Previewing the by-elections of 23rd June 2022
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Seven polls on 23rd June 2022, and we start with the Parliamentary Specials. First, the Wrong Side of the Pennines…
Wakefield
House of Commons; caused by the resignation of Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan.
“There is neither knight nor squire,” said the pinder,
“Nor barron that is so bold,
Dare make a trespasse to the town of Wakefield,
But his pledge goes to the pinfold.”
- Traditional, The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield
It’s now time for the third and fourth parliamentary by-elections of 2022, and the ninth and tenth of the 2019 Parliament. Both of today’s parliamentary seats are defended by the Conservatives, and both are the result of indefensible behaviour by the outgoing MPs.
For our northern poll today we have come to the cathedral city of Wakefield. This was dubbed the “Merrie City” in the Middle Ages, and anybody who has been to Westgate in the city on a Saturday night will see that this is still the case. The Westgate Run is one of Yorkshire’s most notorious pub crawls, with about 20 bars located along the street of that name.
But the behaviour you might see on Westgate of a Saturday night pales in comparison with the crimes of some of the most dangerous members of our society. Wakefield prison, which has been operating on the same site since 1594, is a maximum-security unit housing some of the UK’s most notorious criminals. It has left its mark on the English language, with the slang term “nonce” and even the nursery rhyme Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush having been claimed to have originated in Wakefield prison practices. None of the prisoners here have the right to vote in this by-election, unless they are being held on remand and normally live in the constituency.
Also here in times past was the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, catering for Yorkshiremen and women with troubled minds. Next door to the Asylum site is the modern Pinderfields Hospital, which has been tending to the city’s sick since 1900; the name comes from the Pinder of Wakefield, a mediaeval official who was responsible for impounding stray animals and deterring trespassers.
One inmate of the Asylum was a woman called Patience Kershaw, who died there in March 1869. Nearly three decades earlier, Kershaw — than a 17-year-old girl doing back-breaking work down the coal-pit near Halifax — had given evidence to the Ashley Commission on labour conditions in the mines. Ashley’s report resulted in the Mines and Collieries Act 1842, which banned women and boys under 13 from working underground. Kershaw’s testimony was harrowing enough that it was turned into a song in the 20th century: here is a moving recording of it from the Unthanks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmhACB1ZPQM&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=TheGuardian
Wakefield had its fair share of collieries, but there was more to its economy than coal. The city lies just outside the Heavy Woollen District on the River Calder, and textiles were a mainstay of the local economy for centuries. It was also a major administrative centre. The West Riding county council was based here from 1888 to 1974, as was West Yorkshire county council from 1974 until its abolition in 1986. County Hall is now the headquarters of Wakefield council.
The Heavy Woollen District takes in two smaller towns within the Wakefield constituency, Ossett and Horbury. Both of these had alternative industries: the coalfield extends here, while Horbury also had a large railway and wagon works which survived into the 21st century. Horbury has also given us the hymn Onward, Christian Soldiers: its lyricist, Sabine Baring-Gould, was the curate at Horbury Bridge.
The current Wakefield constituency also takes in the Wakefield Rural ward, which is located to the south-west of the city. The largest component of this is the village of Crigglestone, while the ward additionally extends to the National Coal Mining Museum for England at Overton and the open-air Yorkshire Sculpture Park near West Bretton, which was previously the grounds of Bretton Hall. This isn’t the only centre for modern art in the area: the Hepworth Wakefield, opened in 2011 at Wakefield Bridge, is named after the noted sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth who was born and grew up in Wakefield.
One thing which the city lacks is a professional football team: most Wakefield natives who follow football instead support Dirty Leeds. The main sport here is instead rugby league. Wakefield Trinity have been members of the Super League since 1999, finishing in fifth place on three occasions.
The constituency has excellent communication links to the outside world. The M1 motorway runs through the area from north to south, and Wakefield Westgate is the last stop for intercity trains approaching Leeds from the south. The unstaffed and, by reputation, rather grim Wakefield Kirkgate station is mainly for local trains on the occasions when they run, although there are occasional expresses from Kirkgate which cross the international boundary and go beyond Yorkshire.
Wakefield was one of the large industrial towns which were enfranchised by the Great Reform Act of 1832. The 1885 redistribution extended the Wakefield parliamentary borough to take in the Belle Vue area, and drew a new Normanton constituency which completely surrounded the town. The Normanton seat included Horbury but not Ossett, which was part of the Morley constituency at this time; it also excluded the villages of Woolley and West Bretton, which formed part of the Barnsley constituency.
The Wakefield parliamentary borough had a rather troubled early history, as we can see from the disputed result of the 1859 general election here. The Conservative MP John Charlesworth, a colliery owner, was unseated by the Liberal banker William Leatham by the narrow margin of 406 votes to 403. Charlesworth’s supporters cried foul; there was no Election Court in those days, so they petitioned Parliament to void the election. This action backfired: the Commons’ election committee and a subsequent Commission subsequently reported that both candidates had engaged in corruption, finding that 142 of the 866 electors had been bribed by one of the campaigns. The Commons took a strong line on rotten boroughs in those days, and in the worst cases boroughs could be and were disenfranchised for corruption; Wakefield managed to escape this fate, but the seat was vacant for three years before Parliament eventually agreed to issue a writ for a by-election. That was the end of John Charlesworth’s political career, although Leatham was subsequently elected here in 1865.
The first MP for the post-1885 Wakefield borough was Edward Green of the Conservatives, who had first been elected here in 1874; however, his election campaign on that occasion was also corrupt and he was unseated by the Election Court. Green returned to the Commons shortly before the 1885 general election by winning a by-election in Wakefield, and he was re-elected on the new lines with a slightly increased majority of 325 over Wentworth Beaumont of the Liberals. Sir Edward Green, who was created a baronet in 1886, was from a Yorkshire ironworking family.
Green stood down in 1892 and passed the Wakefield seat on to John Charlesworth’s son Albany Charlesworth, who had a majority of 404 over the Liberals. Charlesworth served one term before passing the seat safely on to the Conservatives’ William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, the heir to the Fitzwilliam earldom and known at this time by the courtesy title Viscount Milton. The Fitzwilliams were one of the richest families in the land thanks to their ownership of a large number of Yorkshire collieries, and nobody opposed Milton’s re-election in 1900.
In 1902 William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam succeeded to his grandfather’s titles (his father having died in 1877), and entered the Lords as the 7th Earl Fitzwilliam. The resulting 1902 Wakefield by-election was the first parliamentary campaign for Philip Snowden, who would later serve as the first Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer; Snowden, standing at this time as the candidate of the Labour Representation Committee, lost by a 60–40 margin as the Conservatives held the seat. The new MP was another wealthy man: Edward Brotherton had made his fortune as a chemicals entrepreneur based in Wakefield, and he was an alderman of the city.
Brotherton’s seat quickly became marginal. In the Liberal landslide year of 1906 he was saved by a split in the left-wing vote, holding his seat with a 217-vote majority over the Labour Representation Committee candidate Stanton Colt. A rematch against Colt in January 1910 saw Brotherton increase his majority to 519; but in December 1910 Labour stood down in favour of the Liberals’ Arthur Marshall. Marshall defeated Brotherton by 2,837 votes to 2,651, a majority of 186.
As can be seen, the Wakefield constituency voted Conservative at all but one election in the period 1885–1910. The Normanton seat which surrounded it was a complete contrast, never voting Conservative or coming close to doing so during this period. This is because it was dominated by the coalmining industry, and the Liberal nomination for the seat was effectively controlled by the Yorkshire Miners Association. All three Normanton MPs during this period were Yorkshire Miners Association officials, trade unionists who would almost certainly have been Labour figures had they lived a generation or two later. Normanton’s first MP set the template for the next two: Ben Pickard had started work in the pits at 12 and rose to become the first president of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain.
Ben Pickard died in February 1904 at the age of 61 prompting the first Normanton by-election, which took place on 1st March 1904. The Yorkshire Miners Association/Liberal nomination went to coalminer and trade union official William Parrott amid some controversy, as Parrott had already been selected as the next Liberal candidate for Leeds East. The Balfour Conservative government was by now unpopular and the Conservative candidate Marcus Dorman didn’t stand much of a chance. On a snowy polling day Parrott increased the Liberal majority to almost 4,000 votes, a 70–30 margin.
William Parrott did not have a long tenure in the Commons: he died in November 1905, also aged 61. For the resulting second Normanton by-election, scheduled for 27th November 1905, the Yorkshire Miners Association/Liberal candidate was another trade unionist and coalminer, Frederick Hall. He was the chairman of the Rawmarsh School Board. This time the Conservatives didn’t bother to put up a candidate, and Hall won the by-election unopposed. He was again unopposed at the 1906 general election a couple of months later.
In 1909 the Miners Federation of Great Britain instructed its members to leave the Liberal party and take the Labour whip, which Hall duly did. He remained as MP for Normanton until his death in 1933, facing only one contested election before the First World War: in January 1910 he defeated the Conservative candidate Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett by 72–28. Ashmead-Bartlett would go on to distinguish himself as a war correspondent at Gallipoli.
