes, and 21% for the Labour candidate.
The bad news for the Gloucestershire Conservatives has continued to pile up since then. In 2024 the Conservatives lost the Tewkesbury parliamentary seat to the Lib Dems, with Conservative MP Laurence Robertson being defeated in his attempt to seek an eighth term of office. The new Lib Dem MP Cameron Thomas is a former Royal Air Force officer who had resigned his commission as flight lieutenant in order to enter politics. Two months ago the Liberal Democrats finished one seat short of taking overall control of Gloucestershire county council; their gains in May included the Tewkesbury East division which includes Northway, where the Lib Dems finished 11 votes ahead of Reform UK with the Conservatives - who were defending the seat - placing a poor third.
Elaine MacTiernan passed away in April from cancer, at the age of 77. There is no independent candidate standing to replace here, so we have a genuine free-for-all! The Conservatives, who hold the ward's other seat, have selected Kevin Cromwell who was their losing candidate here in 2023; Cromwell had previously sat on Tewkesbury council in 2015-23 for wards in Tewkesbury town, and he is a former county councillor for the town. Also returning from the 2023 election is the Lib Dems' Guy Fancourt, who is retired from a career in accountancy and horticulture; Fancourt is a Northway parish councillor and he was runner-up here in the 2023 Tewkesbury council election. The Labour candidate Joe Jones is a Tewkesbury town councillor who was an unsuccessful candidate for the county council in May in Tewkesbury West ward. We met Reform UK's Graham Bocking back in May: Bocking was a Conservative member of Tewkesbury council from 2015 to 2023, latterly representing Innsworth ward, and he failed to get his seat back there as a Reform UK candidate in a by-election two months ago despite the facts that that by-election (a) had no Conservative candidate and (b) had been triggered by Innsworth ward's previous Lib Dem councillor being sent down for child sex offences. The Green Party's James Robins completes an all-male ballot paper here in Northway.
Parliamentary constituency: Tewkesbury
Gloucestershire county council division: Tewkesbury East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cheltenham
Postcode district: GL20
Graham Bocking (RUK)
Kevin Cromwell (C)
Guy Fancourt (LD)
Joe Jones (Lab)
James Robins (Grn)
May 2023 result Ind 348 C 275/218 LD 269/187 Lab 233 May 2019 result C 265/258 Lab 165/105 UKIP 165/140 Ind 154/134 LD 89
Previous results in detail
Ranskill
Bassetlaw council, Nottinghamshire; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor David Bamford.
We now come to three by-election in the Midlands and the North, all of which are in wards which have appeared in this column before. Ranskill lies in northern Nottinghamshire, on the East Coast Main Line and the road between Retford and Bawtry. This road was once the Great North Road, and it was part of the A1 into the 1950s; but the modern A1 takes a more westerly route via Blyth to bypass both Retford and Doncaster.
The Ranskill ward also takes in the parishes of Torworth to the south and Mattersey to the east of the railway line. This was once the location of Mattersey Priory, a Gilbertine foundation whose ruins can be seen next to the River Idle around a mile east of the village. A more recent addition is the village of Mattersey Thorpe, which was greatly expanded during the Second World War to house workers at the Ranskill Royal Ordnance Factory which made cordite for the war effort. Most of the ROF site within Ranskill ward has been returned to farmland, but street names in Mattersey Thorpe still betray their 1940s origins due to being named for Second World War figures: here can be found Keyes Close, Winston Green, Wavell Crescent and Bader Rise. (It could have been worse: it could have been Bader Walk.)
Ranskill ward has unchanged boundaries since 2002 and it has returned councillors from all three Westminster parties in that time. Its first councillor was Sean Kerrigan of the Lib Dems, but the Lib Dem vote here collapsed when he retired in 2007 and the seat was gained by Michael Gray of the Conservatives. Gray won three terms of office before seeking re-election for a fourth term in 2019 as an independent candidate; this split the right-wing vote, and Labour candidate Paul Nicholls came through the middle for a surprising win. Nicholls resigned his seat in February 2021 and Labour gave up their seat without a fight in the resulting by-election, with Gerald Bowers recovering the seat for the Conservatives and Gray in second. Bowers stood down at the 2023 Bassetlaw elections, when Ranskill ward was a straight fight between the Conservatives and Labour with the Tories' David Bamford prevailing by 57-43. This puts Ranskill in the opposition group on Bassetlaw council, which has a strong Labour majority.
