Council by-elections: net gain of four seats

In addition to the excellent result in Newcastle, Liberal Democrats took four further council seats last night: two that had previously been held by independents and two from Labour. We lost one seat to the Tories, on Havant District Council, reflecting their win in the same ward in May.

The gains from Labour were in Newcastle, Maidstone and Tewkesbury, where Labour came a poor fourth, with other pickups in the Sutton South ward of East Lindsey DC and the Whittington ward of Shropshire County Council. Labour’s majority was significantly cut in a Lab/LD two-way fight in Durham. The Conservatives gained from an independent on Oswestry BC.

Net results: LibDem +4, Con +2, Lab -3, Ind -3.

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This entry was posted in Council by-elections.
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6 Comments

  • Steve - alone at his PC 1st Dec '06 - 12:23pm

    Congratulations to Rob Field for the win in Maidstone at the third attempt. He’s been a master of “almost” winning these last few years, losing to Labour by less than 10 votes last year. Glad to see that he’s broken the habit.

  • nigelashton 1st Dec '06 - 6:16pm

    Nice to see a good result in my native county of Kent.

  • Rob Fenwick 1st Dec '06 - 7:21pm

    Wahoo! Reasons to be cheerful..

  • That’s two more than we managed in May …. 😯

  • Angus J Huck 1st Dec '06 - 10:45pm

    What an astounding result in Parkwood! This is one of the most deprived areas in Kent and has been a Labour stronghold for decades. Even when we had minority control of Maidstone BC we did not come close to winning Parkwood. So congratulations to the candidate and team who won it.

    Yes, isn’t it time we started rebuilding our support in Kent. In 2005, the pundits were telling us that the Tories would sweep Labour aside here, but all they managed to get was Gravesend. There must be plenty of voters out there searching for an alternative.

  • Steve - alone at his PC 2nd Dec '06 - 12:37pm

    The complete story in Parkwood is that a very well-run campaign involving members from both Maidstone & The Weald and Faversham & Mid-Kent constituencies has turned a Labour-held 3-way marginal into one of the most solid LibDem seats in the council , with a 23% swing, polling 58% of the vote. Apparently we took 10% from the Conservatives and 13% from Labour.

    Here’s to us repeating the turnaround in other wards next year!

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