Andrew's Previews 2020: The year 2020, told through local by-elections

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So, we have here a three-councillor ward whose representation is split between Labour and the Conservatives, and a single-member ward which has voted for both parties within the last two years. And Labour are defending both of these wards in by-elections, following the resignations of their councillors Sue Moffat and Steph Talbot. I have not been able to find any given reason for their resignations, but in the case of Moffat it is noticeable that she recently applied to be Labour’s next parliamentary candidate for Newcastle-under-Lyme and didn’t get the selection; while last December Talbot was ousted as the head of the Alice charity. During Jarvis’ term the South Yorkshire mayoralty has been significantly beefed up, with new powers over transport, strategic planning and suchlike together with a salary. Jarvis has decided to concentrate on his Westminster role and he is not seeking re-election as mayor. This by-election is to replace the late Conservative councillor Nigel Shaw, who passed away in August at the age of 70 after twenty unbroken years representing this ward on Broadland council. He had also served on Norfolk county council in the past. Before settling down to public service here, Shaw had travelled across Europe working as a DJ. Other elections since May 2019 suggest that things have not improved for the Guildford Conservatives. Tillingbourne ward is part of the Shere division of Surrey county council, which the Conservatives held only narrowly in the 2021 county elections against a strong campaign from the Guildford Greenbelt Group. The ward is part of the Mole Valley parliamentary seat, which is safe for the Conservative MP Sir Paul Beresford but swung strongly to the Liberal Democrats in December 2019 against the national trend. Fareham and Portsmouth are part of one continuous urban area, with Portchester being the hinge in the middle of it. This is because of the presence of the steep Portsdown Hill to the north which forces all lines of communication to run through this ward, including the M27 motorway and the West Coastway railway line. Portchester railway station has regular trains to Southampton, Portsmouth and London.

Now, unlike some other cities, Oxford’s ring road doesn’t necessarily mark the end of the urban area: large parts of Oxford’s south-east fringe are outside the ring road. This includes the former village of Littlemore, which has existed for a very long time but only got a parish church in 1838; its first incumbent was John Henry Newman, who later became a Roman Catholic cardinal and a saint. Newman gives his name to the local primary school. Littlemore ward also takes in the Oxford Science Park and the Kassam Stadium, home of Oxford United FC, both of which are on the southern edge of the city. So, defending this seat for the Conservatives is Neil Waller, an NHS finance manager and former Wealden councillor who lost his seat two months ago in Crowborough South West ward. The Greens have selected Anne Cross, an interfaith minister who lives in Heathfield. The Lib Dems also put a nomination in, but their candidate has withdrawn and will not be on the ballot; that leaves this by-election as a straight fight between Waller and Cross. Defending this by-election for Labour is Una Gillham, who is described as a former lecturer, charity worker and community volunteer. The Conservatives have selected Howard Klein, a chartered surveyor who represents most of the ward on Poulton-with-Fearnhead parish council. The Greens and the independent candidate from last time are not trying again, so the Lib Dems’ Timothy Harwood completes the ballot paper.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. Defending for the Conservatives is Peter Berry, who represents the area on Thorpe St Andrew town council. Labour have selected the wonderfully-named Calix Eden. Brian Howe completes the candidate list for the Lib Dems. 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.

Before we start this week, there are a couple of corrections to the Leicester piece from last week. Aasiya Bora may have finished as runner-up in last week’s by-election, but in fact she placed third in last year’s poll. Keith Vaz is no longer the chair of the Leicester East branch of Labour; he is now the constituency party’s campaigns officer, which can’t be a particularly comfortable position to hold given his candidate’s disastrous performance last week. Eight weeks later, the Labour group found themselves a man down following the resignation of Labour councillor Drew Moore, who indicated that he could not balance his new democratic duties with a new job. Moore had won the final seat in the ward with a majority of just 33 votes over the lead Conservative Peter Berry, so Labour have work to do to hold this by-election. In local elections Byker is a safe Labour ward of Newcastle upon Tyne city council, which has a Labour majority. The current ward boundaries date from 2018, when long-serving councillor George Allison was re-elected at the top of poll. Allison died of cancer in March 2020, on the day after he was awarded the freedom of the city by the council; because of the pandemic, his seat was vacant for more than a year before a by-election could be held as part of the 2021 local elections. This was won by Stephen Sheraton, who finished Allison’s term and was then re-elected in 2022 for a full term of his own. Last year Sheraton polled 65% of the vote, with the Conservatives’ 15% best of the rest.Plymouth council, Devon; caused respectively by the resignations of Conservative councillors Shannon Burden and Dan Collins. Finally, we have the last election to North Yorkshire county council, which returned a Conservative majority at its previous election in 2017: 55 Conservatives against 10 independents, 4 Labour and 3 Lib Dem councillors. There are new division boundaries this year with an increase from 72 councillors to 90. As a result of local government reorganisation the county council will become North Yorkshire’s unitary council in April 2023, with all the district councils underneath it disappearing then. The Tories were much weaker here in the 2019 district council elections: Scarborough council is run by a Labour-Independent coalition, Ryedale by a Lib Dem-independent arrangement, Richmondshire by an independent-led anti-Conservative coalition. The Conservatives do, however, have majorities in Selby, Hambleton and Harrogate districts and hold half of the seats in Craven. 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”.