The Labour group on Bassetlaw council still includes Jo White, who was elected in 2024 as the constituency's Labour MP by defeating the Tories' Brendan Clarke-Smith. She is married to John Mann, who was the previous Labour MP for Bassetlaw from 2001 to 2019; he has served since then as the Government's independent advisor on antisemitism, with a seat in the House of Lords.
Mann has long had a formidable political machine in Bassetlaw, but that didn't stop Labour losing all their Nottinghamshire county council seats in the district in May. Bassetlaw's county councillors are now eight Reform UK and one Conservative. The RUK total includes Misterton division, which covers Ranskill ward and where RUK had a big lead over the Conservatives in May. Which leaves the Tories with a tricky by-election to defend here following the departure later that month of David Bamford, who had been leader of the Conservative group on Bassetlaw council until his resignation.
Bamford has been replaced as the new Conservative group leader by Emma Griffin who represents Tuxford and Trent ward, and the Tories' defending candidate in the Ranskill by-election to fill his council seat is her husband Owen Griffin who runs a logistics firm. The Labour candidate Rhona Collins is straight back on the campaign trail after finishing in third place in Misterton at May's county elections; Collins gives an address in Blyth, where she is a parish councillor. Also standing are the Greens' Margaret Hamilton, Reform UK's Andrew McCallum (who was the only losing Reform UK candidate in the district in May's county elections, coming second to the Conservatives in Retford East), the Lib Dems' Simon Russell and independent candidate and former independent Bassetlaw councillor Mark Watson, who stood in May in a by-election for Beckingham ward without success.
Parliamentary constituency: Bassetlaw
Nottinghamshire county council division: Misterton
ONS Travel to Work Area: Worksop and Retford
Postcode districts: DN10, DN22, S81
Rhona Collins (Lab)
Owen Griffin (C)
Margaret Hamilton (Grn)
Andrew McCallum (C)
Simon Russell (LD)
Mark Watson (Ind)
May 2023 result C 393 Lab 302
May 2021 by-election C 454 Ind 193 LD 74
May 2019 result Lab 278 C 204 Ind 177 LD 45
May 2015 result C 789 Lab 307 LD 156
May 2011 result C 441 Lab 369 LD 53
May 2007 result C 392 Lab 152 LD 141
May 2003 result LD 350 C 247
May 2002 result LD 342 C 248
Previous results in detail
Keppel
Rotherham council, South Yorkshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Carole Foster.
Q15. Which king was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine?
A: Henry I
B: Henry II
C: Richard I
D: Henry V
(Answer at the end.)
That question was asked on 20th November 2000 to Judith Keppel, a garden designer from Fulham who was reportedly struggling for money. At the time, ITV were running a get-rich-quick scheme called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which promised a top prize of One Million Pounds, Cheque, for correctly answering fifteen multiple-choice general knowledge questions. Sounds easy, doesn't it?
Well, not so. It turns out that correctly answering fifteen multiple-choice general knowledge questions isn't as easy at it sounds. In the UK, the top prize has only been paid out six times: to Judith Keppel, David Edwards, Robert Brydges, Pat Gibson, Ingram Wilcox and Donald Fear.
Some of these people have stuck around in quizland. David Edwards went on to play for some years in the Wales team on Radio 4's Round Britain Quiz, and I've had the good fortune to play quiz on his team on a number of occasions. He had previously won the 1990 series of Mastermind, while Gibson went on from his jackpot win to become champion of Mastermind in 2005 and Brain of Britain in 2006. In 2009 Edwards and Gibson played off in the final of the second series of Make Me an Egghead, with Gibson winning to join the ranks of TV's Eggheads. Judith Keppel was on the Eggheads panel from the very beginning, serving for 19 years on the left-hand side of the studio: Keppel, who is now in her 80s, retired for the show's 24th and final series in 2022-23. (This column will talk more about that final series in a few weeks.)