The Morley constituency, which included Ossett at this time, was a safe Liberal seat throughout the period 1885–1918. It had three MPs during this period: Charles Milnes Gaskell from 1885, Alfred Hutton from 1892, and Gerald France from January 1910.
The 1918 redistribution left the Wakefield parliamentary borough more or less intact but redrew the seats around it. A new Rothwell constituency was created, which was nominally based on what we now call the Rhubarb Triangle but also took in Horbury and Wakefield Rural District. Ossett remained part of the Morley seat, now redrawn as Batley and Morley.
The Rothwell constituency had just as large a mining influence as the previous Normanton seat, and it was one of only a few seats which voted Labour at every election in the inter-war period. Every one of those elections was won by William Lunn, who had gone down the pit at 12 and worked for 20 years as checkweighman at Middleton Colliery in Leeds. Lunn had junior ministerial positions in both the Macdonald Labour governments. Even in the Labour disaster year of 1931 his majority was over 2,500. Lunn died in May 1942 at the age of 69, and the by-election to replace him went to the Labour candidate Thomas Brooks, another coalminer and trade unionist, who was elected unopposed thanks to the wartime political truce.
This column covered the history of Batley and Morley in some detail last year when previewing the Batley and Spen by-election. This was a marginal seat which changed hands frequently during the inter-war period, voting Liberal in 1918, Labour in 1922 and 1923, Liberal in 1924, Labour in 1929, Conservative in 1931, and Labour in 1935 and a March 1939 by-election.
Wakefield also developed into a marginal seat during this period. The Liberal win for Arthur Marshall in December 1910 proved to be a one-off, and to date he was the last Liberal MP for the city proper. Marshall sought re-election in 1918 but finished a poor third, and Edward Brotherton recovered the seat he had lost in 1910 with a majority of 3,246 over Labour.
Brotherton stood down at the 1922 election, at which the Liberals withdrew and the new Conservative candidate, Geoffrey Ellis, was run close by Labour candidate Albert Bellamy: Ellis’ majority was just 618 votes. The following year Wakefield voted Labour for the first time, railwayman George Sherwood winning with a majority of 621. A rematch between Sherwood and Ellis in 1924 resulted in Ellis getting his seat back by 894 votes; round three in 1929 went to the Labour candidate Sherwood, decisively.
Or not, as the case may be. Sherwood lost his seat in the Labour disaster of 1931 to the Conservative candidate George Hillman, a surgeon who was leader of the Conservative group on Wakefield council. Unfortunately, Hillman was 64 and in poor health: he died in March 1932, just 144 days after his election, without ever making his maiden speech in the Commons.
The resulting Wakefield by-election of 21st April 1932 brings into our story one of the major players in the Labour Party at the time. Arthur Greenwood had served in Cabinet during the 1929–31 Labour government as Minister of Health, but he had lost his seat in Nelson and Colne at the 1931 election. Wakefield was the first winnable by-election for Labour during the 1931 Parliament, and the local Labour party selected Greenwood as their candidate. He defeated the defending Conservative candidate A E Greaves by 13,586 votes to 13,242, a majority of 344. A rematch between Greenwood and Greaves in 1935 saw Greenwood increase his majority to 3,404.
Following the 1935 election Arthur Greenwood became deputy leader of the Labour Party. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Attlee was in hospital for an operation, so Greenwood had to give the opposition response to the Prime Minister’s statements in the House. His speech of 2nd September 1939 responding to Neville Chamberlain may have been short and flustered, but he spoke for England. In the wartime coalition government Greenwood initially served as minister without portfolio and was a strong supporter of Churchill during the May 1940 crisis; after leaving government in 1942 he stayed on the frontbench by becoming Leader of the Opposition. Greenwood finished his ministerial career with minor roles in the Attlee cabinet from 1945 to 1947.
The redistribution of 1950 greatly expanded the Wakefield constituency, which took over Horbury and the Wakefield Rural area from the abolished Rothwell seat. This created a constituency similar to that of today, except that Ossett was excluded. The boundary changes strengthened the Labour position in Wakefield, particularly so when the 1955 redistribution transferred the mining town of Royston into the seat.
Arthur Greenwood died in June 1954 at the age of 74. For the resulting Wakefield by-election of 21st October 1954 the Conservatives put up a rising star. Maurice Macmillan, son of the defence minister and future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, was fighting his third election campaign after contesting Seaham in 1945 and Lincoln in 1951. Maurice’ future Cabinet career came from the much more Conservative climes of Surrey (more on that story later); for the Wakefield by-election he was up against a major Labour figure.
Arthur Creech Jones had started his career in the civil service, but lost that role when he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during the First World War. He went into trade unionism after his release, and was one of the founding officers of the Transport and General Workers Union. His political career peaked when he served in the Attlee Cabinet as Colonial secretary from 1946 until the 1950 general election, when he lost his seat in Shipley. Again, Wakefield provided a secure base from which a senior Labour figure could resume a political career. Jones defeated Macmillan in the 1954 Wakefield by-election by 21,822 votes to 15,714. The Conservatives put up another future Cabinet minister against Jones in 1959: a very young Michael Jopling lost by a 60–40 margin.
Arthur Creech Jones retired at the 1964 general election and passed the Wakefield seat on to another senior Labour figure. Walter Harrison, an electrician who had joined the Labour movement via the Electrical Trades Union, spent much of his parliamentary career in the Whips office. He was Deputy Chief Whip during the 1974–79 Labour government, and played a decisive role in the 1979 no-confidence vote which brought down the Callaghan administration. Sir Alf Broughton, the Labour MP for Batley and Morley, was on his deathbed and unable to travel to London for the vote. Harrison had approached his Conservative opposite number Bernard Weatherill to discuss whether an opposition “pair” could be found for the absent Broughton. Weatherill offered his own abstention; Harrison, knowing that this would have ended Weatherill’s political career, decided not to accept the offer.
The 1950 redistribution transferred Ossett from the Batley and Morley seat to the Dewsbury seat, where it remained until 1983. This was more marginal than Wakefield but still voted Labour at every election during this period; the smallest Labour majority was 3,669 votes in 1959. There were just two Dewsbury MPs during this period. The former coalminer William Paling represented the seat until 1959, when he retired after suffering an injury to his neck in a 1957 air crash. He was replaced by David Ginsburg, an economist specialising in market research who ended up as one of the Labour MPs to join the SDP in 1981.
The 1974 reorganisation of England’s local government left the Wakefield constituency straddling the boundary between the new counties of West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire, because Royston had been included within the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley. The 1983 redistribution accordingly moved Royston into the new seat of Barnsley Central, leaving the Wakefield seat with very similar boundaries to those of 1950–55. The removal of Royston took a large chunk out of the Labour majority, and this came close to making all the difference. Walter Harrison was re-elected for his seventh and final term of office by just 360 votes over the Conservative candidate, Norman Hazell.
Harrison retired at the 1987 election and managed to pass the Wakefield seat on to the new Labour candidate David Hinchliffe, who increased the Labour majority to 2,789 and went on to make the seat safe again. Hinchliffe was a social worker and former amateur rugby league player, who founded the All-Party Parliamentary Rugby League Group in 1988. He never served in government, with his political career peaking as chairman of the Commons Health select committee.
For some reason the Wakefield constituency and those around it have been a favourite target of Boundary Commission meddling over the last half-century, with the seat seeing major changes in 1983, 1997 and 2010. In 1983 Ossett was transferred out of the Dewsbury seat into the Normanton seat, which in this incarnation was an oddly-shaped constituency which stretched along the northern boundary of the Wakefield district while also taking in Rothwell from the Leeds city council area. Normanton was represented from 1983 by former mineworker Bill O’Brien, who retired in 2005 as one of the oldest MPs on the Labour benches. O’Brien is still with us, now aged 93. Meanwhile in 1997 Horbury was transferred out of the Wakefield seat into Normanton and the Wakefield South ward was hived off to become part of the Hemsworth constituency, with the Wakefield seat stretching west to Denby Dale and Kirkburton to compensate.
For the 2005 election both the Wakefield and Normanton seats were open. The Normanton Labour selection went to Ed Balls, who is a TV star now but at the time was best known as an economic adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. His wife Yvette Cooper was and still is the MP for the neighbouring seat based on Pontefract and Castleford. Wakefield Labour selected Mary Creagh, the leader of the Labour group on Islington council in London. Both of them were elected easily.
The 2010 redistribution created the Wakefield seat we have today. Denby Dale and Kirkburton were removed from the seat and replaced with Horbury and Ossett from the Normanton constituency, which disappeared. The Normanton MP Ed Balls sought re-election in the new constituency of Morley and Outwood, which he won narrowly; while Mary Creagh fought the revised Wakefield seat and also won narrowly. The Conservative candidate for Wakefield Alex Story, a former rower who was on two Boat Race-winning crews and competed at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, cut Creagh’s majority to 1,613 votes.
In 2015 and 2017 Creagh was challenged by Conservative candidate Antony Calvert, who had come close to beating Ed Balls in 2010. These contests resulted in Labour majorities of 2,613 and 2,176 respectively, the Wakefield seat swinging against the national trend on both occasions. Calvert was readopted by the Wakefield Conservatives for a third go at the seat in December 2019…
…or not, as the case may be. Shortly before the nominations deadline a row broke out over poorly-judged social media comments by Calvert, who was forced to step down as the Conservative candidate. Left in a position where they had to choose somebody — anybody — at the last moment, the Conservatives in Wakefield — the city which allegedly gave us the word “nonce” — ended up with Imran Ahmad Khan.