Defending for the Lib Dems is Ciaran Urry-Tuttiett, who might be wanting to make his own journey to Liverpool fairly soon: he is a committed Eurovision fan who presents a Song Contest-themed radio show. Urry-Tuttiett contested Fareham North ward in May. The Conservatives have reselected Harry Davis, who is still a teenager but already has a previous campaign in this ward under his belt: he was runner-up here in May. Another young candidate on the ballot is Dominic Martin for Labour, who completes the candidate list along with Dave Wiltshire of the Fareham Independent Group. The local press have interviewed all the candidates, and you can find out more here ( link). For more information and to apply for a VAC or postal vote, go to electoralcommission.org.uk/voterid. Rose Hill and Littlemore The list of famous people associated with mining areas is often dominated by sportsmen, but possibly the most famous former pupil of Oakdale Comprehensive School (now Islwyn High School) was too young to have gone down the pits. Joe Calzaghe was born in London and spent some of his early life in his father’s native Sardinia, but he grew up in this corner of South Wales before embarking on a stellar boxing career. Calzaghe retired from the ring in 2009 with a perfect record of 46 wins from 46 professional fights, having unified three of the four super-middleweight world titles and spent more than a decade as WBO super-middleweight world champion before moving up to win more world titles at light-heavyweight. This from a lad who was bullied at high school, and left Oakdale Comprehensive without taking any GCSEs. If you got your GCSE results last week and they weren’t what you hoped for, remember that you’ve got a long life left to either put that right or make your mark in some other way.All these shenanigans have left Plymouth council hung again. A further defection earlier this week left Labour as the largest party on the council; the latest composition following a further defection earlier this week gives 24 Labour councillors, 23 Conservatives plus two vacancies, five councillors in the Independent Alliance group (four ex-Conservative, one ex-Labour), two Greens (one of whom was elected as Labour), and an ex-Conservative independent. It’s a very fine balance. Any Conservative losses in these by-elections will mean that Labour increase their lead on the council, although they will remain short of the 29 seats necessary for a majority. Now, one feature of strongly-Asian and strongly-Muslim wards in Pennine towns is that they can swing very hard and very unpredictably depending on what is going on in the local mosques. In May 2023 the Conservatives selected a Muslim candidate in Batley East for the first time since 2015, and they had their best result in Batley East since 2015. In fact, the Tories came extremely close to winning this ward for the first time: Habiban Zaman, the winner of the 2017 by-election, held on for a third term of office by 1,978 votes to 1,964, a majority of just 12 votes. This equates to 44% for both parties. Our Welsh by-election this week takes place in the south-eastern corner of the county. Devauden ward is a hilly and rural area lying between the Wye valley to the east and the Usk valley to the west. This urban bias translates into a Labour-voting bias. Most of the seats up this year were last contested in 2018, and the Local Elections Archive Project database shows that that year (in England only) 41.2% of the votes were cast for Labour, 31.8% for the Conservatives, 14.0% for the Liberal Democrats, 6.7% for the Green Party, 2.1% for independent candidates, 1.3% for UKIP and the remaining 2.9% for localists and other parties. In terms of council seats, Labour won 2,359, the Conservatives 1,338, the Liberal Democrats 540, the Greens 39, independents 61, UKIP 3 and localists and the rest won 84.