Jackpot questions on Millionaire are rarely short of controversy (cough), and Keppel's win was no exception. Eyebrows were raised at the fact that her million-pound win was scheduled by ITV in direct competition with the series finale of the BBC sitcom One Foot in the Grave, and also at the fact that Judith is a descendant of the people in her final question, Eleanor of Aquitaine and her second husband. I stress the word "second" here because Eleanor had previously married King Louis VII of France, but that didn't make it to the list of possible answers on the screen.
In truth, the second criticism doesn't have much force. If you're living in the UK and you're of European descent, then there's a good chance you're descended from Eleanor of Aquitaine (and her second husband) too. Let's do the maths. You have two parents, who have two parents each, and so on; so, if there are no relationships between cousins in your family tree, then your number of ancestors at each generation back will be 2 raised to the power of the generation number.
One person whom we know for sure is descended from Eleanor of Aquitaine (and her second husband) is King Charles III, who is 27 generations down the line from Eleanor. This implies that Eleanor is one of 134,217,728 27th-generation ancestors of Charles III, which is clearly an implausible number: it's twice the current UK population, which is an order of magnitude higher than the number of people who were living in England then. Clearly there must be a lot of cousin relationships in Charles' and your family tree; and in the case of King Charles, you don't need to go too far back to find one. Charles III's mother and father were both descended from Queen Victoria.
Indeed, you only need to go 37 generations back before the number of possible ancestors for you exceeds the number of humans who have ever lived (a figure estimated at around 117,000 million). Counting 37 generations back from Charles III brings you to Alfred the Great. The sheer number of paths mean that there's likely to be a line of descent between pretty much any living White Briton and pretty much any European historical figure who had surviving children, as long as you go far back enough. The difficulty is finding that line of descent.
In the case of Judith Keppel, we can prove her descent from Eleanor (and her second husband) without much difficulty, because the wider Keppel family have been in the public eye for centuries. In England the line goes back to Arnold Joost van Keppel, who came from a prominent Dutch family and was a favourite of William III. When the Prince of Orange came to England in the Glorious Revolution, van Keppel went with him and he became a major figure at the king's court. In 1697 William III awarded him the hereditary title of 1st Earl of Albermarle. Arnold's son Willem van Keppel, the 2nd Earl, married Lady Anne Lennox who was a granddaughter of Charles II via his illegitimate son Charles Lennox, duke of Richmond; as such all of the 2nd Earl's descendants are also descendants of Eleanor of Aquitaine (and her second husband).
Judith is a granddaughter of Walter Keppel, the 9th Earl of Albermarle, who did his bit for local politics. In 1919 Viscount Bury, as he was then known, was elected to the London County Council as a Municipal Reform councillor for Wandsworth Central. He had previously been the losing Conservative candidate for Altrincham in the January 1910 general election.
One thing the Keppel family have been known for through the ages is mistresses to the Royal Family. Alice Keppel, a long-time mistress of King Edward VII, was a daughter-in-law of the 7th Earl of Albermarle. Alice's great-granddaughter has continued the tradition of being a royal mistress into the present day, as she is now Queen Camilla.
Many of the earls of Albermarle down the centuries have made their mark in both politics and the military. For example, let's consider the career of the third Earl, George Keppel. When your columnist did Mastermind some years ago taking questions on the subject of the eighteenth-century military commander James Wolfe, George Keppel (then known as Viscount Bury) came up in the research. He was commander of the 20th Foot in the 1740s and 1750s while Wolfe was second-in-command, and frankly didn't get a very good writeup from Wolfe's biographers. During this period Bury was also a member of parliament, being returned as MP for Chichester in 1746.
Viscount Bury succeeded to his father's titles and entered the House of Lords as the 3rd Earl of Albermarle in 1754, and the resulting Chichester by-election returned his younger brother Augustus Keppel. Both Albermarle and Augustus had prominent military careers, and they hit their own jackpot during the Seven Years' War with the decisive British victory at the 1762 Siege of Havana. Albermarle was the commander of the British land forces in that action, while Augustus was the naval second-in-command. The prize money they won went a long way towards paying off the debts accrued by their father, the 2nd Earl, who was a notorious spendthrift.
