Talk Elections

The year's first UK local by-election is on 6 January:

PARK, Windsor and Maidenhead; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor who has moved out of the borough.  This ward covers the southern fringes of the royal town of Windsor and also includes part of Windsor Great Park and the Legoland theme park.  At the last election in 2007 (results here (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2007/96/#ward2262)) the Conservatives gained the ward from the Liberal Democrats on a big swing, polling 62% to 34% for the Lib Dems and 4% for Labour.

Result from Windsor:
C 64.4 LD 15.8 Lab 15.1 Ind 4.8

A further big swing from the Lib Dems to the Conservatives.  Eight years ago the Lib Dems won this ward with 54% of the vote.

Oh, and here is the new councillor: http://www.waitrose.com/food/celebritiesandarticles/homecooks/0403069.aspx

Change since 2007

Con +2% Lib Dem -18% Lab +11% Ind +5%
Swing: 10% from Lib Dem to Con / 15% from Lib Dem to Lab

And the Liberals did amazing in the 2007 locals! ;)

I suppose the turnout - and the previous Labour result, and, actually, the new Labour result too - is just too low for us to draw any such conclusions... but this is the first result (that I noticed) of it looking like LibDem voters going over (back) to Labour even in the True Blue places - we've seen plenty of it in places where Labour and LDs are the only parties that matter, but in these kind of places Labour had seemed as dead as ever since 2005 so far.

By-elections on 13 January:

OLDHAM EAST AND SADDLEWORTH - see separate thread.

CAMBORNE NORTH, Cornwall; caused by the resignation of an ex-Conservative councillor who has been charged with sexual assault.  This ward contains a relatively small part of the mining town of Camborne, together with the villages of South Tehidy and Tolvaddon Downs on the other side of the bypass (in Illogan parish), and a small set of terraces adjacent to the South Crofty tin mine (in Carn Brea parish), which was Cornwall's last tin mine when it closed in 1998.

Prior to 2009 this area was split between Illogan North and Illogan South wards on Kerrier district council.  In 2007 Illogan North elected two Lib Dems and a Liberal Party councillor (representing a Lib Dem gain from the Conservatives) and Illogan South elected a Labour councillor and two Independents (representing an Independent gain from Mebyon Kernow, who didn't defend their seat).  On the old county council the area was split between Carn Brea (which was safely Labour in 2005) and Illogan and Portreath (which in 2005 elected an independent with just 23% of the vote over the Lib Dems, Liberals, Conservatives, Labour and another Independent; Labour polled 16% in fifth place).

The Illogan area seems to be the main predecessor and looking at the 2009 result (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2009/121/#ward2552) for the new unitary Cornwall council Camborne North has inherited its fissiparousness.  The Labour councillor for the area retired and the Liberal tried his luck in a different ward, but it was the Conservatives who capitalised - the Lib Dems suffering unpopularity over the new unitary council.  The 2009 result was C 36.9 LD 19.4 Ind 15.9 MK 14.8 Lab 10.7 Lib 2.2.  Last year's general election result - in which the Conservatives narrowly gained the Camborne and Redruth seat - and the national polls could indicate further problems for the Lib Dems.

HUMBLEYARD, Norfolk County Council; caused by the resignation of the Conservative Leader of the Council who is off to do voluntary work in India.  This division is directly south-west of Norwich and is based on the villages of Cringleford and Hethersett on the road to Newmarket.  The 2009 result shows a safe Conservative division after the Lib Dems fell back badly; this is part of the safe Conservative South Norfolk constituency.

And Labour representation returns to Cornwall after a gap of about a year and a half as Camborne North is gained:

Labour 33.1, Con 28.1, LDem 21.6, Lib 8.4, MK 4.4, Green 4.3

Humbleyard was a Tory hold of course.

By-elections on 20th January:

BAGULEY, Manchester; caused by the death of a Labour councillor.  Part of Cheshire until 1931, this ward is basically Wythenshawe west of the motorway and most of the housing is post-war and originally part of the Wythenshawe Estate.  The ward includes Wythenshawe Hospital and most of the large Roundthorn Industrial Estate.  Politically this is a safe Labour ward; from 2006-8 the Tories ran second; in 2010 the Lib Dems took second place but were still 23% behind Labour who won with 47% in a crowded field.  Seven candidates are contesting the by-election: the three main parties, UKIP, the Greens, the BNP and an Independent.

MARL, Conwy, North Wales; caused by the the resignation of a Conservative councillor for health reasons.  This two-seat ward covers the western half of the town of Llandudno Junction, which in profiles of the Aberconwy constituency is inexorably prefixed with the phrase "working-class".  Not that you'd guess this from the 2004 and 2008 results as there is a Lib Dem councillor here who has a very large personal vote and always tops the poll easily.  In 2004 he was the only opposition to the two Labour candidates; however in 2008 the sitting Labour councillor stood as an independent and finished a credible fourth, well ahead of the official Labour candidate; however, he lost his seat to the Conservatives whose candidates finished second and third.  Al will probably know more, but I would suspect that the poor Labour result in 2008 is very misleading and they have a good chance of making a gain here.  Candidates here are C/LD/Lab/Ind; yet again no Plaid candidate in a seat they hold in the Assembly.

OLTON, Solihull, West Midlands; caused by the death of Lib Dem councillor Honor Cox.  This ward is located about five miles south east from Birmingham city centre on the Warwick Road and the railway line to Leamington Spa.  I know nothing of the area, but this ward borders Acocks Green ward in Birmingham and politically is very similar, with a solid Lib Dem lead in the last few years.  In 2010 the Lib Dems led the Conservatives by 51-34.   With this vacancy and another Lib Dem Solihull councillor having been kicked off the council for non-attendance, if the Conservatives can make a gain they may be able to topple the LD/Lab coalition which runs Solihull at the moment.  Candidates are the three main parties plus the Greens and a Resident.

TONBRIDGE, Kent County Council; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  This is an urban two-seat county division which has exactly the same boundaries as the old Tonbridge Urban District and current parish.  The town is a large market town on the River Medway and an important railway junction on the South Eastern Main Line, 30 miles from Charing Cross station.  The most recent event of importance in the town was the 2006 Securitas depot robbery when more than £53 million in cash was stolen.  Politically this is a very Conservative town; the party holds all fifteen district council seats and won both county seats in 2009 with 47%, way ahead of their nearest challengers, the Lib Dems on 16%.  There are candidates from the three main parties, UKIP and the Greens.

Marl is the less working class half of Junction (Pensarn ward, which includes the train station, is very working class though) probably because it merges into seamlessly into Deganwy, though it is more working class than not and (obviously) more working class than average for the Aberconwy constituency. But, yeah, the result from last time is very misleading (not that that's unusual even in 'urban' wards in North West Wales).

Presumably we're dealing with the kind of "working class" area you expect amid wealthy tourists and retirees... service sector that is, plus perhaps some more working class retirees as well (who wanted to move to the Welsh Coast but could only afford Junction)?

There's a bit of the latter, yeah, and especially in this end of the town.* But Junction was originally a railway town (shocking I know) and still has that feel to it (though not to the extent of Holyhead or even parts of Bangor). As for employment structure, dead on for this ward but there's still some manufacturing employment to speak of in the east of the town (Pensarn ward). Construction was a sizeable employer before the slump; nearly as much as hotels, catering and the like.

*Though the area on the North coast that's really like that is Abergele.

Well yeah, construction is a word that's just plain missing from my post.

With a name like "Junction", you'd figure it's a railway town. And there is a railway junction there. Of sorts. But I don't suppose it still employs anybody of note.

No more than any other small town with a proper railway station (rather than just a platform).

Thursday's results:

BAGULEY: Lab 70.8 C 11.4 UKIP 5.4 BNP 3.7 LD 3.7 Grn 3.6 Ind 1.4.  Big Lab hold, swing 14% C to Lab.  Huge collapse in the Lib Dem vote which was 24% last time, most of this went to Labour.  The BNP and LD candidates tied on 52 votes with the Greens one vote behind.

MARL: LD 40.4 C 28.1 Lab 22.5 Ind 9.0.  LD gain from Conservative.  Swing 8% LD to C although this is pretty meaningless.

OLTON: LD 39.7 C 39.4 Lab 9.4 Res 7.6 Grn 3.8.  LD hold with a majority of 9 votes; 8% swing LD to C.  The new councillor is press officer for Solihull's Lib Dem MP Lorely Burt.

TONBRIDGE: C 56.6 Lab 21.3 LD 9.8 Grn 6.4 UKIP 5.9.  Easy Tory hold; swing 1% C to Lab.

There is one by-election on Thursday 27th:

OLIVERS BATTERY AND BADGER FARM, Winchester; caused by the death of a Lib Dem councillor.  One of England's more romantic ward names, Olivers Battery was originally an Iron Age earthwork south-west of Winchester; later, during the English Civil War, it was the base for Oliver Cromwell's siege of the city.  Development here came after the First World War when a former Army veterinary hospital was gradually built on, and the ward is now part of the Winchester built-up area.  Politically this is a safe Lib Dem ward: last May's result was LD 60.2 C 35.1 Lab 4.7.

It seems odd that Respect would field a candidate there.

They didn't; that was a Residents Association candidate.

Ah. :P

You didn't seriously think Respect could poll 7% in Solihull, did you? ;D

Well, it's a by-election, so....

Oliver's Battery and Badger Farm was a safe Lib Dem hold in the end.  LD 53.9 C 36.4 Lab 9.8 (and that's the best Labour performance here for years).  Turnout was very high for a local by-election, 51.2%.

By-elections on 3 February:

AMBERLEY AND WOODCHESTER, Stroud, Glos, and RODBOROUGH, Gloucestershire County Council; caused by the death of a Conservative who sat on both councils.  The Rodborough county division is south-west of Stroud town in one of the steepest parts of the Cotswolds; it includes the settlements of Rodborough (which is a suburb of Stroud) to the north-east, Amberley to the south-east, Woodchester in a deep valley at the centre of the division, and King's Stanley to the west.  As the name suggests, Woodchester has Roman connections.  Politically the district ward was safe Conservative when it was last fought in 2008, the Tories polling 54% and the Greens finishing second with 18%.  The county division was much closer in 2009, the Tories beating the Lib Dems by 35-31 with the Greens polling 21% in third place.  As King's Stanley is part of a safe Tory ward, most of the Lib Dem and Green vote comes from Rodborough itself, which at district level is a C/LD/Grn marginal with the Tories and Lib Dems currently holding one seat each.  The Greens have acknowledged this by fighting the county ward but not the district ward; all three main parties have candidates in both contests.

CARNOUSTIE AND DISTRICT, Angus; caused by the resignation of an SNP councillor due to ill-health.  Carnoustie is well-known for its Open Championship golf course, but the town itself was developed around the linen industry and today is a commuting base for Dundee, which is just ten miles away on the railway.  The ward itself includes a large hinterland running inland as far as the hamlet of Monikie.  Angus is one of the strongest areas for the SNP, and at the 2007 local elections the SNP had 47% of first preferences (Lab 22%, C 16%, LD 14%) and after transfers won two of the three seats, Labour taking the other.  The four main parties and an Independent are contesting the by-election.

also, Brian Boyd (Ind) over Ed Oswald (SNP) by 20 votes. Labour third. Conservatives fourth. LDs fifth.

Looks like a banner evening for the Liberal Democrats!

The division might have voted for David Drew last year, but he was hardly a normal Labour candidate, so yeah... excellent result.

That Carnoustie result in full:

Ed Oswald  SNP  1289
Brian Boyd  Ind  1252
Ron Thoms  Lab  258
Eddie Wilmott  C  217
Charles Goodall  LD  93

Transfers
Boyd    1252 +202 1454
Oswald  1289 +137 1426
Thoms    258 -258
Wilmott  217 -217
Goodall   93  -93

By-elections on 10 February 2011:

ROMNEY MARSH, Kent County Council; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  Mostly consisting of reclaimed marshland, Romney Marsh is named after the town of New Romney, which is one of the original Cinque Ports but is now some distance from the sea.  In the nineteenth century the economy was dominated by the Romney Marsh sheep, specially bred for the wet conditions; today the main export from the area is electricity, with Dungeness being home to a nuclear power station.  New Romney and Lydd are the main centres of population.  This is a safe Conservative division; in 2009 the Tories polled 47% with UKIP second on 24%; in 2005 the Lib Dems ran second.

WORKSOP NORTH EAST, Bassetlaw, Notts; caused by a Conservative councillor being kicked off the council for not attending any meetings in six months.  In mitigation, he is seriously ill; however, the result is that the Tories have lost their majority on the council.  This ward is an urban segment of Worksop between the Carlton and Blyth roads.  Politically it's a ward the Tories can win in a good year: Labour won all three seats in 2002, the Tories gained all three seats between 2003 and 2006, Labour took seats back in 2007 and 2010 and the remaining Tory seat, held in 2008, is now up.  Last year Labour polled 64% in a straight fight with the Conservatives, but in the previous three years the largest winning margin was 113 votes.  With the upturn in Labour fortunes (they convincingly gained Worksop's most middle-class ward at a by-election a few months ago) a Labour gain seems nailed-on here.

According to their own website, the council has 23 Conservatives, 21 Labour, 3 independents and 1 vacancy... so unless exactly one of the independents is allied with the Tories, I don't see how having the seat declared vacant ended the Conservative majority.

Might have held a majority on the Chairman's casting vote.

Worksop North East: Labour 74.0, Con 19.6, Ind 4.6, LDem 1.7
Romney Marsh: Con 54.1, Labour 18.2, LDem 11.7, UKIP 10.2, Ind 5.8

And, surprisingly, Lydd on Shepway DC (see above for the general area) which everyone assumed wouldn't be held due to proximity to the main elections in May: Con 49.3, Labour 20.6, LDem 15.3, Ind 14.8

By-elections on 17th February 2011 see the Conservatives defending three marginal wards.

BOURN, South Cambridgeshire; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor who is taking up a new job.  This ward consists of a series of villages on the A428 and A1198 west of Cambridge, the largest of which is Cambourne.  While the ward has a full slate of Conservative councillors, it's a marginal ward and there is normally a strong Lib Dem challenge here; at the last election in 2010 the Tories won by 45-39 with Labour polling 11%.  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus the Greens and an Independent.

KENTON, Brent, North London; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  Served by the Underground stations of Kenton (on the Bakerloo line) and Kingsbury (on the Jubilee line), this ward has a diverse population; at the 2001 census this ward was 57% non-white with almost 30% giving their religion as Hindu.  At the 2006 elections this was a safe Conservative ward and was also strongly Conservative in the 2008 GLA polls, but it's part of the safe Labour Brent North seat and last May a big swing to Labour turned the ward into a marginal, with the top Labour candidate just 115 votes away from the third Conservative.

QUARRY AND COTON HILL, Shropshire; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor who is going back to live in Australia.  This bizarrely-shaped ward covers the centre of the town of Shrewsbury, located in a loop of the River Severn, together with the residential area of Coton Hill to the north-west and a north-eastern prong along St Michael's Street which is presumably there to make up the numbers.  The only previous result in 2009 saw the Conservatives defeat the Lib Dems by 44-36, with the Greens polling 14% and an outfit called the Albion Party getting 6%.  Surprisingly there was no Labour candidate, but that omission will be rectified in the by-election.

Quarry & Coton Hill is certainly bizarrely shaped, but it's better than pairing Quarry with Castlefields (as was done for the old district council from 2002 onwards) and has been done before at various different levels.

Results...

Kenton: Con 44.1, Labour 37.7, Ind 7.7, LDem 7.4, Green 3.1
Bourn: Con 56.3, LDem 22.2, Labour 21.5
Quarry & Coton Hill: LDem 41.8, Con 31.6, Labour 23.1, Ind 3.5

Comment on the last of those; that's an unusually high Labour vote in that part of the town, to say the least. Boundary issues mean direct comparison isn't possible, but I'd guess probably around level with the 2005 County Council elections, not sure about 'normal' local election rounds. Bad result for the Tories; the unpopularity of the council might be a factor. Wonder whether this defeat will kick off another round of factional infighting?

After a fallow week, by-elections on 3 March:

BARNSLEY CENTRAL, caused by the resignation of a Labour MP following conviction: see separate thread.

KILPATRICK, West Dunbartonshire; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor.  This ward is named after the Kilpatrick Hills but confusingly does not include the village of Old Kilpatrick; instead it is based on the village of Duntocher, an old Roman settlement on the Antonine Wall which boomed after the Second World War with the building of an estate by Clydebank town council.  Duntocher was once the north-western terminus of Glasgow's municipal tram network.  Unsurprisingly it's a strong Labour ward: in 2007 Labour ran two candidates in this three-seat ward and both of them got a quota of first preferences, the lead SNP candidate taking the final seat; vote shares were Lab 55.9 SNP 32.8 C 8.3 SSP 3.0.  Just three candidates are standing in the by-election, Labour, SNP and Conservative.

MARCH NORTH, Cambridgeshire County Council; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  Once the county town of the Isle of Ely, the market town of March started off as a minor port on the River Nene, then became a railway centre (there is still a large marshalling yard in this ward).  Today the main employer in the ward is the top-security Whitemoor Prison.  In 2005 this was quite close between Conservative and Lib Dem, the Tories prevailing by just 99 votes in a straight fight, but the Lib Dems fell back sharply in 2009 when the shares were C 55.8 LD 30.5 Lab 13.7.  The by-election is between the three main parties; the Labour candidate is an 18-year-old who works in the local Tesco.

RIVERSIDE, Cardiff; caused by the resignation of a Plaid Cymru councillor for personal reasons.  This is a residential area located on the west bank of the Taff opposite Cardiff Castle.  The main local landmark is the Sophia Gardens cricket ground, home of Glamorgan cricket club and a Test match venue in 2009.  In 2004 the three seats in the ward split 2 PC 1 Lab, with Plaid gaining the Labour seat in 2008 when the shares were PC 43.9 Lab 32.4 C 12.2 LD 11.5.  The by-election is between the four main parties plus the Greens; bizarrely the Plaid candidate is the boss of the Lib Dem candidate, who has had some success on TV quizzes.

WALKDEN NORTH, Salford; caused by the death of a Labour councillor.  Salford may be the roughest city in the known universe(TM) but Walkden isn't like that; located outside the M60 on the road to Preston, as well as the usual cotton mills it was a centre for coal-mining, with navigable tunnels linking the mines here directly to the Bridgewater Canal at Worsley.  Some bits of Walkden are quite posh, but this is the more working-class half and also includes some of the sink council estate of Little Hulton.  The ward consistently returns Labour councillors by comfortable margins and the 2010 result was Lab 50.9 C 21.9 LD 17.4 English Democrats 9.7.  The same four parties are fighting the by-election together with a BNPer.

WIGAN CENTRAL, Wigan; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor for health reasons.  Everyone has heard of Wigan because of the efforts of George Orwell at documenting the town as it was in the 1930s.  Everyone should know Wigan for coal-mining and textiles which is what made the pie-eating town rich (and such a hellish place to live).  Today the largest employers in the town are the Tote bookmakers, the near-bankrupt sports clothing chain JJB Sports and Heinz which allegedly has Europe's largest food processing factory here; other food exports from Wigan include Uncle Joe's Mint Balls and the World Pie-Eating Championships, while the town was also the home of George Formby, Britain's very own war crime.  Hopefully I've put you off the place by now as is my solemn duty as a Boltoner :) but having said all that Wigan Central ward (which covers the town centre and points north) is actually surprisingly middle class and usually a fairly safe Tory ward.  However, the Tory group on the council suffered a Stoke-style split a few years ago with four councillors wandering off to form the Wigan Independent Conservative Party; one of them stood for re-election in 2010 and split the Tory vote down the middle, allowing Labour to win easily; shares were Lab 42.2 C 25.9 WIC 18.6 UKIP 8.1 BNP 5.2.  The by-election is fought by Conservative, Labour, Wigan Independent Conservative and UKIP, so there is every chance of a similar right-wing vote split.

Hard to believe that Riverside was reliable Tory ward until about twenty years ago and would have been one of the reasons for the improbable Commons tenure of Stefan Terlezki. Though large parts of the ward have changed a lot and certain other things have changed elsewhere. It's quite a strange ward, as you can tell from glancing at it's nomis profile. (https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/lmp/ward/1308630970/report.aspx?frommap=yes) Basically it's a ward of two halves; Riverside itself is a fairly run-down inner city district these days and is one of the least white places in Wales (which isn't saying a lot, I suppose) with sizeable Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian communities (so not actually the minorities associated with Cardiff at all). Employment is dominated by low-paid jobs in the service sector and unemployment is high. The other half of the ward, Pontcanna, is crachach central. It is one of the poshest parts of Cardiff (even more so than neighbouring Llandaff) and is home to seemingly the entire Welsh media. The percentage of people who claim to be Welsh speakers is much higher than the Cardiff average in Pontcanna, but you could probably work that out for yourselves. Riverside and Pontcanna have two things in common; both have an unusually low percentage of people in born in Wales and both are good territory for Plaid in local elections. The latter might come as a surprise, but the Welsh Labour Party has always struggled to appeal to ethnic minority voters (perhaps made worse in Cardiff by the continuing strength of a pro-business right-wing faction within the Party; this is the city of Julian Hodge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Hodge), after all) and Plaid have someone managed to fill part of the gap, at least at local level. No idea what'll happen in the by-election.

Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention Russell Goodway. You can't write about the right-wing of Cardiff Labour and not mention that remarkable man. Who I note is now on twitter.

Results from 3rd March:

Kilpatrick: Lab 60.1 SNP 32.9 C 7.0.  Lab win on first prefs
March North: C 52.4 Lab 24.0 LD 23.6.  7% swing C to Lab since 2009
Riverside, Cardiff: Lab 46.8 PC 30.3 C 10.2 Grn 7.6 LD 5.1.  Lab gain from PC
Walkden North: Lab 72.6 C 11.7 EDP 7.0 BNP 5.2 LD 3.5.  16% swing C to Lab
Wigan Central: Lab 48.6 C 27.2 Wigan Ind C 16.4 UKIP 7.9.  Lab gain from C; 3% swing C to Lab since 2010

By-elections on 10th March:

BRUNSWICK PARK, Southwark; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor after he was arrested by the Met's paedophile unit.  Not to be confused with the ward of the same name in Barnet, this ward covers territory either side of Peckham Road in Camberwell, around the eponymous park in the north and down to Maudsley (Psychiatric) Hospital and Denmark Hill railway station (on the South London Line and Catford Loop) in the south-west corner.  Also in the ward is Lakanal House, a tower block which caught fire in 2009 killing several people.  Southwark politics tends to be very geographical, with the Lib Dems winning in Southwark proper, Labour winning in Camberwell and Peckham and the Conservatives winning in Dulwich; this ward being in Camberwell makes it safe Labour.  In 2010 the vote shares were Lab 51.8 LD 22.7 Grn 14.5 C 10.9.  Candidates in the by-election are Lab, LD, Grn, C and Trade Union/Socialist Coalition.

ROSEGROVE WITH LOWERHOUSE, Burnley, Lancs; caused by the resignation of a Lib Dem councillor due to ill-health.  This ward is located at the west end of Burnley, straddling the M65 motorway at Rose Grove station.  It's one of the white areas of the town and very working-class.  The previous election results in this ward give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'all over the place': when it was created in 2002 Labour topped the poll but the BNP candidate and an independent (Marlene Disley) tied for the second seat.  Defending in 2003, the BNP failed to contest the ward (in the year they the topped the poll across the whole borough) and it was gained by an independent (Samuel Holgate, who had represented the predecessor ward before 2002).  In 2004 Marlene Disley who didn't stand for re-election and Labour won by 251 votes with the BNP second.  In 2006 the Lib Dems gained the ward from Lab with a majority of 54 votes over the BNP, Labour finishing third six votes behind the BNP.  In 2007 Holgate stood for re-election as a Lib Dem candidate but finished third, 37 votes behind the Labour and BNP candidates who tied for first place, Labour winning the drawing of lots.  In 2008 the Lib Dems gained from Labour by a majority of 146 votes over the BNP, Labour finishing a poor third.  A by-election on European election day in 2009 was held by the Lib Dems with a majority of 245 over the BNP.  Most recently in 2010 the Lib Dems held by 57 votes over Labour on the same day as they gained the Burnley parliamentary seat.  With that sort of history anything can happen and it's certain to be an interesting result.  Candidates are LD, Lab, BNP, C and Ind.

Has Cardiff Labour finally worked out how to appeal to minority voters?

Brunswick Park: Lab 65.1, LDem 20.7, Green 7.6, Con 4.2, TUSC 2.3

Full results for Rosegrove with Lowerhouse don't seem to be available, but it was a comfortable Labour gain with the LibDems apparently slipping into third behind the BNP.

The Labour Party 521 (43.1%)
British National Party 288 (23.8%)
Liberal Democrat 261 (21.6%)
The Conservative Party 81 (6.7%)
Independent 58 (4.8%)

Found the result... on... Stormfront. Lol.

lol With the BNP in meltdown I'm not surprised they're eager to tout this result. Percentages:

Rosegrove with Lowerhouse, Burnley
Lab   43.1%   +11.8%
BNP   23.8%    +5.4%
LibD   21.6%   -11.8%
Con     6.7%   -10.2%
Ind      4.8%    +4.8%

Brunswick Park, Southwark
Lab   65.1%  +13.3%
LibD  20.7%     -2.0%
Grn     7.6%     -6.9%
Con     4.2%    -6.7%
TUS      2.3%   +2.3%

I find the Labour result in Burnley somewhat underwhelming, actually.

It sort of depends what you compare it to :P

Indeed.

()
Rosegrove with Lowerhouse ward from 2002-onwards, measuring % of vote.

Two by-elections this week.

PAISLEY SOUTH, Renfrewshire; caused by the death of a long-serving SNP councillor.  This appears to be a mainly residential area along the Neilston Road, including the Glenburn area and Dykebar Hospital.  In 2007 first preferences were Lab 31.6 SNP 28.5 LD 12.6 Ind (Caroline Martin) 10.3 C 6.9 Ind 5.5 Grn 1.8 Sol 1.4 Ind 0.9 SSP 0.6, but the seats went SNP 2 Lab 1 LD 1 mainly as a result of terrible vote-balancing by Labour, whose lead candidate topped the poll but had almost no surplus to transfer to his running-mate, who then got overtaken by former SNP candidate Caroline Martin on Conservative transfers.  Martin was the runner-up.  Looking at the 2003 results, the SNP are strong in Glenburn and further into the town centre while the Lib Dem vote comes from the area around the hospital.  Candidates for the by-election are the four main parties plus the SSP and a new indie.