Wakefield born and bred, Ahmad Khan responded to a jibe from Mary Creagh that he had been parachuted into the seat by literally parachuting into the seat, as part of a skydive over the city. Before his election campaign he had worked in counter-terrorism and conflict zones, including a spell as a UN political assistant in Somalia. His brother Karim Ahmad Khan is a prominent lawyer who is currently chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and who may well be kept busy in future by the fallout of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
In December 2019 Imran Ahmed Khan defeated Mary Creagh by 21,283 votes to 17,925, a margin of 47% to 40% and a majority of 3,358, becoming the first Conservative MP for Wakefield since George Hillman in 1931–32. Hillman served for only 144 days before his death. Ahmad Khan lasted for longer than that but hasn’t finished his first term either. In June 2021 he was charged with sexual assault on a 15-year-old boy, an offence which took place in 2008; a jury at Southwark Crown Court found him guilty after a trial on 11th April 2022. Ahmed Khan is now serving an 18-month prison sentence. He resigned from the Commons at the end of April, before his sentencing.
The downfall of Ahmad Khan forces a parliamentary by-election in a marginal Conservative seat. This is a rare occasion: the only other marginal Conservative seat to come up in a by-election since the party came to power in 2010 was Corby, way back in November 2012. The Tories have lost a number of seats in by-elections in the ten years since then, but those were from safe positions.
Additionally, the experience of this column is that when councillors get prosecuted for offences against children, the electoral backlash against the party they represented can be very large in the resulting by-election. No majority is safe.
We can already see the electoral backlash against the Ahmad Khan affair by comparing the Wakefield local election results from 2021 and 2022. Across the six wards which form this constituency, the 2021 local elections — a particularly good year for the Conservatives — saw the Tories poll 47% across the constituency to Labour’s 42%, with the Conservatives gaining the normally safe-Labour ward of Wakefield East. Twelve months later, Labour carried the Wakefield constituency in the 2022 Wakefield local elections (below) by 51% against 34% for the Conservatives, a swing of 11% in twelve months; the party also gained Horbury and South Ossett ward from the Conservatives. In local elections the three Wakefield city wards within the constituency are normally safe for Labour, while Wakefield Rural (Crigglestone and the other villages) is safe Conservative, Horbury and South Ossett is marginal, and Ossett has voted for all three main parties and UKIP in this century but is probably best described as a Conservative-inclined marginal at the moment. Wakefield South ward, the Tories’ best ward in the city proper, is not part of this seat: as stated earlier, it’s in the Hemsworth constituency.
At the time of writing two reputable opinion polls for the Wakefield by-election have been completed, both of which also show sizeable Labour leads. JL Partners were in the field for The Times from 13th to 22nd May, with topline figures of 48% for Labour and 28% for the Conservatives. A later poll by Survation, for the progressive campaign group 38 Degrees, showed a larger Labour lead of 56–33, with fieldwork from 24th May to 1st June. There has been plenty of time for the result to change from this in any direction, and the decidedly mixed history of UK constituency polling also needs to be taken into account in reading these tea leaves.
Looking forward, the winner of this by-election may have some work to do to secure renomination because draft proposals from the Boundary Commission will break this constituency into two halves for the next general election. The Wakefield constituency name is proposed to remain, but the current and revised constituencies only have the Wakey East, North and West wards in common; the new seat will instead look north into the Rhubarb Triangle, to take in Outwood and Rothwell. Ossett, Horbury and Wakefield Rural, together with Wakefield South, will instead form the eastern half of a new constituency called Ossett and Denby Dale. Both of these would probably be notional Conservative seats under December 2019 conditions, but Ossett and Denby Dale would be a much better bet for the Tories than the revised Wakefield.
There are 47 polling stations for this by-election, and hopefully every voter in the constituency has easy access to one of them given that public transport in this area is falling apart. Bus drivers for Arriva, who have an effective monopoly on buses here, are on an indefinite strike over pay at the time of writing; and polling day for this by-election falls on a day of national rail strikes.
The task of picking up the pieces for the Wakefield Conservatives falls to their defending candidate Nadeem Ahmed. He has served since 2006 as a councillor for Wakefield South ward, and he was leader of the Conservative group on Wakefield council from 2014 to 2021.
The Labour Party will have high hopes of a gain here. Amid some disquiet from the local party their selection has produced Simon Lightwood, who is the head of communications for Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust.
The only other party to save their deposit here in December 2019 were the Brexit Party. Their successors, Reform UK, have nominated Chris Walsh, who is a gym owner from Morley. The Liberal Democrats have reselected Jamie Needle, who was their candidate here in 2019: he is a parish councillor in Menston, near Ilkley. Standing for the regionalist Yorkshire Party is local resident David Herdson, a software developer for a major building society who is a former chairman of the Conservatives’ Wakefield branch and was until recently a regular columnist for the website politicalbetting.com.
Ten other candidates have been nominated for this by-election. First of those alphabetically is Akef Akbar, who was the Conservative candidate who gained the normally safe-Labour Wakefield East ward in 2021; Akbar has since fallen out with the Conservatives and is standing here as an independent. Three candidates here also contested the Batley and Spen by-election last year, including Paul Bickerdike of the Christian Peoples Alliance. Mick Dodgson is standing for the anti-lockdown group Freedom Alliance. The Official Monster Raving Loony Party have nominated Sir Archibald Earl ‘Eaton. Our second Batley and Spen returnee is the only candidate not to give an address in northern England: former Britain First/EDL figure and Northern Ireland resident Jayda Fransen, who is currently disqualified from being a local councillor (but not from being an MP) following a conviction in 2018 for religiously aggravated harassment, is standing as an independent. Jordan Gaskell is the candidate of UKIP, which even your columnist now has to accept is no longer a major party. Thérèse Hirst, who was the most successful of our three Batley and Spen returnees last year, stands for the English Democrats. The Northern Independence Party have now got their party registration sorted out, after failing to do so in time for last year’s Hartlepool by-election: they have selected Christopher Jones. The Green candidate is Ashley Routh, a former parish councillor in Lincolnshire who stood for election to Sheffield city council last month. Completing the ballot paper is the official Britain First candidate, Ashlea Simon.
That’s Wakefield. We now turn to our second Parliamentary Special of the week, by travelling down to the West Country…
Wakefield council wards: Horbury and South Ossett, Ossett, Wakefield East, Wakefield North, Wakefield Rural, Wakefield West
ONS Travel to Work Area: Wakefield and Castleford
Postcode districts: S75, WF1, WF2, WF3, WF4, WF5, WF12
Nadeem Ahmed (C)
Akef Akbar (Ind)
Paul Bickerdike (CPA)
Mick Dodgson (Freedom Alliance)
Sir Archibald Earl ‘Eaton (Loony)
Jayda Fransen (Ind)
Jordan Gaskell (UKIP)
David Herdson (Yorks Party)
Thérèse Hirst (EDP)
Christopher Jones (Northern Independence)
Simon Lightwood (Lab)
Jamie Needle (LD)
Ashley Routh (Grn)
Ashlea Simon (Britain First)
Chris Walsh (Reform UK)
December 2019 result C 21283 Lab 17925 Brexit Party 2725 LD 1772 Yorkshire Party 868 Ind 454
June 2017 result Lab 22987 C 20811 Yorkshire Party 1176 LD 943 Ind 367
May 2015 result Lab 17301 C 14688 UKIP 7862 LD 1483 Grn 1069 TUSC 287 Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol 283
May 2010 result Lab 17454 C 15841 LD 7256 BNP 2581 Grn 873 Ind 439
Tiverton and Honiton
House of Commons; caused by the resignation of Conservative MP Neil Parish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sduMReP_7wM&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=VolmerFilm
Farming is a dangerous business. Livestock have minds of their own, and if a field of cows takes exception to someone approaching then the consequences can be nasty. Modern farms are often full of dangerous chemicals like fertiliser and weedkiller. And then there’s the mechanical equipment. The tractor is the foundation upon which modern agriculture is built, but it’s a heavy and powerful piece of kit which can do a lot of damage if mishandled.
Andrew’s Previews has been going in some form or another since 9th September 2010, starting off as a series of posts on a political web forum. In its third week I briefly mentioned the 23rd September 2010 by-election for Teignbridge council, in Devon:
IPPLEPEN, Teignbridge, Devon; caused by the death of a Conservative councillor. This is a village four miles south of Newton Abbot and seven miles west of Torquay. The ward was 72% Conservative in 2007 in a straight fight with the Lib Dems, although it was closer in 2003.
The late Conservative councillor was Victor Elliott. The local press report on his funeral (link) was headlined “Legend in his own lifetime” and Elliott certainly had a long life, passing away at the age of 87 as one of the UK’s oldest councillors. He was a retired butcher “who died doing one of the things he liked most — working on the farm”. Despite his advanced age this was no natural death: Elliott was run over by his own tractor in June 2010, and died of his injuries three weeks later. This changed local politics: the Conservatives lost the resulting by-election in Ipplepen to the Lib Dems, and the by-election winner Alistair Dewhirst has sat on Teignbridge council ever since.