It was around this point that the Rockingham Whigs started to become important in British politics. This was a Whig group hostile to George III, which was centred around two-time Prime Minister Charles Watson-Wentworth, the second Marquess of Rockingham.
(Wine gums, anyone?)
The Keppels were major supporters of Rockingham, so they were out of political favour during the American Revolutionary War while the British government was led by Lord North. Perhaps an indication of this is that in January 1778 Augustus Keppel was promoted to the rank of Admiral and given the task of commanding the Western Squadron, guarding the English Channel and approaches from its base in Plymouth. With the French having by now entered the war on the side of the American revolutionaries, this was likely to be a tough assignment. Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser, with whom Keppel was not on good terms, was one of his subordinate commanders.
In July 1778 the Western Squadron engaged the French at the First Battle of Ushant. It was not one of the Royal Navy's best performances, partly due to Keppel's tactics and partly due to Palliser failing to obey orders. The battle ended indecisively with no ships lost on either side, but the British came off worse in terms of damage and casualties.
The battle then resulted in a furious row between Keppel and Palliser, which got completely out of hand by spilling over into Parliament: both of them were MPs. Keppel ended up before a court-martial, which acquitted him of the charge of misconduct and neglect of duty. He resigned from the Navy, but got a parting shot in 1782 when Lord Rockingham came to power for his second term as Prime Minister. Rockingham raised Augustus Keppel to the peerage as the first and only Viscount Keppel, and gave him the job of First Lord of the Admiralty.
That wasn't the only thing that Rockingham did for Augustus Keppel. The Marquess of Rockingham was a very wealthy man with a large estate at Wentworth Woodhouse near Rotherham. The Wentworth park has a number of massive follies scattered around it, depending on the taste and budget of the aristocrat who was in charge at the time they were erected. One of those follies is Keppel's Column, a 115-foot column erected in 1780 to commemorate the acquittal of Admiral Augustus Keppel. Keppel's Column still stands today at the southern end of the Wentworth estate, close to the main road between Rotherham and Chapeltown. It's a landmark of South Yorkshire, and it's recently been refurbished and reopened to the public following a grant from the Culture Recovery Fund.
Since 2004 Keppel's Column has given its name to the Keppel electoral ward of Rotherham council. This covers the deprived Kimberworth Park area at the north-western corner of Rotherham's built-up area, but also extends to the mining village of Thorpe Hesley next to the M1 motorway. With its easy connection to the motorway, Thorpe Hesley is turning into something of a commuter centre.
Keppel ward, and the Thorpe Hesley ward which preceded it, were solidly Labour for the first forty years of the modern Rotherham council's existence, with the sole exception of a Lib Dem win in Thorpe Hesley ward in 2000. Then the wheels came off the council's Labour administration in spectacular fashion, mainly due to the uncovering of massive failings by the council in dealing with the Rotherham child exploitation scandal. Following critical reports by Baroness Jay and Dame Louise Casey, central government effectively sacked the Labour council in 2015 by sending the Commissioners in to take over all of Rotherham's executive functions. A whole-council election was ordered for 2016.
There had already been an effect on the town's election results. The Labour MP for Rotherham, Denis MacShane, had been forced to resign in 2012 following a scandal over his parliamentary expenses; Labour held the resulting Rotherham by-election against a strong second place for the UK Independence Party who polled 21.7%, at the time their highest ever vote share in a parliamentary election. The British National Party also finished in third place and easily saved their deposit. At the following Rotherham council elections in 2014, UKIP topped the poll across the borough with 44% of the vote, against 41% for Labour, and they won ten of the 21 seats up for election.
This populist wave was nothing new, as we can see from looking at previous election results in Keppel ward which is part of the Rotherham constituency. Although this ward had been consistently Labour from its 2004 creation to 2012, that disguises a number of close results and freak vote splits. In 2004 Labour's Ian Barron had won the ward's third and final seat eleven votes ahead of the Lib Dems and sixteen votes ahead of UKIP's David Cutts. The BNP finished a close second in 2006 and 2007, and UKIP were a close second in 2008 and a more distant second in 2011. In 2014 David Cutts rode the populist wave to finally break through in Keppel ward after many years of trying, defeating Ian Barron by 50-38. UKIP won a second seat here in 2015, with Paul Hague being elected.