PEMBURY, Tunbridge Wells, Kent; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor who fell out with his local party.  This is a large village three miles east of Tunbridge Wells on the road from London to Hastings.  At local level it has been Lib Dem in the past but the Tories have topped the poll each year since 2004, and last year's result (C 59.4 LD 40.6) was pretty safe.  Candidates are Tory, Lib Dem and UKIP.

Results...

Labour easily held gained Paisley South and only just fell short of a win on first preferences: Lab 49.4 SNP 32.4 C 9.2 Ind 3.9 LD 3.2 SSP 1.9.  The Labour candidate was their second candidate in 2007.

Pembury was a surprising Lib Dem gain: LD 43.6 C 34.0 UKIP 22.4.  A correction to my preview above: I am informed that the Lib Dems actually won this ward in a 2005 by-election.

By-elections on 24th March:

BELLINGHAM, Lewisham; caused by the death of a Labour councillor who had served for 40 years.  Served by Bellingham and Beckenham Park railway stations on the Catford Loop, this ward mainly consists of an inter-war council estate.  This is a safe Labour ward and the 2010 result was Lab 43.1 LD 26.7 C 19.0 Community Need Before Private Greed (part of Lewisham for People Not Profit) 5.8 Grn 5.4.  Should be an easy Labour hold.  Candidates for the by-election are three main parties, the Greens and the Socialist Alternative.

PONTYPOOL, Torfaen; caused by the resignation of an Independent councillor under a cloud.  This ward covers the centre of the depressed town of Pontypool.  Labour were unopposed here in 2004 but in 2008 lost the seat to an Independent, the result being Ind 52.0 Lab 30.6 Peoples Voice 17.3.  The by-election sees a very large field, with candidates from Labour, Plaid and the Tories and no fewer than five independents.

Results:

Bellingham: Lab 51.4 C 15.9 LD 15.6 Soc Alt 12.3 Grn 4.7.  Labour hold.  5% swing C to Lab.
Pontypool: Lab 31.2 Mike Harris 28.2 Williams 14.0 PC 8.8 Nigel Harris 8.1 Bousie 4.4 C 3.2 James 2.1.  Lab gain from Ind

Of the independent candidates, Ian Williams was the Torfaen People's Voice candidate for the Welsh Assembly in 2007.  Sarah Bousie polled half the number of votes that she received in the Miss Torfaen 2011 contest. (http://misstorfaen2011.internationalvoting.net/)

That's pretty much it for UK local by-elections until the main May local elections, with only one contest scheduled between now and then - Wick ward in the Highlands on 7th April.

Last local by-election before 5 May.

7 April: WICK, Highland; caused by the resignation of an Independent councillor.  The last town before John o' Groats, Wick sends its local councillors to Inverness, more than 100 miles away by road.  Historically the town's economy was built upon herring, with at one point one-fifth of Britain's herring being landed here.  Today the herring have gone and North Sea oil has filled the gap, with supplies departing from the harbour and Wick Airport.  Recent political controversy here includes the proposed closure of the town's library and swimming pool with replacements in the Wick High School premises (which was behind the resignation that caused this by-election) and a failed biomass heat/energy scheme into which Highland Council sunk more than £13 million of council taxpayers' money.  In the 2007 election independents won the first two seats, with the final seat going to the Lib Dem candidate who started fourth but overtook the SNP candidate on Labour transfers; the first preference shares were Ind 51.9 SNP 16.9 LD 15.5 Lab 14.0 C 1.8.  Candidates for the by-election are the four main parties plus three independents; confusingly two of the independents are the unsuccessful SNP and Labour candidates from 2007.

SNP win in Wick. Not got first preferences yet, but working backwards their vote is up by something close to 30%. The SNP didn't return any councillors in Wick last time, and their 2007 candidate stood as an independent.

Might put money on the SNP winning Caithness, Sutherland and Ross then :P

How did the LibDem do?

Came 4th (http://www.aldc.org/elections/by-election-results/)

SNP 1049 (45.5;+28.6)
Lab 463 (20.1; +6.1)
Ind 245 / 202 / 75 (22.7; -29.2)
LD 236 (10.2; -5.3)
Con 33 (1.4; -0.4)

These aren't the first preference results.  They're what's on the Highland Council website
http://www.highland.gov.uk/yourcouncil/elections/highlandcouncilelections/byelection-ward3/ward3-results.htm
but it also says that the SNP candidate reached the quota of 1047 at the "end of stage 3".  So the 1049 can't be their first preference vote, and the percentages are probably wrong.

Three candidates were eliminated: the Tory and the two independents with the lowest vote listed above.

Yes - these are third count vote totals (except for the two candidates eliminated after the first and second counts.)

It seems that the 202 vote independent's vote was not redistributed - he merely would have been next in line had any further eliminations been necessary. It's worded a bit sillily.

Having now had chance to draw breath after the May elections, the local by-elections are back with two contests on Thursday 19th May.

DYCE/BUCKSBURN/DANESTONE, Aberdeen City Council; caused by the death of a long-serving Lib Dem councillor.  This ward covers the north-west of the Aberdeen city council area.  Dyce is best known as the location of Aberdeen Airport, the main heliport for the North Sea oil industry, while Bucksburn is a residential area further towards the city centre and Danestone is a newish estate on the other side of the River Don.  When the ward was created in 2007 it voted SNP 36.2 LD 26.2 Lab 24.9 C 8.3 Ind 2.4 Grn 2.0, but the SNP only ran one candidate so the seats split LD 2 SNP 1 Lab 1, the second Lib Dem getting transfers from the SNP surplus and the also-rans to defeat the Conservatives for the final seat.  The ward is part of the Aberdeen Donside constituency which the SNP held at this month's Holyrood elections, at which the SNP councillor for this ward was elected to Holyrood from the regional list.  On that form an SNP gain should be in prospect.  Candidates are LD/SNP/Lab/C/Grn/Ind.

ST JOHNS AND BROOKWOOD, Surrey County Council; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor.  This division covers the west of the town of Woking either side of the South Western Main Line and the Basingstoke Canal.  The division includes the Arts and Crafts suburb of Hook Heath to the east, part of the Knaphill area to the north and to the west the Brookwood Cemetery, the largest cemetery in Britain which was built in the 1850s to house the dead of London and was once served by its own railway station in London.  In 2005 and 2009 this was a highly marginal Conservative division, the Tories beating off the Lib Dem challenge by 187 votes in 2005 and just 63 votes in 2009 (C 43.0 LD 41.4 UKIP 11.8 Lab 3.8 ).  The division covers three wards of Woking Borough Council: St Johns and Hook Heath is strongly Conservative (the party polled 68% there earlier this month); Hermitage and Knaphill South is the main source of Lib Dem strength although their majority was slashed two weeks ago; Brookwood was last up in 2008 and its (live) voters delivered a Tory gain from Lib Dem by just 11 votes.  Candidates are C/LD/UKIP/Lab.

St. John's/Brookwood

Con 48.9
Lib Dem 38.6
Lab 6.9
UKIP 5.6

(from BritainVotes (http://twitter.com/BritainVotes/status/71350224156770305))

Dyce/Bucksburn/Danestone

SNP 51.4
Lab 23.1
Lib Dem 11.0
Con 8.7
Ind 3.7
Green 2.2

(from BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-13467590) via Andrea at Vote2007)

That's

SNP +15.2%
LAB -1.8%
LIB -15.2%
CON +0.4%
GRN +0.2%

No by-elections last week.  There is one by-election on 2nd June:

CANONS, Harrow; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  This ward is at the north-east corner of the London Borough of Harrow and is served by Canons Park and Stanmore stations at the western end of the Jubilee Line.  This is the third most Jewish ward in England, with a Jewish population of 36% at the 2001 census.  Politically it's a very safe Conservative ward; since 2002 the lowest Tory score was 56.7% in a 2007 by-election which saw a further 8.5% for an independent who had failed to get the Conservative nomination, and in 2002 the Conservatives had 74.1% in a straight fight with Labour (this was the year that almost all of the Lib Dem candidates in Harrow messed up their nominations).  For more electoral information on Harrow I must point you to the website of 2002 Labour candidate for this ward Colin Gray. (http://www.harrow-elections.co.uk)  The 2010 result was C 59.6 Lab 24.0 LD 16.4; candidates for the by-election are just the three main parties.

Canons

Con 59.7
Lab 30.9
Lib Dem 9.4

(from http://www.harrow.gov.uk/info/200154/results/2339/canons_by-elections_results_2011 (http://www.harrow.gov.uk/info/200154/results/2339/canons_by-elections_results_2011))

Good result for Labour in a ward utterly dominated by suburban prosperity, good result for the Tories (and Johnson) as well; evidence that that their (his) prosperous suburban base is holding up well.

By-elections on 9th June:

BO'NESS AND BLACKNESS, Falkirk Council; caused by the death of an SNP councillor.  Borrowstounness (always abbreviated to Bo'ness) is a small town on the Firth of Forth about seven miles east of Falkirk.  It was once the eastern end of the Antonine Wall; in more modern times the town's main economy was based on its port and coal-mining, while now it's a commuter centre for Edinburgh and Falkirk.  In 2007 the shares of the vote were SNP 47.2 Lab 31.9 C 12.7 Ind 4.3 SSP 3.8, with the SNP winning one seat on first preferences and a second on transfers from the second Labour candidate, the top Labour candidate reaching quota on Independent transfers.  Since then there has been a by-election in November 2009 following the death of the other SNP councillor (the two elected in 2007 were brothers); the SNP held this in the first round, the votes being SNP 57.5 Lab 29.5 C 12.8 LD 2.8.  The ward is part of the Falkirk East seat at Holyrood which was an SNP gain last month.  Candidates for the by-election are SNP, Lab, C and Independent.

BROMPTON, Kensington and Chelsea; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  This ward is at the eastern end of Kensington, served by Knightsbridge and South Kensington stations on the Piccadilly Line; for tourists it includes the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Brompton Oratory and Harrods.  Politically - this is affluent Kensington, what do you expect but a super-safe Tory ward?  That's exactly what you've got: last year the ward voted C 67.4 LD 19.4 Lab 13.2, and in 2006 the Tories polled 77.3%.  It would be a brave or foolish person who predicted anything other than a Conservative hold.  Candidates for the by-election are just the three main parties.

CHELMSFORD CENTRAL, Essex County Council; caused by the death of a Lib Dem councillor.  The county town of Essex, Chelmsford became an industrial centre in the 19th century, with Marconi setting up the world's first radio factory here; the town remains a major employment centre even though thousands of people commute from here to London.  This division covers the central business district and the Moulsham area to its south.  It was marginal LD/C in 2005 but the Lib Dems increased their majority in 2009, the votes being LD 44.5 C 33.6 Grn 8.2 Lab 7.7 BNP 6.1.  Candidates for the by-election are just the three main parties.

QUEENS GATE, Kensington and Chelsea; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  Immediately west of Brompton ward (see above), this ward covers a more residential area between Kensington Road and Cromwell Road, served by High Street Kensington station on the District Line.  Apart from that, pretty much all the comments for Brompton ward apply equally to this ward; the shares of the vote last year were C 62.0 LD 19.3 Lab 12.1.  The by-election is being fought by the three main parties plus UKIP.

TAIN AND EASTER ROSS, Highland Council; caused by the death of an SNP councillor who had been elected as an Independent.  Tain is a town on the east coast of Ross and Cromarty located on the A9 and the Far North Line, most famous for being the home of the Glenmorangie Distillery; the ward includes a large chunk of Easter Ross as far south as Kilmuir on the Cromarty Firth.  This being the Scottish Highlands, individuals matter a lot more than parties; for what it's worth, the shares of the vote in 2007 were Ind 63.3 LD 16.2 SNP 12.0 Lab 3.8 C 3.2 SSP 1.5, with more than half of the Independent votes going to Alasdair Rhind who was easily elected in the first round.  His surplus enabled Alan Torrance (whose death caused this by-election) to move from fourth place into third, which position he held for the rest of the counting, ironically squeezing out the SNP candidate.  (The Lib Dem candidate won the other seat.)  Candidates for the by-election are SNP, Lib Dem and three independents.

The grammatically correct way to phrase that is "Tain is a town in Easter Ross". :P

that's a shame, because that is exactly the kind of place the Greens need to start winning, that 8.2 was not remotely a fluke, and nowhere near their best result in Essex, and they need to block their's and the LibDems' protest votes going back to labour

That would then raise the question as to why the ward wasn't just called Easter Ross...

Partly because half the ward's population is in Tain, and partly because the term Easter Ross sometimes is understood to include Dingwall, which is not in the ward.
The Black Isle, though also strictly speaking on the east coast of Ross & Cromarty (and more or less including the long-suppressed tiny county of Cromarty), is not in Easter Ross.

Cromartyshire had about thirteen separate pieces, one of which was Ullapool.  Which is on the other coast.  You can see why they got rid of it.

Yah, most of the territory was over in Wester Ross actually. I thought the populated bits were mostly the ones in the Black Isle, though.

Of course, Cromartyshire was created out of the landholdings of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mackenzie,_1st_Earl_of_Cromartie) horrid person. Not only the most
bizarre, but also (until 1974) the newest county to have existed in Britain.

Some extra snippets from the excellent Britain Votes (http://britainvotes.blogspot.com/2011/06/by-election-preview-9th-june.html) blog:

* The Tory candidate in Brompton is Louis Mosley, grandson of Oswald.
* The former Lib Dem councillor in Chelmsford Central died while waiting for an operation that repeatedly got cancelled - and she was on the board of directors of the hospital involved.

Any news on a potential Stock byelection in Essex if/when Lord Hanningfield resigns?

 :-\

Kensington and Chelsea, Brompton
Con 79.6 (+12.2)
Lab 11.0 (-2.2)
Lib Dem 9.4 (-10.0)

Kensington and Chelsea, Queens Gate
Con 73.7 (+3.9)
Lib Dem 11.1 (-8.2)
Lab 9.1 (-1.8 )
UKIP 6.0 (+6.0)

(via http://twitter.com/BritainVotes (http://twitter.com/BritainVotes))

Essex, Chelmsford Central
Con 43.6 (+10.0)
Lib Dem 38.6 (-5.9)
Lab 17.8 (+10.1)

Falkirk, Bo'ness and Blackness (compared with 2007 result/compared with 2009 by-election)
SNP 57.8 (+10.6 / +0.3)
Lab 31.8 (-0.1 / + 2.3)
Con 8.2 (-4.5 / -4.6)
Ind 2.1 (-2.2 / +2.1)

(from Mark Senior and Andrea at Vote 2007)

Tain and Easter Ross will only begin to count Friday morning.

Tain and Easter Ross first preferences:
SNP 837
Fiona Robertson 811
Ruaridh Mackenzie 467
LD 307
Michael Herd 97

After transfers:
Fiona Robertson 1204
SNP 1037

Ten by-elections next week so not as much detail as usual.

ABBEY, Dumfries and Galloway; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor.  This is a mainly rural ward covering the area south-west of Dumfries around the large hill of Criffel; the main settlement is the town of Dalbeattie.  First preferences in 2007 were C 33.8 Lab 28.1 SNP 17.8 Ind 15.4 LD 4.9, with the seats splitting C 2 SNP 1 Lab 1.  There was then a by-election in May 2008 which the Conservatives held, the shares being C 40.8 Lab 33.2 SNP 18.0 Ind 4.1 LD 3.9 and the 2PP C 54.0 Lab 46.0.  Candidates for this by-election are just C/Lab/SNP.

ARLLECHWEDD, Gwynedd; caused by the death of a Lib Dem councillor.  To quote Al in another place:
All I can add to that is that the 2008 and 2004 results were both straight LD/PC fights with very similar results: the Lib Dems won 290-268 in 2004 and 296-265 in 2008.

BURTON TOWN, Staffordshire County Council; caused by the death of a Labour councillor.  This division covers virtually all of the original town of Burton-on-Trent, and in particular includes all of the town's famous breweries.  This was one of only three Labour seats in Staffordshire that survived the Tory landslide of 2009, and even then the result was pretty close, Lab 34.4 LD 27.7 C 22.8 BNP 15.1.  Labour should perform much better this time.

BYKER, Newcastle upon Tyne; postponed from 5 May.  This is an inner-city ward east of the city centre, which was extensively redeveloped in the 1960s.  For non-Geordies Byker is most famous for the BBC children's TV Byker Grove, which gave the nation Ant and Dec.  Even before 2010 this was a safe Labour ward; the 2010 result was Lab 57.7 LD 24.3 C 9.2 Ind 8.8.  Candidates are the three main parties plus an Independent, the BNP and an outfit called Newcastle First of which I know nothing.

CREWE SOUTH, Cheshire East; postponed from 5 May.  This two-seat ward covers the area west of Crewe railway station along the Nantwich Road, including some railway works and Crewe Alexandra's football ground at Gresty Road.  Cheshire East has been re-warded since the previous election in 2008 which makes any comparison with previous results moot; for what it's worth one Labour and one Lib Dem councillor are standing for re-election.  There are two candidates from each of the three main parties.

ECKINGTON, Derbyshire County Council; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor who now has a politically restricted post.  Eckington is a small town north of Chesterfield just outside the Sheffield city boundary which consistently returns Labour county councillors.  The 2009 result was Lab 35.5 Ind 30.9 C 23.7 LD 9.9; the by-election is a straight fight between Labour and Conservative.

HULLBRIDGE, Rochford, Essex; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  Hullbridge is a rather isolated village on the River Crouch, directly south of South Woodham Ferrers.  For some reason, the major party opposition to the Conservatives in Rochford district has rather broken down and the result is some seriously wacky voting patterns; in 2006-08 the ward was safe Conservative with the BNP third from 2007 onwards; in 2010, on General Election day, the Green Party came from nowhere to take the ward from the Conservatives with a majority of more than 100; last month the Greens subsided into third place with the Conservatives reasserting their normal large majority, this time over the English Democrats in second.  Candidates for the by-election are C/Grn/Lab/UKIP.

MANVERS, Rushcliffe, Notts; postponed from 5 May.  This two-seat ward covers the southern half of the village of Radcliffe on Trent, east of Nottingham on the road and railway line to Grantham.  On the basis of the 2007 result (C 74.4 Lab 25.6) it's very safe Conservative.  Candidates are 2 each C/Lab.

UWCHALED, Conwy; caused by the death of a Plaid Cymru councillor.  This is a rural ward based on the village of Cerrigydrudion, on the A5 London-Holyhead road.  It is named after the long-abolished Uwchaled rural district of Denbighshire.  Previous election results tell us very little: the ward was Plaid unopposed in 2008.  Candidates this time are C/Ind.

WESTERHOPE, Newcastle upon Tyne; postponed from 5 May after the Lib Dem candidate died on polling day.  Unlike Byker, Westerhope was originally a separate village about six miles west of Newcastle and was not incorporated into the city until 1974.  Until 2008 this was a safe Lib Dem ward, but Labour gained it in 2010, the vote shares being Lab 36.5 LD 33.0 C 24.3 BNP 6.2.

Arllechwedd, Gwynedd
Plaid 56.0 (+8.8 )
Lib Dem 20.4 (-32.4)
Lab 15.8
Cons 7.7

Other results aren't up yet on the authories' websites.

Conwy, Uwchaled

Ind 94.1
Con 5.9

(from Britain Votes)

Newcastle, Westerhope

Lab 33.2 (-3.3)
Ind 26.5 (defending ex-Lib Dem councillor)
Newcastle First 16.0
Lib Dem 14.8 (-18.2)
Con 7.2 (-17.1)
BNP 2.4 (-4.1)

(from Vote 2007)

Other reports are of a Labour hold in Newcastle, Byker and of a Green gain from Conservative in Rochford, Hullbridge, but no figures yet.

Update:

Derbyshire, Eckington

Lab 73.8 (+38.3)
Con 26.2 (+2.5)

Rochford, Hullbridge

Green 49.8 (+31.6)
Con 36.5 (-5.0)
Lab 12.0 (-5.2)
UKIP 1.7

Not looking good for LibDem hopes to keep what they have in Gwynedd next year. Though maybe they'll do better with candidates with less... er... offensive surnames.

If I can ask why, what is the problem with the Douglas-Pennants? I understand than they are a very old nobility family, but, what else?

Because (and this is no reflection on the man in question; he may be very nice for all I know) they were a bunch of absolute and utter bastards. They developed,* owned and ran Penrhyn Quarry until the 1950s and in terms of how they treated their workforce they were the worst of the families that owned slate quarries in North Wales. Which is saying a lot, actually. Of particular relevance would be the lockouts in Bethesda (http://www.llgc.org.uk/ymgyrchu/Llafur/StreicPenrhyn/index-e.htm) at the turn of the last century, one of the most important events in the history of North Wales and one of the most important in the modern history of Wales generally. In which they were the bad guys.

So the name is kind of toxic. Which probably isn't especially helpful if you're trying to get elected, no matter how hard you try.


_{(translation: 'there is no traitor in this house'. It's a card put up in the windows of striking quarrymen in Bethesda)}

*Via outright theft and the proceeds of slavery. I don't make this up.

LOL.  Why no Plaid candidate?



Roughly what I'd have expected there.


This seems to be a very strange ward.

I suppose it is a very rural area where only the candidate is important, no matter his party.
The kind of place which would prefer non-partisan elections at the local level.
According to Wikipedia, the area is heavily Welsh-speaking, too.

Abbey, Dumfries and Galloway
Count 1 (compared to 2007/2008 by-election)
Cons 39.7 (+5.9/-1.1)
Lab 38.5 (+10.4/+5.3)
SNP 21.8 (+4.0/+3.8 )

Count 2 (compared to 2008 by-election 2PP)
Lab 51.0 (+5.0)
Cons 49.0 (-5.0)

LABOR gain on CONSERVATIVE


Byker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Lab 72.6 (+14.9)
BNP 8.7
Lib Dem 6.1 (-18.2)
Ind 4.7
Cons 4.6 (-4.6)
Newcastle First 3.3

Crewe South, Cheshire East (two candidates, so I'm using the combined total for each party. Each party had two candidates. Wards were redrew, so past comparisons are not possible.)
Lab 59.2, 2 seats
Cons 31.5
Lib Dem 9.3

Results for Burton Town, Staffordshire County and Manvers, Rushcliffe are still missing, apparently.

Haha, Byker.

Anyway... didn't the LibDems used to be fairly strong in south Crewe? Ah, yes. They did. My memory was right. So... wow.

According to ALDC;

Burton Town, Staffordshire County
Lab 43.7 (+9.3)
Con 31.3 (+8.5)
Lib 18.6 (-9.1)
UKI  6.4 (+6.4)
[BNP15.1 (-15.1)]

(compared to Jun '09)

Manvers, Rushcliffe
Con 69.3 (-5.0)
Lab 30.7 (+5.0)

(compared to May '07)

Not to mention, the overlooked and then forgotten by-election in Camborne;

Camborne South, Cornwall
Lab  34.5% (+28.5%)
Con  33.5% (+6.6%)
MKN  20.4% (-8.0%)
Grn  11.6% (+11.6%)
[Lib 21.1% (-21.1%)]
[Ind 17.6% (-17.6%)]

(compared to May '07)

Good night for Labour (and Greens).

A comment on the "Britain Votes" website constated than another by-election was forgotten

Marchwiel, Wrexham County (that is in NE Wales, near England Border. This is a rural ward based on the Marchwiel village, just to the southeast of Wrexham City town. 2008 results were IND 51.2, IND 29.7, CONS 13.1, BNP 6.1. This by-election had only two candidates, a Conservative and an Independant (not one of those who ran in 2008)

Ind 63.7
Cons 36.3 (+26.2)

By-elections on 23rd June:

AIRYHALL/BROOMHILL/GARTHDEE, Aberdeen; caused by the resignation of a Lib Dem councillor after he was charged with embezzlement from a local community centre.  This is a built-up area in south-west Aberdeen on the north bank of the Dee, running west from the Bridge of Dee.  First preferences in 2007 were LD 37.7 C 27.4 SNP 17.3 Lab 12.8 Ind 4.8 with the Lib Dems winning 2 seats and the Conservatives 1.  Pretty much anything could happen here - the Lib Dems are obviously on the slide and have run the council for eight years, this ward is part of the Aberdeen South and North Kincardine Holyrood seat which the SNP now hold, while the Conservative group in Aberdeen is suffering from civil warfare with half of the party caucus having jumped ship.  Candidates are LD/C/SNP/Lab/Grn/NF/2 Indies.

BINSTEAD AND FISHBOURNE (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2009/87/#ward2052), Isle of Wight; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  This ward is on the north-east coast of the island; Fishbourne is a small village located on the estuary of Wootton Creek, while Binstead to the east is the western end of the town of Ryde.  The Isle got re-warded at the last election in 2009, at which the Conservatives defeated an Independent candidate by just four votes; the shares were C 42.5 Ind 42.1 LD 15.4.  Candidates are C/Ind/LD/Lab/UKIP; the Independent is the same one as in 2009.

COCKINGTON-WITH-CHELSTON, Torbay, Devon; caused by a Conservative councillor being elected Mayor of Torbay.  This ward is located just west of Torquay town centre and includes the former village of Cockington, now part of the town.  The results in 2007 and 2011 were both close, with the Conservatives winning three seats each time with majorities over the Lib Dems of 62 votes in 2007 and 100 votes last month; shares last month were C 36.0 LD 26.6 Lab 14.8 Grn 12.1 Ind 10.6.  Candidates for the by-election are C/LD/Lab/Grn and two Independents.

DEEPING ST JAMES (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2007/272/#ward8022), South Kesteven, Lincs; postponed from May after the death of a Lib Dem councillor who had been nominated for re-election.  The largest of several villages in the fens just north of Peterborough known as the Deepings, Deeping St James is perhaps best known as the home of the world darts champion Martin Adams.  This is a three-member ward which in 2007 had just four candidates, two Conservative, one Lib Dem and the then Labour county councillor, a colourful character who has changed his name by deed poll to Fair Deal Phil Dilks.  Shares of the vote in 2007 were C 37.7 LD 36.9 Lab 25.4.  This time there are full slates of Conservatives and Lib Dems, two Green Party candidates and two Independents (one of whom is Dilks).