Victor Elliott was not the only politician named by this column to die as the result of a tractor accident. On 4th June 2017 Derek Mead was crushed to death against a gate at his farm in Puxton, Somerset, by his own JCB farm loader. He was 70 years old. The inquest heard that he had left the tractor’s engine running with his dog in the cab, and the dog had accidentally flipped a lever which put the tractor into forward gear.
Again, this bizarre and tragic accident changed local politics. Derek Mead was a multi-millionaire, who farmed 3,000 acres of land in Somerset and had a number of other business interests. He had ploughed some of that money into politics by forming his own political party: the North Somerset First Independents stood 18 candidates in the 2015 elections for North Somerset council, polling 7% of the vote across the district. However, they only won one seat, with Mead himself being elected for the ward of Weston-super-Mare North Worle. The North Somerset First Independents became defunct after Mead’s death, and they didn’t stand a candidate in the resulting by-election which was won by Labour. Labour subsequently lost the seat to the Conservatives in 2019 — a rare bright spot for the North Somerset Conservatives in what was a poor year for them.
When history repeats itself, it does so the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
Midway between Ipplepen and Weston we come to the countryside of north-eastern Devon — more good agricultural country with a particular emphasis on dairy farming. Towns here are few and far between. The largest settlement here is Tiverton, an old mediaeval settlement located north of Exeter at the point where the River Lowman flows into the Exe. This is a town built on textiles: Tiverton was a major centre for the wool trade from the 16th century onwards, and was also transformed by the Industrial Revolution. This was thanks to John Heathcote, an industrialist and inventor from the Midlands, who moved his entire lace-making operation here in 1816 after his Midlands mills were attacked by Luddites.
Heathcoat became a major player in politics here, helped by the fact that Tiverton was one of the ancient boroughs which were entitled to elect two MPs. He served as one of Tiverton’s MPs from 1832 to 1859, and as we shall see several of his descendants — the Heathcoat-Amorys — have also represented the town in Parliament.
From an 1835 by-election until his death in 1865 the other MP for Tiverton was none other than Viscount Palmerston, who spent much of this period on the frontline of British politics as one of the major players in the Whig and later the Liberal parties. Palmerston served as Prime Minister from 1855 to his death, with a brief break from 1858 to 1859, and was also Foreign Sectary and then Home Secretary during his time as MP for Tiverton. He was the last prime minister to due in office: Henry Campbell-Bannerman died at 10 Downing Street in April 1908, but he had resigned as prime minister 19 days previously and his failing health had prevented him from moving out of the official residence.
Viscount Palmerston’s peerage was an Irish one, meaning that his entire political career was conducted from the House of Commons. This meant he had to fight elections, and Tiverton — even after the Great Reform of 1832 — had a reputation as a rotten borough. We can see this from the story of the 1847 general election here, at which Palmerston and Heathcote were challenged by the Chartist leader George Harney. Harney won the hustings on a show of hands, but Palmerston then requested a poll. Harney knew he had no chance of winning a poll among the 445 people who were eligible to vote in Tiverton, and he was forced to withdraw from the election: on a low turnout, the declared result gave Heathcote 148 votes, Palmerston 127 and Harney nil.
Modern-day Tiverton is rather off the main lines of communication in north Devon. The main link to the outside world today is the A361 North Devon Link Road, a modern highway running from Barnstaple to the M5 motorway at Sampford Peverell. It’s at that junction that we find the Tiverton Parkway railway station, located on the Great Western main line with regular intercity trains (strikes permitting) to London and the north. The M5 and the railway also pass the smaller town of Cullompton on their journey south towards Exeter.
One textile business in this constituency which is still going strong today is carpet-making. The town of Axminster, close to the Dorset boundary, has become a generic word describing carpets, and Axminster Carpets still has their factory in Axminster to this day. Nearby is Seaton, a holiday resort on the coast of Lyme Bay: the town is still an important tourist centre and is also of interest to geologists, thanks to its location as part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.
The other town in this constituency name is Honiton, which is on the old road from London to Exeter (the A30) and is a stop on the South Western railway line from London to Exeter via Salisbury. This has a similar history to Tiverton as a lace-making centre, but the lace industry here is much older and was introduced by Huguenots rather than Midlanders. Queen Victoria’s wedding dress was made with Honiton lace.
There are other similarities between Tiverton and Honiton. Both towns have suffered a series of devastating fires over the centuries, leaving Honiton in particular with a fine set of Georgian buildings on its High Street. Both of them have unusual traditions which go back for centuries. Tiverton has the Perambulation of the Town Leat, held every seven years to commemorate and check the town’s original water supply: this was an open aqueduct gifted to the town in 1262 by Isabella, countess of Devon. Honiton has the rather more dangerous Hot Pennies ceremony, held each July, at which hot pennies are thrown from the town’s balconies into crowds of locals gathered on the High Street. Last year’s Hot Pennies ceremony was a special one, marking the 800th anniversary of the town’s borough charter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obnIsws4_-g&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=BlackSkyuk
Like Tiverton, Honiton was also a parliamentary borough going back to the 17th century which kept its two MPs after the 1832 Reform Act. Its most prominent MP in Victorian times was Joseph Locke, the nineteenth-century civil engineer whom we have to thank for much of the UK’s railway network, including three-quarters of the modern West Coast main line. Locke was one of Honiton’s MPs from 1847 until his death in 1860. Like John Heathcote and Viscount Palmerston in Tiverton, he was a Whig and then a Liberal.
The Honiton parliamentary borough was abolished by the 1868 redistribution, and Tiverton similarly lost its status in 1885. From that year onwards both towns have been in county constituencies and their elections have been dominated by the Conservative Party. Since 1885 Tiverton has had just one non-Conservative MP, who we shall come to later; the town of Honiton has had exclusively Conservative MPs continuously since 1868, when it was absorbed into the former East Devon constituency. Following the 1885 redistribution the Honiton seat had similar boundaries to the modern East Devon local government district, including the towns of Ottery St Mary and Exmouth which are now in the East Devon constituency; while the Tiverton seat covered virtually everything else in the Exe Valley which was not part of the borough of Exeter, stretching south to include Countess Weir, Exminster and Dawlish Warren.
The countryside around Honiton has the longest streak of continuous Conservative representation in the country, going all the way back to 1835. In the general election of that year the future prime minister Lord John Russell of the Whigs and John Yarde-Buller of the Conservatives were elected unopposed to what was then the South Devon constituency. The Whigs had and maintained a large majority in the Commons, but the prime minister going into that election was Sir Robert Peel as head of a minority Conservative government; he tried to keep that administration going after the election, but eventually threw in the towel after a couple of months of what was clearly a lost cause. King William IV then sent for Viscount Melbourne, who formed a Liberal government including Lord John Russell as Home Secretary. This entailed Russell accepting a Crown office, which under the rules of the time meant he had to seek re-election to the Commons. At the resulting South Devon by-election on 7th May 1835 he was challenged by the Conservatives’ Montagu Parker, who defeated Russell by 3,755 votes to 3,128. Ever since then, Axminster and Seaton have had exclusively Conservative MPs. Russell did eventually become Home Secretary, being elected in a further by-election twelve days later as MP for the safer Whig territory of Stroud.
The two MPs for East Devon at its abolition in 1885 were Sir John Kennaway and William Walrond, both of whom continued their parliamentary service after the redistribution as MPs for Honiton and Tiverton respectively. Kennaway’s position in Honiton was secure enough to keep him in Parliament for almost forty years: he entered the Commons at an uncontested by-election in April 1870, and retired in January 1910 as Father of the House following the 1908 death of Henry Campbell-Bannerman. William Walrond, the owner of the country manor of Bradfield House within this constituency, was first elected in 1880 and transferred to Tiverton in 1885. He had a rather more high-profile political career than Kennaway, serving as Chief Whip in the Salisbury administration and as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under Balfour. In his youth Walrond had been an active cricketer, playing for the Eton First XI and turning out for the MCC in a first-class game in 1868.
William Walrond was raised to the peerage in Balfour’s resignation honours, taking the title Lord Waleran. He was succeeded as MP for Tiverton in the 1906 general election by his son and heir Lionel Walrond, who withstood the Liberal landslide of that year by 4,455 votes to 3,970. Lionel also had a close call here in January 1910 when the Liberals selected Sir Ian Heathcoat-Amory as their candidate.
When the First World War broke out Lionel Walrond was commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps, and joined the staff as a railway transport officer with the rank of lieutenant. He was wounded in France in 1915 and evacuated to the UK, where he died on 2nd November 1915 at the age of 39. Walrond is one of 19 MPs who died on active service in the First World War whose shields decorate the chamber of the House of Commons. The wartime political truce meant that the resulting Tiverton by-election of 30th November 1915 was uncontested, with the Conservative candidate Charles Carew being returned.