The 2016 all-out election didn't end up changing very much in Rotherham, with Labour winning 48 seats against 14 for UKIP and one independent - almost the same as the outgoing council. All three councillors for Keppel ward were re-elected, Labour's Margaret Clark and UKIP's David Cutts and Paul Hague.
By the time the next Rotherham council elections came around in 2021 the council's UKIP group had rebranded as the Rotherham Democratic Party, and their councillor Paul Hague was re-elected in a slightly-redrawn Keppel ward; Labour picked up the seat vacated by David Cutts, who retired. Hague then resigned at the end of 2022 following criticism over his attendance at meetings, and Labour gained his seat at the resulting by-election in January 2023 with second place going to the Lib Dems and third place to independent candidate Sid Currie, a former Rotherham Labour figure.
The Lib Dem performance in the 2023 by-election appears to have been a flash in the pan - the ward borders Chapeltown in Sheffield where the Lib Dems are strong - but Sid Currie built on that result to win one of the three seats in Keppel ward at the 2024 Rotherham council elections. Shares of the vote were 33% for the Labour slate which held the other two seats, 30% for Currie, 11% for the Yorkshire Party which wants more devolution for God's Own County, and 10% for the Conservatives. Overall Labour increased their majority on Rotherham council slightly last year, winning 33 seats against 13 Conservatives, 10 independents and 3 Lib Dems.
Keppel ward is part of the Rotherham parliamentary seat, which turned in a very different result in the general election two months later after the Conservative candidate withdrew at the last moment leaving no time for the party to nominate anyone else. The seat turned into a contest between Labour and Reform UK, with Sarah Champion being re-elected by 45-30. Champion has served since 2020 as chair of the Commons' International Development select committee.
Labour now to defend the second Keppel ward by-election in three years following the resignation of Carole Foster, who had served since winning the 2023 by-election. Foster resigned her seat due to work commitments, and her LinkedIn indicates that she has taken up a new job working for Rotherham council.
Defending this seat for Labour is Kieran Bold, who is a caseworker for the Labour MP for Rother Valley and has previously worked on IT systems and processes for the NHS and South Yorkshire police. Neil Collett, who was an unsuccessful independent candidate for this ward in 2024 and is involved with a local litterpicking group, is standing again. Also returning from 2024 is the ward's regular Yorkshire Party candidate Peter Key. The Conservative candidate Lewis Mills is a former Rotherham councillor, who lost his seat to Labour last year in Bramley and Ravenhurst ward. Also on the ballot are Tony Mabbott for the Green Party, Khoulod Ghanem of the Lib Dems (who finished second here in the 2023 by-election), and Reform UK's Tony Harrison who was their parliamentary candidate for Rother Valley last year.
Parliamentary constituency: Rotherham
ONS Travel to Work Area: Sheffield
Postcode districts: S35, S61
Kieran Bold (Lab)
Neil Collett (Ind)
Khoulod Ghanem (LD)
Tony Harrison (RUK)
Peter Key (Yorkshire Party)
Tony Mabbott (Grn)
Lewis Mills (C)
May 2024 result Lab 1179/1092/892 Ind 1068/634 Yorkshire Party 406 C 378/331/299 Grn 352 LD 151 TUSC 67
January 2023 by-election Lab 745 LD 445 Ind 381 Yorkshire Party 314 C 119 Grn 59
May 2021 result Lab 1204/1117/754 Rotherham Democratic Party 993/681/642 C 917 Yorkshire Party 448 LD 264
Previous results in detail
And the answer to the quiz question was B: Eleanor of Aquitaine’s second husband was Henry II.
Throston
Hartlepool council, County Durham; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Steve Wallace.
Kepepl ward in Rotherham is having its second by-election in three years; but last on the menu this week is a ward which is having its second by-election in three months. For this, we travel to western Hartlepool.
The settlement of Throston was originally located on the Durham coast next to the Hartlepool headland, but the parish of that name extended quite some distance inland to include smaller hamlets like Throston Grange and High Throston. These areas were incorporated into West Hartlepool in 1936, and since the Second World War a lot of houses have been built here: the modern Throston Grange estate dates from the late 1960s, and housebuilding is still going on in this area.