ELMLEY CASTLE AND SOMERVILLE, Wychavon, Worcs; caused by no candidates being nominated for the May election (the Conservative councillor died shortly before nominations opened).  This is a long and narrow ward in the Vale of Evesham between the town itself and Bredon Hill, containing the villages of (from west to east) Great Comberton, Little Comberton, Elmley Castle, Netherton, Hinton on the Green, Sedgeberrow and Aston Somerville.  The 2007 result was C 72.4 LD 27.6 and the by-election is again a straight C/LD fight.

LLANEGWAD, Carmarthenshire; caused by an Independent councillor being disqualified for not attending any meetings in six months (due to ill-health).  This is a deeply rural area covering the lower Cothi valley until it flows into the Tywi at Nantgaredig, which is probably the largest settlement in the ward.  For what it's worth, the shares in 2008 were Ind 52.6 Ind 28.1 PC 19.4.  The by-election is a straight fight between an Independent councillor and Plaid.

ST ANDREWS, Great Yarmouth; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  This is an urban ward in southern Great Yarmouth on the Suffolk side of the river, just north of Gorleston.  The seat was won convincingly by the Conservatives in 2008, 62.6-37.4 over Labour, but in May Labour narrowly gained the seat by 52.2-47.8.  The by-election is again a straight C/Lab fight.

SEABRIDGE, Newcastle under Lyme; postponed from 5 May following the death of the UKIP candidate.  This ward is located at the south end of the town of Newcastle under Lyme, between the Clayton Road and the M6 motorway.  It's a fairly well-off area and this is reflected in the voting patterns, which show a safe Conservative ward.  The 2010 vote shares were C 43.4 Lab 28.9 LD 19.2 UKIP 8.4 and the same four parties are standing this time.

STANTON (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2007/166/#ward6803), Derbyshire Dales; caused when the only candidate who was nominated for this ward in the May elections withdrew.  Located in the Derwent valley just north of Darley Dale, the ward includes the villages of Stanton in Peak and Rowsley in the Peak District National Park and Northwood and Tinkersley outside it.  The 2007 result was C 59.6 LD 40.4, although I believe the Conservative councillor then left the party.  Candidates this time are C/LD/Lab.

Newcastle-under-Lyme, Seabridge

Con 45.7 (+2.3)
Lab 40.8 (+11.9)
UKIP 9.2 (+0.8 )
Lib Dem 4.3 (-14.9)

Carmarthenshire, Llanegwad

PC 52.1 (+32.7)
Ind 47.9

Wychavon, Elmley Castle and Somerville

Con 68.8 (-3.6)
Lib Dem 31.2 (+3.6)

Torbay, Cockington with Chelston

Lib Dem 46.3 (+19.7)
Con 27.1 (-8.9)
Lab 15.8 (+1.0)
Inds 8.4
Green 2.4 (-9.7)

Isle of Wight, Binstead and Fishbourne

Ind 37.2 (-4.9)
Con 36.9 (-5.6)
Lib Dem 12.1 (-3.3)
UKIP 8.1 (+8.1)
Lab 5.7 (+5.7)

(from http://britainvotes.blogspot.com/ (http://britainvotes.blogspot.com/))

Great Yarmouth, St. Andrews

Lab 51.4 (-0.8 )
Con 48.6 (+0.8 )

(compared with May 2011 - 14.0% swing to Labour since 2008 so a Labour gain)

(from http://www.great-yarmouth.gov.uk/council-democracy/elections-news-information/elections-results.htm (http://www.great-yarmouth.gov.uk/council-democracy/elections-news-information/elections-results.htm))

South Kesteven, Deeping St. James

Actual results first:

Ind Dilks 792 (elected)
Ind Stevens 647 (elected)
Con 631 (elected), 483, 318
Green 350, 289
Lib Dem 242, 70, 67

Percentages:

Ind Dilks 29.8
Ind Stevens 24.3
Con 23.7 (-14.0)
Green 13.1 (+13.1)
Lib Dem 9.1 (-27.8 )

(from http://www.southkesteven.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=4971&p=0 (http://www.southkesteven.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=4971&p=0))

Serious Business in Caernarfon. (http://www.caernarfonherald.co.uk/caernarfon-county-news/local-caernarfon-news/2011/06/23/row-break-out-over-council-election-in-gwynedd-88817-28928724/)

Both the notion that the council can coopt members in certain circumstances, and the notion that party politics "should not" play a role in that, are so alien to my understanding of representative democracy as to make it impossible to have an opinion. Though neither is as outlandish as the notion that councillors should not discuss who to vote for before the meeting - wtfh?

Derbyshire Dales DC, Stanton

Con 246
Lab 173
LD 84

(via the Council's Twitter feed)

At a glance that looks like a pretty good Labour performance.

Let me guess, the LD in Kesteven whose vote total was non-joke was their incumbent.

From above:

Derbyshire Dales, Stanton

Con 48.9 (-10.7)
Lab 34.4 (+34.4)
Lib Dem 16.7 (-23.7)

Oh well, so he was locally known for some other reason... and the other two were not.

Aberdeen City, Airyhall/Broomhill/Garthdee

1st preferences

SNP 33.2 (+15.9)
Lab 23.3 (+10.5)
Con 19.4 (-8.0)
Lib Dem 16.5 (-21.2)
Green 3.0 (+3.0)
Inds 3.9 (-0.9)
NF 0.7 (+0.7)

SNP win seat on final count.

SNP	1112	1115	1120	1136	1161	1263	1441
Lab	783	783	784	810	829	956	1068
Con	649	652	654	656	676	801
LD	554	558	562	584	599
Ind 1	98	99	109	122
Green	101	103	104
Ind 2	32	34
NF	25

http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/ElectedRepresentatives/Elections/Byelection/garthdee_byelection.asp (http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/ElectedRepresentatives/Elections/Byelection/garthdee_byelection.asp)

(via Vote2007)

Town Councils can be Serious Business, you know.

That's why I don't get it.

I think the general idea is that if you aren't on the Town Council (any Town Council) then you aren't supposed to get it.

Two by-elections on 30th June, both in safe Conservative wards in safe Conservative councils.

CHESHUNT CENTRAL, Broxbourne, Herts; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor after he was arrested on suspicion of fraud.  Just outside the Greater London boundary in the Lea Valley, Cheshunt is a dormitory town for commuters to London; Liverpool Street is fourteen miles away on the West Anglia Main Line.  The main local employer is the supermarket chain Tesco which has its head office here.  Broxbourne council (which also includes Hoddesdon to the north) is dominated by the Conservatives, with the Labour opposition able to win just one of the district's thirteen wards, and it's not this one.  Entirely built-up except for the marshy ground along the Lea, Cheshunt Central is one of the weaker Tory wards, but they still enjoy a majority of nearly a thousand votes, currently over Labour, who took second place from the BNP in 2008.  The shares of the vote in May were C 67.9 Lab 20.4 English Democrats 11.6; the by-election sees candidates from the three main parties, UKIP and an Independent.

THAMESFIELD, Wandsworth, South London; caused by the Conservative leader of the council being appointed to Boris Johnson's team of Deputy Mayors of London.  Thamesfield ward consists of the Putney bank of the River Thames south of Putney Bridge; it's served by Putney station, six miles from Waterloo on the Windsor Line, with East Putney underground station just outside the ward boundary.  For decades now Wandsworth has been a 'flagship' Tory administration which sets unbelievably low council taxes by providing almost no actual services themselves, instead 'outsourcing' them to private companies; because of this the Conservatives have had more than 70% of the council seats continuously since 1990 even though all three of the borough's constituencies voted Labour in 1997 and 2001 (and Tooting or its predecessors have been held by Labour in Parliament since 1964).  Thamesfield ward is part of the Putney seat which is the better end of the borough for the Tories, and the votes in 2010 were C 56.0 Lab 17.7 LD 16.8 Grn 9.6, the leading Tory candidate polling almost 5000 votes.  The same four parties are contesting the by-election; for some reason the Labour candidate is working the ward hard with leaflets like this:
()

Edit: This is my 300th post

Difficult to think of many less promising wards in London to target, tbh.

With some research, I got the answer.

He was the only LD local candidate. The two others were a couple living in the South Kesteven district, but not in or near the contested ward.

They don't seem to like outside candidates. The 3rd Tory candidate was also from outside the ward and he polled behind a Green.

Labour gained 2 seats from the Lib Dems at a by-election held last Thursday in East Ward (Langley Moor) of Brandon & Byshottles Parish Council

Near your patch; were you involved at all?

The existence of the two strong indies plays a role here. People voting for 1 or 2 of them having 2 or 1 votes to potentially give to the major party candidate(s) they like.

Yep


I'm afraid not. Easing my way back 'into things' gently ;) however

Things better in general then?

Generally :), yes

Glad to hear it :)

Wandsworth, Thamesfield

Con 45.8 (-10.2)
Lab 31.3 (+13.6)
Lib Dem 16.7 (-0.1)
Green 6.2 (-3.4)

Broxbourne, Cheshunt Central

Con 53.1 (-14.8 )
Lab 34.4 (+14.0)
UKIP 6.3 (+6.3)
Ind 4.4 (+4.4)
Lib Dem 1.7 (+1.7)



(via BritainVotes)

The targeting clearly worked - that's an excellent result for Labour.

Looked up the 2008 GLA results for Thamesfield to get a bit more context: C 50.8 Lab 18.8 Grn 11.9 LD 11.6; Boris 55.6 Ken 28.1.

Let's not forget that Labour were getting their lowest poll ratings in its modern history at that point. Now, they're at their highest point for about 10 years.

31% in that ward? Good Lord. I suppose it shows that Community Liberal style campaigning still works, even if not for its inventors.

Five local by-elections on 7th July. 

[Horbury candidates list edited 6th July]

CHURNET VALLEY (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2009/398/#ward5278), Staffordshire County Council; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  This is a long and thin county division east of Stoke-on-Trent, which is visited by thousands of people every year; it's the home of the theme park Alton Towers and the Churnet Valley preserved railway.  Alton is at the south-east end of the division, which runs north-west along the Churnet Valley to the village of Cheddleton on the Stoke-Leek road; the division also includes the northern part of the town of Cheadle.  The presence of part of Cheadle meant that Labour had a fairly strong vote in the division in 2005 (C 47.6 Lab 32.4 LD 19.9) but that melted away in the 2009 Tory landslide, with Labour finishing in third place behind the Lib Dems; shares were C 53.9 LD 26.5 Lab 19.6.  The late Tory councillor, Barrie Mycock, once featured in a b3ta.com list of Real People With Rude Names (http://www.b3ta.com/features/realnames/ (http://www.b3ta.com/features/realnames/)); perhaps it's just as well they didn't know that Barrie was actually his middle name and his actual first name was Ramon.  I'm not making this up. (http://www.staffsmoorlands.gov.uk/downloads/Declaration_Cheadle_North_East_of_results.doc)  Candidates for the by-election are three main parties plus UKIP; UKIP have had some local success in Leek and Newcastle-under-Lyme so it'll be interesting to see how they do here.  

HORBURY AND SOUTH OSSETT, Wakefield, West Yorkshire; caused by the resignation of a Conservaive councillor due to ill-health.  The large village of Horbury is located in the Calder Valley about three miles south-west of Wakefield, at the point where the wool-spinning towns end and the coal-mining towns begin.  Horbury's main industries were spinning and engineering; the sports company Slazenger (official supplier of tennis balls to Wimbledon) had a factory here, and Charles Roberts and Co built tens of thousands of railway wagons over the years at Horbury Junction; the railway company Bombardier built the Voyager trains here in 2000-2005.  When the ward was created in 2004 Labour won 2 seats and the Conservatives 1; the Tories gained the Labour seats in 2007 and 2008 but the ward always remained marginal, the largest Tory majority being 199 votes in 2007.  The Tories did well to hold on in 2010 by 102 votes but in May Labour gained the ward fairly comfortably with a majority of 385; shares of the vote were Lab 49.1 C 41.3 LD 9.5.  Candidates for the by-election are those three parties plus UKIP and an Indie two Indies; the Lib Dem candidate is regular contributor to the Vote-UK forum (http://www.vote-2007.co.uk) Mark Goodair.

LYTCHETT MATRAVERS, Purbeck, Dorset; caused by the resignation of a Lib Dem councillor.  The village of Lytchett Matravers lies about seven miles north-west of Poole with good views over Poole Harbour; the ward also includes the village of East Morden to the west.  Purbeck council is currently finely balanced; following May's election the Tories and Lib Dems were tied on 11 seats each, with the Lib Dems currently controlling the council as a minority.  If the Tories can win the by-election they will have half the seats on the council, and that's certainly possible in this tight marginal ward; the Lib Dems won by 118 votes in 2010 (LD 52.6 C 47.4) and 57 votes in 2006, while in 2008 the Lib Dems and Tories won one seat each in a double-header.  The by-election is a straight LD/C fight.

PECKHAM, Southwark, South London; caused by the death of the Mayor of Southwark, who was a Labour councillor.  An iconic district of South London thanks to the TV comedy Only Fools and Horses (and Desmond's), Peckham ward covers the area between Burgess Park to the north and Peckham Bus Station to the south.  The area has a reputation for gang violence and the ward includes the notorious North Peckham Estate, scene of the murder of 10-year-old local resident Damilola Taylor eleven years ago and now extensively redeveloped.  The 2001 census found that the ward was majority black, 36% African, 15% Caribbean and 4% "Black Other".  With that sort of inner-city background it's a very safe Labour ward, and the 2010 shares of the vote were Lab 62.3 LD 17.9 C 8.5 Grn 6.1 Ind 5.2.  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties, the Greens and TUSC, the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition.

SAWLEY (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2009/377/#ward6938), Derbyshire County Council; caused by the death of long-serving and amazingly popular Independent councillor Bill Camm.  Camm had been a councillor since 1961, initially as a Labour member of Long Eaton Urban District Council, although he fell out with Labour many years ago over the depth of a local swimming pool, of all things.  He stood for Parliament in 1983 as the Independent Labour candidate for Erewash and easily saved his deposit, polling 7.5%.  Sawley is a western suburb of the town of Long Eaton, on the eastern side of the M1 motorway a few miles south-west of Nottingham; the county division consists of the original village of Sawley south of the railway line (Sawley ward) and the Long Eaton ward of Wilsthorpe, covering the New Sawley area north of the railway line.  Camm's popularity was such that it's difficult to tell what will happen now he's gone; the most recent county election in 2009 was Camm 54.4 C 24.1 Lab 10.8 LD 10.7; in the 2007 Erewash district council election he polled 48.8% in the three-member Sawley ward, with the Lib Dem candidates winning the other two seats.  Camm retired from his district council seat in May, and Sawley elected two Conservatives and one Labour councillor, with Wilsthorpe electing three Conservative councillors although Labour were just 13 votes away from the final seat.  Both the Tories and Labour have gone for high-profile candidates, with Labour standing last year's Erewash parliamentary candidate, and the Tories selecting the leader of Erewash council (who is a Wilsthorpe ward councillor).  There is also a Lib Dem candidate.

Horbury and (especially) Ossett are in the Heavy Woollen District which extends over to Batley; they used to make shoddy (sort of like recycled wool) there.

Much hilarity can be gleaned from a glossary of textile manufacturing terms on tehwiki:

Amusing image from the Horbury campaign.  Peter Box is the leader of Wakefield Council.

()

The website to which that image is linked is less amusing.
A guy rambling about Conservative-Labour-Lib Dem secret alliance, an homophobic rant and an anti-immigrant rant.

That guy is a perennial candidate and he was condemned by court in 2002 for harassment against his MP.

http://www.wakefieldexpress.co.uk/news/local/mp_s_court_victory_on_man_with_wild_slurs_1_951083 (http://www.wakefieldexpress.co.uk/news/local/mp_s_court_victory_on_man_with_wild_slurs_1_951083)

That guy is a psycho, I think.

I note that his name is Norman. What is it with Norman's from Yorkshire? (we all remember Norman 'chainsaw' Scarth, yes?)

Anyways, Peter Box has been the leader of Wakefield council since 1998. Which is the sort of length-of-service that you normally associate with Manchester and surrounds.

Derbyshire, Sawley

Lab 41.7 (+30.9)
Con 36.9 (+12.8 )
Lib Dem 21.4 (+10.7)

Lab gain from Ind

Southwark, Peckham

Lab 70.1 (+7.8 )
Lib Dem 22.1 (+4.2)
Con 3.4 (-5.1)
TUSC 2.5 (+2.5)
Green 1.8 (-4.3)

Lab hold

Purbeck, Lytchett Martravers

Con 53.9 (+6.5)
Lib Dem 46.1 (-6.5)

Con gain from Lib Dem

Staffordshire, Churnet Valley

Con 52.0 (-1.9)
Lab 24.0 (+4.4)
UKIP 15.5 (+15.5)
Lib Dem 8.5 (-18.0)

Con hold

(from BritainVotes)

Good result in Sawley for Labour. Suppose that the LibDems in Peckham will be pleased not to have Greenocked.

Labour majority in Horbury & South Osset is apparently over 700.

Interesting that UKIP can poll so much in Churnet Valley outside European Elections time.

I did wonder about that.  UKIP have very active chapters in Leek (which borders this division) and Newcastle under Lyme nearby, who actually seem to know how to do local campaigning.

Wakefield, Horbury and South Ossett

Lab 51.5 (+2.4)
Con 30.8 (-10.5)
UKIP 6.7 (+6.7)
Lib Dem 5.8 (-3.7)
Inds 5.2 (+5.2)

Lab gain from Con

(from Neil M at Vote 2007)

Those would be changes from May.

One by-election on 14th July:

OLD CATTON (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2009/390/#ward7424), Norfolk County Council; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor.  This division is a northern suburb of Norwich containing the parish of Old Catton together with part of Sprowston; it falls outside the Norwich city boundary which has failed to keep pace with the city's growth.  The deprivation indices suggest that Old Catton is a well-off area, while Sprowston is more mixed.  The 2009 result (C 48.8 UKIP 16.3 LD 13.5 Lab 10.8 Grn 10.6) suggests a very safe Tory area, but Labour did much better in 2005 (C 39.9 Lab 32.5 LD 22.7 Grn 4.8 ) on the general election turnout, and also were back in second place in May in the Broadland district council ward of Old Catton and Sprowston West, which has the same boundaries as this county division (C 51.4 Lab 25.9 LD 13.4 UKIP 9.3); Labour finished third behind the Lib Dems in the 2007 and 2004 district elections.  The area is part of the Norwich North constituency and the 2009 result was followed shortly after by the Conservative gain in the Norwich North by-election, although the political climate is now very different of course.  Candidates are C/Lab/LD/Grn/UKIP.

Old Catton (changes from 2011 district council election in italics)

Con 40.6 (-8.2) (-10.8 )
Lib Dem 25.3 (+11.8 ) (+11.9)
Lab 23.0 (+12.2) (-2.9)
UKIP 6.5 (-9.8 ) (-2.8 )
Green 4.6 (-6.0) (+4.6)

Two local by-elections on 21st July:

GLYDER, Gwynedd; caused by the death of a Plaid councillor.  This ward is basically western Bangor and runs south-west from the Coleg Menai campus up the hill to Friars School; it also includes the mainland end of Telford's Menai Bridge.  Al will probably know more about the area.  In 2008 Plaid were only opposed by the Lib Dems and won 64.4-35.6; the 2004 result saw Labour standing as well, the result being PC 48.9 Lab 27.2 LD 23.8.  This time there is a full set of candidates from the four main parties.  Plaid must win this by-election to preserve their overall majority on Gwynedd council.

REMENHAM, WARGRAVE AND RUSCOMBE, Wokingham, Berkshire; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor who now sits on the neighbouring council of Windsor and Maidenhead.  This is a rural ward at the northern end of Wokingham district on the Berkshire (eastern, here) side of the River Thames; Remenham and Remenham Hill lie at the northern end of the ward east of Henley-on-Thames, Ruscombe at the southern end is a suburb of Twyford on the Great Western Main Line, while Wargrave lies between them on the Thames and has a railway station on the Henley Branch.  This is a very safe Conservative ward which last voted in 2010 and split C 65.3 LD 28.2 Lab 6.5; the Tories polled more than 73% at the 2008 and 2006 elections.  Candidates are the three main parties plus UKIP and the Greens.

The Caernarfon-Bangor bus route goes through Glyder ward so I know it quite well as I now travel through it nearly every day. Mixture of different residential areas, all of which are quite pleasant in a very North Wales way (houses are generally small but well built; white walls and bluish or greenish slate roofing) and one of the more middle class of the Bangor city wards, but then that's not saying a great deal. A reasonable number of people in socially rented housing, but it doesn't have the large estates that you have elsewhere in Bangor (or Caernarfon, for that matter). Employment is dominated by the public sector (education and health; it's Bangor). As you expect, the percentage of people in professional occupations is rather high, the percentage in managerial occupations very low. The middle class element in the ward is very much of the Welsh-speaking middle class variety; I think it's the most Welsh-speaking ward in Bangor (or is that Marchog/Maes-G?). Amazing views in places.

Anyway; Glyder is probably the most 'naturally' Plaid ward in Bangor (the 2008 margin in next-door Dewi was much higher, but then Dogan could run as a Communist - or a Tory even - and win that ward by miles) and as such it would be a major shock if it were lost. Still, it's history isn't as strongly Plaid as might be thought (Bangor used to be dominated by independents, and this ward was no exception. Go back to the 60s and I think it usually had Labour councillors - Bangor West did anyway. Not sure of the boundaries) and the deceased incumbent was a popular figure. I presume that the Labour and LibDem candidates will be the usual City Councillors (edit: almost but not quite. See new post). The LibDem percentage will be important in light of their history of solid percentages in the ward and their County Councillors in Hirael (a Local Councillor For Local People) and (two) in Menai.

I'll report if/when I see any posters.

Is there is a particular why there always seem to have a by-election in Gwynedd? It is not the first time since May.

It's a big council (75 members) and as it's a rural area even more of the councillors are elderly than normal. Though two by-elections (one of which is yet to come) have been caused (the first directly, the second indirectly) by the fact that one of the Ffestiniog councillors was sent to prison for trying to murder his wife.

Just checked the SoPN for Glyder (yeah, can't sleep). Plaid candidate lives in the ward and is presumably this (http://www.bangor.ac.uk/psychology/research/staff_profile.php?person=elin_walker) person (http://www.s4c.co.uk/tighdudley/e_contestants-elinwj.shtml) (doesn't strike me as being an especially common name). The LibDem candidate also lives in the ward, is a City Councillor and has been around since forever. The Labour candidate lives in a different part of the city (though still on the same side of the railway line as Glyder ward) and was a paper candidate (for Dwyfor Meirionnydd) in the National Assembly election in May. The Tory candidate lives outside the ward but, again, fairly close; Upper Bangor. Same candidate as in the Arllechwedd by-election. Seems that three (and perhaps all four but I know nothing about the Tory) have had something to do with the university in one way or another at some point.

And about the Wokingham seat, is that even legal to sit on two borough/district councils (which are the same thing) at the same time? I see for County/Borough, County/District and the combinaisons with Parish councils, but two same-level authorities?

I remember the story about the Llais guy, but what's with the indirectly caused by-election?

you have to live in the area covered by the council you are running for a seat in, but you don't automatically have to resign if you move out of the district, so I suppose there's nothing stopping you, but he'd come under pressure to quit before long ( similar thing happened a few years ago when a labour cllr in Lambeth was selected as the candidate for a parliamentary seat in Bristol and moved there)

Well, I don't know if that is the thing than Al is thinking about, but, reading about that story, I also saw than the guy elected to replace him resigned at the beginning of July, because of work and family commitment.

For Wokingham, I searched too, and I saw than the Labour candidate is slamming the Conservatives hard because she resigned only once she won the Maidenhead seat, and not before. If she did before, they could have held the election at the same time than the referendum, saving money, acoording to him.

The resignation of the councillor elected in the by-election triggered by the conviction of the previous councillor. There have also been two by-elections in one of the other Ffestiniog wards as well, but none in the one that includes Llan. Its a little strange given that local politics in Ffestiniog used to be characterised by these really hard old men who'd been around as long as the Moelwyns, but they're all dead now (the deferred election being a consequence of the death of one of the last of them).

Gwynedd, Glyder

PC 39.4 (-25.0)
Lib Dem 36.9 (+1.3)
Lab 12.4 (+12.4)
Con 11.4 (+11.4)

(from BritainVotes)

Wokingham, Remenham, Wargrave and Ruscombe

Con 65.9 (+0.6)
Lib Dem 21.1 (-7.1)
Lab 7.3 (+0.8 )
UKIP 4.3 (+4.3)
Green 1.5 (+1.5)

(from Vote 2007)

Ah, so Madge's personal popularity can still be translated into a significant amount of votes, despite his party label. Which is good news for the LibDems in the area seeking re-election (both on the County Council and for the 'City Council') next year.

By-elections next week.  Starting with an unusual Tuesday by-election on 26th July:

SNATCHWOOD, Torfaen, Gwent; caused by the death of a People's Voice councillor.  This ward is a northern suburb of Pontypriddool, on the west bank of the river just south of Abersychan.  In 2008 it was won by People's Voice, a group of anti-Labour independents associated with former Independent AM Trish Law; People's Voice defeated Labour here by 372 votes to 282 in a straight fight.  The defeated Labour candidate is standing in the by-election along with candidates from Plaid, the Tories and three Independents.

By-elections on 28th July are in three safe Conservative wards and a LD/Lab marginal:

BEARDWOOD WITH LAMMACK, Blackburrn with Darrrwen, Lancs; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor due to ill-health.  Beardwood and Lammack are outlying north-west suburbs of Blackburrn, just inside the A6119 ring road; the ward also includes the Witton Country Park to the south.  This is a very middle-class area (Lammack in particular is quite well-off) and the Tories proved this by polling 82% in 2008 in a straight fight with Labour; the Tory vote in May was the lowest for some years at 60.3%, to 33.2% for Labour and 6.4% for the Lib Dems who don't stand in this ward consistently.  Candidates for the by-election are just the three main parties.

