One principal authority by-election took place this week in Westmorland & Furness – a Conservatives defence in Hawcoat and Newbarns.
Westmorland & Furness Council, Hawcoat & Newbarns
This week’s by-election was triggered by the resignation of the former Conservative councillor. In 2022, at the inaugural election of the new Westmorland and Furness Council, the Liberal Democrats took control of the unitary thanks to sweeping gains wins several wards in Tim Farron’s constituency. However, this ward is in the industrial seaport town of Barrow-in-Furness – an electorally challenging area for us. At the last election, all three of our candidates finished last behind the Conservatives, Labour and Independents.
This is crucial context for understanding our last placed finish in the by-election last night. Reform easily beat the Conservatives, who dropped over 20 points into third place. It should be noted that the winning Reform candidate, Hazel Edwards, was formerly a Conservative councillor and mayor.
Turnout was very low, falling by around 14 points to 27%.
A big thank you to Stephen Pickthall for making sure a Liberal Democrat was on the ballot!
Reform: 1139, 48.4% (NEW)
Labour: 576, 24.5% (-9.8%)
Conservative: 447, 19.0% (-21.5%)
Green: 121, 5.1% (NEW)
Liberal Democrats: 69, 2.9% (-2.7%)
Reform GAIN from Conservative
Turnout: 27%
Thank you to all of our candidates, agents, and campaign teams. A full summary of these results, and all other principal council by-elections, can be found on the ALDC by-elections page here.
* Joe Nutt is a Campaigns and Communications Officer for ALDC
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13 Comments
A desultory campaign then?
This is a sobering result: ReformUK comes in and wins with 1139 votes and we can manage just 69.
I do get very annoyed by the comments on these by-election posts. The over-exaggeration of our comeback because we won last week and then complain when we finished rock bottom the next week is exhausting and shows a complete lack of understanding of individual races and local contexts.
I think we all need a bit of perspective. Barrow has NEVER been a stronghold for us. This ISN’T in Tim Farron’s constituency. It’s in a working class, post-industrial town and constituency held by Labour. A Liberal hasn’t won the constituency since the 1890s! We have NEVER done much local work here and while yes, 69 votes is depressing, it’s totally unreasonable to expect much more from a campaign that knowingly didn’t waste resources on a race they couldn’t win.
You can opine as much as you want about the failure of the national party to make us competitive everywhere. I absolutely don’t argue the national party needs to do better in delivering a wider vision beyond what soft Toryshire voters want. But give me a break, NO ONE is competitive EVERYWHERE. If we were competitive everywhere we would be holding together an unimaginably unsustainable coalition of voters.
Please be realistic and think before you post! Stop the armchair activism of taking an individual result and displaying it as failure everywhere. Take the time to research the demographic picture and electoral results in these races before posting shallow comments about how it’s not good enough. Sorry, rant over.
I would not have classed Barrow-in-Furness as post industrial. For decades it has had the same major employer – the dockyards. It manafactures the UK’s nuclear submarines and conventional frigates. A highly educated work force.
I second Henry’s comments about Barrow – this south-eastener has at least, albeit not recently, set foot in the Barrow constituency (visiting friends who lived in the area at that time) .
@Henry
My frustration with the election result is due to seeing us lose half our vote share while the Green Party can stand for the first time and immediately get double our vote. There may be reasons why we have never been competitive in this particular area but this result shows us going backwards while others are moving forwards.
@ Kira Collins Given that Barrow-in-Furness used to have its own Council, Town Hall and Mayor it’s not too surprising that nearly three quarters of the electorate didn’t bother to turn out for a by-election to a recently reorganised Council with an HQ forty miles away….. and half of not much isn’t a lot.
Some info and stats about Barrow :
Child Poverty: Overall, over 20% of children in Barrow live in poverty, with some central neighbourhoods reporting child poverty rates approaching 50%.
Fuel Poverty: Around 14.2% of Furness households face fuel poverty, exceeding the national average due to a high proportion of older, poor-quality housing.
Health Deprivation: Life expectancy and general health outcomes in Barrow are considerably lower than the UK average. This is historically tied to the legacy of heavy industry and underlying economic conditions.
Local Economy: Despite relatively strong employment linked to the BAE Systems shipyard, low wages in other sectors, rising debt, and a high proportion of lone-parent families keep poverty rates elevated.
To be fair to this government £ 200 million has been allocated to reviving the area……. though most people probably haven’t noticed it.
This is the 6th contest since May 7th & the first Reform gain, way too soon to draw any conclusions.
This ward is the Posh end of Barrow & a typical Conservative seat. Most of Reforms votes seem to have come from The Conservatives with a chunk from Labour.
The Greens look to have taken half our vote, not untypical in a place where we have no base. This is probably about National Image.
I don’t think comments like armchair activism are particularly helpful when discussing the decline in the Lib Dem vote in industrial or inner city areas. I too share the concern about the greens leapfrogging the Lib Dems where they stand as new candidates. David Raw, thank you for those helpful stats broken down. It makes a change to links to upper middle class media like the Guardian I see so often posted on here. Barrow had a hard time with covid I remember seeing on the news, more so than many other areas. It’s a town I’d love to visit to find out more.
@ Jason Connor Thanks for the kind remarks, Jason.
I’m afraid we come back to the question of what does the modern Liberal Democrat Party have to offer to places like Barrow ? I’m afraid the occasional fall into Windermere doesn’t butter many parsnips after the giggles, gasps and ripples have subsided.
@ Paul Barker “This is the posh end of Barrow”.
Have you ever been to Barrow, Paul ? As someone who lived and worked in Cumbria for over thirty years, I can tell you Barrow doesn’t have a “posh end”.
Should have added, the winning Reform candidate in Barrow was a well known former Tory Mayor of Barrow.