Previewing the Three Rivers and Harborough by-elections of Wednesday 19th March 2025

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

Two by-elections on Wednesday 19th March 2025:

Abbots Langley and Bedmond

Three Rivers council, Hertfordshire; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Sara Bedford.

We begin this week's column with Wednesday by-elections, because why not? In fact we have a rare treat for you today with two local by-elections taking place in the middle of the working week: today we see the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats defending one seat each, with both wards being part of a Conservative-held parliamentary seat. Those of a more left-wing persuasion may be pleased to note that tomorrow's menu might be a bit more to your political taste.

Today's Lib Dem defence lies on the very edge of London's built-up area, in a ward which straddles the M25 motorway. Inside the M25 we find Abbots Langley, which is now functionally a suburb of Watford but is still an independent parish. This is one of a few Langleys in the general area: the Abbots prefix indicates that Abbots Langley was granted in 1045 to the abbot of St Albans Abbey. The smaller village of Bedmond lies around a mile to the north, outside the motorway.

This area has a long history which includes an unusually famous son. The mediaeval chronicler Matthew Paris, writing from St Albans Abbey in the 13th century, places Bedmond as the birthplace of one Nicholas Breakspear in or around 1100. Breakspear was from humble origins and he didn't stay long in England: he travelled to the south of France in his youth and made his career in the church. He became an abbot in Avignon, then Bishop of Albano, and finally - in 1154 - Breakspear was elected as the first and (so far) only English pope, taking the name Adrian IV. Adrian had a short and difficult reign of five years, in which he restored papal authority in the city of Rome, crowned the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and was forced to sign a peace treaty with the Norman Kingdom of Sicily - which didn't go down well with Barbarossa, and resulted in a papal schism after Adrian's death in 1159. Pope Adrian never forgot his Hertfordshire birthplace, and the late 1150s saw privilege after privilege being showered upon St Albans Abbey.

Your columnist has good memories of Abbots Langley. Many years ago I attended a quiz there on the national circuit (in the Abbots Langley Community Centre, above) and managed to win the Civilisation section of the paper. Unusually for the UK quiz circuit, there was a celebrity guest there to present my prize: that was Jeremy Beadle. Beadle has gone down in the collective memory as a TV and radio prankster, but he was also a first-rate quizzer: he wrote quizzes for the Independent newspaper for many years, and in 1999 he took on the public as the professional quizzer in a Channel 5 game show called Win Beadle's Money. A total of 52 episodes were made, with only eight contestants managing to actually defeat Jeremy Beadle and win his money.

Curiously this isn't the only link between Abbots Langley and professional versus punter quiz shows: Bradley Walsh, the presenter of The Chase, once lived in Abbots Langley. The village is also the birthplace of Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions secretary, who grew up here.

Modern Abbots Langley very much has a middle-class demographic profile, which is helped by the fact that the ward boundaries include Kings Langley railway station from which there are regular commuter trains to Euston. In last year's general election it was part of one of the relatively few London commuter seats to stick with the Conservative party: Abbots Langley and Bedmond are contained within the South West Hertfordshire constituency, represented since 2019 by Conservative MP Gagan Mohindra who is now a junior frontbencher on the shadow education team. This was a rare expansion of Conservative-held territory in the case of Bedmond, which was transferred out of the Lib Dem-held St Albans constituency by boundary changes.

In local government the Liberal Democrats dominate much of western Hertfordshire. The local authority here is Three Rivers council, which surrounds the town of Watford on three sides and has been under the leadership of the Lib Dems and their predecessors continuously since 1986. Although not always with a majority, as we shall see.

In fact, both this by-election and a previous Abbots Langley and Bedmond by-election just last August would appear to have been provoked by a bout of infighting within the ruling Liberal Democrat group. In my Preview for the August 2024 by-election (Andrew's Previews 2024, forthcoming) I noted that the current Abbots Langley and Bedmond ward, and the Abbots Langley ward which came before it, had had the same three councillors continuously since 1999: Sara and Matthew Bedford, and David Major, who were all elected as Liberal Democrats. The most recent ordinary election in May 2024 had re-elected Matthew Bedford - who was first elected for the old Abbots Langley ward all the back in 1994 - for his tenth term of office with a 59-20 lead over the Conservatives. Three Rivers council's May 2024 AGM elected Matthew Bedford as deputy leader of the council, with Sara also appointed to a cabinet position.

Sara Bedford, who was first elected here in 1996, had previously served as leader of Three Rivers council from 2016 to 2020. That stint in the leadership led to accusations of her bullying other councillors, and it would appear that her return to the council cabinet in May 2024 reopened some old political wounds. By July 2024 Sara Bedford had quit the Lib Dems with more bullying allegations flying around, and Matthew Bedford had quit the council in support of his wife. The resulting August 2024 by-election in Abbots Langley and Bedmond ward was lost to the Conservatives on a big swing, with Conservative candidate Vicky Edwards polling 41% against 34% for the Liberal Democrats and 16% for the Green Party.