BUSH HILL PARK, Enfield, North London; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor who is moving to Cyprus for family reasons; Enfield has a large Cypriot community.  Served by the station of same name on the Enfield Town branch, 9.75 miles from Liverpool Street, this is part of the safe Labour parliamentary seat of Edmonton but doesn't vote like it; this can be explained by the area's history as a planned estate built on the grounds of the former Bush Hill Park House.  The estate is now a conservation area.  This produces a safe Conservative ward; the 2010 vote shares were C 38.4 Lab 24.8 LD 19.4 Grn 10.5 UKIP 6.9, while the Tories polled 63.4% in a 2009 by-election and their nearest challenger in 2006 was a campaigner to save Chase Farm Hospital.  Candidates for the by-election are C/Lab/LD/Grn/UKIP/BNP/Christian Party/EDP/Ind.

POULTON NORTH, Warrington; caused by the resignation of a Lib Dem councillor.  This is an area of new town development in the north-east of Warrington, just south of the huge M6-M62 junction at Croft.  The deprivation indices show that the ward is quite starkly divided, with the Blackbrook area (the south-west corner of the ward) being one of the most deprived areas in England and the Fearnhead area next it one of the least deprived.  This social division produced a safe Lib Dem ward in 2007 and 2008 (the Lib Dems polled 59.9% in 2008) but Labour gained by 31 votes in 2010 and gained a second seat in May by 238 votes (Lab 46.9 LD 39.2 C 13.9).  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus UKIP.

STANMORE PARK, Harrow, North London; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor who is now a cabinet member on Central Bedfordshire council, quite a long way from Harrow.  This ward covers most of the area known as Stanmore, stretching along Church Road and Stanmore Hill to the south of Bentley Priory, where the RAF forces in the Battle of Britain were controlled.  The main peculiarity of the area is an extremely large Jewish population, 27.3% according to the 2001 census; just outside this ward is Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue which has the largest single Orthodox community in Europe.  While this ward isn't as uniformly middle-class as Bush Hill Park (it does have one quite deprived census area) it is an even safer Conservative area, with the shares of the vote in May being C 58.5 Lab 20.5 LD 13.5 Grn 7.5.  Candidates for the by-election are C/Lab/LD/Grn/UKIP and an Independent who is a former Mayor of Harrow and unsuccessfully sought the Conservative nomination.

Deliberate mistake time again?

Yep :)

Torfaen, Snatchwood

Lab 47.9 (+4.8 )
Ind 1 (M. Harris) 32.3
Ind 2 (Joy) 8.2
Ind 3 (N. Harris) 7.4
Con 2.4 (+2.4)
PC 1.8 (+1.8 )

Enfield, Bush Hill Park

Con 44.5 (+6.1)
Lab 26.8 (+2.0)
Ind 9.2 (+9.2)
Lib Dem 7.1 (-12.3)
Green 4.0 (-6.5)
UKIP 2.8 (-4.1)
BNP 2.5 (+2.5)
Christian 1.8 (+1.8 )
Eng Dem 1.2 (+1.2)

Warrington, Poulton North

Lib Dem 48.3 (+9.1)
Lab 39.1 (-7.8 )
Con 8.3 (-5.6)
UKIP 4.2 (+4.2)

Blackburn, Beardwood with Lammack

Con 63.8 (+3.5)
Lab 33.3 (+0.1)
Lib Dem 3.0 (-3.4)

Harrow, Stanmore Park

Con 58.1 (-0.4)
Lab 21.2 (+0.7)
Ind 12.4 (+12.4)
Lib Dem 4.1 (-9.4)
Green 2.2 (-5.3)
UKIP 2.0 (+2.0)

Certainly didn't expect an LD hold in Warrington.

There was some bad publicity for the Labour candidate; was on holiday for some of the campaign and the local press found out.

August is normally a quiet month for by-elections and there is just one on 4th August.

SOUTH PETHERTON (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2009/397/#ward9363), Somerset County Council; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor.  South Petherton is a tiny town in rural Somerset, just of the A303 about ten miles west of Yeovil.  The division includes a hinterland stretching to the villages of Merriott and Hinton St George to the south.  Those villages are in the district ward of Eggwood, which was fairly safe Lib Dem in May, while South Petherton ward itself (which also includes some villages to the west) is a marginal ward won by the Conservatives in May, gaining a seat from the Lib Dems.  This produces a marginal county division, like much of rural Somerset; the 2009 result was a Conservative gain with a majority of 94 (C 43.3 LD 40.3 Ind 9.2 Grn 7.2) while in May the Lib Dems were slightly ahead across the two district wards.  Candidates for the by-election are C/LD/Grn/UKIP; the Conservative candidate is a district councillor for South Petherton and the Lib Dem candidate is the district councillor for Eggwood, while the independent candidate from 2009 now has the Green nomination.

There will be yet another by-election in Gwynedd, btw. Dewi Lewis (who was one of the most senior members of the Plaid group and of the council; he had the Economics and Development - or something like that - seat on the Council Board) has resigned after confessing to stealing £53,000 while he was a sub-postmaster. Given that he represented Penrhyndeudraeth ward, there's a mild amount of irony in the fact that he's likely to become a prisoner fairly soon (ho, ho, ho).

:D

There's a by-election in the City Centre ward in Edinburgh City Council on August 18th. The sitting SNP councillor David Beckett left to take up a position at Harvard.

This will be a very transfer heavy result

2007 by party

SNP 20.3
Conservative 20.1
Lib Dem 19.7
Labour 17.9
Green 16.8
Other 4.4

Tight!

The SNP are favourites to retain their seat, but 'The Trams' issue hovers over the ward like a foul smell. An anti-tram candidate is running as an independent. The Greens are also running.

apart from the fact that it'll be most likely a tory hold, that sounds like an interesting one

also, wtf is goin on in Gwynedd? I thought it was Ynys Mon that was supposed to be falling apart from the inside

What would that be... a five way marginal?


No idea; the business with Dewi Lewis came as a massive surprise. Elections next year will be as messy as always.

Somerset, South Petherton

Lib Dem 53.6 (+13.3)
Con 37.9 (-5.4)
Green 4.3 (-2.9)
UKIP 4.2 (+4.2)

what the hell happenned there?

Somerset County Council being less popular than death might be a reason.

Hmm... something about the letter 's'... see also Suffolk and Shropshire.

Three by-elections on 11th August:

ETON AND CASTLE, Windsor and Maidenhead, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor who is now a Government advisor on technology.  This is one of only five wards to cross the River Thames; the others are in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.  There can be few wards with stronger royal connections; this ward contains Windsor Castle, the largest and longest-occupied castle in the world, a residence of the monarchy since the time of Henry I; the Windsor Home Park, a private Royal Park; and the Frogmore Mausoleum, final resting place for generations of the Royal Family.  However, the part of the ward in Windsor is essentially uninhabited, with the only buildings of any note being the castle itself and some commercial properties on the riverfront (including Windsor and Eton Riverside railway station, served from Waterloo).  The vast majority of the ward's electorate live on the Buckinghamshire side of the Thames in the tiny town of Eton, best known for and dominated by the famous public school.  As befits a ward with such strong Establishment connections, it's safe Conservative; between 2007 and May this year the Lib Dem and Labour votes were essentially static while the Conservatives found two hundred extra voters, producing a result of C 65.2 LD 27.8 Lab 7.0.  The by-election is contested by the three main parties plus UKIP.

FREMINGTON, North Devon; caused by the resignation of an Independent councillor due to ill health.  Fremington is a village on the south bank of the Taw Estuary, about three miles west of Barnstaple; the ward also includes the village of Yelland to the west.  Not an awful lot can be read from May's result, which saw two very popular Independents dominating the poll and gaining the two seats from the Conservatives; the votes cast were Ind 1266/969/235 C 382/323 LD 184/95.  The by-election is contested by two Indies, the Tories and the Greens; the Tory candidate is one of the district councillors who lost his seat in May, while both Indies are current or ex-Fremington parish councillors.

ST PETERS, Islington, North London; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor who has been charged with benefit fraud; she denies the charge.  This ward is in the heart of Islington on the eastern side of Upper Street and Islington Green, and is served by Angel underground station on the Bank branch of the Northern Line, and by Essex Road underground railway station on the Finsbury Park-Moorgate branch (the only railway station in the UK which is only accessible by lift, fact fans).  The deprivation indices suggest that this is one of the more well-off wards in Islington.  Labour gained the ward from the Lib Dems in 2006, while May's result makes the ward look like a three-way marginal: Lab 34.4 LD 29.0 C 27.5 Grn 9.2; this is actually the strongest Conservative ward in Islington.  Candidates are Lab/LD/C/Grn/Ind, a second Independent having withdrawn after the close of nominations.

I think we can safely predict that the red flag will fly over Eton & Castle.

As for St Peters, yeah, it's one of the most gentrified wards in Islington, though isn't without its poorer sections (because Islington is like that). A few decades back and it would have been a solidly working class area, of course. Labour gaining it in 2006 was a massive, massive shock; one of the defeated LibDem councillors was the borough's then-leader, the controversial and (allegedly!) tyrannical Steve Hitchins.

Do you think current goings-on will affect the result?  Rainham is too close to that for my liking, let alone central Islington

In Fremington, there is no LD candidate. I suspect they are backing some "Independent" candidate.

Talking of Independents, the "declaration of interest" of the other councillor of that ward says he is a member of the Liberal Democrat party. So, he was elected as an Independent, is seating as a "New Wave Independent" (which are in coalition with LDs to run the council), but is a member of the Liberal Democrat party.

That is not the only strange ward in North Devon. Some wards than LDs held before 2011 had no LD candidates, but a full Independent ticket.

I'm cynical, pananoid or things like that really happens?
Is that common to make run people as independents when they are not?

You're good at this aren't you? Yes, it happens all the time in rural areas, although it isn't as common as it used to be.

It's more or less the norm on a number of parish/town councils, and I'd guess that on many of the independent-dominated districts in Wales and the North of Scotland, there's an element of this going on

There's a great side-effect to STV; it makes it difficult for Independents to get in as their 'home turf' is now 3-4 times bigger than it was. 18 independents were ousted on Highland Council in 2007 for example and 10 lost out in Dumfries and Galloway.

Long may it continue.

Well, I'm out of university for the summer, so, I have a lot of free time to fill.

Windsor & Maidenhead, Eton & Castle

Lib Dem 47.4 (+19.6)
Con 41.5 (-23.7)
Lab 7.3 (+0.3)
UKIP 3.9 (+3.9)

Islington, St. Peters

Lab 52.5 (+18.1)
Lib Dem 19.8 (-9.2)
Con 17.1 (-10.4)
Green 7.9 (-1.3)
Ind 2.7 (+2.7)

North Devon, Fremington

Ind (WoodTurner) 46.9
Con 28.8 (+10.3)
Ind (TurnerWood) 18.3
Green 6.0 (+6.0)

Lib Dems polled 8.9 last time but didn't stand

Reports of a Labour hold in Islington.


Forward, comrades. Forward!

That's quite a shocking result, no? (For what that's worth in local by-elections)

CITY CENTRE, Edinburgh; caused by the resignation of an SNP councillor who is off to Harvard University.  The Old Town; the New Town; the Royal Mile; Calton Hill; Princes Street; Waverley Station; the Castle; the Military Tattoo; the Grassmarket; the Scottish Parliament; the Palace of Holyroodhouse.  All of them are in this ward and at this time of year all of them are completely overrun with tourists up for the Edinburgh Festival and its Fringe (which these days is the tail that wags the dog).  If you have never been to Edinburgh for the Festival, go - you won't regret it.  Unless you actually live in this ward - many locals move out for the duration of the Festival and let their apartments out to Fringe performers at extortionate rates.  Canvassing in this ward is difficult at the best of times, with many flats accessed through stairwells accessed through other stairwells (one of which broke the ankle of the Labour candidate in a fall last week); together with the deluge of flyers from Fringe performers and the fact that many of the polling stations are Fringe venues, it has to be asked whether it was a good idea to hold the by-election in August at all.  Nevertheless, there are candidates from the four main parties together with the Greens and a strong Independent candidate running on a platform of scrapping the troubled under-construction Edinburgh tram system.  The 2007 results show a five-way marginal: first preferences were SNP 20.4 C 20.2 LD 19.9 Lab 18.0 Grn 17.0 SSP 1.8 Ind 1.6 Lib 1.0, the seats eventually splitting LD/SNP/C, the Tory candidate beating the Labour candidate for the final seat by just six votes.  With that result to work from absolutely anything could happen here, and transfers will be crucial.

PAGE MOSS, Knowsley, Merseyside; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor.  This is western Huyton, along the A57 Prescot Road and bordering the Liverpool wards of Knotty Ash and Yew Tree.  It's difficult to think of a safer Labour ward in the North West - even at Labour's low point in 2008 Page Moss gave the Labour candidate 78.7% in a straight fight with the Lib Dems, and last May's result was Lab 93.1 LD 6.9.  Candidates are the three main parties (the Tories are standing here for the first time since 2007) together with the Greens and an independent.

I suspect that the result in the one ward will be harder to predict than the other.

Anyway, if there's one thing probably all of us associate with Huyton...

Detailed map of the Edina ward? I want to see for myself what all is in it.

()

[now screenshotted as suggested by Al]

Screenshot it, maybe?

LDs governed until 2007 and held this ward before their loss of the Council that year. The Conservatives now dominate Windsor & Maidenhead Council (the LDs had only one seat before this by-election, with some small Residents' Association representation as well), but they've made themselves unpopular, so it's not a huge surprise the LDs made a surprise gain.

Cuts out the Old Town'S southern fringes, then. Goes further west than I would have expected, too.

Basically everything to the south of Princes Street and beyond (basically the 'red road' that cuts down the middle) was won by the SNP in 2007. Labour won in the north east of the ward, at the Calton Hill area while in the north west in the New Town and towards Haymarket you found people who voted Lib Dem 'nationally' but Tory locally. Obviously the SNP pretty much won everything in 2011.

This is the area of the ward most affected by the tram works.  Maybe this is a clue as to where the anti-tram indy's votes will come from?

Which is as things should be, yeah. Though "Calton Hill area" may be a misnomer, I think "Holyrood area" probably covers it better. (Google map) Ooh, wait a second. That little council estate right by Holyrood appears to be the very northern tip of Southside/Newington ward. Nevermind then.

Knowsley, Page Moss

Lab 82.5 (-10.6)
Lib Dem 8.7 (+1.8 )
Ind 3.4 (+3.4)
Green 3.2 (+3.2)
Con 2.3 (+2.3)

Edinburgh, City Centre

Con 24.2 (+4.0)
SNP 23.1 (+2.9)
Lab 19.7 (+1.7)
Green 14.3 (-2.7)
Ind 11.4 (+9.8 )
Lib Dem 7.3 (-12.6)

SNP	797	825	893	1081	1368
Con	837	904	1043	1110	1264
Lab	682	716	745	968
Green	494	576	635
Ind	394	402
Lib Dem	251

SNP hold

Those two wards don't have much in common, do they?

Good result for us in Edinburgh; bodes well for next May.

Well, they are both heavily urban.

Two by-elections left in August on the 25th.

SALTCOATS AND STEVENSTON, North Ayrshire; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor.  Two of the 'three towns' along with the Arran ferry port of Ardrossan, Saltcoats started off as a salt-panning town which became a seaside resort, while Stevenston is a chemicals town which was a major base for Nobel Industries.  Both towns are served by stations on the electrified branch from Kilwinning to Largs and are about 30 miles from Glasgow Central.  The 2007 first preferences were Lab 34.8 SNP 32.0 Ind 25.6 C 7.6, with Labour winning 2 seats, the SNP 1 and an independent 1.  In 2003 all the predecessor FPTP wards were Labour except for Stevenston South which went narrowly SNP.  Saltcoats is in the Cunninghame North Scottish Parliament constituency while Stevenston is in Cunninghame South, both SNP-held, while the ward is part of the Labour-held Ayrshire North and Arran Westminster constituency.  Candidates for the by-election are Lab/SNP/C/LD/Socialist Labour/Pensioners/Ind.

SHIREBROOK SOUTH WEST, Bolsover, Derbyshire; caused by the death of an Independent councillor.  Shirebrook is a town on the eastern edge of Nottinghamshire, about five miles north of Mansfield and linked to it by the Nottingham-Worksop "Robin Hood" railway line.  Today it's the headquarters and site for the main warehouse of Sports Direct, the sportswear company owned by Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley, but its political preferences are determined by its history as a coal-mining town; Shirebrook Colliery was begun in the 1890s and finally closed in 1993.  Reflecting this, in 2003 Shirebrook's five single-member wards returned a full slate of unopposed Labour councillors.  In 2007 democracy broke out, with two wards having contested elections and Labour losing them both: North West was gained by the East Midlands' only ever Respect councillor, and this ward elected an Independent candidate, Alan Wareing, by a majority of one vote (Ind 376 Lab 375).  Wareing was re-elected in May much more comfortably (Ind 52.1 Lab 32.2 BNP 9.6 C 6.1).  With Wareing no longer with us a Labour regain looks the most likely outcome.  Candidates for the by-election are Lab/BNP/C/Grn; the BNP performed very well in the Shirebrook and Pleasley county division in 2009, polling 27.2% and finishing second, but their star has rather sunk since then.

Bolsover, Shirebrook South West

Lab 47.8 (+15.6)
Green 24.6 (+24.6)
Con 17.2 (+11.1)
BNP 10.3 (+0.7)

(via Andrea at Vote2007)

North Ayrshire, Saltcoats and Stevenston

Lab 48.7 (+13.9)
SNP 33.2 (+1.2)
Con 7.2 (-0.4)
Pensioners 5.4 (+5.4)
Ind 2.9 (-22.7)
Lib Dem 1.4 (+1.4)
Soc Lab 1.1 (+1.1)

Lab	1914	1927	1936	1963	2039
SNP	1306	1311	1326	1363	1425
Con	284	286	297	308	331
Pensioners	211	217	222	240
Ind	114	117	123
Lib Dem	56	57
Soc Lab	43

Amusing set of results. The Greenies have another councillor nearby so it's not that surprising that they picked up some of the energy from the independent vote in Shirebrook.

Saltcoats and Stevenston is a good result for Labour even taking into account it deing diluted by 2 or 3 candidates next year. No Ronnie McNicol standing (a sitting independent) and most of his support went to Labour. Despite this the SNP-IND-LAB-LAB result is likely to be repeated next year which is good for Labour who otherwise would be fighting to retain one of it's seats from the SNP.

One by-election on 1st September:

KESWICK, Allerdale, Cumbria; caused by the resignation of an Independent councillor due to ill-health.  Keswick (the W is silent) is a market town at the centre of the Lake District National Park, which was once a centre for pencil manufacturing (the world's first graphite pencils were made here) and now, this being the Lakes, gets most of its money from tourism.  The ward also includes the rural Vale of St John to the east, which climbs between Wainwright's Central and Eastern Fells past the lake of Thirlmere (source of Manchester's water) to the pass of Dunmail Raise.  Politically, this area is definitely not typical of Allerdale district, whose tone is set by the working-class and Labour-voting town of Workington, 21 miles to the west.  Labour currently hold half the seats on the council and will have overall control if they win the by-election.  Allerdale district has a lot of unopposed elections, and the last contested election in this ward was all the way back in 2003, at which the three main parties each won one seat, the Lib Dem candidate topping the poll.  The Tory and Labour winners from that by-election are still there, while the Lib Dem councillor stood down in 2007 (she is now the county councillor for the area) and was replaced by a new Lib Dem councillor who was re-elected in 2011 as an independent.  Interestingly the Tories are not contesting the by-election; the candidates nominated are Lib Dem, Labour and Green Party.

Addendum and correction: it turns that the Lib Dem county councillor resigned earlier this year and there was a by-election on 5 May for the rather larger county council seat of Keswick and Derwent.  This was a Conservative gain: C 32.3 Ind 25.4 LD 24.2 Lab 18.1.

Allerdale, Keswick

Lib Dem 59.7
Lab 35.3
Green 5.0

(via Vote2007)

Three by-elections on 8th September:

BACKWELL, North Somerset; caused by the death of an Independent councillor.  This ward covers the large village of Backwell, eight miles south-west of Bristol on the road to Weston-super-Mare, together with the neighbouring villages of Brockley, Flax Bourton and Barrow Gurney.  It is served by Nailsea and Backwell railway station on the Great Western Main Line, with direct trains to Bristol Temple Meads and in peak hours to London Paddington (126 miles away), which makes this a very desirable area for commuters to Bristol and even London (if you fancy spending more than four hours a day on a train).  Politically this was a safe Conservative ward until 2007, when two Independents gained the ward after campaigning on a planning issue.  The two Independents were re-elected in May with only a single Conservative candidate as opposition; shares of the vote were Ind 67.3 C 32.7.  Candidates for the by-election are Ind/C/Lab/LD.

SOUTHMEAD, Bristol; caused by the resignation (due to ill-health) of a Lib Dem councillor.  This ward is on the northern edge of the city next to the town of Filton and its airport.  It started off life as a 1930s council estate to house people cleared from slums in the city centre, and is still an extremely deprived area, particularly when compared to the neighbouring middle-class ward of Westbury-on-Trym.  Politically it's a rather volatile ward; safe Labour on the basis on the 2006 and 2010 results (the 2010 shares were Lab 40.5 LD 27.1 C 20.7 BNP 6.5 Grn 2.6 English Democrats 2.5) but the Lib Dems gained the ward from Labour in 2009 with a majority of 20 (LD 32.1 Lab 31.4 C 18.9 English Democrats 11.4 Grn 6.2).  Candidates are LD/Lab/C/Grn/English Democrats.

STOCK, Essex County Council; caused by the disqualification of Conservative councillor Lord Hanningfield who is now serving a prison sentence for fiddling his House of Lords expenses.  This ward covers a large rural area to the south of Chelmsford, including the villages of Stock, Margaretting, the Hanningfields and Bicknacre and the Wickford suburb of Runwell.  There is one railway station in the far south of the division, at Battlesbridge on the Crouch Valley Line, 32 miles from Liverpool Street.  This is a very right-wing part of England, and that together with the large size of Essex county divisions allowed Hanningfield to poll almost 6000 votes on general election day in 2005, when he was leader of the County Council; he was re-elected in 2009 (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2009/382/#ward4020) with 65.7% of the vote, the opposition being split LD 12.5 Grn 8.7 BNP 7.8 Lab 5.2.  With Hanningfield's fall from grace I would imagine that majority would be eroded somewhat.  Candidates for the by-election are C/LD/Grn/Lab/UKIP.

In other news, the winner of the Poulton North by-election in Warrington at the end of July has sadly died.

North Somerset, Backwell

Ind 61.7 (-5.6)
Con 23.7 (-9.0)
Lab 9.4 (+9.4)
Lib Dem 5.2 (+5.2)

Bristol, Southmead

Lab 45.5 (+5.0)
Con 31.4 (+10.7)
Lib Dem 15.0 (-12.1)
Green 4.9 (+2.3)
Eng Dem 3.2 (+0.7)

(via Britain Votes)

Essex, Stock

Con 59.3 (-6.4)
UKIP 24.0 (+24.0)
Lab 9.0 (+3.8.)
Lib Dem 5.2 (-7.3)
Green 2.6 (-6.1)

(via Vote 2007)

If it was built in the thirties, would it actually have been built directly for slum clearance? Most of the second generation (and the much smaller first generation; Addison Act houses) were built for skilled (as the term was understood then; often means something different now) workers and their families. The general idea was that the slum dwellers would then move into the houses that the skilled workers had left as they moved out to the new estates. Didn't work out like that, for obvious reasons.

Well, I was basically cribbing from the Wikipedia entry for Southmead, which says:

Seven by-elections on 13th September, for eight seats:

BRAMSHOTT AND LIPHOOK, East Hampshire and HEADLEY, Hampshire County Council; a rare double by-election for the district council and a county council by-election caused by the resignation of two husband-and-wife Conservative district councillors; the husband (the county councillor) has since died.  Despite the order of the names Liphook is the major part of the district ward; it's a large village which started as a coaching stop on the London-Portsmouth stagecoach route, and is now bypassed by the A3; for London commuters Liphook station is on the Portsmouth Direct line, 47 miles from Waterloo and 28 miles from Portsmouth Harbour.  The Headley county division includes the whole of this ward and extends to the north to take in the Grayshott and Headley wards; Headley is just another rural village as far as I can tell while Grayshott (birthplace of the actor Colin Firth) is contiguous with the Surrey village of Hindhead, now known for its newly-built tunnel on the A3.  During the Second World War a large number of Canadian troops were stationed all over the division.  Politically, this a very Tory part of England although the Lib Dems came reasonably close in the district ward in 2007; shares of the vote were C 63.7 LD 31.1 Lab 5.2 in the county division in 2009 and C 50.6 LD 32.3 Lab 17.1 in the district ward in May.  Both polls are contested by the three main parties and the Greens, although the Greens are only standing one candidate for the district by-election; there is also an outfit called the Justice and Anti-Corruption Party standing for the county by-election.

GRAISELEY, Wolverhampton; caused by the death of a Labour councillor.  From a very Tory area to a very Labour area; this is inner-city Wolverhampton to the west and south-west of the city centre, with all the deprivation that entails.  Even at Labour's nadir in 2008, when they lost control of Wolverhampton, this was a safe ward and it's a lot safer now for the party; the result in May was Lab 64.5 C 16.5 Ind 13.6 LD 5.4.  Candidates are the three main parties plus UKIP.

HIGHGATE, Camden, North London; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor.  Highgate has a reputation as one of London's most expensive and desirable suburbs, although the political effect of this is slightly diluted as the Camden/Haringey boundary runs right through the middle of it.  Camden's Highgate ward runs south through the more socially mixed Dartmouth Park area as far as Gospel Oak station on the North London and Gospel Oak-Barking Lines; the ward includes Parliament Hill, known for its great views of central London; much of Hampstead Heath; and Highgate Cemetery, final resting place of Karl Marx.  The politics of this area certainly isn't Marxist: this ward is a very stong area for the Green Party, which suggests a very large concentration of so-called Guardianistas living here; it elected three Labour councillors in 2002 with the Conservatives and Greens not far behind (the lead Green candidate was future Mayoral candidate Sian Berry); the Labour councillors lost in 2006 to two Greens and one Conservative; the Conservative councillor resigned in 2008 and the Greens won the by-election; in 2010 Labour regained two seats from the Greens.  Shares of the vote in 2010 were Grn 30.5 Lab 29.0 LD 20.2 C 20.2, which almost suggests a four-way marginal.  The same four parties are contesting the by-election.