The MP for Honiton during this time also served in the First World War. Clive Morrison-Bell had started his career in the military, going from Eton and Sandhurst to a commission in the Scots Guards in 1890. His career included service in the Boer War as part of the Canadian contingent, and he took part in the operations at Paardeburg, Poplar Grove and Dreifontein. Morrison-Bell retired from the Army in 1908 with the rank of Major and took over the Honiton seat in January 1910. He rejoined the Army when the First World War broke out, and spent most of the hostilities as as a prisoner of war after being captured in 1915.
The 1920s were an unstable political time, and both the Tiverton and Honiton constituencies became marginal during this period. The fun started in 1922 when Charles Carew stood down as MP for Tiverton; the Conservatives selected Herbert Sparkes, who defeated the prominent ex-Liberal MP Francis Dyke Acland by 10,304 votes to 10,230, a majority of 74.
Herbert Sparkes died just six months later in May 1923, aged 64, from pneumonia. The resulting Tiverton by-election of 21st June 1923–99 years ago this week — marked the first of three contests in 17 months between Dyke Acland for the Liberals and his cousin Gilbert Acland-Troyte for the Conservatives. Dyke Acland, who had previously sat as MP for Richmond (Yorkshire) and Camborne and had served in the Asquith government during the First World War, won the June 1923 by-election by 12,041 votes to 11,639 on a turnout of 88%. The only other candidate in the by-election was Frederick Brown, the local Agricultural Workers’ Union organiser, who had been the Labour candidate here in 1922 and stood as an independent Labour candidate after the party decided not to contest the by-election; he polled 495 votes and lost his deposit.
Round 2 of Dyke Acland v Acland-Troyte took place in the general election of December 1923, and this time it was a straight fight between them. Dyke Acland held the seat with a reduced majority, prevailing by 12,303 votes to 12,300 — a majority of just three votes. This election also marked the closest contest in the neighbouring Honiton seat, with Clive Morrison-Bell defeating the Liberal candidate John Halse by 12,470 votes to 12,177, a majority of 293. This was the second of Halse’s five consecutive attempts to be elected as MP for Honiton, and he would not come as close again.
Gilbert Acland-Troyte was finally elected as MP for Tiverton at the third attempt in the 1924 general election, defeating Francis Dyke Acland by 13,601 votes to 11,942. He was a nephew of Lord Waleran and a cousin of the late Lionel Walrond, but had a much more glittering military career than his cousin. Acland-Troyte was commissioned into the Army in 1896, fought in the Boer War where he was wounded, and was mentioned in despatches seven times during the First World War. He retired from the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in 1919 with a CMG, a DSO, a French Croix de Guerre and the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He had another close contest in 1929 against the Liberal candidate, defeating a very young Dingle Foot (who ended up in Labour and served as Solicitor General in the first Wilson government) by 2,515. After that nobody opposed Acland-Troyte’s re-elections in 1931 and 1935.
Over in Honiton, Clive Morrison-Bell retired from the Commons in 1931 and passed his seat on to Cedric Drewe. Drewe had previously been a Devon MP for the South Molton constituency in 1924–29, becoming the only Conservative MP for that seat between 1891 and 1945. He enjoyed a much longer parliamentary career in Honiton, and during his final parliamentary term in 1951–55 served as the government’s deputy chief whip.
Gilbert Acland-Troyte called time on his parliamentary career (and indeed his military career, having served in the Home Guard during the Second World War) in 1945, and handed the Tiverton seat over to the new Conservative MP Derick Heathcote-Amory. He was a great-great grandson of the Tiverton lace entrepreneur John Heathcote, and a grandson of Sir John Heathcote-Amory who had been an MP for Tiverton from 1868 to 1885. Derick was elected to Parliament within a year of being wounded and captured in the Second World War during Operation Market Garden; this came near the end of a long career in the Territorial Army, which he left in 1948 with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
Derick Heathcoat-Amory’s Labour opponent in the 1950, 1951 and 1955 elections was Labour candidate Patrick Duffy, a Leeds University professor who had done well to get this far: he was given the last rites during his Second World War service after being injured in a plane crash in Orkney. Duffy ended up with a Parliamentary career, but not from Tiverton: he won the marginal Yorkshire seat of Colne Valley in a 1963 by-election, lost that seat against the national trend in 1966 and then represented the safe Labour seat of Sheffield Attercliffe from 1970 to 1992. Sir Patrick Duffy is still with us today and is now the oldest living former MP, having celebrated his 102nd birthday last week.
Heathcote-Amory was joined in the Commons by another TA lieutenant-colonel in 1955 with the election of Robert Mathew as MP for Honiton. Mathew was a barrister by profession but had fought in Italy and Greece during the Second World War. Honiton 1955 was his fifth attempt to get into the Commons: Mathew had fought South Ayrshire in 1945 and a 1946 by-election, and missed out in the marginal seat of Rochester and Chatham in 1950 and 1951.
Derick Heathcote-Amory’s career in elected office started in 1932 when he became a member of Devon county council. He quickly rose up the greasy pole after the Conservatives returned to power in 1951, and was appointed to Cabinet by Winston Churchill in 1954 with the agriculture and fisheries portfolio. His political career peaked in 1958 when he became Harold Macmillan’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Heathcote-Amory left the frontbench in 1960 and was translated to the Lords, becoming the first and only Viscount Amory. The Liberals had a go at the resulting Tiverton by-election of 16th November 1960 and their candidate, local farmer James Collier, finished in a strong second place; however, this by-election instead marked the start of the 32-year political career of Sir Robin Maxwell-Hyslop. Maxwell-Hyslop was just 29 at the time of the by-election, although he had one previous parliamentary campaign under his belt after contesting Derby North the previous year: before entering the Commons he worked for Rolls-Royce in their aero-engine division. His majority in the by-election was 3,040 votes or 9%; only in the two 1974 elections did his majority again fall below 10 points, and then only marginally.
Robert Mathew died in December 1966 at the early age of 55. The resulting Honiton by-election of 16th March 1967 marked a quick return to the political frontline for an MP with even longer service than Robin Maxwell-Hyslop. Peter Emery had first been elected to Parliament in 1959 by gaining the Reading constituency from Labour; he was re-elected in 1964 by just ten votes, and lost that seat in 1966. Emery went on to be a Devon MP for 34 years, mostly on the backbenches although he did serve as a junior minister under Edward Heath.
The last MP for Tiverton, and the first female MP for the area, was Angela Browning who succeeded Sir Robin Maxwell-Hyslop in 1992. Browning had had a variety of jobs before entering parliament, finishing as a self-employed management consultant. Her son is autistic, and in 1993 Browning became president of the National Autistic Society. She became a junior agriculture minister in 1994.
Which brings us to the modern-day constituency of Tiverton and Honiton, which was created in 1997 and greatly redrawn in 2010. The 1997 boundary changes reduced the number of seats in Plymouth from three to two, resulting in major knock-on effects across Devon. The rural area south-west of Exeter was transferred from the Tiverton seat into the Teignbridge seat, and to compensate the Tiverton constituency grabbed the town of Honiton out of its namesake seat, which was renamed as East Devon. In 2010 the number of seats in Devon, Plymouth and Torbay went up from 11 to 12, with the new constituency (Central Devon) grabbing a large amount of rural territory from Tiverton and Honiton; in consequence the area around Seaton and Axminster was transferred from East Devon to Tiverton and Honiton, giving this seat a coastline.
The first election for Tiverton and Honiton saw Angela Browning re-elected for a second term with a sharply-reduced majority: she polled 24,438 votes against 22,785 for the Liberal Democrat candidate James Barnard. After this Browning joined the opposition frontbench under William Hague, and she served in the Shadow Cabinet from 1999 to 2001: first with the trade and industry portfolio, then as shadow leader of the Commons.
Browning retired to the Lords in 2010 and was replaced as MP for Tiverton and Honiton by Neil Parish. Parish went on to win the seat in four general elections, most recently winning in 2019 with a majority of 24,239; he polled 60% of the vote, with Labour finishing second on 20%.
2010 was not the start of Neil Parish’s political career. His first parliamentary contest was in 1997 in Torfaen, and he served as an MEP for south-west England from 1999 to 2009, finishing his Strasbourg career as chair of the European Parliament’s agriculture and rural development committee. Neil Parish went on to do the equivalent role in the House of Commons, being elected in 2015 as chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs select committee.
Neil Parish’s political career was brought down in April 2022 by a scandal, in which he resigned after admitting viewing pornography twice within the Palace of Westminster. In one of those statements which are so bizarre that they must be true because nobody could possibly make this up and be believed, Parish claimed he had initially been looking at a website about tractors. The mind boggles.
Parish can probably reflect that it could have been worse. As was pointed out at the start of this piece tractors can kill people rather than just careers, and at least his wife hasn’t written him a John Deere letter as far as I know.
The most recent local elections in this area were for Devon county council in 2021, which was a notably good Conservative year: the Conservatives won all eight county council divisions wholly or partly in this seat, gaining Seaton and Colyton division from the Independent East Devon Alliance. With the caveat that this includes votes from Bradninch and Whimple which are outside the constituency, the vote shares across those eight divisions were 50% for the Conservatives, 16% for Labour and 11% for the Lib Dems.
The constituency takes in most of the Mid Devon local government district (which is based in Tiverton) and the eastern end of the East Devon district, both of which are areas where the Conservatives lost their majority at the last district council elections in May 2019. In Mid Devon an independent-led anti-Conservative coalition was initially put together, but this failed to last the course and the Lib Dems have been replaced in the ruling coalition by the Conservatives. Independent and Lib Dem councillors are running East Devon council. Across the wards which make up this constituency (including the whole of Tale Vale ward, which straddles the boundary with the East Devon seat), the votes cast in May 2019 were 35% for the Conservatives, 20% for the Lib Dems, 14% for independent candidates and 12% for Labour. In terms of council seats this translated to 23 Conservatives, 12 independents, 5 Lib Dems, 5 seats for the Independent East Devon Alliance, and a Green.
By-election gains since 2019 mean that the Conservatives are now close to a majority in Mid Devon, currently with 20 seats out of 42. They gained two seats in by-elections in Tiverton town in May 2021, and held a by-election in Upper Culm ward in June 2021. The most recent poll in that district was a by-election in Cullompton South ward in April, which the Liberal Democrats gained from an independent councillor. There have been two by-elections in the East Devon part of this constituency since 2019, both in July last year: the Conservatives gained an independent seat in Feniton while Labour surprisingly picked up a Lib Dem seat in the neighbouring Honiton St Michael’s ward. Remember the name of the winning Labour candidate Jake Bonetta — he’s young, he’s clearly made an impact and he might be one to watch for the future.
Honiton St Michael’s ward is also the political home of the defending Conservative candidate in the Tiverton and Honiton by-election. Helen Hurford represents that ward on Honiton town council, and is the current Deputy Mayor of Honiton. She runs a beauty salon in the town.
The Labour party have reselected the candidate who finished as runner-up here in 2019. Liz Pole is chair of the party’s Tiverton and Honiton branch, and is a businesswoman who gives an address in the constituency.
Also giving an address in the constituency is the Liberal Democrat Richard Foord, who has served with the Army in Iraq and the Balkans and as a UN peacekeeper in Kosovo. After leaving the Army with the rank of major, he now works for a leading university and volunteers with local Scout groups. Foord stood for election to Mid Devon council in 2019, finishing eighth out of ten candidates in Lower Culm ward. Despite the fact that his party finished third here in 2019 with 15% of the vote, and the fact that nobody has ever overturned a majority of 24,239 or higher at a parliamentary by-election, and the fact that the countryside around Honiton hasn’t voted for a non-Conservative parliamentary candidate at any point in the last 187 years, at the time of writing Foord is the bookies’ favourite. Of course, the bookies have been wrong before.
All five parties from last time are standing again. Fourth here in December 2019 with 3.8% were the Greens; they have selected Gill Westcott who previously fought this seat in 2017. Her last electoral outing was in 2019 for Mid Devon council: she contested Halberton ward, a rural area immediately to the east of Honiton. The UK Independence Party, who finished fifth and last here in 2019 with 1.6%, have selected former South Gloucestershire Conservative councillor, former Mayor of Bradley Stoke and UKIP national party chairman Ben Walker. Please do not confuse him with our genial host, the Britain Elects founder of the same name: they are different people.
That leaves three other candidates to list, all of whom are fighting for space somewhere on the political right. In ballot paper order, Jordan Donoghue-Morgan is standing for the Heritage Party, Andy Foan for Reform UK, and Frankie Rofolo for the For Britain Movement.
As with Wakefield above, this seat is due for the chop in the forthcoming boundary changes. The draft plan increases the number of seats in Devon from 12 to 12 and a bit; the bit is achieved by moving Tiverton out of this seat into a brand-new constituency called “Tiverton and Minehead”, which crosses the Devon-Somerset border. The remainder of this seat, renamed as “Honiton”, is to gain Ottery St Mary and Sidmouth in compensation.
This column likes to highlight pubs which do their bit for democracy by serving as polling stations, so a shoutout is due to the Heathfield Inn in Honiton which is one of the polling places for this by-election. This is a far-flung, rural and agricultural constituency and it will take a while for all 103 ballot boxes to come in, so don’t expect an early declaration. While by-election watchers wait for this one to come in, keep reading as this column turns to the five other polls taking place today…
Devon county council divisions: Axminster, Feniton and Honiton, Seaton and Colyton, Tiverton East, Tiverton West, Willand and Uffculme, Cullompton and Bradninch (part: Cullompton North, Cullompton Outer and Cullompton South wards), Whimple and Blackdown (part: Awliscombe, Broadhembury, Chardistock, Combe Raleigh, Cotleigh, Dalwood, Dunkeswell, Luppitt, Membury, Monkton, Payhembury, Plymtree, Sheldon, Shute, Stockland, Upottery and Yarcombe parishes)
Mid Devon wards: Canonsleigh, Castle, Clare and Shuttern, Cullompton North, Cullompton Outer, Cullompton South, Cranmore, Halberton, Lower Culm, Lowman, Upper Culm, Westexe
East Devon wards: Axminster, Beer and Branscombe, Coly Valley, Dunkeswell and Otterhead, Feniton, Honiton St Michael’s, Honiton St Paul’s, Newbridges, Seaton, Trinity, Yarty, Tale Vale (part: Broadhembury, Payhembury and Plymtree parishes)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Exeter (most), Sidmouth (Seaton and Axminster area)
Postcode districts: DT7, EX5, EX10, EX12, EX13, EX14, EX15, EX16, EX24, TA3, TA4, TA20, TA21, TA22
Jordan Donoghue-Morgan (Heritage Party)
Andy Foan (Reform UK)
Richard Foord (LD)
Helen Hurford (C)
Liz Pole (Lab)
Frankie Rufolo (For Britain Movement)
Ben Walker (UKIP)
Gill Westcott (Grn)
December 2019 result C 35893 Lab 11654 LD 8807 Grn 2291 UKIP 968
June 2017 result C 35471 Lab 15670 LD 4639 Grn 2035
May 2015 result C 29030 UKIP 8857 Lab 6835 LD 5626 Grn 3415
May 2010 result C 27614 LD 18294 Lab 4907 UKIP 3277 Grn 802
Port Talbot
Neath Port Talbot council, Glamorgan; postponed from 5th May following the death of Andrew Tutton, who had been nominated as an independent candidate.
It’s time for Andrew’s Previews to return to Wales for the first time in six months. There haven’t been any local by-elections in the country for all that time because the whole of Welsh local government was up for election last month. All the results of those polls are now in, with one exception — the Port Talbot ward of Neath Port Talbot council, where May’s poll was postponed and takes place now.
As you might guess we are in the centre of Port Talbot, which occupies a narrow strip of land hemmed in between docklands and the South Wales main line railway on one side, and the M4 urban motorway and some rather steep mountains — Mynydd Emroch and Craig Emroch — on the landward side. Port Talbot’s English-language name indicates that it is a new town, founded in 1836 to serve the docks on land belonging to the Talbot family of Margam Abbey. For decades the town has been economically dependent on the large and constantly-troubled Port Talbot steelworks: in the 2011 census Port Talbot ward made the top 60 in England and Wales for those working in lower supervisory or technical occupations. Between the steelworks, the motorway and the town’s constrained location, there is a major problem here with air quality.
The postponement of the election here follows the death of a long-standing figure in Port Talbot’s politics. Andrew Tutton, who passed away during the election campaign after being nominated as an independent, had represented Port Talbot ward from 1999 to 2012 as a candidate for, and sometime leader of, the Neath Port Talbot Ratepayers Association. He contested the 2001 Westminster election in the local Aberavon constituency on the Ratepayers’ ticket, finishing in fourth place but saving his deposit. The Ratepayers became defunct after a rebrand to “Neath Port Talbot Independent Party” and a wipeout at the 2012 local elections; Port Talbot was previously their strongest ward, but Labour carried the ward that year with a 54–39 lead over the Ratepayers. That was the last contested local election here, because nobody opposed the Labour slate in May 2017. Neath Port Talbot, in common with all Welsh local councils, got new ward boundaries this year; Port Talbot ward’s boundaries have remained unchanged, but a decline in population means that its representation has been cut from three councillors to two going forward.
In a way the death of the localists here is ironic, because Neath Port Talbot’s local elections this year had a rather localist dynamic to them. The district wasn’t even mentioned in this column’s preview of the May 2022 Welsh local elections, but it turned in one of the worst Labour results of this cycle last month with Labour losing overall control for the first time since the council was created in 1996. With the two seats here yet to poll, Labour are on 25 seats, independent councillors on 18, Plaid Cymru on 12, the Lib Dems on 2 and the Green Party has 1. The independents and Plaid have formed a coalition to run the council going forward. The localist remark arises because the independents did particularly well in Neath and Plaid’s seats are concentrated in the Pontardawe area, two parts of the district which may well have felt overlooked and forgotten by the council’s previous Labour administration.
This poll will complete the 2022 Neath Port Talbot election. Of the three outgoing Labour councillors, Sharon Freeguard and Saifur Rahaman are seeking re-election for their second and third terms of office respectively; the other previous Labour councillor, long-serving ex-Ratepayers figure Dennis Keogh, is retiring. The original ballot had two independent candidates, Kimberley Isherwood and the late Andrew Tutton; John Davies has come forward as a new independent. Plaid Cymru are contesting the ward for the first time since 1999: Melissa Stanford-Roberts was on the original candidate list, and she has now been joined by outgoing councillor Nigel Hunt who lost his seat in the neighbouring Aberavon ward last month. The delay to the poll has also allowed the Green Party to join in: their slate of Jan Dowden and Bethany Payne completes the revised ballot paper.
Parliamentary and Assembly constituency: Aberavon
ONS Travel to Work Area: Swansea
Postcode districts: SA12, SA13
John Davies (Ind)
Jan Dowden (Grn)
Sharon Freeguard (Lab)
Nigel Hunt (PC)
Kimberley Isherwood (Ind)
Bethany Payne (Grn)
Saifur Rahaman (Lab)
Melissa Stanford-Roberts (PC)
May 2017 result 3 Lab unopposed
May 2012 result Lab 831/782/707 Neath Port Talbot Ind 592/528/479 C 107
May 2008 result Neath Port Talbot Ratepayers Asoc 805/762/689 Lab 715/704/681
June 2004 result Neath Port Talbot Ratepayers Assoc 1008/967/914 Lab 536/516/386
May 1999 result Neath Port Talbot Ratepayers Assoc 1056/977/709 Lab 604/574/518 Ind 490 PC 429
May 1995 result Neath Port Talbot Ratepayers Assoc 906/739 Lab 839/822/774 Ind 792
Previous results (2004–2017) in detail
Highley
Shropshire council; caused by the resignation of independent councillor David Tremellen.
Our free-for-all this week comes in the Severn valley. The village of Highley lies in the south-east corner of Shropshire, midway between Bewdley and Bridgnorth, and is rather atypical of Shropshire as a whole. It’s a pit village. Highley Colliery was a huge mine which was in operation from 1878 to the late 1960s: the colliery site next to the River Severn has now been landscaped and turned into a country park.
Coal is still important to the local economy today. After being closed in the 1960s Highley railway station is now run by the Severn Valley Railway, a preserved line which runs services from Kidderminster to Bridgnorth using a mixture of steam and diesel traction. The railway has opened a visitor centre next to Highley station: since 2008 the Engine House has been home to some of the railway’s locomotives and rolling stock which have been taken out of service.
The village’s coalmining heritage can still be seen in the ward’s census return, which is much more working-class than the rural wards which surround it. It might have been thought that this might have been good territory for Labour, but Highley is part of one of the weakest Labour constituencies in the country (Ludlow) and the party is poorly organised here. Labour did stand here in last year’s Shropshire elections, but they finished third and last with 13%. Instead during this century Highley has returned independent councillors to Shropshire council and to Bridgnorth council before then, with the exception of a Liberal Democrat win in 2009. David Tremellen had been the ward councillor since 2013 until his resignation last month; he was re-elected in 2021 with a 53–34 lead over the Conservatives.
No independent candidate has come forward to replace Tremellen, so we have a free-for-all! Second place last year went to local resident Naomi Waterson of the Conservatives, who is back for another go; she is vice-chair of Highley parish council. Former councillor Tremellen has signed the nomination papers for the Labour candidate, Liam Atwal. Also standing are Bridgnorth resident Clare Nash for the Green Party and local resident Mark Williams for the Liberal Democrats.
Parliamentary constituency: Ludlow
ONS Travel to Work Area: Telford
Postcode district: WV16
Liam Atwal (Lab)
Clare Nash (Grn)
Naomi Waterson (C)
Mark Williams (LD)
May 2021 result Ind 451 C 286 Lab 114
May 2017 result Ind 427 C 282 Lab 170 Ind 111
May 2013 result Ind 374 UKIP 178 LD 124
June 2009 result LD 654 C 380
Previous results in detail
Hindhead
Waverley council, Surrey; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Peter Isherwood.
In the Wakefield preview I promised you more on the part of Surrey represented by Maurice Macmillan. At the time of his death in 1984 this was the South West Surrey constituency, which has since been represented by two other high-profile Conservative cabinet ministers. Virginia Bottomley, who was successively health and national heritage secretary during the Major government, won the 1984 by-election after Macmillan died, and Jeremy Hunt — a cabinet minister throughout the Coalition, Cameron and May governments, finishing up as foreign secretary — has represented the constituency since 2005.
Hunt’s South West Surrey constituency includes the county’s highest village. Hindhead lies in rolling woodland on the Greensand Ridge; Gibbet Hill, which overlooks the natural amphitheatre of the Devil’s Punch Bowl, is the second-highest summit in Surrey. The Punch Bowl is not part of Hindhead ward, which is closely drawn around the village and the neighbouring village of Beacon Hill. Until the opening of the Hindhead Tunnel in 2011 the village was on the main A3 road from London to Portsmouth, and consequently passing trade was a major part of its economy. This easy access might have attracted a number of writers to the area: Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw both lived in Hindhead, and Conan Doyle was the first president of the Hindhead golf club.
This lovely countryside is part of the Waverley local government district, which has been a disaster area for the Conservatives over the last electoral cycle. In 2011 the Conservatives won 56 of the 57 seats on Waverley council; in 2019 they crashed from 51 to just 23 councillors, and an anti-Tory coalition led by the Farnham Residents party is now running the show. Recent by-elections in the area show no sign of the Conservatives turning the tide: in fact, they lost a by-election to an independent candidate last month in the neighbouring ward of Frensham, Dockenfield and Tilford. Subsequent news that the government has approved an application to drill for gas at Dunsfold, a village a few miles to the east previously best known as the site of the Top Gear test track, is not likely to go down well in the area.
In electoral terms, it could have been even worse for the Waverley Conservatives. The late Peter Isherwood had represented Hindhead on Waverley council since 1999, and for most of that period he had the sort of majority you might expect for a Conservativein true-blue Surrey. From 2011 to 2019 his running mate was Friedrich Wilhelm Christiaan Winkel von Hesse-Nassau, who is a management consultant — clearly German aristocracy isn’t what it used to be. Christiaan Hesse, as he is professionally known, retired in 2019 when Isherwood secured re-election for his final term by the narrowest possible margin. Top of the poll was Jerome Davidson of the Lib Dems who gained a seat from the Conservatives with 544 votes; Isherwood tied for second place with the other Lib Dem candidate Geoffrey Whitby on 542 votes each. Only one of them could be elected: the returning officer drew lots to resolve the tie, and the lot fell on Isherwood who was declared elected. Don’t let anybody tell you your vote never changed anything.
The task of defending a Conservative majority of zero votes falls to Ged Hall, who was a councillor for Frensham, Dockenfield and Tilford from 2015 to 2019. In a straight fight, he is opposed by Liberal Democrat candidate Julian Spence, who lives in that ward where he is a Churt parish councillor; Spence has recently retired from a career in risk management.
Parliamentary constituency: South West Surrey
Surrey county council division: Waverley Western Villages
ONS Travel to Work Area: Guildford and Aldershot
Postcode districts: GU10, GU26
Ged Hall (C)
Julian Spence (LD)
May 2019 result LD 544/542 C 542/437 Lab 79
May 2015 result C 1416/1380 Grn 408 Ind 393 LD 373/325
May 2011 result C 1143/1025 LD 423/332
May 2007 result C 1093/1019 LD 295
May 2003 result C 815/801 LD 423/404
Previous results in detail
New Malden Village
Kingston upon Thames council, London; postponed from 5th May following the death of Mary Clark, who had been nominated as an independent candidate.
We finish our unfinished business from May’s ordinary local elections with one more postponed poll, this time in Greater London. New Malden is one of the railway suburbs which sprang up along the main lines out of London; it is on the South Western main line from Waterloo, and trains from London to Honiton (for one of today’s parliamentary by-elections) pass through without stopping. Stopping trains out of London can either continue along the main line or take the branch line to Kingston.
New Malden’s census return has a very unusual feature. This London suburb has become the focus for Korean immigration to the UK, and a North Korean human rights group reported in 2014 that New Malden’s population of 600 North Koreans forms the largest North Korean community in Europe. It’s not entirely clear why this happened, but one factor may be that the South Korean embassy used to be located here. This large Korean community has resulted in some other unusual distinctions, such as a 2004 report from Tesco that their New Malden store sells the most fresh fruit and vegetables — a tribute to the Korean diet, there. Of course, none of the Koreans here will be eligible to vote in this by-election unless they have also taken out British citizenship.
New Malden has never been large enough to an independent local government unit: when the system of urban and rural districts was set up in the 1890s it shared an urban district with Old Malden and Coombe. The Maldens and Coombe were incorporated as a municipal borough in 1936, meaning that the borough received a civic mace with the insignia of King Edward VIII. There aren’t many of those around.
Since the 1960s local government here has been the responsibility of one of the smallest London boroughs by population, Kingston upon Thames. This is one of the most Lib Dem-friendly of the London boroughs, and New Malden Village ward is within the Kingston and Surbiton constituency represented by the party leader Sir Ed Davey.
