November is always a busy time for by-elections and Thursday was no exception, with nine principal council seats up for grabs – all in England.
Sadly, only four of these contests had Liberal Democrat candidates. As soon as you find out there is a by-election coming up in your area, don’t assume somebody else will organise it – please get in touch with ALDC straightaway, apply for a grant if you need one and always stand a candidate!
Starting in the North West of England, in Burnley, we came heartbreakingly close to gaining a seat from the Conservatives. Commiserations to Russell Neal for missing out by just nine votes in Rosehill with Burnley Wood ward – we pushed the Conservatives into third place but a surge in the Labour vote saw their candidate take the seat.
Burnley BC, Rosehill with Burnley Wood
Labour: 372 (39.4%)
Liberal Democrat (Russell Neal): 363 (38.4%)
Conservative: 123 (13.0%)
Green: 87 (9.2%)
In Kingston upon Thames, we sadly lost a seat in the Green Lane & St James ward to the Kingston Independent Residents Group, a localist party. Well done to our candidate, Mahmood Rafiq, and the local team in New Malden for conducting a positive campaign.
Kingston upon Thames LBC, Green Lane & St James
KIRG: 855 (46.3%)
Liberal Democrat (Mahmood Rafiq): 647 (35.1%)
Labour: 265 (14.4%)
Conservative: 78 (4.2%)
In Greasley (Broxtowe BC) the Liberal Democrat share of the vote was 10.7%, which is encouraging given we did not stand in the ward last time. Similarly in Bourne East (South Kesteven DC) we won 11% of the vote – having not fielded a candidate here in 2019. These are encouraging results and will hopefully lead to success in future district and county elections in these areas.
There were five by-elections that were not contested by the Liberal Democrats. On East Devon DC an Independent won Newton Poppleford & Harpford and in Cannock West (Cannock Chase DC) the Tories retained the seta with a reduced majority. In a second contest in South Kesteven DC the Conservatives held off a strong Independent showing to retain Grantham St Wulframs – the ward Margaret Thatcher was born in. Finally there were two contests in Braintee DC, taking place in wards represented in the House of Commons by two more prominent Conservatives – the current Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, and former Home Secretary, Priti Patel. However, was nothing to cheer about for the Essex Tories: an Independent held Coggeshall and Labour gained Braintree South from the Conservatives.
A full summary of all results can be found on the ALDC by-elections page here.
* Chris Twells is ALDC's Fundraising & Sponsorship Officer and is also standing for the Welsh Parliament as our lead regional list candidate in North Wales.
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13 Comments
We have now lost three by elections in recent weeks and are making very little progress generally. Why ?
“Well done to our candidate, Mahmood Rafiq, and the local team in New Malden for conducting a positive campaign.”
Indeed. However, the KIRG fought a disgraceful, borderline racist campaign, and I’m sure the local team are considering their options given the slurs against our candidate which could be considered defamation of character.
@Chris Bertram. The police are investigating it as a hate crime. It’s not over yet.
In the past few weeks there have been a couple of very good gains for the Lib Dems, in Salisbury and in Mole Valley. However, there has also been a sequence of very poor results, with this week’s batch adding to the gloom; losing a seat in Ed Davey’s back yard, and failing to hold off a Labour surge in a ward that had been traditionally Lib Dem in most recent elections. Of course, in individual contests there are always odd, local circumstances, but there does seem to be a pattern emerging – that all too often, the LD brand is simply not strong enough to withstand a well organised campaign from an opponent, whether that be Lab, Cons, or an Independent,
It will be concerning that local newspapers and our opponents will happily be shouting LibDem losing here. One of them in Sir Eds own seat. Somebody is asleep at the wheel.
Burnley Rosehill result May 2022
Lib Dem 770
Lab 323
Con 207
Green 70
Fall in Lib Dem %, 57% to 38%, I would venture to suggest that this result is very, very bad!!
We won the ward in 2016, 2018, 2019 as well this last May.
National opinion polls are suggesting we will struggle at any General Election to reach a double figure %.
Times are getting harder.
We cannot gloss over these figures.
@theakes, @Tim Rogers. Having spent yesterday working on the Kingston by-election I can assure you that local election results often bear little relationship to national figures. There were some very specific circumstances at play here, and some are now being investigated by the police, so I won’t go into detail. I don’t know the circumstances in Burnley Rosehill but we really can’t extrapolate from a single ward election, with all its local issues and pressures, to the outcome of a general election – you need to watch trends.
It’s not just looking at local council by elections, most opinion polls are dire for us, with one putting Reform ahead of us. There are no easy answers but something needs to change.
“we really can’t extrapolate from a single ward election, with all its local issues and pressures, to the outcome of a general election – you need to watch trends.”
Fareham, South Cambs, Kingston and Burnley. All bad results in recent weeks – one you might be able to dismiss as a freak – but this is starting to look like a trend.
This is really worrying, even more so that Labour is making gains at the expense of the Lib Dems. The only consolation being the Greens did not make any progress.
One other consolation from Kingston is that the Conservative vote fell more than ours.
These reports are very poor as they don’t give changes in vote share, Mark Packs reports are much more informative.
The first point to note about the Burnley result is just how volatile this Ward is with Our vote share leaping from 28% in 2021 to more than 50% this May & falling again to 38% on Thursday. The second point is that we are in Coalition with Labour, we know what Coalition does to us.
In Kingston the Tory vote collapsed, by two-thirds. Presumably most of those went to The Residents group while we lost votes to Labour, unsurprisingly in the present political climate.
Local By-elections are very odd, if you only knew about Seat changes you might think that Labour, the Libdems & Greens were all similarly sized Parties. Since May labour are up by 12 Seats, Libdems by 6 & Greens by 5. That bears no resemblance to the real relationships between the three Parties, so chill about these results.
Whatever happened elsewhere on Thursday, I suspect that the loss in Kingston was in the context of very unusual circumstances. The candidate was an Ahmadiyya Muslim and full points to the local party for selecting him. However “mainstream Muslims” (admittedly an imprecise term) tend to see Ahmadiyyas as belonging to another faith but claiming to be Muslims. I have worked with both sides in Bradford and some otherwise devout and sensible community minded people can turn very hostile in their attitude to the “heretics”. While some straightforward racism may well have been involved it could have been more complicated.