HIGHLAND, Perth and Kinross; caused by the resignation of an SNP councillor who is emigrating to Australia.  This ward is centred on the town of Pitlochry, 28 miles north of Perth on the Highland Line and A9 to Inverness, which is a tourist resort popular as a base for pensioners' coach holidays.  At this time of year the tourist interest is centred on the Pitlochry Highland Games (which take place today) and the Festival Theatre (which uniquely puts on six different plays at once, one for each night of the week), while year-round employment is provided by the Tummel hydroelectric power scheme, with nine power stations of which Pitlochry is the lowest.  Eight of those power stations are within this ward, which is one of the largest wards in the UK with an area of 900 square miles; for comparison that is bigger than Herefordshire and only slightly smaller than Luxembourg.  The only other population centres of note in the ward are Aberfeldy and Blair Atholl; to the north is a large chunk of the Cairngorms National Park (including Glen Tilt, known to pilots as "Star Wars Valley"), the A9 and Highland Line run north-west through Killiecrankie, Blair Atholl and Glen Garry to the Pass of Drumochter, while to the west Strath Tummel leads up to Rannoch Moor with its comically isolated railway station on the West Highland Line.  Perthshire is a strong SNP area and this is one of the SNP's strongest wards; first preferences in 2007 were SNP 58.4 C 25.6 LD 13.5 Ind 2.5, with the SNP winning two seats and the Conservatives one; interestingly all three winning candidates had a quota of first preferences so there was no need to do any transfers.  Candidates for the by-election are SNP/C/LD and two Independents.

PHOENIX, Gedling, Nottinghamshire; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor who is emigrating.  Part of the eastern Nottingham suburb of Carlton, this ward is on the edge of the Nottingham built-up area and covers a fairly socially mixed area.  Politically it's a Labour/Lib Dem marginal, Labour gaining both seats from the Lib Dems in May by majorities of 62 and 4 votes; shares of the vote in May were Lab 52.2 LD 47.8.  Candidates are the three main parties plus UKIP, who appear to be working the area hard (for them).

SURBITON HILL, Kingston upon Thames, South London; caused by the resignation of a Lib Dem councillor whose new employer (Friends of the Earth) does not allow him to hold a council seat.  Surbiton is an icon of suburbia in British TV such as The Good Life, thanks to its location on the South Western Main Line; Surbiton station is twelve miles from Waterloo.  This ward runs south from the station through some very middle-class areas along the Upper Brighton Road and Hook Road.  In 2010 the Lib Dems gained the ward from the Conservatives, who looked fairly safe on the basis of the 2006 results; shares of the vote in 2010 were LD 42.3 C 36.5 Lab 11.2 Grn 7.9 Christian Peoples Alliance 2.1.  Those five parties are standing in the by-election together with an Independent.

Wolverhampton, Graiseley

Lab 64.6 (+0.1)
Con 25.0 (+8.5)
Lib Dem 7.5 (+2.1)
UKIP 2.9 (+2.9)

(The Conservative candidate stood as an Independent in May 2011, taking 13.6%.)

Gedling, Phoenix

Lib Dem 48.7 (+0.9)
Lab 39.1 (-13.1)
Con 8.6 (+8.6)
UKIP 3.7 (+3.7)

Camden, Highgate

Lab 41.6 (+12.6)
Green 33.5 (+3.0)
Con 21.0 (+0.8.)
Lib Dem 3.9 (-16.3)

Kingston-upon-Thames, Surbiton Hill

Lib Dem 39.7 (-2.6)
Con 35.6 (-0.9)
Lab 13.9 (+2.7)
CPA 6.8 (+4.7)
Green 3.2 (-4.7)
Ind 0.8 (+0.8.)

(via Britain Votes)

East Hampshire, Bramshott and Liphook

Con 53.7 (+3.1) (796, 743)
Lib Dem 27.0 (-5.3) (404, 371)
Lab 10.5 (-6.6) (183, 117)
Green 8.8 (+8.8.) (126)

Hampshire, Headley

Con 64.6 (+0.9)
Lib Dem 11.8 (-19.3)
Lab 10.5 (+5.3)
Green 7.2 (+7.2)
Justice 5.9 (+5.9)

Perth and Kinross, Highland (changes from 2008 by-election in italics)

SNP 54.4 (-4.0) (-5.5)
Con 22.4 (-3.2) (-7.4)
Lib Dem 12.1 (-1.4) (+4.8.)
Ind Leszke 10.1 (+10.1) (+10.1)
Ind Rennie 1.0 (+1.0) (+1.0)

Obvious signs of revival there for the Scottish Lib Dems...

(via Vote 2007)

Gedling's a bit of a surprise. Then again, so is the extent of LD collapse in guardianland.

The Gedling Lib Dem candidate was a long-time councillor who'd lost by 4 votes in May. The Highgate vote certainly doesn't look promising for Lynne Featherstone or Sarah Teather next time round.

Why should it look unpromising?  This Highgate ward isn't in either of their seats.

Because they lost 80% of their vote?

(looks again at result)
Point taken.

Just one by-election on 22nd September.

STAITHE, Fenland, Cambridgeshire; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor in a car crash.  Welcome to Wisbech, self-styled Capital of the Fens.  Located on the Cambridgeshire/Norfolk border, the town became a wealthy port in the 17th century, handling agricultural produce from the newly drained Fens; the River Nene here is still navigable.  Many of the buildings in the town centre are Georgian, leading to some film and TV costume dramas being filmed here, while the town's most famous son is the slavery abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, who has a memorial and a ward named after him in the town.  Staithe ward, one of seven wards covering Wisbech, is located on the eastern edge of the town before it merges seamlessly into the suburb of Walsoken, which is over the county boundary in Norfolk.  Fenland distict is an extremely Tory part of England, with the Tories having a majority in 2003 and 2007 before a single vote was cast through unopposed returns and undernomination by opposition candidates; Staithe was Conservative unopposed in both those years.  In May the opposition made an effort to actually contest the election, and Labour and UKIP candidates were nominated for the ward; the result was C 55.1 Lab 28.8 UKIP 16.1.  The ward forms a quarter of the Wisbech South county division which at the last county council election in 2009 voted C 46.4 UKIP 26.5 Lab 10.6 LD 9.5 Libertarian 7.0.  Candidates for the by-election are C, Lab, UKIP, Lib Dem and an Independent.

Fenland, Swaithe

Con 42.0 (-13.1)
Lab 30.6 (+1.8.)
Lib Dem 16.6 (+16.6)
UKIP 7.2 (-8.9)
Ind 3.7 (+3.7)

(via BritainVotes)

Five local by-elections on 29th September, for three of which Al is probably better qualified to comment.

BICESTER NORTH, Cherwell, Oxon; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  Probably best known to the rest of the world as the home of the Bicester Village Shopping Centre, the UK's leading designer outlet centre which is insanely popular with Japanese tourists, Bicester (pronounced BISter) is a very fast-growing market town located twelve miles north-east of Oxford.  Part of its fast growth is due to its good transport links, some of which date back to Roman times - the town is just off the M40 London-Birmingham motorway and is served by two railway lines; Bicester North station (which despite the name is not in this ward) is on the Chiltern line, 55 miles from London Marylebone, while Bicester Town station is on a branch line twelve miles from Oxford.  The franchise-holder, Chiltern Railways, is currently working on connecting the two lines so it can serve Oxford.  There are some run-down parts of the town, but not this ward, with all four of the census areas in it ranking in the 20% least deprived in England.  Obviously, this results in a safe Conservative ward, with the shares of the vote in May being C 58.9 Lab 25.1 LD 16.0.  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties.

BISHOP'S CASTLE, Shropshire; caused by the resignation of a Lib Dem councillor.  One of Shropshire's tiny market towns, and until 1974 the smallest borough in England, the town is located twenty miles north-west of Ludlow, twenty miles south-west of Shrewsbury and just two miles from the Welsh border.  The ward itself includes eleven other tiny parishes in the same general area.  At the first unitary Shropshire Council election in 2009 the shares of the vote here were LD 47.7 C 40.5 Grn 11.8, the Lib Dem councillor having previously been a long-serving district councillor on the now-abolished South Shropshire district council.  Candidates for the by-election are the Lib Dems, Conservatives, Greens and Labour.  

DIFFWYS & MAENOFFEREN, Gwynedd; caused by the resignation of a Llais Gwynedd councillor.  At the other end of the Ffestiniog Railway (see Penrhyndeudraeth below) is the slate-quarrying town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, of which this ward covers the town centre and eastern end.  To be honest, the recent politics is probably more interesting; Plaid unopposed in 2004, the ward was gained by the anti-Plaid movement Llais Gwynedd in 2008 with vote shares LlG 49.3 PC 41.1 Lab 9.5; the Llais councillor was then forced to quit the council last year after being convicted of attempting to kill his wife.  Llais held the by-election on 15 July 2010 by just four votes (LlG 50.5 PC 49.5); this by-election has been caused by the resignation of the councillor elected in that by-election.  Plaid gained Blaenau's other ward in a by-election shortly after the previous Diffwys by-election.  The by-election is again a straight fight between Llais and Plaid.

NASCOT, Watford, Hertfordshire; caused by the resignation of a Lib Dem councillor who has a new job in Ireland.  This ward runs north-west from the town centre between the Hempstead Road and the West Coast Main Line, with its main spine being the Nascot Wood Road, highly sought after and home to many footballers and other high-earners (the south end of the ward is within walking distance of Watford Junction mainline railway station).  Normally this would create a safe Conservative ward, but Watford Council went Lib Dem at local elections in a big way around 2000, with the Lib Dem elected mayor now on her third term; the yellow Focus has turned this ward into a Lib Dem/Tory marginal, with the score in the five elections since 2006 being Lib Dem 4 Conservative 1 (in 2008).  The result in May was LD 45.6 C 36.3 Lab 11.7 Grn 6.4, which was actually the biggest Lib Dem majority in recent years.  Candidates for the by-election are the same four parties.

PENRHYNDEUDRAETH, Gwynedd; caused by the resignation of a Plaid Cymru councillor who stole £53,000 from the local post office while he was sub-postmaster.  Amusingly, he was the cabinet member for economy and community; even more amusingly, he's now a prisoner.  Amusingly, because this ward includes the Hotel Portmeirion, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis' fantasy Italianate village which was the setting for the 1960s TV series The Prisoner, and now attracts large numbers of tourists.  However, the main industry in the town was explosives, with an ICI factory here until 1997, and there is still quarrying in the area.  The ward includes the village of Minffordd to the south-west and runs north-east into part of the Snowdonia National Park.  Transport connections are comparatively good, with two railway stations on the Cambrian Coast Line which is part of the mainline network (but more than 100 miles from Shrewsbury where the line connects to the rest of the network), and three stations on the narrow-gauge Ffestiniog Railway; however, that's only four stations in total as Minffordd station is shared by both companies.  As usual in rural Wales, previous results are not much of a guide to what might happen in the by-election; the 2008 result was PC 58.5 Llais Gwynedd 41.5.  Candidates for the by-election are Plaid, Llais Gwynedd and Annibynnol.

False. :P http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/relationships.jsp?u_id=10153700&c_id=10001043 (http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/relationships.jsp?u_id=10153700&c_id=10001043)

(But I would have mispronounced Bisster. I'd have guessed at "Beester".)

I knew I should have checked that 1971 census report I have lying around somewhere. :P

As well as Bishops Castle (known locally as 'The Castle' and, alas, generally pronounced in a way that's difficult to really describe with a standard alphabet. On the bright side, at least they don't speak the Clun dialect), which has a bit of a strange almost bohemian feel to it in spite of it being a quintessential remote Marches market town (this has been reflected in a strong Green Party vote), it includes countless tiny agricultural settlements on the western edge of the Long Mynd and the Onny Valley (Ratlinghope, Norbury, Asterton and so on) and the larger settlements in the Kemp Valley (the main one is Lydbury North) and a small part of what might be thought of (lol) as the greater Clun district, west of Bishops Castle. Most of these were closed villages, back in the day. And it shows.

I still have difficulty believing that Peter Phillips has resigned; he even ran for re-election (in 2009) when he was seriously ill. He was/is an old school Liberal, which is quite appropriate for what is (at least in places) a very old school Liberal area (though anywhere with as many farmers as this ward is certainly not generically poor territory for the Tories either). Phillips was a longserving councillor, despite being an abrasive prick. He will have had a personal vote, despite that. Perhaps because of it.

Candidates matter a great deal in places like this, of course. The Tory and the LibDem both live in the ward (the former in Lydbury North, the latter in Norbury. So far, so predictable). The Labour candidate (and it's been a long time since there's been one of those in this part of Shropshire. Get the impression that more than twenty votes would count as an achievement, but stranger things have happened) lives near Craven Arms, and the Green in Bucknell (on the far-off borders of distant Herefordshire). The Tory was a councillor (for the Bishops Castle & Onny Valley ward) on the old SSDC and lost to Phillips in 2009, the LibDem is a parish councillor and seems to be well-known locally, the Labour candidate is a well-known local-ish journalist (formerly of the Ludlow Advertiser), while it seems that the Green is another parish councillor, but presumably not for anywhere in the ward.

The main local issue to be aware of in Shropshire is the council. It is very right-wing*, rather incompetent, riven by nasty factional infighting, and is increasingly unpopular. Take that away and the chances of a Tory gain would look very likely indeed; with it... ah... this is completely unpredictable.

Will do the others later.

*Though 'Shropshire Tories are right wing' is a little bit 'sun rises in east, sets in west'. But a lot of people have been taken aback by recent antics.

Mockery aside, it's a really nice area.

What's a closed village?

Entirely dominated by a single landlord. The sort of place where, not so very long ago, candidates who were not Tories had to inform the electorate that the ballot was indeed secret.

A separate but related meaning would be a place it was (back in the day) impossible to move to 'cept maybe as a woman marrying in - which of course is a subset of the first definition as it would be due to the landlord's policy not to take on any new tenants.

Thanks. One of the benefits of the Land Acts is that all of this is a foreign concept to us.

It is to modern England as well...

Gwynedd, Diffwys & Maenofferen

PC 57.9 (+16.8.) (+8.4)
LlG 42.1 (-7.2) (-8.4)

(italics represent change since 2010 by-election)

Gwynedd, Penrhyndeudraeth

PC 62.5 (+4.0)
LlG 26.6 (-14.9)
Ind 10.9 (+10.9)

Watford, Nascot

Lib Dem 48.5 (+2.9)
Con 38.8 (+2.5)
Lab 6.4 (-5.3)
Green 6.3 (-0.1)

(via BritainVotes)

Cherwell, Bicester North

Con 65.9 (+7.0)
Lab 19.3 (-5.8.)
Lib Dem 14.7 (-1.3)

Shropshire, Bishop's Castle

Lib Dem 53.4 (+5.7)
Con 36.3 (-4.2)
Lab 5.3 (+5.3)
Green 4.9 (-6.9)

(via Vote 2007)

As much as 5% in Bishops Castle? I think that may count as a minor triumph.

Anyway, after this I'm almost - stress on almost - willing to predict that the Tories lose that big majority on Shropshire council at the next election. Also looks bad for Llais next year. Their candidate in Penrhyndeudraeth didn't look up to much, but their choice in Blaenau wasn't so bad. Plaid's longtime strategy for much of Gwynedd (running people from the local establishment, however defined) seems to be working again.

By-elections on 6th October:

LOWER STOKE, Coventry; caused by the death of a Labour councillor.  A place close to my heart as I went to university there, Coventry is defined by its industries: originally the city was known for its clocks and watches, but when that industry died around 1900 the watchmakers turned to making bicycles and then cars, creating one of the centres of the UK's motor industry.  This ward is directly east of the city centre, running either side of the Binley Road; at the south end of the ward is Stoke Aldermoor, now a small housing estate but previously the home of a Rootes and Peugeot factory.  Generally the ward is working-class but nowhere near being the most deprived area of the city.  It's a safe Labour ward with the shares of the vote in May being Lab 57.6 C 22.5 Grn 7.8 Socialist Alternative (who are vigorously led in Coventry by the former Militant MP Dave Nellist) 6.4 BNP 5.8.  Candidates in the by-election are the same five parties plus the Lib Dems, who are very weak in Coventry and stand in this ward only intermittently.

NORLAND, Kensington and Chelsea, North London; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor after he was charged with possessing child porn.  Bounded to the south by Holland Park Avenue, to the west by the West Cross Road and to the east by Ladbroke Grove, this ward is served by Holland Park station on the Central Line to the south, Latimer Road station on the Hammersmith Line to the north, and the newly-opened Shepherd's Bush station on the West London Line to the south-west.  Ladbroke Grove at the east end is part of newly-fashionable Notting Hill and the main route for the Notting Hill Carnival; Holland Park in the south has always been a desirable area to live, while the area around Latimer Road station is rather more run down by all accounts.  Politically - this is part of the Kensington constituency, you're not going to get anything other than a super-safe Conservative ward; the shares of the vote on general election day in 2010 were C 55.4 Lab 23.4 LD 21.2.  Even in the adverse circumstances of this by-election the Conservatives should have no trouble holding on.

VICARAGE, Watford, Hertfordshire; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor who is starting a four-year university degree.  This ward lies directly west of Watford town centre along the Vicarage Road, and includes Watford General Hospital and Vicarage Road Stadium, the home of Watford football club.  The census statistics don't show this ward ranking highly in the deprivation indices, but one striking feature of the ward is the large Asian population - 17% of the population gave their ethnic origin as Pakistani in the 2001 census, by far the largest figure in Watford.  This has helped Labour to win the ward against the yellow tide that has engulfed most of the rest of Watford, and while the Lib Dems did win one seat in a doubleheader in 2006 and held onto the seat in 2007, the Labour position has greatly improved since then; the shares of the vote in May were Lab 50.1 LD 27.5 C 9.2 Ind 8.1 Grn 5.1.  Candidates this time are the three main parties plus two independents; this time Labour and the Lib Dems are fielding white candidates, while one of the independents is an Asian who was a prominent member of the local Lib Dems but failed to get the nomination.

What do Llais Gwynedd actually stand for?  Just a sort of "not Plaid" but still very much Welsh, or something a bit more than that?

Basically it's a 'fyck you Gwynedd council' vote, combined (some of the time at least) with an intense parochialism. A protest party, in other words. But as to the people in it rather than their voters...

They they started as a group opposed to school closures on the Llŷn and in Meirionnydd (always an extremely emotive issue in Wales, especially this part of it) and this is the issue that they exploited with stunning results in 2008; most of Plaid's senior councillors were beaten by (including both their Party President and the Leader of the council) Llais candidates because of the issue. There are interesting parallels with People's Voice (and not just because of the similar name) as they attracted a very odd range of people, most of which had some grudge or other with Plaid, but who were (to put it mildly) not friendly with the established networks of Independents or with Labour. Two of their most high profile members are Owain Williams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owain_Williams) and Simon Glyn (who you may remember for this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1181928.stm)). The now-imprisoned Gwilym Euros Roberts was a good example as well; he had previously been a Plaid councillor (managing to lose his seat in 1999 of all years) but seems to have thought himself badly treated (though in his case that may have just been psychosis).

The Conservative candidate in Norland, Catherine Faulks is the sister in law of Sebastian Faulks

lol

Well.. I just thought I hadn't posted here for a while, came here to see if Andrew had some useful background to the by-elections which I didn't know already and thought I may as well post that here rather than another place.  I can talk in more detail about Vicarage if you prefer

I can't speak for the others o/c but I follow this thread closely (without posting, because I have nothing to contribute due to lack of knowledge) and I'm very interested in local political and economical geography of Britain.
The more information the better, so go ahead :)

Oh, I wasn't having a go at you; I just found that particular fact to be... well... lol. What else do you say, you know?

Yeah I knew what you meant

The Labour candidate was a contestant in the 2009 UK series of Big Brother.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1191485/Evicted-Beinazir-leaves--Big-Brother-housemate.html

Let the Z-list catfight begin!

Watford, Vicarage

Lab 52.9 (+2.8.)
Lib Dem 23.2 (-4.3)
Ind (Azam) 11.0 (+11.0)
Ind (Baker) 7.4 (-0.7)
Con 5.5 (-3.7)

Coventry, Lower Stoke

Lab 54.1 (-3.5)
Con 22.3 (-0.2)
Soc 10.1 (+3.7)
BNP 5.9 (+0.1)
Green 4.5 (-3.3)
Lib Dem 3.1 (+3.1)

Kensington and Chelsea, Norland

Con 43.8 (-11.6)
Lab 28.4 (+5.0)
Lib Dem 23.2 (+2.0)
UKIP 4.5 (+4.5)

(via BritainVotes)

I usually agree with your colouring (so sick of coming across bizarrely coloured parties when trawling through the councils' results), but I disagree with your BNP and Soc colours. :P

Anyway, pretty good result for the latter. Also for Labour to improve upon last year's result in Watford is an achievement.

If there was a deeper pink available I'd use it for the SP. Brown seems somehow appropriate for the BNP.

By-elections on 13th October:

BAMBER BRIDGE EAST, South Ribble, Lancashire; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor due to ill health.  Brig, as it's known locally, is a large village located about five miles south-east of Preston on the A6, the old road to London.  This, the easterly of the village's three wards, is based on the area known as Walton Summit in a triangle between three motorways: the M61 to Manchester, the M65 to Blackburn and the M6, which here is the southern end of the original Preston Bypass, opened in 1958 as the UK's first ever motorway.  The ward was quite a close three-way marginal in 2007: Labour won both seats but the second Labour candidate was only 35 votes ahead of the Conservatives who in turn were only 30 votes ahead of the bizarrely-named local political movement 'Idle Toad', led by a former Labour councillor who is still the local county councillor (although this ward is not his powerbase).  The Idle Toad fell apart shortly after the 2007 election, with one former councillor suing the party after its newsletter described him as a "defecator" (the party's defence was that this was a misprint for "defector"!), and they haven't stood here since.  The 2011 election resulted in two Labour holds with a greatly increased majority; shares of the vote were Lab 57.4 C 42.6.  The by-election is another straight Labour/Tory fight.

MEOPHAM NORTH, Gravesham, Kent; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor.  The Kentish village of Meopham (pronounced MEPPam) is located in the North Downs five miles south of Gravesend; this ward is the northern half of the Meopham parish and includes the whole of Meopham itself plus the hamlets of Meopham Green and Meopham Station; as the name suggests Meopham Station has a railway station on the London-Chatham main line, with trains taking 48 minutes to London Victoria; this makes Meopham a very well-off area popular with London commuters.  Under first-past-the-post Gravesham council has had a few wrong-winner results in recent years caused by the Tory votes piling up in super-safe wards, and this is one of those; the result in May was C 71.1 Lab 28.9, and the local county council division (Gravesham Rural) had an even larger majority in 2009.  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus UKIP.

ST HELEN'S, Barnsley, South Yorkshire; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor.  Located at the north end of the town on the road to Wakefield, this ward is based on the post-war New Lodge, Athersley North and Athersley South council estates.  It's a very depressed part of a very depressed town, and Labour are rarely seriously challenged here; the closest races in the last few years were in 2006 (Lab majority 198 over Independent) and 2008 (Lab majority 330 over BNP).  The BNP have finished second here at every election since 2008 (including a 2009 by-election) but apart from that first result have never come anywhere near winning.  May's result was Lab 79.3 BNP 12.1 C 8.6; the by-election also sees an English Democrat and an independent candidate.

SLEAFORD WEST AND LEASINGHAM, Lincolnshire County Council; caused by the death of the Deputy Leader of the Council, who was a Conservative councillor.  A market town 19 miles south of Lincoln, Sleaford became a regional centre at the junction of the Nottingham/Skegness and Peterborough/Lincoln roads and railway lines and was once the county town of the Parts of Kesteven, the south-western of Lincolnshire's three Parts.  Industries in the town were mainly agricultural, including seeds and the Bass Maltings.  This division includes the town centre, the south-west of the town and the villages of North and South Rauceby to the west and Leasingham to the north.  These are generally well-off areas and this is safe Conservative ward, with the 2009 result being C 57.0 Ind 18.3 LD 13.9 Lab 10.8.  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus the Lincolnshire Independents, a group of independent county councillors. 


Just please don't use teal like the BBC do.

In Ireland, we have three different political parties all of whom use green as their colour - I've allocated teal to the Greens.

Some more info on Brig's affluence level and social makeup would be welcome, thanks! :)

doktorb will be have a better answer if he's still here, but probably best described as 'middle of the road'; neither particularly deprived nor particularly well-off.

Barnsley, St. Helen's

Lab 75.8 (-3.5)
BNP 10.5 (-1.6)
Eng Dem 8.8 (+8.8.)
Con 3.7 (-4.9)
Ind 1.3 (+1.3)

Gravesham, Meopham North

Con 47.3 (-23.8.)
UKIP 33.7 (+33.7)
Lib Dem 10.8 (+10.8.)
Lab 8.2 (-20.7)

Lincolnshire, Sleaford West and Leasingham

Con 43.0 (-14.0)
Ind 31.8 (+13.5)
Lab 22.1 (+11.3)
Lib Dem 3.2 (-10.7)

(via BritainVotes)

South Ribble, Bamber Bridge East

Lab 55.0 (-2.4)
Con 45.0 (+2.4)

(via Vote 2007)

I think the one result counts as 'lolbarnsley', actually. Weird result in Kent; UKIP as a tactical choice for Labour voters? Some local issue?

Green belt/planning, I think; there was also a poll which showed them as main rivals to the Conservatives.

Not only that, but isn't it Labour who are in control of the Gravesham council - could it be Labour supporters who disapprove of it giving them a kicking by voting for the party seen to be spearheading the opposition?


lol I dunno - I tend to think of darker blues and purples for right-wingers, and darker (maroon!) and bold reds for lefties. Pink just makes me think social democrats and the whole 'People's Flag Is Palest Pink' song.