Many of the houses in the Bishop Cuthbert estate north of Throston Grange Lane date from the 21st century, and the Jesmond area at the eastern end of this ward has seen some major regeneration work in the last decade. There are still a fair few council houses here, but not nearly as many as there used to be. Bishop Cuthbert has some expensive housing by Hartlepool standards, but Throston Grange and particularly Jesmond are a long way down the social scale compared with the affluent West Park area to the south.
The current Throston ward was created in 2021, before which most of this area was covered by Jesmond ward. At its first election in 2012 Jesmond returned two Labour councillors and one councillor for the localist group Putting Hartlepool First. The ward then voted for the UK Independence Party in 2014 and 2016, on the latter occasion electing UKIP candidate John Tennant who subsequently served as a Brexit Party MEP from 2019 to 2020.
All three outgoing councillors for Jesmond ward sought re-election here in 2021: Tennant for Reform UK, Amy Prince for Labour, and former Labour councillor Paddy Brown as an independent. Brown topped the poll with 42% of the vote, independent candidate Peter Jackson won the second seat, and Prince beat the alphabet to hold the third seat for Labour; she had a majority of 34 votes over her running-mate Gary Allen. The Labour slate polled 36%, while Tennant finished last of the six candidates on 22%. The Conservatives, who won the Hartlepool parliamentary by-election on the same day, had no candidate for this ward.
Labour's Amy Prince was re-elected in May 2022 but then resigned shortly afterwards, after taking up a new job with longer hours; the by-election to replace her in October 2022 was held for Labour by history teacher Cameron Sharp. Labour then staged a recovery in Hartlepool in the 2023 and 2024 elections, defeating independent councillor Peter Jackson in 2023 and easily gaining the ward's final seat in 2024 when independent councillor Paddy Brown stood down. On that occasion Throston ward voted 62% for Labour and 21% for the Conservatives, with Reform UK being the only other party to stand. Labour took overall control of Hartlepool council at the May 2024 elections, and then recovered their by-election loss at the July 2024 general election when Jonathan Brash became the town's Labour MP.
Hartlepool had no scheduled local elections in May 2025, but Throston ward went to the polls in a by-election after the 2022 by-election winner Cameron Sharp stood down to take up a teaching job with the council. In one of the night's first results to come through, the resulting by-election was gained by Reform UK's Amanda Napper with a 58-32 lead over Labour: that's a swing of 36% compared with the May 2024 result. This is the sort of stuff that breaks swingometers. Napper will need to seek re-election in May 2026, when Amy Prince's original term expires.
In the meantime Reform UK have a chance to gain another seat in this ward in short order as a result of the resignation of Steve Wallace, who was elected here for Labour in May 2023 but quit the party two months later following what he described at the time as "a falling-out". In January this year Wallace pleaded guilty to common assault at York crown court and was fined £200 and ordered to pay £500 compensation to his victim, following which he was reported to be considering his future on the council. He has now stood down to, in his words, "hand the baton on to a younger generation".
Labour will want their seat back in the resulting by-election and they have selected Mark Hanson, a retired police officer who is fighting his first election campaign. Also new to a ballot paper is the Reform UK candidate Ed Doyle. In fact none of the May 2025 by-election candidates are back for another go: completing the candidate list here are Margaret Lyall for the Conservatives, Tom Casey for the Green Party and Connor Stallard for the Lib Dems.
Parliamentary constituency: Hartlepool
ONS Travel to Work Area: Hartlepool
Postcode districts: TS24, TS26
Tom Casey (Grn)
Ed Doyle (RUK)
Mark Hanson (Lab)
Margaret Lyall (C)
Connor Stallard (LD)
May 2025 by-election RUK 889 Lab 486 C 151
May 2024 result Lab 1015 C 347 RUK 263
May 2023 result Lab 717 Ind 555 RUK 155
October 2022 by-election Lab 450 Ind 280 C 124 LD 32
May 2022 result Lab 765 Ind 406 C 339
May 2021 result Ind 1014/875 Lab 862/828/654 RUK 528
Previous results in detail
If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them - going back to 2016 - in the Andrew's Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale