At the General Election, in Mole Valley, the Liberal Democrat vote fell by 14% while the Conservatives and UKIP shares increased.
There’s good news this morning though as the Liberal Democrats pulled off a convincing double by-election win for Holmwoods ward on the District Council. Congratulations to new Councillors Claire Malcolmson and Clayton Wellman. The local team is particularly pleased with the majority over the Tories. Here’s the result in full:
LD (Claire) 804
LD (Clayton) 768
Con 492
Con 458
UKIP 201
UKIP 180
Green 105
Green 78
Total votes 1594 (including 3 spoilt)
This constitutes a Liberal Democrat gain from UKIP and a hold. The by-elections were caused by the sad death of Liberal Democrat Councillor Mick Longhurst on 2nd May and the resignation of the previous UKIP councillor. Their vote was particularly low.
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19 Comments
Good win, well done delighted when I heard last night. Dare I say, dare I? Out of coalition and a prospective new leader, change of circumstance and environment, perhaps change of result.
“This constitutes a Liberal Democrat gain from UKIP and a hold. ”
Excellent. Well done Mole Valley! This is the way forward for Liberal Democrats.
Over the next three years the future of the party will be improved every time we read the words —
” Liberal Democrat gain from UKIP”
Or Conservative, or Labour etc
Any word on what the local issues there were?
Wow! I was expectint the Tories to take both seats easily, lets hope this is a trend. The most recent Poll has UKIP falling to 8%, behind us.
Well done to the team involved. We seem to do ok without a leader – wasn’t our last parliamentary by-election gain in Dunfermline when we were leaderless? Maybe a perpetual leadership contest is the key to our success….
Just looking at the percentages – our candidates nearly doubled the vote since last year, from 26% to 50% while UKIP collapsed, going from 32% to 12%. Greens & Tories did much the same & Labour didnt stand at all.
The site Political Betting has a potted history of Mole Valley voting over the last decade.
An excellent, but not as unexpected as some might think. Holmwoods has been a solid Lib Dem Seat for many years thanks to the hard work of the local Mole Valley Team, and it is great to see them return to winning ways. We have regularly defeated the Conservatives there, usually out-polling them by three to two or better. Even in 2010 on General Election day we beat them by 300. The fact that it was one gain from UKIP shows how bad things got in 2014 with Nick’s performance in the debates against Nigel Farage and “The party of IN” fiasco.
Ultimately it is about trust, and in Mole Valley people still trust their local Lib Dem Councillors despite the mess of the last five years in Westminster. It is those people and that trust that we have to get back across the entire country (including Scotland) so that we can build again.
There weren’t any earth-shattering local issues – the team just ran a strong grassroots Lib Dem campaign and worked very hard in a seat where we had always done quite well until recently and had a good track record.
We were fortunate to have two excellent candidates and the campaign was run by the ALDC book.
I’m sure there are many more seats we can re-gain across the country as soon as we get the chance if we work hard and stick to basics.
Gareth
I agree with Gareth. It was a very focused local campaign with just over 3 weeks between our previous councillor’s funeral and polling day. But our candidates and our messages really hit home, thanks to a lot of hard work and a marked change in the receptiveness of voters, enabling us to jump from 3rd place in 2014 to a relatively easy win with over 50% of the vote.
Congratulations to Mole Valley for starting the Lib Dem revival in terms of net gain of seats!
I would be interested to know what the Tories and UKIP did compared to us both this time and in 2014…
Labour are hardly going anywhere if they can’t find candidates for a by-election.
Remove the albatross and the campaign flies. đ
Well done Move Valley Team. If we can build trust like this across the country, with the help of new and established members spreading our principles and listening to electors, we will return to councils in great numbers. Also to parliament in bye-elections and later at General Elections. A very welcome result to cheer all party members. Happy Saturday everyone.
Thank you Mole Valley for giving us hope!
Naturally a welcome result, but Mole Valley is never going to be become a Lib Dem constituency. The Tories got over 60% of the vote at the General Election- let us not delude ourselves that this is going to lead anywhere.
Sammy,
I just went to the Leeds hustings and Tim Farron made the extremely good point that the main purpose of winning council seats is NOT to get an MP elected in that constituency, but to gain power in local government and help people in local communities. In the case of Mole Valley District the Tories only just took it back from NOC, and the Lib Dems have been in control in the past. Lets hope they will again before long!
We have been very much over-targeting in the last 5 years and if we are to rebuild our national support we need many more local councillors both in places where we might win a parliamentary seat, and in others where we will not.
But there are also plenty of seats the Lib Dems have won in the past where the Tories have at times got 60% of the votes…. Westmorland and Lonsdale is an example… Sutton and Cheam is another..
Wekk done Mole Valley. Well done England at Durham.
A win that Geoffrey Boycott said was “impossible” was achieved, winning the game and the series.
Those who alleage that the Single Transferable Vote is complicated will now be explaining the Duckworth-Lewis Method.
Thanks Andrew
Tories and UKIP had been working the ward since last July, and the Tories in particular appeared very confident of taking both council seats But they seemed strangely complacent during the by-election, and UKIP never really got going again.
Labour could find just 4 candidates for the whole of Mole Valley in May and decided to give Holmwoods a miss. Not having any candidate on the ballot paper in May they were not allowed to add any for the rerun.
Paul Kennedy
” Not having any candidate on the ballot paper in May they were not allowed to add any for the rerun.”
– Wait, what? Labour weren’t allowed to have a candidate? That can’t be right, surely. And in what way is this a “rerun” rather than a straightforward by-election? Please explain; I’m quite taken aback by this.