That loss cut the Lib Dem majority on Three Rivers council to one seat, and the party has since fallen into a minority as a result of further changes: the latest composition has 19 Lib Dem councillors against 11 Conservatives, 3 Labour, 3 Greens, 2 independents and this vacancy. Sara Bedford is still the Hertfordshire county councillor for Abbots Langley (although not Bedmond, which is part of the Lib Dem-held Three Rivers Rural division), but she resigned her seat on Three Rivers council in January one step ahead of a scheduled standards committee meeting.

The Liberal Democrats will get their council majority back if they can win this by-election and reverse the defection loss, although the result last August will leave the party in no doubt that this poll will not be a walkover. They have selected Aidan Bentley, who is a full-time student and an Abbots Langley parish councillor. The Conservative candidate is Ian Campbell, who works as an engineer. The Green party have reselected Jane Powell after her third-place finish in last August's by-election. Also standing here are Pierce Culliton for Labour and Gavin Casey for Reform UK.

Parliamentary constituency: South West Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire county council division: Abbots Langley (Abbots Langley), Three Rivers Rural (Bedmond)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Luton
Postcode districts: HP3, WD4, WD5

Aidan Bentley (LD)
Ian Campbell (C)
Gavin Casey (RUK)
Pierce Culliton (Lab)
Jane Powell (Grn)

August 2024 by-election C 593 LD 500 Grn 233 Lab 137
May 2024 result LD 939 C 322 Lab 222 Grn 121
May 2023 result LD 888 C 438 Lab 214 Grn 98
May 2022 result LD 1070 C 435 Lab 238 Grn 124
May 2021 result LD 989 C 580 Lab 264 Grn 130
May 2019 result LD 1136 Grn 292 Lab 185
May 2018 result LD 1096 C 456 Lab 237 Grn 67 UKIP 59
May 2016 result LD 1037 C 394 Lab 224 UKIP 179
May 2015 result LD 1496 C 1467 Lab 573
May 2014 result LD 1048/989/862 C 446/408/406 UKIP 439 Lab 227/224/187
Previous results in detail

Glen

Harborough council, Leicestershire; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor James Hallam.

For our other by-election today we travel north to the Leicestershire countryside. The Glen ward of Harborough district covers seven parishes just to the south-east of Leicester's built-up area, but the vast majority of its electors live in the village of Great Glen which has been bypassed by the main road towards Market Harborough. Great Glen lies in the valley of the River Sence, and the Glen in the name has the same "valley" meaning as the glens of Scotland, reflecting that this is an old settlement with a Celtic name. The Great in the name is to distinguish Great Glen from Glen Parva to the south of Leicester, which this column will be visiting for another by-election in the not too distant future.

Glen ward is home to the Leicester Grammar School, a fee-paying school which was founded in 1981 and moved here in 2008 from the city centre. The Leicester Grammar School has produced a number of Leicester Tigers rugby players over the years, and former pupil Harry Ellis - a scrum-half who won 27 caps for England and one cap for the British and Irish Lions in the 2000s - now teaches PE here. This is not a boarding school, but nonetheless Glen ward has a rather young age profile to go with its professional commuter demographic. Great Glen has also had lots of new houses built in this century, which will also reduce its age profile by attracting young families to live here.

It's places like Great Glen which have been decisive in ensuring that the Harborough, Oadby and Wigston constituency (which was renamed from "Harborough" in 2024) has been in Conservative hands since 1950. Partly this is to do with the fact that this parliamentary seat includes the Oadby and Wigston borough which has run by the Liberal Democrats for decades, and until the Coalition years the Lib Dems would normally poll decent vote shares in Harborough without ever winning. Labour took over second place here in 2015, and they came within 3,000 votes of unseating Conservative backbencher Neil O'Brien last year. O'Brien weathered the storm and was re-elected for a third term of office, and he recently joined the Conservative frontbench as a shadow education minister.

Local election results show that Great Glen is clearly in the Conservative column. In the 2023 Harborough council elections the Tory slate enjoyed a 57-29 lead over the Liberal Democrats in Glen ward - but this wasn't enough to stop the Conservatives losing their majority on Harborough council, which now has a traffic-light coalition under a Lib Dem leader. The ward is part of the Gartree division of Leicestershire county council, which was very safely Conservative when it was last contested in 2021; the Gartree name refers to an ancient hundred or wapentake of Leicestershire, which covered a similar area to the modern Harborough district.

This by-election is to replace James Hallam, who is standing down after serving as a Conservative councillor here for 14 years since his first election in 2011; his local government career peaked in 2019-23 when he was deputy leader of the council. Defending this seat for the Conservatives is Peter Scott, who is a Great Glen parish councillor. The Lib Dems have selected Christopher Graves, who contested the neighbouring Kibworths ward (where he lives) in 2023. Also on the ballot are candidates from two parties who didn't stand here in 2023: Robin Lambert stands for the continuing SDP and Andy Thomas for Labour.

Parliamentary constituency: Harborough, Oadby and Wigston
Leicestershire county council division: Gartree
ONS Travel to Work Area: Leicester
Postcode districts: LE2, LE7, LE8

Christopher Graves (LD)
Robin Lambert (SDP)
Peter Scott (C)
Andy Thomas (Lab)

May 2023 result C 864/758 LD 436/405 Grn 216/170
May 2019 result C 964/711 LD 313/238 Ind 265 Grn 232 Lab 150
Previous results in detail

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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