The independent in Barnsley's reportedly a lefty, so technically only 2.2% has gone rightwards.

That might explain it yeah. Kent County Council has a (huge) Tory majority, Gravesham District has a Labour majority (centered entirely on Gravesend and Northfleet, naturally).

Of course, the ward in question was a two-party fight in May anyway; I missed that when looking earlier.

By-elections in the week commencing 16 October.  There is one unusual Tuesday poll on 18 October:

COKEHAM, Adur, West Sussex: caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  This is one of two wards covering the south coast village of Sompting, hard up against the South Downs three miles north-east of Worthing, and now effectively a suburb of Lancing, which is the next town east after Worthing.  Sompting has some quite run-down council housing areas and this ward, which takes in built-up areas either side of the main A27 south coast road, with the unpopulated areas now being part of the South Downs National Park, has its fair share of them.  It was the last Adur ward to elect a Labour councillor, doing so in 2004, but the Conservatives have won consistently since then.  The 2010 result (http://www.andrewteale.me.uk/leap/results/2010/354/#ward5289) was C 42.2 LD 27.1 Ind 20.4 UKIP 10.3, but the Independent candidate was actually the regular Labour candidate for the ward who appears to have had problems with his nomination papers that time.  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus UKIP and the Greens.

and lots of by-elections on Thursday 20 October:

BOOKHAM SOUTH, Mole Valley, Surrey; caused by the death of a Liberal Democrat councillor.  This ward covers Great Bookham, a suburb of Leatherhead on the road to Guildford, and also includes a little countryside to the south including the National Trust regency stately home of Polesden Lacey.  The two Bookhams (Great and Little) are on the southern edge of the London Travel to Work Area, and Bookham railway station (which is located outside this ward in Little Bookham) has trains every half hour to Waterloo via Worcester Park, taking about 50 minutes, plus occasional rush-hour trains to London Bridge via West Croydon, taking about an hour.  As that might suggest, the ward is uniformly well-off, with all four of its census areas in the 20% least deprived in England.  In Mole Valley district this doesn't translate into a safe Tory ward, as the district is closely fought between the Lib Dems and Conservatives; the Conservatives won this ward in May by 60 votes (C 46.9 LD 44.6 UKIP 8.4) but this was their first win since 2006, the Lib Dems have won the three elections in between by majorities of 150-300.  Candidates in this marginal ward are again Lib Dem, Tory and UKIP.

BRADWELL SOUTH AND HOPTON, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  Part of the area that was transferred from Suffolk to Norfolk in 1974, this is one of those badly-drawn wards that has no transport link from end to end.  It contains the southern part of the Great Yarmouth suburb of Bradwell, and curves around the built-up area of Gorleston to take in the seaside resort village of Hopton-on-Sea, home to the World Indoor Bowls Championship.  Hopton-on-Sea is a fairly comfortable area while Bradwell is more socially mixed.  The ward was safe Conservative during the Noughties, but Labour performed well in Great Yarmouth in May to almost bring the ward into marginal territory; shares of the vote were C 46.2 Lab 35.9 UKIP 12.7 Grn 5.1.  Candidates for the by-election are just Conservative, Labour and UKIP.

BRIDGE, Nottingham; caused by the death of a Labour councillor.  This ward covers Nottingham's city centre, but most of the population is located south of the centre in the Meadows, a 1970s council estate whose redevelopment grant fell victim to coalition cuts last year.  Also here is Meadow Lane, home of the world's oldest professional football [soccer] team, Notts County.  Bridge ward's two seats split Lib Dem/Labour in 2007 but Labour decisively gained the second seat in May, the shares of the vote being Lab 52.0 LD 36.2 C 11.8.  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus UKIP and the Church of the Militant Elvis.

ECCLES, Salford; caused by the death of a Labour councillor.  Swallowed up by Salford in 1974, Eccles is an ex-textile town on the north bank of the Manchester Ship Canal and on the Liverpool and Manchester railway.  The ward runs north from the town centre across the M602 arterial motorway to include the Ellesmere Park and Monton areas to the north and north-west.  Socially it runs the gamut from some very deprived areas in the town centre and Ellesmere Park to Monton, which is quite a nice area.  Monton and Ellesmere Road is presumably where the Tory vote comes from, and this was a Labour/Tory marginal during the Blair and Brown years, the Conservatives winning in 2007 and 2008, but Labour decisively gained one of the Conservative seats in May (Lab 55.1 C 27.9 UKIP 10.8 LD 6.3).  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus the BNP and an independent.

ELLESMERE PORT TOWN, Cheshire West and Chester; caused by the death of the leader of the Labour group.  This industrial town (the local football team is still called Vauxhall Motors) was founded in the nineteenth century on the south bank of the Mersey, and is named after the Ellesmere Canal which reaches the sea here.  This ward runs from Ellesmere Port railway station (two trains an hour on the Wirral Line to Liverpool, plus four trains a day to Helsby) south through the town centre and the Wolverham area to Cheshire Oaks, the UK's largest designer outlet and a major local employer.  On the opposite side of the M53 motorway is part of the enormous chemical works.  The ward was created in May and the only previous result is Lab 79.8 C 13.5 LD 6.8; predecessor wards on the former Ellesmere Port and Neston council are part of safe Labour Stanlow and Wolverham ward and the whole of normally safe Labour Central ward (although the Tories did get within 6 points of Labour in 2007).  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus UKIP and Socialist Labour.

PARK HALL, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire; a long-delayed by-election caused by the death of a Labour councillor the day after she was re-elected in May's local election.  The ward is located in the northern Mansfield suburb of Mansfield Woodhouse along Park Hall Road; generally one of the district's more deprived areas.  Mansfield had new wards created in May and the only previous result is Lab 57.8 Mansfield Independent Forum (who are associated with the borough's elected Mayor) 35.3 LD 7.0.  The Tories and UKIP will also enter the fray at the by-election.

SHORTLANDS, Bromley, South London; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor.  Despite having a Bromley postal address, this ward is part of the affluent south-east London suburb of Beckenham, which boomed in the late nineteenth century after the coming of the railway; at the junction of the Chatham Main Line and the Catford Loop, Shortlands station is 10 miles from Victoria and has four trains per hour to there via Herne Hill and a further two to Blackfriars via Catford.  This creates an affluent commuter ward, five of whose six census areas are in the 20% least deprived in England; the result of this in Bromley borough is a very safe Conservative ward, the 2010 result being C 57.9 Grn 14.5 Lab 14.2 LD 13.3.  The Green strength was probably due to a protest vote more than anything; they didn't stand here in 2006 and polled just 6% in the 2008 GLA elections (C 60.8 Lab 11.0 LD 9.6 Grn 6.1 BNP 4.1 Christian 2.7; Boris polled 68.6%).  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties, the Greens, UKIP and the BNP.

WALTON, Stafford; caused by the death of a long-serving Conservative councillor.  This ward is a suburb of the market town of Stone, located to the south of the town centre on the opposite side of the River Trent.  The ward is bisected by the dual-carriageway A34, the main road to Stafford seven miles to the south.  Walton ward has some of Stone's most desirable areas, but the politics in 2007 didn't reflect that, the three seats splitting Conservative/Labour/Independent; the Tories did however clean up this May when the shares of the vote were C 35.1 Ind 25.7 Lab 22.8 second Ind 9.6.  Candidates for the by-elecion are Conservative, Labour and Independent.

From their website :

http://ymlp.com/z0ZaSm

Adur, Cokeham

Con 39.6 (-1.9)
Lab 38.8 (+18.7)
UKIP 12.5 (+0.7)
Green 4.8 (+4.8 )
Lib Dem 4.3 (-22.4)

Great Yarmouth, Bradwell South and Hopton

Con 49.6 (+3.4)
Lab 36.2 (+0.3)
UKIP 14.2 (+1.5)

Cheshire West and Chester, Ellesmere Port Town

Lab 71.6 (-8.2)
Con 10.6 (-2.7)
Soc Lab 6.8 (+6.8 )
UKIP 6.7 (+6.7)
Lib Dem 4.3 (-2.5)

Bromley, Shortlands

Con 59.5 (+1.6)
Lib Dem 19.7 (+6.4)
Lab 10.3 (-3.9)
UKIP 6.1 (+6.1)
Green 3.0 (-11.5)
BNP 1.4 (+1.4)

Stafford, Walton

Ind 45.6 (+3.4)
Con 29.8 (-5.3)
Lab 24.5 (+1.7)

Nottingham, Bridge

Lab 50.2 (-1.8 )
Lib Dem 38.9 (+2.7)
Con 7.5 (-4.3)
UKIP 2.2 (+2.2)

Mansfield, Park Hall

Lab 53.2 (-4.6)
Mansfield Ind 21.0 (-14.3)
Lib Dem 20.1 (+13.1)
UKIP 3.2 (+3.2)
Con 2.6 (+2.6)

Salford, Eccles

Lab 54.5 (-0.6)
Con 31.1 (+3.2)
BNP 6.5 (+6.5)
Lib Dem 5.5 (-0.8 )
Ind 2.4 (+2.4)

Mole Valley, Bookham South

Lib Dem 47.2 (+2.6)
Con 42.5 (-4.4)
UKIP 10.3 (+1.9)

(via Britain Votes)

If you still need this (sorry for the late reply!).....Bamber Bridge (or as you are quite rightly directed to call it, Brig) is a fairly suburban little town/large village.  Good mix of the "hard working families" working locally in below average pay offices and shops and the like, and commuter country working in Preston or Blackburn, maybe even further away,  and then there's a good slice of new build estates springing up with the young professionals that flock to such places.  There's no obvious pockets of poverty, it's very much "comfortable".

The ward with a byelection is an odd one - a good slice of it is an industrial estate (where I worked for nearly 2 years).

Here are some streets within Bamber Bridge East :

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=mounsey+road,+bamber+bridge&hl=en&ll=53.725738,-2.659496&spn=0.000013,0.017585&sll=53.385022,-3.02817&sspn=0.008946,0.026994&vpsrc=6&hnear=Mounsey+Rd,+Bamber+Bridge,+Preston+PR5,+United+Kingdom&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=53.72574,-2.656091&panoid=nddZHi0mKpE5gt_TwacaCg&cbp=12,119.03,,0,3.95


http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=poplar+avenue,+bamber+bridge&hl=en&ll=53.731889,-2.660215&spn=0.000013,0.017585&sll=53.72574,-2.656091&sspn=0.004462,0.017585&vpsrc=6&hnear=Poplar+Ave,+Bamber+Bridge,+Preston+PR5,+United+Kingdom&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=53.731891,-2.656819&panoid=eEJCLA11DdJ8kA9Ex1z_jw&cbp=12,343.57,,0,-3.41

Aw. A Labour gain here would have been cute.

Looks like Labour and Green gained nearly the entirety of the abandoned LibDem vote.

Btw, forgive me if that sounds redundant. I'm still learning British politics.

Oh, I never needed it. But thanks!

Six by-elections on 27th October:

BLOXWICH EAST, Walsall, West Midlands; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  Arguably the northernmost town of the Black Country, Bloxwich became famous in the nineteenth century as the UK's foremost manufacturer of awl blades, as well as for other light metalworking.  The town was swallowed up into Walsall county borough relatively early, and Walsall Corporation built council houses on much of the land now in this ward, which is entirely on the eastern side of the A34 Walsall-Stafford road; as a result most of the census areas rank highly in the indices of multiple deprivation.  In Walsall this doesn't translate into a safe Labour ward because of Walsall Labour's wacky reputation (perhaps the Boardbashi could enlighten us...?); the three seats split 2C/1Lab when the ward was created in 2004 and stayed that way until this May; Labour held on by just thirteen votes in 2006, the Conservatives held in the following two years with increasing majorities (296 in 2007, 745 in 2008), and Labour held rather more comfortably in 2010 by 248 votes.  The change finally came in May with a Labour gain by just 6 votes (Lab 42.8 C 42.3 UKIP 8.1 Democratic Labour 3.8 LD 2.9), and Labour now have a chance to gain the final Conservative seat in this by-election.  Candidates are Conservative, Labour, UKIP, Greens and English Democrats.

BUDE NORTH AND STRATTON, Cornwall; caused by the resignation of a Lib Dem councillor.  Cornwall's northernmost town, Bude is a Victorian seaside resort with good surfing conditions, while its twin town Stratton, about a mile inland, is a more ancient market town which was once the centre of one of Cornwall's ten hundreds.  Created in 2009 for the unitary Cornwall council, the ward is one of two-and-a-half wards within the area covered by Bude-Stratton town council; it contains the northern half of Bude, all of Stratton and the village of Flexbury just to the north of Bude.  In 2009 it was a straight fight between Conservative and Lib Dem, the Lib Dems winning a landslide by 72.4-27.6; the Lib Dem councillor had previously represented Poughill and Stratton ward on North Cornwall district council.  Poughill and Stratton ward normally split LD/Ind, while Bude ward was safe Lib Dem in 2007 but the two seats split in 2003 between Lib Dem and Mebyon Kernow, the Cornish nationalist movement, who were not far behind the two Lib Dem candidates in 2005 in the former Bude-Stratton county division.  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties (and it's been a long time since there was a Labour candidate here, if there ever has been one here) plus an independent amusingly named Louise Emo.  It'll be interesting to see if there's an Emo vote here.

COATBRIDGE NORTH AND GLENBOIG, North Lanarkshire; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor.  Winner of the 2007 Carbuncle award for being most the dismal town in Scotland, Coatbridge's roots go back to the nineteenth century when it became a major centre for ironworking and coalmining; this attracted a huge number of Irish immigrants to the town.  The industrial bust came rather earlier here than it did in many other places, with the coal exhausted by 1920 and only one of the ironworks surviving the Great Depression.  The town's low-lying nature and industrial past has given it good transport links, and there are three railway stations in the ward; Coatbridge Central (one train per hour to Motherwell and Cumbernauld, plus a few peak-hour trains on the Argyle Line to Motherwell, Glasgow Central and beyond) and Coatbridge Sunnyside and Blairhill (four trains an hour on the North Clyde line to Edinburgh Waverley, Glasgow Queen Street and beyond); this, together with the proximity of the A8 motorway to the south means that distribution is now a major local employer.  The Irish immigration still has its effects today, with around half of the population giving their religion as Roman Catholic in the last census, and led to a political scandal in 1994 when the town was part of Monklands district council; Monklandsgate, as it was known, alleged that there were sectarian spending discrepancies in favour of Coatbridge over Airdrie (a mainly Protestant town to the east) on the grounds that the entire ruling Labour group were Roman Catholic.  This turned out to be false but related allegations of nepotism were upheld; the issue dominated the Monklands East by-election after John Smith died.  This ward, as the name suggests, covers the north of the town together with countryside to the north as far as the edge of Cumbernauld, including the village of Glenboig.  When PR came in for Scottish local government in 2007 Labour won two seats in this ward, the SNP won one and the remaining seat went to an independent, who overtook the Conservatives on SSP and Labour transfers; first preferences were Lab 47.8 SNP 29.4 C 10.6 Ind 9.0 SSP 3.2.  There was a previous by-election in June 2009 after the SNP councillor decided to concentrate on being an MSP, at which Labour gained the SNP seat; first preferences then were Lab 37.2 SNP 30.5 Ind 13.5 C 8.8 Ind 5.3 Grn 2.9 SSP 2.0, the Green candidate being BritainVotes contributor Kristofer Keane; Labour only narrowly won the 2-party preferred, 50.9-49.1.  Coatbridge and Chryston was one of the Labour seats which resisted the SNP tide in May, so this could be an interesting battle to watch.  Candidates this time are just the four main parties.

NEWCHAPEL, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor.  The north-eastern corner of Newcastle-under-Lyme district, this ward covers a surprisingly hilly area between the towns of Kidsgrove and Biddulph which was once part of Kidsgrove Urban District, running from Newchapel itself at the southern end, through Harriseahead to the hilltop village of Mow Cop, which straddles the Staffordshire/Cheshire border along the hill of the same name, which rises to a summit of 335 metres (1100 feet).  (Incidentally, Mow Cop is visible from higher parts of Bolton on a good day and can be easily identified by the TV mast at the summit: )
()
The ward's two census areas are both in the middle of the deprivation indices.  The politics of the ward are quite interesting; when it was created in 2002 the Lib Dems won both seats, but promptly lost them in 2003 (to the Conservatives) and 2004 (to Labour; there was no Conservative candidate that year, presumably they messed up their nomination papers).  The Conservatives decisively gained the Labour seat in 2008 but performed relatively poorly in a February 2010 by-election which saw a close three-way race for second place won by UKIP, who are very well organised in this borough (C 33.5 UKIP 23.8 Lab 22.2 LD 20.5).  Labour gained the ward in May by 50 votes (Lab 32.7 C 27.3 Ind 18.1 UKIP 15.4 LD 6.5) and will now be looking to gain the other seat.  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus UKIP.

THORNTON DALE AND THE WOLDS, North Yorkshire County Council; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor in order to care for his wife.  This is an enormously-sized division covering a swathe of countryside between Norton, Pickering and Scarborough; from the northern end it runs along the Whitby-Pickering road past the Hole of Horcum, down to the beautiful village of Thornton-le-Dale on the Pickering-Scarborough road (Thornton Dale ward), then across the low-lying Vale of Derwent to take in some small villages up on the Yorkshire Wolds (Rillington, Sherburn and Wolds wards).  With the exception of Thornton-le-Dale, which is more upmarket, most of the census areas are in the middle of the deprivation indices.  The 2009 result (C 61.5 LD 29.7 Lab 8.8 ) suggests that this should be an easy Conservative hold.  The by-election is a straight C/LD fight.

WYRESIDE, Lancashire County Council; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  This county division is basically the rural northern half of the Fylde peninsula, covering the area between Garstang and the Wyre estuary together with a few villages on the south side of the Wyre, the largest of which is Great Eccleston.  The main settlements in the ward are Pilling, Preesall, Hambleton and Knott End-on-Sea, from which the ferry to Fleetwood departs that is the only link between Fleetwood and the rest of the Lancaster and Fleetwood parliamentary constituency.  It's an agricultural and surprisingly low-lying area, with the main road from Pilling to Lancaster once regularly flooded by high tides.  All of the division's census areas are within the 40% least deprived in England with the exception of Knott End, which has a significant retiree population.  The division is safe Tory and wasn't seriously contested in 2009, the shares of the vote then being C 65.9 Grn 21.1 Lab 13.1; in 2005 it was a straight fight between Tory and Labour, the Conservatives winning by 64.2-35.8.  I'm not sure of the reason for the Green strength as the Greens only stood in one of the constituent district wards in May (Pilling, polling 21%), but this division does border the Green-held county division of Lancaster Central.  The same Green candidate is contesting the by-election along with candidates from the Conservatives, Labour and UKIP.

Funny than Withby, Scarborough and Pickering are cities which are near one each other.

Well yeah, Ontario is a funny England-themed theme park.

This! Is! SCOTLAND!
There are only two main parties.
Especially as the LDs seem not even to have stood here in recent history.

Newcastle-under-Lyme, Newchapel

Lab 45.7 (+13.0)
Con 29.5 (+2.2)
UKIP 21.7 (+6.3)
Lib Dem 3.1 (-3.4)

North Lanarkshire, Coatbridge North and Glenboig (changes from 2009 by-election in italics)

Lab 52.4 (+4.6) (+15.2)
SNP 39.0 (+9.6) (+8.5)
Con 6.0 (-4.6) (-2.8 )
Lib Dem 2.7 (+2.7) (+2.7)

Cornwall, Bude North and Stratton

Lib Dem 61.2 (-11.2)
Con 25.2 (-2.4)
Lab 7.7 (+7.7)
Ind 5.9 (+5.9)

Lancashire, Wyreside

Con 58.0 (-7.9)
Lab 23.4 (+10.3)
UKIP 9.6 (+9.6)
Green 9.0 (-12.1)

Walsall, Bloxwich East

Lab 48.0 (+6.2)
Con 43.5 (+1.2)
UKIP 5.1 (-3.0)
Eng Dem 2.6 (+2.6)
Green 0.8 (+0.8 )

(via BritainVotes)

North Yorkshire, Thornton Dale and The Wolds

Con 66.2 (+4.7)
Lib Dem 33.8 (+4.1)

(via Vote 2007)

By-elections on 3rd November, two in the Scottish Highlands and two in the English Midlands.

INVERNESS SOUTH, Highland Council; caused by a Labour councillor being found guilty of a £43,000 benefit fraud.  This is one of five multi-member wards named after the city of Inverness, capital and main administrative centre of the Highlands.  Unlike the other four wards, it contains very little of the actual city itself, the main population centres being Inverness suburbs such as Westhill, Inshes and Milton of Leys.  The ward also includes a large rural area to the south east, including the Culloden battlefield and following the A9 and the Highland railway line to Slochd Summit.  In 2007 the shares of the vote were SNP 27.0 LD 23.0 Ind 22.4 Lab 17.1 C 10.5, with the four seats being shared SNP/LD/Lab/Ind; all four councillors were brand new, with the Labour candidate the only one with previous electoral experience having unsuccessfully fought Inshes as an independent in 2003.  Inshes would appear to be rather less well-off than the rest of the ward and is presumably the source of the Labour vote.  The by-election has attracted a large field of candidates, with the four main parties being joined by the Greens, the Christian Party and an Independent.

OBAN NORTH AND LORN, Argyll and Bute; caused by the death of an SNP councillor.  This is a very large ward in the Scottish Highlands covering the northern end of the old county of Argyll, an area which was once the district of Lorne (which, through various aristocratic connections, is the source of all those Lorne place-names in Canada), together with the northern part of the port of Oban.  The ward also includes some islands in Loch Linnhe, the largest of which is Lismore.  The largest settlement wholly in the ward is probably Dalmally, on the road and railway line east towards Crianlarich and birthplace of the late Labour leader John Smith.  Much of the local economy is based on tourism, with a year-round employer being the Cruachan Dam hydroelectric power station (a fact which once won me a bottle of beer in a quiz for being the only person to correctly answer the relevant question :) ).  First preferences in 2007 were Ind 54.6 SNP 22.4 LD 14.6 C 8.5, with the first two seats going to two incumbent independent councillors and the SNP and Lib Dems sharing the other two.  The by-election sees two independent candidates (one of whom stood unsuccessfully in 2007) along with candidates from the SNP, Lib Dems and Conservatives.

SYSTON RIDGEWAY, Leicestershire County Council; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor.  Located six miles north-east of Leicester on the Fosse Way and the road to Melton is the town of Syston.  These days it's a commuter town for the city of Leicester, with Syston station having hourly trains to Leicester and Nottingham on the so-called Ivanhoe Line, and its politics basically reflects that.  This county division combines the eastern half of the town with the even richer villages of Queniborough and Rearsby to the north and a rural area to the east as far as South Croxton.  Only one of the division's six-and-a-half census areas (in central Syston) is within England's most deprived 40%, while two-and-a-half are in the least deprived 20%.  Shares of the vote in 2009 were C 52.6 BNP 19.4 LD 17.4 Lab 10.6; the BNP have performed well in this part of Leicestershire over the last few years and in May they held their seat in East Goscote ward of Charnwood council (one of only two seats the BNP won in May).  East Goscote ward borders this division and the BNP councillor is standing in this by-election against the three main parties.

YOXALL, East Staffordshire; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor who "wants to spend more time on his farm" - he was elected for the first time in May so perhaps decided that being a local councillor wasn't for him.  East Staffordshire is a starkly divided local government district, with the brewing town of Burton upon Trent normally outvoted by the Tory town of Uttoxeter and the rural area, of which this ward is a part: it consists of several villages on or just off the A515 Lichfield-Ashbourne road, with Yoxall itself at the south end, Newborough at the north end and Hoar Cross in between.  May's result was C 79.3 Lab 20.7, which from Labour's point of view is an improvement on the 87-13 drubbing they got in 2007.  The by-election is another straight C/Lab fight.

Leicestershire, Syston Ridgeway

Con 52.1 (-0.5)
Lab 26.0 (+15.4)
BNP 14.8 (-4.6)
Lib Dem 7.0 (-10.4)

East Staffordshire, Yoxall

Con 84.3 (+5.0)
Lab 15.7 (-5.0)

(via Britain Votes)

Highland, Inverness South

SNP 33.9 (+6.9)
Lib Dem 28.7 (+5.7)
Lab 11.8 (-5.3)
Con 11.1 (+0.6)
Green 6.0 (+6.0)
Christian 4.8 (+4.8 )
Ind 3.6 (-18.8 )

Lib Dem	747	761	777	830	971	1091
SNP	885	903	922	967	1005	1084
Lab	308	319	327	357	379
Con	290	300	336	339
Green	157	172	189
Christian	126	130
Ind	94

Argyll and Bute, Oban North and Lorn

SNP 44.1 (+21.7)
Con 20.6 (+12.1)
Ind (Neal) 17.9 (+17.9)
Lib Dem 10.6 (-4.0)
Ind (Doyle) 6.7 (+2.8 )

SNP	1081	1117	1179	1374
Con	505	523	591	758
Ind (Neal)	438	496	561
Lib Dem	260	273
Ind (Doyle)	165

Yoxall

Conservative 478 (84%)
Labour 89 (16%)

(Via the lovely Nicola at East Staffs electoral office)

LibDems win Inverness South by 4 votes at the Final Count

Full count details for Inverness South (http://www.highland.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/F39E89BF-C07B-47D4-82E8-EF76C10FC015/0/ElectionSTVspreadsheetWard20InvernessFinal.pdf) from Highland Council's website.

I always find transfers interesting, particularly weird ones like the 16 from the "Scottish Christian Party" to the Lib Dems.  Generally the Lib Dem seems to have done very well from the transfers, particularly from the elimination of the Tory (not surprising) but also from the elimination of the Labour candidate.

As for Oban North and Lorn, Argyll and Bute, first preferences were (from the Council website)
SNP 1081 (44.1%)
Con 505 (20.6%)
Ind (Neal) 438 (17.9%)
Lib Dem 260 (10.6%)
Ind (Doyle) 165 (6.7%)
Details of later counts don't seem to be on the site but unsurprisingly the SNP won.
 
Edit: now found the full result for Oban North & Lorn (http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/sites/default/files/council-and-government/Ward5_ByElection_Declaration_0.pdf), via VoteUK.  Lib Dem transfers were fairly even between SNP/Con/Ind; Ind transfers favoured the other Ind then the SNP.

No surprise that the Inverness seat was lost (circumstances, plus winning a seat on a low vote in the first place), but the party the seat was lost to is a bit of a surprise. Decent result for us in Leicestershire, I suppose.

... but still a disturbingly high BNP vote, even if it's a bit lower than in 2009.  Is it a "white flight" sort of area?

All of Leicester suburbia is white flight. But this area more than most, yes. The BNP candidate is the District Councillor for East Goscote (just outside the division) and was actually re-elected in May, while another BNP candidate polled about 19% in the Syston East ward at the same time.

That LD win is a surprise, yeah.

"The total number of votes cast was …2449.…........... and ………19…… were rejected.
With the number of valid votes being ………2468……………… the Quota (the number of
votes required to win the by-election) is ……1225"

The Lorn declaration. Is that transposition grounds enough to challenge it? ;D

Also, of course, the last transfer is silly. The SNP hadn't achieved the original quota yet, but had more votes than the two other non-eliminated candidates combined. But I guess that's what the law says you're supposed to do.

Four by-elections on 10th November, all in marginal wards in urban England.

ALDBOROUGH, Redbridge, North London; caused by the resignation of a Labour councillor.  One of the few wards in Greater London that contains any kind of rural area, this is the largest ward in Redbridge, running along the north side of the A12 Eastern Avenue up to the Barking/Dagenham border, and including the Fairlop Waters Country Park.  The population of the ward is almost entirely squeezed into the south-west corner in the Aldborough Hatch area and the eastern part of Barkingside.  It is served by Newbury Park and Barkingside underground stations on the Hainault Loop of the Central Line. 

The ward's census areas are mostly in the middle or slightly below the middle of the deprivation indices; an interesting indicator from the 2001 census is a high Jewish population (12.6%).

In 2010 this was a split ward with Labour gaining one seat from the Conservatives who held the other two; shares of the vote were C 43.5 Lab 41.3 LD 15.2.  At the 2008 GLA elections the Conservatives led Labour 38.5-31.9 in the list vote and Boris led Ken by 45.3-37.6.  With this ward being in the traditionally marginal constituency of Ilford North, and the Coalition currently running the hung Redbridge council, this by-election could be an interesting pointer.  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus the Greens, the BNP and UKIP.

ST MARGARET'S, Ipswich; caused by the resignation of a Conservative councillor.  This ward covers the north of the town, running from the edge of the town centre around Christchurch Park to the northern edge of the town.  Mostly it is a well-off area with the exception of the area around Christchurch Park which is much more working-class.

The ward consistently voted Lib Dem from 2002 to 2010 but was normally marginal, and there were some very close battles with the Conservatives, particularly in 2007 (majority 43) and 2008 (majority 45).  After years of trying, the Conservatives finally made a gain in May by just 60 votes (C 37.0 LD 35.1 Lab 21.3 Grn 6.7), but the Conservative councillor has now resigned after just four months in office.  The Lib Dems will be looking to gain the seat back.  Candidates for the by-election are just the three main parties.

ST MARY'S, Islington; caused by the disqualification of a dissident Labour councillor who failed to attend any meetings of the council or its committees in six months.  The heart of Islington, this ward stretches north along the A1 Upper Street from the Angel to the Highbury Corner roundabout and then north-west along the southern edge of the Holloway Road.  It is served by Highbury and Islington station, a major interchange for the North London Line, the newly-extended East London Line, the Victoria Line and the Moorgate branch of the mainline rail network; the Moorgate branch's Essex Road station is also in the ward.

Islington has a trendy reputation (Boris Johnson lives in this ward), but this is not yet reflected in the census figures; four of the ward's seven census areas are in the 20% most deprived in England, and the other three aren't much better off.

This ward elected three Lib Dem councillors when it was created in 2002, but one of the Lib Dem councillors defected to Labour in 2005 (the one whose disqualification caused this by-election).  She held her seat in her new colours in 2006 and Labour gained a second seat in the ward in 2010, when the Lib Dems generally performed poorly in a parliamentary constituency they were targeting.  It will be interesting to see whether any Labour gain from not being in national government any longer is offset by them now running Islington council.  Shares of the vote in 2010 were Lab 32.9 LD 32.0 C 20.1 Grn 11.9 Ind 3.2; in 2008 Ken beat Boris 42.7-37.0.  Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus the Greens and the BNP.

SPARKBROOK, Birmingham; caused by the resignation due to ill-health of high-profile Respect councillor and party leader Salma Yaqoob.

Where do I start when describing Sparkbrook?  It's an extremely depressed inner-city ward in southern Birmingham, including the Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath areas just outside the middle ring road.  It is one of the largest wards in England by electorate, with 19,661 people eligible to vote in May's election.  It has about twenty census areas, every single one of which is in the most deprived 20% in England.  It is the home of the Balti Triangle, Birmingham's equivalent of Manchester's Curry Mile or London's Brick Lane.  But there's one thing above all that defines its politics: the 59% of the population who (on slightly different boundaries) gave their religion in the 2001 census as Muslim.

That fact has made Sparkbrook the only stronghold of the Respect party outside London, starting in 2006 when Yaqoob gained a seat from Labour on an enormous swing from the Lib Dems, who topped the poll here in 2004 and won two out of three seats.  Respect gained the two Lib Dem seats in 2007 and 2008 and held a by-election in September 2009 after one of their councillors went bankrupt.  Yaqoob was re-elected in 2010, polling more than 5,000 votes, and on the same day came a creditable second in the general election in Birmingham Hall Green, polling 25.1% to 32.9% for Labour; she could have cause to curse the boundary changes which abolished the much more strongly Muslim seat of Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath.  However, a change came in May when Labour gained a seat (shares of the vote were Lab 49.8 Respect 38.8 LD 6.5 C 2.8 Grn 2.2). 

Labour now have a chance to gain a second seat, and have selected a high-profile candidate in the shape of Victoria Quinn, partner of the veteran Labour group leader Sir Albert Bore, while Respect have selected their former councillor who lost his seat in May.  The support of the local mosques could be crucial in deciding the result.

Sparkbrook is a very interesting ward. I'll post more later, but I'll just note for now that back in the 1980s it was where Dick Knowles had his seat.

Yaqoob in ill health? :(

That'll surely be the end of Respect once she's gone? Shame, as I'd much rather the "Muslim vote" be converged around authoritarian socialists than its likely successor.

If, as I suspect, Godsiff was about as popular as the Black Death in Moseley in 2010, then Sparkbrook ward would have to have been pretty close; significantly closer than the council election there on the same day.

I've been assuming that it will be, at least as an election-winning force in Brum, but we'll see.  Don't they also still have a presence in Tower Hamlets?

Round here (Sheffield) they disappeared after the Galloway/SWP split; they'd had some decent results before that but never really looked like winning a ward.  Their Burngreave candidate has continued to have some decent results by the standards of non-Labour candidates in Burngreave, but under different labels.

Unlikely; remember most of the Muslim families there are from Azad Kashmir. So, for them, religion is mostly a family thing and the imam about as influential as a vicar. The biradaris are a different matter.

Doesn't he live in St Peter's? I recall it being mentioned when there was a by-election in St Peter's last month (to replace the daughter of the Councillor who caused this by-election). Or has he moved home in search for the next local by-election?

Maybe he has two houses in Islington?

He may well have moved since 2008.  The Statement of Persons Nominated for the last mayoral election gave an address for Boris which is definitely in this ward.

Al - thanks for the correction.

"Where do I start when describing Sparkbrook?"

:D

I believe he has a flat in every remotely trendy ward in London.

Islington, St Mary's

Lab 47.0 (+14.1)
Lib Dem 26.9 (-5.1)
Green 13.3 (+1.4)
Con 11.8 (-8.3)
BNP 0.9 (+0.9)

Birmingham, Sparkbrook

Lab 56.7 (+6.9)
Respect 33.2 (-5.6)
Lib Dem 5.7 (-0.8 )
Green 2.6 (+0.4)
Con 1.9 (-0.9)

Redbridge, Aldborough

Lab 51.7 (+10.4)
Con 38.6 (-4.9)
Lib Dem 3.1 (-12.1)
UKIP 3.0 (+3.0)
Green 2.3 (+2.3)
BNP 1.2 (+1.2)

Ipswich, St Margaret's

Lib Dem 41.8 (+6.7)
Con 38.7 (+1.7)
Lab 19.5 (-1.8 )

via Britain Votes

Hilarious Sparkbrook result is hilarious.

So do we think that's basically the end of Respect as a force in Brum, then?  Their leader has gone and that was quite a heavy defeat in what was their stronghold.  Oh, and it's always good to see the Tories come fifth.

It generally looks a good set of results for Labour.

Six by-elections on 17th November, including an unusual double by-election.

HILLHEAD, Glasgow; caused by the death of an SNP councillor.

In the days when Glasgow parliamentary seats had district names rather than compass points, Hillhead was one of the most famous names, with famous MPs to match.  Its two last MPs before its abolition in 1997 were George Galloway and Roy Jenkins, and it's hard to think of a more diverse pair of famous names than that.  Jenkins won the 1982 by-election for the SDP after the death of Glasgow's last Conservative MP, Sir Tam Galbraith (father of Lord Strathclyde, the Leader of the House of Lords). 

That this was the last Conservative seat in Glasgow indicates that Hillhead is rather different from the rest of the city.  The current ward stretches out from the edge of the city centre along the Great Western Road and is served by the Hillhead, Kelvingrove and St Georges Cross subway stations.  In the middle of the ward is the Glasgow University complex, which fills the area with students, while the west end of the ward includes some of the most desirable parts of Glasgow.

The student vote makes this if not the strongest Green ward in the whole of Scotland, probably one of the strongest.  First preferences in 2007 were Lab 25.3 SNP 21.1 Grn 18.6 LD 18.3 C 10.2 Solidarity 3.8 SSP 2.0 9% Growth Party 0.6, with the top four parties all winning one seat each.  With the vote that fragmented, transfers will be crucial.  Candidates are the four main parties, the Greens, UKIP (whose candidate was the 9% Growth Party candidate last time) and an outfit called Britannica.

POULTON NORTH, Warrington, Cheshire; caused by the death of a Lib Dem councillor.  To quote my preview of the previous by-election here on 28th July:


The July by-election resulted in a Lib Dem hold; shares of the vote were LD 48.3 Lab 39.1 C 8.3 UKIP 4.2.  However, the new Lib Dem councillor (who had previously lost his seat in May) suddenly died less than two months into his term of office, so this ward is now going to the polls for the third time in just over six months.  Candidates for this by-election are, again, the three main parties plus UKIP.

RUABON, Wrexham; caused by the death of a Plaid Cymru councillor.

The village of Ruabon can be found six miles south-west of Wrexham on the main road to Llangollen and Oswestry, and is a stop on the Shrewsbury-Chester railway line.  It was once known for mining and brick-making.  Confusingly, the Ruabon ward only consists of the northern half of the village, the southern half being in the Penycae and Ruabon South ward.

The ward was a very narrow Labour win in 2004, just two votes ahead of an independent, but the Labour councillor lost his seat in 2008 to Plaid Cymru, coming in a poor third behind an independent candidate.  Shares of the vote in 2008 were PC 43.8 Ind 32.2 Lab 23.9.

The by-election is being contested by the same independent candidate from 2008 along with new Plaid, Labour and Conservative candidates.

SALTHILL, Ribble Valley, Lancashire; caused by the resignation of a Lib Dem councillor.

Salthill ward covers the east of the Norman market town of Clitheroe.  In the shadow of Pendle Hill, Clitheroe is a centre for tourism in the Ribble Valley and the Forest of Bowland, with an hourly train service to Blackburn and Manchester and a surprising amount of industry given that only one of the town's census areas is in the wrong half of the deprivation indices, and it's not in this ward.

Clitheroe is normally a stronghold for the Lib Dems in the very Tory district of Ribble Valley, with the Lib Dems having controlled the town council for many years, but Salthill ward is more marginal and its two seats have been split between the Lib Dems and Tories since 2003.  In May the Tories topped the poll and there was a surprisingly good performance from the UKIP candidate, who beat the Tory and Lib Dem running-mates to finish third just 43 votes behind the Lib Dem councillor; shares of the vote were C 29.4 LD 24.2 UKIP 20.3 Ind 16.2 Lab 9.9.

Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties plus UKIP.

WEST WIGHT, Isle of Wight; caused by the death of an Independent councillor.

The west of the Isle of Wight is generally sparsely populated, and this is the largest ward on the island by area.  The main settlement in the ward is the tiny town of Yarmouth, one of the three ports of entry to the island thanks to its ferry service over the Solent to the Hampshire town of Lymington.  The ward also includes much of the island's north-west coast, almost as far as the outskirts of Cowes, as well as some inland villages such as Shalcombe.

The island was re-warded in 2009 and the only previous result is from that year: Ind 53.5 C 46.5.  To confuse matters, the defeated Conservative candidate in 2009 had been elected in 2005 for the predecessor ward of Shalfleet and Yarmouth - as an Independent.  The Conservatives are standing again and are joined by the Lib Dems and UKIP, although the Lib Dems may now be wondering why they bothered to stand, having been forced to disown their candidate after allegations of financial impropriety involving him and a local Masonic lodge.

ZETLAND, Redcar and Cleveland; a double by-election caused by the resignations of two Liberal Democrat councillors over a dispute as to whether they were eligible to stand for election - they are (or in one case were) teachers at the foundation Eston Park School which is funded by the council. 

The only ward in England beginning with Z, it is named after the Marquess of Zetland, who was the lord of the manor, and the Zetland lifeboat, first stationed here in 1802 and now the world's oldest surviving lifeboat.  Appropriately, the Zetland ward is located on the seafront, next to the wide, long sandy beach for which Redcar (pronounced REDDker, for those who didn't know) should be famous; indeed the town took the part of Dunkirk in a recent film.  However, at the same time as the town was being developed as a seaside resort, it was also developing as a steelworking centre, and by the twentieth century there was a major steelworks and ICI chemical works completely filling the gap between Redcar and Middlesbrough. 

The steelworks was controversially closed in February 2010, and in the general election three months later Labour sensationally lost the Redcar parliamentary seat to the Liberal Democrats.  This wasn't entirely unexpected - the Lib Dems had had some huge gains in local by-elections in Redcar since 2007 - but still stunning considering the failure of the Lib Dems to break through in most urban areas at that election.

The local Liberal Democrats followed through in the 2011 council election by gaining seats in Redcar town where they topped the poll in five of the six wards, only working-class Kirkleatham holding out against the yellow tide.  Two of the Lib Dem gains came in this socially-mixed marginal ward, which had been split Lab/C in 2007 with the Lib Dems very close behind, and narrowly elected two Conservative councillors over Labour in 2003.  On May's figures (LD 50.0 Lab 35.4 C 14.6) the ward looks safe, but it remains to be seen how much of that Lib Dem lead was due to tactical voting by Conservatives.

The by-election sees two candidates each from the three main parties plus a single UKIP candidate.

Ruabon is basically a Labour place, but local politics in most of North Wales is (and has always been) odd and that area is no different. Very personality orientated, as a general rule. The previous councillor ran for us in Montgomery in 2010 and 2011.

Interestingly, while the LibDems did well in Redcar town in May, they failed to make much of an impact in the other end of the seat. That might not seem of interest at first (Grangetown and so on being the sort of places that they are), but they must have done pretty well there the previous year. Anyways, Zetland is a fairly averagey middle of the road sort of place.

Have you been to Grangetown, like? :)

To compliment Andrew's wonderful profiles (I didn't know that amazing fact about Redcar for one thing), these images might be useful.

()  () () () () () () ()

Glasgow Labour has been a bit in turmoil in the last few months. Something like 20 Cllrs have been deselected ahead of next year's elections. The Scottish Herald enjoyed the whole saga. It remains to be seen if it had any negative traction in the overall public (probably uninterested) and especially among activists.

Walsall Council has scheduled a by-election for the 22nd December, Good luck getting turnout for that one.....

A Tory councillor in Brighton & Hove has resigned their seat of Westbourne and there is rumour that there may possibly be a by-election before Christmas so I'll keep ya'll updated on that.. Even if the seat doesn't chance hands the result could be interesting given this is the only principal local authority with a (minority) Green-led administration. Results from earlier this year:

Tory: 39%
Labour: 29%   
Green: 25%
Lib Dem: 7%

It should give an insight into how the Greens are holding up, in any case.

Redcar would be a good test case of whether areas where the LibDems gained from Labour last year are truly shifting back to Labour in an avalanche of disatisfaction with the libDems being in coalition with the Tories.

I think you've confused the context in which these were won - these were won in May this year, set against the backdrop of aforementioned significant Lib>Lab swings and ensuing heavy Liberal losses to Labour around the country.

Zetland, as far as I can see, isn't naturally a Labour seat - it was Con/Con in 2003, albeit with Labour only 3% behind (Con 41.3%, Lab 38.7%, Lib 20.0%), and then it was Con/Lab in 2007, with the introduction of an independent helping to make it ultra-marginal (Lab 28%, Con 27%, Lib 26%, Ind 19%).

This May's results were;

Lib 50.0% (+23.7%)
Lab 35.4% (+7.5%)
Con 14.6% (-12.3%)
[Ind18.9% (-18.9%)]

So, far from being a case of being a Labour seat opting for Liberal, it looks to me like Labour are a minority in this ward, and only won their seat in 2007's favourable four-way split.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Liberals extended their lead in this by-election.

If we compare that to Goldsmid back in 2009, the previous result there was....(top candidate for each party only)


Paul Lainchbury   C   1330   28.1%
Melanie Davis   Lab   1231   26.0%
Rob Jarrett           Grn   1010   21.3%
Bob Bailey           LD   720           15.2%
Anne Giebeler   BHI   314             6.6%
Gemma Furness   Ind   134             2.8%

so greens and labour both much further back, labour with more momentum than then and no disgraced outgoing tory, all to play for

Presumably the Brighton Greens are having some sort of honeymoon period?

SNP hold Hillhead, LDem hold Poulton, Labour gain Ruabon, Tories gain Sighthill, Tories gain Wight West. Most of these - weirdly - were extremely close, it seems.

Glasgow, Hillhead

SNP 32.8 (+11.7)
Lab 30.2 (+4.7)
Green 13.9 (-4.7)
Con 11.9 (+1.7)
Lib Dem 9.8 (-8.5)
UKIP 1.1 (+1.1)
Britannica 0.4 (+0.4)

SNP	1026	1027	1030	1079	1174	1386
Lab	945	946	950	992	1057	1276
Green	435	436	441	556	639
Con	372	374	384	441
Lib Dem	307	310	301
UKIP	36	37
Britannica	11

Ribble Valley, Salthill

Con 34.0 (+4.6)
Lib Dem 33.4 (+9.2)
UKIP 26.0 (+5.7)
Lab 6.5 (-3.4)

Wrexham, Ruabon

Lab 34.2 (+10.3)
PC 34.1 (-9.7)
Ind 23.0 (-9.2)
Con 8.7 (+8.7)

Warrington, Poulton North (changes in italics in comparison with July by-election)

Lib Dem 44.7 (+5.5) (-3.6)
Lab 42.2 (-4.7) (+3.1)
Con 8.5 (-5.4) (+0.2)
UKIP 4.6 (+4.6) (+0.4)

Isle of Wight, West Wight

Con 76.7 (+30.2)
Lib Dem 13.9 (+13.9)
UKIP 9.4 (+9.4)

Redcar and Cleveland, Zetland

Lib Dem 47.0 (-3.0) (661, 633)
Lab 37.8 (+2.4) (531, 512)
Con 11.6 (-3.0)(217, 102)
UKIP 3.6 (+3.6) (50)

(via Britain Votes)

Ruabon - Labour won by 1 vote
Salthill - Conservative won by 4 votes

I'm sure that occasionally happens in afleitch's better dreams...

Wembley Central as well now, possibly Wrstbourne, Hove too.  Who is it who sets the dates for these?


I don't think that the student vote (or absence of it) will have much effect in any of these, but I agree its a stupid date for a byelection, is there even any council business over winterval?

Winterval?

loltiredness

;D It was appreciated!

Hillhead was a 13.65% turnout; woeful. About a third of the electorate are students so there is alot of 'churn'. SNP doing well to top the poll here. Transfers are interesting. I've been trying to work out, using the recent by-elections in Scotland as a guide to work out what will happen with the inevitable Lib Dem collapse in an STV system.

In Glasgow in 2007 the Greens won 5 seats (on par with the Lib Dems) and the Tories just 1 as the Tories were transfer repellant. Indeed in Pollockshields, the Tories only won by 4 votes on the last count pipping the Greens.

Tranfers from the Lib Dems in te by election were 115 (38.2% to the Greens, 57 (18.9%) to the Conservatives, 49 (16.3%) to the SNP and 42 (14%) to Labour with 38 exhausted

In 2007 the Tories, right the way through to count 7 when they were eliminated only picked up 62 votes. Picking up 69 votes from transfers until elimination in this low turnout by-election is actually not bad; theres much more movement here from the Lib Dems to the Tories than there was in 2007. However, the Greens are in a very good position here, not only to win seats but also unfortunately, to knock the Tories out in Pollockshields (though they would be in a stronger position to win in Newlands/Auldburn as Labour's second candidate performed so poorly)

Of course the SNP undernominated in Glasgow which led to some curious results due to huge surplusses of SNP votes not having a second SNP candidate to go to. They won't be doing that this time round and a fight to the finish with Labour could end up freezing nearly all the other parties out almost exclusively in the 3 seaters.

Five by-elections on 24th November:

BEAVER, Ashford, Kent; caused by the death of Labour councillor Brendan Naughton.

One of the boom towns of modern Britain thanks to its location and good transport links, Ashford is an old market town which became a major railway junction in the nineteenth century.  It is now linked to London and the Channel Ports by the M20 motorway and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, with high-speed trains taking just 37 minutes to reach St Pancras.

The growth of Ashford has meant the town has spilled outside its old boundaries to swallow up several surrounding villages, and Beaver ward (named after Beaver Lane), which was originally the south-west corner of the town, is now just part of the urban sprawl.

Beaver ward is a fairly working-class area and was safe Labour in 2003. Unusually it has been swinging towards the Conservatives ever since then, and in May the two Labour candidates were just 29 and 27 votes ahead of the Conservatives; the Ashford Independents, a well-organised localist group with five Ashford councillors, finished in a strong third place.  Shares of the vote in May were Lab 38.8 C 36.4 Ashford Ind 24.8.

Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties, the Ashford Independents and the Greens.  All the candidates are based in the town except for the Labour candidate, who is from the nearby town of Tenterden.


GREAT HORTON, Bradford; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Rev Paul Flowers, who as well as being a Methodist minister is also the chairman of the Co-operative Bank.

This ward is south-west of the city centre just outside the ring road.  It's a heavily deprived area, particularly in the Lidget Green area at the northern end of the ward.  Perhaps connected with that, the ward has a large Asian population (19.3% Pakistani, 9.2% Indian according to the 2001 census).

These sort of factors make the ward prone to strange results, and there were some very strange results in Bradford when the ward was created in 2004 - the three seats in this ward split 2 Labour 1 Conservative, with huge differences in the votes of the Conservative and Labour candidates and allegations of electoral fraud thrown around.  The Conservative councillor was sent to prison in early 2006 in connection with a fatal hit-and-run accident in his taxi, and Labour gained his seat in a double-vacancy election that year.  Since then it has been plain sailing for Labour here as their vote has grown and the ward turned into a stronghold; in May shares of the vote were Lab 75.4 C 15.4 LD 9.2.

Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties, the Greens and UKIP.


HAZLEMERE SOUTH, Wycombe, Buckinghamshire; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Bob Bate after he posted a tweet comparing gay marriage to marriage with animals.

The village of Hazlemere is a suburb of High Wycombe, located just north-east of the town on the Amersham Road.  Southern Buckinghamshire has some of the UK's most expensive/unaffordable property, and all six of Hazlemere's census areas are in the 20% least deprived in England. 

This being southern Buckinghamshire, these demographics translate into a very safe Tory ward, which had a 28-point Tory lead in May this year (C 54.7 Ind 26.6 LD 18.7) and wasn't even contested in 2007.  Even in the adverse circumstances of this by-election the Tories should have no trouble holding on.


LAKENHAM, Norfolk; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Fiona Williamson, who is moving abroad.

Lakenham is a working-class ward within the city of Norwich, located at the south end of the city between the Ipswich Road and the River Yare.

The county council division has the same boundaries as the Norwich City Council ward of the same name, so the ward effectively goes to the polls each year.  During the Blair and Brown years it was a Lab/LD marginal ward, with Labour usually winning narrowly except in 2008 and at the last county council election in 2009 (LD 31.6 Lab 26.8 UKIP 15.7 C 13.2 Grn 12.7).  Labour started to pull away in the 2010 city council election (which was delayed until September because of a botched attempt to make the city a unitary council) and on this May's result (Lab 41.6 LD 21.3 Grn 18.5 C 11.8 UKIP 6.7) the ward now looks safe for them; not good for the Lib Dems who are defending this by-election and a city coucil seat next year, in a parliamentary seat they hold.  The Greens have beaten the Conservatives to third place in the ward at the last two elections.

The by-election features candidates from the three main parties, the Greens and UKIP.


WENDRON, Cornwall; caused by the death of Independent councillor Mike Clayton.

Wendron is a rural ward which essentially covers the countryside between Camborne and Helston.  The largest settlements in the ward are Wendron itself, Crowan and Sithney.

The ward, particularly around Wendron itself and Carnmellis, has a history of tin-mining going back for centuries, and the former Wheal Roots tin mine near Wendron is now a tourist attraction under the name of Poldark Mine, after the Poldark novels which were set in the general area.  Perhaps because of the long mining history, this is a fairly poor area. 

Local politics in this part of Cornwall tends to be dominated by independents, and in 2009 Wendron ward elected Mike Clayton, who had previously represented a smaller Wendron ward on Kerrier district council.  Clayton had a decent enough majority but won with less than a third of the vote, and the candidates placed second to fifth all polled over 10% (Ind 31.7 MK 19.9 C 15.5 UKIP 13.0 LD 10.0 Ind 6.9 Lab 3.0); runner-up was Loveday Jenkin of the Cornish nationalist party Mebyon Kernow, who had previously been a district councillor for the ward including Crowan.

Jenkin is standing again for Mebyon Kernow and is joined by the three main parties and independent candidate Phil Martin, who is a former district councillor for the ward including Sithney.

() () () () () ()

It looks like the safeness for Labour was exaggerated in 2003 by there being a straight Labour/Tory choice; the following elections which have introduced a third option - be it the Liberals or the Ashfield Independents - has seemed to hit the Labour vote. With the Greens entering, and the gap so narrow, could we be looking at a Con gain?

()

Wycombe, Hazlemere South

Lib Dem 37.7 (+19.0)
UKIP 33.4 (+33.4) (candidate stood as Ind in May, getting 26.6)
Con 20.9 (-33.8 )
Lab 8.1 (+8.1)

Ashford, Beaver

Lab 37.5 (-1.3)
Con 27.8 (-8.6)
Lib Dem 19.3 (+19.3)
Ashford Ind 12.4 (-12.4)
Green 2.9 (+2.9)

Cornwall, Wendron

MK 36.4 (+16.5)
Lib Dem 22.3 (+12.3)
Con 19.4 (+3.9)
Ind 15.1 (-23.5)
Lab 6.8 (+3.8 )

Bradford, Great Horton

Lab 58.6 (-16.8 )
Con 20.7 (+5.3)
Lib Dem 9.9 (+0.7)
UKIP 8.6 (+8.6)
Green 2.1 (+2.1)

Norfolk, Lakenham (changes in italics since 2011 city council elections)

Lab 43.0 (+16.2) (+1.4)
Lib Dem 25.0 (-6.6) (+3.7)
Green 20.1 (+7.4) (+1.6)
Con 6.5 (-6.7) (-5.3)
UKIP 5.4 (-10.3) (-1.3)

(Update: All via the new BritainVotes site here (http://britainvotes.survation.com).)

The UKIP candidate's personal vote might explain their high vote, but what's the explanation for the Tory collapse?


Good win for Mebyon Kernow there.

Indeed.

Seems Ashford turned out to be a relatively safe hold for Labour - I didn't realise the Liberals were standing (who's absence appears to have bolstered the Tory/Independent vote this May to a point where they looked like challengers).


They're Cornish nationalists as well? :)

Find a nice colour tag in grey or ochre for MK and I will oblige :P

Here's grey

More surprised at your colouring of the Ashford Independents than your Teale for MK - you usually leave them black.

I'm assuming that they're a local party of sorts rather than a set of random independents and I usually use teal for those, beige being too hard to read. I'll just experiment with goldenrod... bingo.

Just trying something else... (that's fuchsia)... or this (orangered) for assorted non-Labour lefties...

I see.

Seem to remember Respect being orangeyred. Never even heard of the colour Goldenrod before.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colornames.asp (http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colornames.asp)

Can be hit and miss as to what colours are supported by the BBCodes.

I love how this forum can talk about absolutely anything at length ;)

No, this is Fuchsia:

()

I've been accused of being many things in my time, but that's the first time I've been accused of being a Cornish nationalist. ;)

Two by-elections on Tuesday 1st December, in two very different Conservative areas of southern England.

BRENT, Somerset County Council; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Alan Ham.

Not to be confused with a rather more well-known London borough, the county division of Brent can be found on the Somerset Levels, covering the countryside between Burnham-on-Sea and Weston-super-Mare.  It has the M5 Sedgemoor service area at its geographic centre; the service area was once known as Brent Knoll, after the isolated hill nearby which dominates the surrounding landscape and gives its name to this division.

While Somerset county council is often closely fought between the Tories and Lib Dems, with lots of marginal divisions, this is not one of them partly thanks to a large personal vote for Alan Ham, who originally gained the seat off the Liberals (on slightly different boundaries) in a 1988 by-election, and saw his vote grow to almost 70% at his final re-election in 2009 (C 69.9 LD 24.7 Lab 5.4).  At Sedgemoor district council level the two-and-a-half wards covered by the division (Berrow, Knoll and part of Axevale) are also safely Conservative; when the Lib Dems gained the local parliamentary seat of Wells last year this was probably not one of the areas which voted for them.

This time Labour have decided not to waste their time standing and the by-election is a two-horse race between the Tories and Lib Dems.  The Tories have selected a controversial (http://tinyurl.com/cef9s8q) local farmer and Axevale district councillor, while the Lib Dem candidate is a Burnham-on-Sea and Highbridge town councillor who narrowly failed to get elected to Sedgemoor council in May in a previously safe Lib Dem ward.

RAYLEIGH CENTRAL, Rochford, Essex; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Tony Humphries.

Part of the badly-planned urban sprawl of South Essex, the market town of Rayleigh can be found six miles north-west of Southend-on-Sea.  On the site of a Norman castle and medieval royal hunting ground, the town has expanded greatly in recent years thanks to overspill from London, to which it is linked by the A127 arterial road and a station on the Liverpool Street-Southend Victoria line.

The town is covered by eight wards of Rochford council; this ward is rather misnamed in that it doesn't cover the town centre but instead is a residential area east of the town centre, bounded to the south by the Eastwood Road.

While Rochford council was Lib Dem controlled from 1994 to 1998, South Essex as a whole swung a mile to the right during the Blair years and the Conservatives now have a strong council majority with a rather fragmented opposition; the eight opposition councillors consist of four Lib Dems (all in western Rayleigh), two Residents and two Greens, following a Green Party gain at a by-election in June this year, and there have been good votes in the district for UKIP, BNP and English Democrat candidates.  The Green gain was in the rather isolated Hullbridge ward; Rayleigh Central is very different in that the Lib Dems are normally the nearest opposition to the Conservatives. 

The ward was reasonably close when it was created in 2002, with the two Conservative councillors having majorities of 105 and 76, but this wasn't followed up by the Lib Dems, who allowed the Conservatives to win unopposed in 2004 and have trailed in a distant second ever since.  The most recent result in 2010 looked rather more encouraging from the Lib Dem point of view (C 54.7 LD 30.9 English Democrats 14.4), but that was on the same day as the most recent general election and there is still a long way to go for the Tories to lose this one.

Candidates for the by-election are again Conservative, Lib Dem and English Democrat.  The Conservative candidate is a former chairman of Rayleigh town council, the Lib Dem candidate is the wife of the leader of the Lib Dem group on the district council, and the English Democrat candidate came a creditable second in Hullbridge ward in May.

It was a compliment, not an accusation, and thus obviously untrue.

Also, "service area" must be one of the most bizarre of UK-specific names for everyday common things.

I'd spotted your fervent Cornish nationalism a mile off! :D

Pretty boring by-elections this week. Coalition partners or right-wing English nationalism; English democracy in action!

Rayleigh Central

()

Street View from one street chosen at random - http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=rayleigh&hl=en&ll=51.594055,0.634289&spn=0.000053,0.053988&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=18.199598,55.283203&vpsrc=6&hnear=Rayleigh,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=15&layer=c&cbll=51.585049,0.616324&panoid=QxmdBKswfN8uqsANseZFtQ&cbp=12,25.26,,0,7.05



Brent

()



Obviously the ward is huge so here's a field - http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Lympsham,+Weston-Super-Mare&hl=en&ll=51.28436,-2.971373&spn=0.016964,0.107975&sll=51.237202,-2.951889&sspn=0.151112,0.4319&vpsrc=0&hnear=Lympsham,+Weston-Super-Mare,+Avon,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=14&layer=c&cbll=51.284384,-2.971366&panoid=0qcZdNQXqjiMMUtTiLXaqQ&cbp=12,34.1,,0,9.97

Somerset, Brent

Con 58.0 (-11.9)
Lib Dem 42.0 (+17.3)

Rochford, Rayleigh Central

Con 54.7 (-)
Eng Dem 29.4 (+15.0)
Lib Dem 15.8 (-15.1)

(via Britain Votes)

Just the one by-election on 8th December.

HAMILTON WEST AND EARNOCK, South Lanarkshire; caused by the death of an independent councillor.

Twelve miles south-east of Glasgow on the M74 to England, Hamilton is the main administrative centre of South Lanarkshire, although it is not the council's largest town (that's East Kilbride).  This ward, as the name suggests, covers the west of the town together with the suburb of Earnock (which has now been swallowed up by the town) and a rural area towards East Kilbride.

First preferences in 2007 were Lab 38.1 SNP 25.1 Ind 22.6 C 9.6 Grn 2.6 SSP 2.0, with Labour winning two seats, the SNP one and an independent, whose policy was to oppose the then Labour-controlled council's policy on local high schools, also being elected.  (Since 2007 the council has been controlled by a Labour/Conservative coalition.)  The ward is part of the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse constituency at Holyrood; this seat was one of the SNP gains in May.

Just three candidates have been nominated for the by-election, Labour, SNP and Conservative.

South Lanarkshire, Hamilton West and Earnock

SNP 50.1 (+25.0)
Lab 36.9 (-1.2)
Con 13.0 (+3.4)

(via Britain Votes)

Yeah, quite a different result to some other recent ones in Scotland. Given the appalling weather, what was turnout like?

About 12%, I think. 822 to 821 for the other two candidates combined.

11.79%, exactly.

So 12%, then.

Thought a first-count majority was quite likely. For whichever of the two parties.

By-elections on 15th December:

FELTHAM AND HESTON: see separate thread.


CLARE AND SHUTTERN, Mid Devon District Council; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Nigel Burrough.

Clare and Shuttern is a very rural ward, covering the sparsely-populated countryside north of Tiverton along the Exe Valley as far as the Somerset border.  The largest settlement in the ward is the village of Bampton.

When the ward was created in 2003 it elected a Conservative and an Independent councillor, but the Conservatives gained the second seat in 2007 and held the two seats fairly easily in 2011 against only Independent opposition.  The ward is part of the Tiverton West electoral division, which the Conservatives narrowly gained from an Independent in 2009.

The Conservatives have nominated for the by-election their Tiverton West county councillor Polly Colthorpe, who was a district councillor for this ward (and once deputy leader of Mid Devon council) until May this year.  The more successful Independent candidate from May, Bampton parish councillor Terry Knagg, is standing again and there is also a UKIP candidate.


COOMBE VALE, Kingston upon Thames Royal Borough Council, South London; a rare double by-election caused by the resignations of Conservative councillors James White (who has since died) and Robert-John Tasker (who has got a job in the USA).

Probably a more pressing priority for the south-west London Lib Dems than the Feltham and Heston by-election is this council by-election in a marginal C/LD ward.  Coombe Vale ward can be found to the north-west of New Malden railway station on the South Western Main Line, and is basically bounded by Coombe Road and Traps Lane to the east and Coombe Lane West to the north.  This is a very affluent commuter area, with the main demographic pecularity being a very large Korean population (although most of the Koreans living here wouldn't be eligible to vote).

Until 2006 Kingston upon Thames council tended to seesaw between the Conservatives and Lib Dems at every election.  When this ward was created in 2002 the Lib Dems were on the up and they won two of the three seats in the ward, the top two Conservative candidates dead-heating for the final seat which had to be decided by lots.  In 2006 the Lib Dems lost five seats on the council, and two of them were in this ward as the Conservatives won all three seats with a convincing majority.  The Tories held all three seats in 2010 but with much smaller majorities of 311, 89 and 79 votes.  The Lib Dems will hope to follow through with two gains in the by-election, while the Tories can point out that this ward is in the Richmond Park constituency which the Tories gained off Lib Dem Susan Kramer last year.  An interesting fight is in prospect.

The by-election has pairs of candidates from the Conservatives, Lib Dems, Labour, the Christian Peoples Alliance and the Greens together with a single UKIP candidate.  One of the Conservative candidates is Lynne Finnerty; she will presumably be hoping to take the Tory vote share beyond last time's...


FRISBY ON THE WREAKE, Melton District Council, Leicestershire; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Nigel Angrave.

One of Britain's more unintentionally humerous ward names, this conjures up in my mind an image of an out-of-control frisbee causing Fentonesque chaos.  (On the other hand it's not the most humorous ward as anyone who has ever heard the Bolton pronounciation of Tonge with The Haulgh will attest.)  The truth is more bucolic: this is rolling Leicestershire countryside between Leicester and the pork pie town of Melton Mowbray, consisting of the villages of Grimston and Hoby on the north side of the River Wreake, and Rotherby, Kirby Bellars and Frisby on the Wreake itself on the opposite bank.

Nigel Angrave was elected unopposed for the ward in 2003 and 2007.  He did face a contested election in May but easily defeated the Labour candidate by 71.0% to 29.0%.  The ward is part of the safe Conservative county division of Asfordby.

The by-election again has Conservative and Labour candidates, with two independents also standing.


SHETLAND CENTRAL, Shetland Islands Council; caused by the resignation of Iris Hawkins, who is getting married.  This is the last local by-election in Scotland before May's full council elections.

Shetland is by far the most northerly council in the UK, and with this by-election taking place in mid-December there are less than six hours of daylight on polling day (sunrise 0903, sunset 1456) which must be some sort of record.

As the name suggests, this ward covers the centre of the Shetland Mainland west of Lerwick, from Girlsta in the north to Scalloway in the south.  At the centre of the ward is Lerwick/Tingwall Airport, from which flights depart to various outlying islands.  The ward also covers the islands of Tronda, West Burra and East Burra which are connected to Mainland by a series of causeways, together with some smaller uninhabited islands.  The main centre of population is Scalloway, a harbour on the west coast with strong historical links to Norway (the "Shetland Bus" Second World War resistance movement had its home here) and is now a service base for the recently-developed Schiehallion oil field.

You can't talk about the Shetland Islands Council without mentioning oil; the islands have Europe's largest oil terminal at Sullom Voe, and over the years the Council has built up an enormous oil fund making it one of the richest councils in the UK.  (London and Edinburgh, please take note.)  As North Sea oil declines, this ward could play its part in the next generation of energy, with an enormous windfarm planned covering almost the entire Central ward - the Scottish Ministers are currently dithering over whether to say yes or no to the idea.  Unfortunately the council is also running a huge deficit which has led to the closure of the secondary school in Scalloway, and there are various allegations that the council has been dipping into the oil fund to try to plug the deficit, with most of the people involved in the running of the oil fund having been sucked into the controversy.

Elections in Shetland are basically non-partisan and until PR was brought in were often uncontested.  The 2007 election returned Iris Hawkins, who had previously represented the single-member Scalloway ward, and new councillors Andrew Hughson and Betty Fullerton; all three of them polled over 21% of first preferences and were a long way ahead of the other five candidates.  The by-election sees six candidates, in alphabetical order:

* Stephen Morgan is the outgoing head of children's services at the council.
* Clive Richardson is an official Conservative candidate.
* Davie Sanderson is the chairman of Scalloway Community Council and runs Shetland Aquaculture; there is a fisheries college in Scalloway.
* Ian Scott was the runner-up in 2007, polling 10.8% of first preferences, and also lost to Hawkins in 2003 in Scalloway ward.  He is standing on an anti-cuts platform.
* Scotty van der Tol came bottom of the poll in 2007 with 19 votes (1.6%), when he was known as Scotty Dyble.  He is a UKIPper who favours independence for Shetland.
* Robert Williamson is a GMB union rep.

Pretty much anybody could win out of that lot, except possibly van der Tol.

Now that's what I consider a legitimate resigning issue!

()

If it was the bridegroom that was resigning, that is. :P

Melton, Frisby on the Wreake

Ind (Hutchinson) 38.5
Con 34.0 (-37.0)
Lab 16.2 (-12.8 )
Ind (Twittey) 11.3

Kingston-upon-Thames, Coombe Vale

Con 44.8 (+1.9) (1340, 1308)
Lib Dem 28.5 (-8.2) (908, 778)
Lab 17.4 (+7.4) (526, 502)
Green 4.1 (-3.7) (122, 108)
CPA 2.9 (+0.3) (94, 76)
UKIP 2.4 (+2.4) (70)

(via Britain Votes)

Mid Devon, Clare and Shuttern

Con 63.6 (+2.2)
Ind 27.4 (-11.2)
UKIP 8.9 (+8.9)

(via Vote 2007)

Interesting to see the Tories lose Frisby on the Wreake! Is Hutchinson a rightist? Also a pretty strong result for Labour in Kingston-upon-Thames:

()

Anyone have any results there pre-2002?

Google finds this (http://classinacoat.typepad.com/my-blog/2011/11/election-fever.html):

So it looks like he stood because he didn't like the Tories' choice of candidate, and it appears the people of the wonderfully named Frisby on the Wreake agreed with him.

:D Thanks for clearing that up!

He does appear to have drawn Labour votes as well.
Then again, their candidate was "an Asian Socialist", so maybe not so surprising. ^-^

Shetland, 1st count

    Stephen Morgan - 116
    Clive Richardson - 29 (elim)
    Davie Sandison - 332
    Ian Scott - 107
    Scotty Ven der Tol - 27 (elim)
    Robert Williamson - 75

2nd count

    Stephen Morgan - 124
    Davie Sandison - 352 (elected)
    Ian Scott - 115
    Robert Williamson - 81

Conservatives get 4.2% in Shetland. Feel the surge.

A rare Monday by-election today.

19th December: WORLINGHAM, Waveney DC, Suffolk; a rare Monday by-election caused by the resignation of ex-Conservative councillor and favourite subject of Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs column Andrew Draper.  Draper left the Conservative group in August after he was convicted of drink-driving and assaulting a police officer, but remained on the council as an independent until finally resigning in November after being charged with sending an offensive email to a police officer and possessing a prohibited weapon.

Waveney council covers the north-eastern corner of Suffolk and is named after the River Waveney, which here forms the boundary with Norfolk.  The main town in the district is Lowestoft, and the district also includes the towns of Beccles, Bungay, Halesworth and Southwold.  The village of Worlingham is effectively an eastern suburb of Beccles; the Worlingham ward also includes the villages of North Cove and Barnby on the road to Lowestoft, together with part of the Broads National Park to the north.

For the most part Waveney is a classic Conservative/Labour battle with the Labour vote concentrated in Lowestoft and the Conservatives cleaning up in the rural areas, although as often happens there are some deviations from this pattern; in particular, the Green Party are very strong in Beccles.

Draper's decision in August to stay on as a councillor probably had
something to do with the political balance of the council: before his resignation there were 23 Conservative councillors, 23 Labour, one Green (in Beccles North) and one Independent councillor, with the Conservatives forming the administration with the support of the Independent councillor, who is chairman of the council.   Waveney ditched elections by thirds this year and moved to whole council elections every four years; with the next elections not being until 2015 that is a long time to rely on the council chairman's casting vote.

As can be seen the council is evenly split 24-24 between the administration and the opposition, so a Conservative loss in the Worlingham by-election could result in Labour taking control of the council with the support of the Green councillor.  So, will the Conservatives lose this by-election?

In almost any other circumstances I would confidently say no - it's a safe ward and in recent years has usually given the Conservative candidate over half the vote, with Labour finishing a fairly strong second and the Greens picking up about 15% in third.  However, on the other side of the equation is the circumstances of Draper's resignation, which could provide a boost to the opposition parties.  Still, given past form in the ward the Conservatives have to start as strong favourites and a Labour (or Green) gain would be a real shock.

The by-election sees candidates from the three main parties, the Greens and UKIP.  The Lib Dems are standing in the ward for the first time since 2007 and UKIP last stood here in 2002.

Waveney, Worlingham

Con 45.9 (-11.0)
Lab 38.0 (+2.8 )
Green 8.9 (+1.1)
UKIP 4.1 (+4.1)
Lib Dem 3.1 (+3.1)

see below

What are those changes from, I don't recognise them? I make it:

Con 45.9% (-7.1%)
Lab 38.0% (+4.8%)
Grn  8.9% (-5.0%)
UKI  4.1% (+4.1%)
Lib  3.1% (+3.1%)

On the face of it and taking an overly simplistic view it looks like Labour attracted nothing but Green voters and the Liberal and UKIP vote is made up exclusively of Tory voters.

well that could've been interesting under AV:D

is it just the two tomorrow? Wembley and Westbourne?

Three tomorrow in the last by-elections of the year, and it's the Urban W's: Walsall, Wembley and Westbourne.

WEMBLEY CENTRAL, Brent LBC, North London; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Jayesh Mistry.

Wembley is, of course, internationally famous for association football, with Wembley Stadium being the home of the England football team and traditional venue for major domestic matches such as the FA Cup final, as well as this year's and next year's Champions League final.  The original stadium (which was demolished in 2000) was built in the 1920s as the centrepiece of the British Empire Exhibition, which provided one impetus for the major inter-war housing developments that turned Wembley from a detached Middlesex town into part of the London urban sprawl. 

This ward doesn't include the stadium but is instead based on the town centre and Wembley Central station on the West Coast Main Line, which is also served by the Euston-Watford line of the London Overground and the Bakerloo line of the Underground; parts of the ward are also served by Alperton underground station on the Uxbridge branch of the Piccadilly Line.

Wembley is one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the UK, and the 2001 census found a non-white population in Wembley Central ward of 77%, one of the highest figures in the country.  Indians were the largest ethnic group forming almost 40% of the population; 39% gave their religion as Hindu and 15% as Muslim.  The ward is generally economically working-class, with all but one of its census areas in the most deprived 20%-40% in England.

Since its creation in 2002 this has consistently been a Lib Dem/Labour marginal ward at Brent council level.  The Lib Dems won all three seats in 2002 with majorities of 120, 93 and 54, and held all three seats in 2006 with majorities of 205, 111 and 90, and held a by-election in 2009 with a majority of 261 after one of their councillors was found guilty of fraud.  Labour gained the ward in 2010 with majorities of 527, 230 and 155 on a much higher turnout.  At the 2008 GLA elections Labour carried the ward with 37.9% to 21.1% for the Lib Dems, 14.7% for the Conservatives and 10.9% for the Greens, while Ken beat Boris by 53.1% to 24.7%.

Candidates for the by-election are the three main parties, all of whom are standing Asian candidates, plus the Greens, who aren't.

WESTBOURNE, Brighton and Hove; caused by the resigation of Conservative ex-Leader of the Council Brian Oxley.

This ward is in Hove, actually.  It runs down from Aldrington railway station to the seafront, with Westbourne Street and Westbourne Villas running along the centre of the ward.  Hove has traditionally seen itself as socially superior to Brighton, which has a brasher reputation, but interestingly the demographics of this ward don't reflect this - five of the ward's six census areas are in the wrong half of the deprivation indices and the other is right in the middle.

Despite this, the ward was safe Conservative in 2003 (when Labour won Brighton and Hove council for the last time) and 2007, when the Conservatives were a handful of seats off a majority and Oxley became Leader of the Council.  In 2011, the Greens famously became the largest party on the still-hung council and now have a minority administration here - the first Green administration on any principal council in Britain.  Most of the Green vote is in Brighton, but the Green surge was felt here and turned the ward into a three-way marginal - C 35.5 Lab 29.5 Grn 26.3 LD 7.6 European Citizens Party 1.1.

The Green administration is apparently pretty popular so if there is any further increase in their vote a Green gain cannot be ruled out.  Labour can look to the demographics (although they were nowhere near winning in 2003 when they controlled the city council), while the Conservatives will be looking to make the ward safe again.

For some reason a lot of candidates have come out of the woodwork for this one, and the four main parties are joined by UKIP, the Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts and the European Citizens Party.

BIRCHILLS LEAMORE, Walsall MBC, West Midlands; caused by the death of Labour councillor Joan Barton.

Drive down the M6 into the Black County, taking care to avoid the toll road, and just after the M54 joins a view opens out on the left-hand side of an unambiguously industrial landscape with several prominent blocks of high-rise flats.  This is Leamore, part of Birchills Leamore ward.

As the name suggests, the ward covers two distinct parts of the borough of Walsall.  Birchills is located just outside the town centre ring road in the south-east corner of the ward, while Leamore is a large council estate in the west of the ward on the opposite side of a canal, hard up against the M6 as stated.  The ward scores very highly on the deprivation indices; apart from Pouk Hill in the south-west corner every census area in the ward is in the most deprived 20% in England.

In Walsall demographics like this don't necessarily produce a safe Labour ward, because the local Labour party has an extremely wacky reputation.  Labour won all three seats in 2004 comfortably enough, but their councillor who was up in 2006 defected to the Conservatives and came within 70 votes of being re-elected in her new colours.  One of the Labour councillors resigned in 2008 over child porn allegations and Labour then lost the by-election to the Conservatives by 103 votes.  Labour got the seat back in 2010, but only by 171 votes, before performing much more strongly this May.

Candidates for the by-election are Labour, Conservative, Greens, UKIP and the English Democrats; the Conservative candidate was the winer of the 2008 by-election.

Finally, it is obligatory to mention Slade because IT'S CHRISTMAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSS!: Noddy Holder grew up in Leamore and the cover of Ambrose Slade's first album Beginnings is a photograph of the band on Pouk Hill.

On that note, it may be an opportune time to wish the people reading these previews (both of them) a Merry Christmas.  There will be a new thread in time for the first council by-elections of the new year on 12th January.

The only time I have ever been in Walsall was in the back of an ambulance. I like the idea of keeping things that way.

Don't sell yourself short. This thread is great when I'm really bored.

Walsall, Birchills-Leamore

Lab 52.8 (-2.2)
Con 32.4 (-1.2)
Eng Dem 8.2 (+8.2)
UKIP 3.7 (+3.7)
Green 2.9 (+2.9)

Brighton and Hove, Westbourne

Con 39.3 (+3.8 )
Lab 31.6 (+2.1)
Green 24.7 (-1.6)
Lib Dem 1.7 (-5.9)
UKIP 1.4 (+1.4)
TUSC 0.8 (+0.8 )
ECP 0.5 (-0.6)

Brent, Wembley Central

Lab 48.3 (+5.5)
Lib Dem 35.2 (-0.2)
Con 12.0 (-6.7)
Green 4.5 (+1.4)

(via Britain Votes)

Wembley result is surprisingly good, given noises off.