Mind, the Lib Dems haven’t all had it their own way here this century. Davey was out of the Commons from 2010 to 2015 after losing his seat to the Conservatives, who went on to win overall control of Kingston borough in the 2014 election. It probably didn’t help that Derek Osbourne, the long-serving Lib Dem leader of the council, was exposed as a paedophile in 2013 and subsequently served a prison term: he resigned from the council after his initial arrest, and the resulting by-election in Beverley ward — the main predecessor to New Malden Village — was lost to the Conservatives. (Remember what I said in the Wakefield section?) The Tories went on to win all three seats in Beverley ward in 2014, but the Lib Dems took them back in 2018 with a large majority: 48% for the Lib Dems, 25% for the Conservatives, 12% for Labour. In the 2021 London mayoral election Beverley voted 37% for Sadiq Khan of Labour, 30% for Shaun Bailey of the Conservatives and 13% for the Lib Dem mayoral candidate Luisa Porritt; the Lib Dems actually topped the poll here in the Londonwide list ballot with 27%, against 26% for the Conservatives, 24% for Labour and 12% for the Greens. These results are for the old Beverley ward: New Malden Village is a new ward for the 2022 elections, so the boundaries for today’s poll are being used for the first time.
The recent Conservative local election disaster area in Surrey appears to be spreading to ex-Surrey as well. The elections for the other wards of Kingston upon Thames council went ahead as scheduled on 5th May, and the Tory vote here has fallen apart: the seat count currently stands at 41 for the Lib Dems, just three Conservative seats in a borough which they controlled until 2018, and one seat for the Kingston Independent Residents Group. That’s with the three seats in New Malden Village still to poll, after independent candidate Mary Clark died during the election campaign. Nominations were reopened but no new candidates have come forward, so the twelve surviving candidates will go forward to the rescheduled poll.
Two outgoing Lib Dem councillors for the previous Beverley ward, Mark Durrant and Lesley Heap, are seeking re-election here; they are joined on the defending Lib Dem slate by Dongsung Kim. Two other parties have full slates of three candidates: former Beverley ward councillor Paul Bedforth, Philip Cockle and Saad Hindosh stand for the Conservatives, while Labour have nominated Sean Casey, Pat Dobson and Stephen Dunkling. There is a partial slate of two candidates from the Kingston Independent Residents Group, Richard Hebborn and Mark Tracey; and Lucy Howard of the Green Party completes the revised candidate list.
Parliamentary constituency: Kingston and Surbiton
London Assembly constituency: South West
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: KT1, KT3
Paul Bedforth (C)
Sean Casey (Lab)
Philip Cockle (C)
Pat Dobson (Lab)
Stephen Dunkling (Lab)
Mark Durrant (LD)
Lesley Heap (LD)
Richard Hebborn (Kingston Ind Res Gp)
Saad Hindosh (C)
Lucy Howard (Grn)
Dongsung Kim (LD)
Mark Tracey (Kingston Ind Res Gp)
No previous results on these boundaries
Bush Fair
Harlow council, Essex; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Marco Lorenzini.
We have now completed the unfinished business from the May 2022 local elections, so it must be time to open the file marked “matters arising”. Just seven weeks into the new municipal year, we already have the first by-election among the Class of 2022. Returning Officers have to give a minimum of 25 working days’ notice of a poll, and the legal notice for this election was published on 13th May — just eight days after last month’s polling day.
To get a council term that short requires either appallingly bad luck or appallingly bad judgment. In this case, it’s the latter. The Conservatives had selected Marco Lorenzini as their candidate for the Bush Fair ward of Harlow council, which he won in May’s local elections. It turned out that nobody had checked his Twitter account first; when somebody else looked into Lorenzini’s past tweets a series of retweets of racist stuff about Muslims, immigrants and the new Doctor Who Ncuti Gatwa turned up. The Harlow Conservatives withdrew the whip from Councillor Lorenzini, who took the hint and resigned within a week of his election, leaving behind an entry in the Councillors Behaving Badly file and a headache for the Harlow Conservatives, who now have a difficult by-election to defend in a politically-volatile ward.
Political volatility should come as standard given that we are in a New Town. In fact Harlow was one of the first New Towns, with construction beginning in the late 1940s to ease overcrowding in bombed-out London; it was designed with a series of neighbourhoods which were intended to be self-supporting, with their own shops, pubs and facilities.
There were also some pre-existing villages incorporated into the town. The village of Tye Green now forms part of the Bush Fair ward, which is a residential area in the south-east of the town either side of Tillwicks Road. Betraying its New Town origins, over 40% of the local housing is still socially rented, and in the 2011 census Bush Fair made the top 50 wards in England and Wales for those educated to Level 1 standard — that is, 1 to 4 GCSE passes or equivalent.
The Harlow parliamentary constituency has been a bellwether since it was created in 1974, failing to vote for the winning party at a general election since then only once (in 1979). However, the constituency is a bit larger than the town and the ward boundaries for Harlow council have the effect of packing a large number of Conservative voters into two safe wards. It took the big Tory leads of May 2021 for the Harlow Conservatives to break the mould and gain overall control of the council. They gained two further seats in May to leave Harlow with 20 Conservative councillors, plus this vacancy, against 12 for Labour.
Bush Hill ward is even more politically volatile as the town, having voted for all three main parties and UKIP over the last twenty years. The Lib Dem vote disappeared here when the Coalition was formed, and by the time this column last visited Bush Hill in November 2018 (Andrew’s Previews 2018, page 391) it had turned into a closely fought Labour v Conservative marginal. It’s still closely-fought today, and the Conservative breakthrough in 2021 came with a majority of just 47 votes. Lorenzini gained a second Conservative seat seven weeks ago by polling 678 votes to 674 for Labour, a Conservative majority of four votes.
The Harlow Conservatives do at least have a four-vote majority to play with — that’s four votes more than the party’s Hindhead branch are defending today — but the circumstances of this by-election don’t inspire optimism for their defending candidate. She is Emma Ghaffari, a bioscientist who fought Toddbrook ward in May. Labour have reselected Kay Morrison, who stood here in May and also fought the last by-election to Harlow council in July 2021 (Mark Hall ward): Morrison moved to Harlow a few years ago from the Scottish New Town of Glenrothes, where she was a Labour member of Fife council for 18 years (1999–2017) and fought Mid Fife and Glenrothes in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election. Also standing are Jennifer Steadman of the Greens, who fought this ward in May, and Nicholas Taylor of the Harlow Alliance Party, who fought this ward at the 2018 by-election.
Parliamentary constituency: Harlow
Essex county council division: Harlow South East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cambridge
Postcode district: CM18
Emma Ghaffari (C)
Kay Morrison (Lab)
Jennifer Steadman (Grn)
Nicholas Taylor (Harlow Alliance Party)
May 2022 result C 678 Lab 674 Grn 116 LD 47
May 2021 result C 963 Lab 916 LD 91
May 2019 result Lab 615 C 438 UKIP 302 LD 92
November 2018 by-election Lab 543 C 460 UKIP 103 Harlow Alliance 63 LD 39
May 2018 result Lab 733 C 634 UKIP 180 LD 82
May 2016 result Lab 796 UKIP 429 C 370 LD 111
May 2015 result Lab 1380 C 1124 UKIP 838 LD 164
May 2014 result UKIP 744 Lab 694 C 326 LD 102 Harlow Ind 80
May 2012 double vacancy Lab 1021/877 C 259/182 UKIP 236 LD 109/90
May 2011 result Lab 1113 C 501 LD 256 UKIP 178
May 2010 result Lab 1254 LD 1134 C 1053
May 2008 result LD 860 Lab 652 C 554
May 2007 result LD 855 Lab 796 C 414
May 2006 result LD 995 Lab 693 C 357
June 2004 result Lab 751 LD 690 C 383 Ind 325
May 2003 result LD 663 Lab 624 C 140
May 2002 result LD 1086/1082/1071 Lab 868/845/838 C 224/219/215 Socialist Alliance 87
Previous results in detail
Other updates
Slightly unexpectedly, we have an election result to bring you from England’s “smallest” “county”. This arises in the Oakham South ward of Rutland council, which this column visited last year. In May 2019 the Conservative slate here was opposed only by Joanna Burrows of the Lib Dems, who topped the poll leaving the Tories to win the ward’s other two seats by default. One of the Conservative councillors resigned last year and the Lib Dems gained the by-election. The Rutland Conservatives are now in an advanced state of falling apart and have comprehensively lost control of the council; their disarray is such that when independent ex-Conservative councillor for Oakham South Ian Razzell resigned the party couldn’t even find a candidate to replace him. A poll had been scheduled for 14th July, but when nominations closed Raymond Payne of the Liberal Democrats was the only candidate; he has therefore been declared elected unopposed, giving a Lib Dem gain from the Conservatives. That gives the Liberal Democrats all three council seats in Oakham South. This column sends its congratulations to Councillor Payne.
Belated congratulations are also due to one of the major figures of internet psephology, David Boothroyd, who founded and ran one of the first British electoral websites in the last years of the last century and currently publishes a weekly blog detailing the comings, toings and goings of British local government. Boothroyd has been a Labour member of Westminster city council since 2002, and following the Labour takeover of that city last month he has joined the council’s cabinet with the finance portfolio. If this proves to be a loss to psephology going forward, it may well be balanced by a gain for Westminster’s council taxpayers.
There is no Parliamentary Special next week, but it’ll still be a long read: next Thursday is Super Thursday with ten local by-elections taking place. Stay tuned for that.
If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them — going back to 2016 — in the Andrew’s Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale
