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The swing to Labour seen in the 2021 Senedd election in Monmouth was amplified in the 2022 Welsh local elections, where in Monmouthshire the Conservatives lost their majority and Labour finished as the largest party for the first time since 1995. Labour are now running the council as a minority with 22 out of 46 seats; a gain here will give their administration half of the council. How likely is that? Well, Labour contested Devauden ward this year for the first time this century, and finished in second place: Bob Greenland, who had been deputy leader of the Conservative group and of the council since 2008, was re-elected for a fifth term of office with a 49–31 lead. Greenland passed away in August 2022 from cancer; his last tweet was a criticism of the outgoing Prime Minster Boris Johnson. May 2003 result Lab 1040/963/958 C 728/670/588 LD 535/475/434 Plymouth Party 365/264/242 Grn 172 Ind 118 Since 2004 this ward had been represented on Monmouthshire council by the Conservatives’ Bob Greenland, who was elected without a contest in 2008 and had large leads over the Lib Dems in 2004, 2012 and 2017. All of those local elections also resulted in Conservative-led government of Monmouthshire county council, the party winning an overall majority in 2004, 2008 and 2017 and ruling from 2012 to 2017 in coalition with the Lib Dems. In the 2021 census Poulton North made the top 50 wards in England and Wales for those working in the water, sewerage or waste management sector. Warrington is the home of North West England’s water company United Utilities, and one wonders whether the census enumerators might have got a bit confused by that; UU do have their fingers in a number of other pies.
The village of Devauden itself is the location where John Wesley first preached in Wales, doing so on the village green in 1739. The ward also includes a number of other small villages, as far west as Llangwm. This was historically hunting territory, and to some extent still is: the village of Itton at the southern end of the ward is home to the foxhounds of the Curre and Llangibby Hunt. This entry has been corrected: the Minnie Pit disaster took place in Halmer End, not Bignall End as originally stated. Audley That’s not a majority which bodes well for this by-election, which — like the last Batley East by-election — has come out of the Councillors Behaving Badly file. The Councillor Behaving Badly here is Fazila Loonat, who was first elected in 2016 (under her previous surname of Fadia) and re-elected in 2021. What did for Loonat was the same thing that did for the Labour MP Fiona Onasanya and the Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne — lying about a speeding offence. Oxfordshire’s Vale of White Horse district has a by-election in Steventon and the Hanneys ward, which covers four parishes along the Great Western main line to the north of Wantage. This seat is vacated by the Conservatives’ Matthew Barber, a former leader of the council who was elected last year as the Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner. Barber was run close in 2019 by the Liberal Democrats; Louise Brown is the defending Conservative candidate, the Lib Dems’ Sally Povolotsky may fancy her chances of a gain, while independent candidate David Corps also stands. The Labour slate included (Zeena) Iysha Begum, who was elected at the age of just 18; at the time she was a student at Winstanley College in Wigan and doing volunteer work for a local community interest company. She had moved to St Helens in 2018 with her mother and brothers, fleeing domestic violence. Unfortunately Begum’s time on the council lasted only a few months before she resigned due to a change in her personal circumstances.There are some major changes to Merseyside’s local elections this year, as all the seats on St Helens council are up for election on new ward boundaries while the Liverpool council elections have been cancelled. Both of those councils are moving to whole elections every four years. Labour have secure majorities in St Helens, Knowsley and Sefton and the party run Wirral council (above) as a minority, with 28 Labour seats (one of which is vacant) against 23 Conservatives, 7 Green seats (one of which is vacant), 6 Lib Dems and 2 ex-Labour independents. If the 2021 results are repeated Labour will lose three seats: Bebington and Prenton wards to the Greens, and Pensby and Thingwall ward to the Conservatives.
Our other English by-election takes place in the centre of the country, as we are only a few miles from Coton in the Elms, the hamlet generally recognised as the point in England furthest from the sea. Swadlincote is the southernmost town in Derbyshire, and it’s traditionally a mining centre as the town’s civic motto E terra divitiæ — “riches from the earth” — might suggest. As well as coal, the town lies on clay deposits of unusually high quality which were particularly suitable for manufacture of large pipes. Tamworth council, Staffordshire; both caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Richard Ford. Outgoing councillor Baker-Smith doesn’t appear to have completely left her Isle of Wight roots. She was working remotely in an NHS job which is nominally based there, and she quit Manchester council in July to spend more time on the island caring for a family member. The local authority here is Folkestone and Hythe council, where the Conservatives lost their majority in a messy 2019 election. The Tories won 13 seats, the Green Party and Labour six each, the Lib Dems and UKIP two each and the remaining seat went to an independent. The Conservatives still run Folkestone and Hythe council, but they now have to rely on a coalition with UKIP and the independent councillor. Defending for Labour is Carol Ferris, who stood in the other Thorpe St Andrew ward (South East) in May; she was elected to Thorpe St Andrew town council, but missed out on a seat on Broadland council then. Another Thorpe St Andrew town councillor on the ballot is the Conservatives’ Peter Berry, who finished as runner-up in the 2022 by-election and the 2023 Broadland district election in North West ward. Completing the ballot paper is Victor Morgan for the Liberal Democrats.To allow consistent comparisons to be made across local elections from year to year, the BBC make an estimate of how the vote would have gone across the whole country based on vote changes in a representative sample of wards. Their Projected National Share for the 2018 local elections put the Conservatives and Labour level on 35% each and the Lib Dems on 16%. We can see from the differences between these and the figures above that the wards holding elections tend to be stronger for Labour, and weaker for the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, than the GB average.
Labour are defending this by-election following the death of Labour councillor Diana Friend, a retired teacher who passed away in May at the age of 72. She was the serving deputy mayoress of Warrington, as her husband and fellow ward councillor Graham Friend was the borough’s deputy mayor for 2022–23. They married in 2017 within the ward, at the Church of the Resurrection in Cinnamon Brow; Diana was already a ward councillor then, having been first elected in 2016 under her previous surname of Bennett, and she and Graham had met through their political work. Folkestone and Hythe council wards: Hythe Rural, Hythe (part: part of Hythe parish), Romney Marsh (part: Dymchurch parish) The Heathfield and Mayfield county division is currently split between two safe-Conservative parliamentary seats. Heathfield is covered by the Bexhill and Battle constituency represented by Huw Merriman, Mayfield is part of Nus Ghani’s Wealden constituency. Merriman and Ghani are both currently junior ministers: Ghani holds the industry brief, while Merriman is responsible for the government’s railways and High Speed 2 policy. Boundary changes for the next general election will transfer Heathfield into the Wealden seat, which will take on the new name of “Sussex Weald”. Andy Weatherhead’s side of the story is that he was never formally a member of the New British Union and no longer holds those views. He has decided to seek re-election, as an independent candidate, in the by-election prompted by his resignation from the county council. Weatherhead has also been described in a local press interview as “a good bloke” by the official Conservative candidate in this by-election, former Hythe town councillor John Gabris. The Green Party will have high hopes of recovering a seat which they lost two years ago: they have selected Hythe town councillor Jenni Hawkins. Also standing are Tony Cooper for Labour and Ian Meyers, who is the leader of the UKIP group on Folkestone and Hythe council but is contesting this by-election as an independent candidate. Counting for this by-election will take place on Friday morning.The other North East council to watch is Hartlepool, whose entire representation was up in 2021: the parliamentary seat was a historic Conservative by-election gain, while the party may also be ruing its decision not to stand more candidates in the simultaneous Hartlepool council election. The whole council was up for election last year on new ward boundaries, but the Conservative dominance in the ward map only netted them 13 seats out of 36 because they only stood 13 candidates: there are 12 independent and/or localist councillors and 11 Labour members, giving a very balanced council. There is little scope for Labour gains in Hartlepool because the party are defending seven of the 13 seats up for election this year; holding what they have got will be a decent result.
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