Wednesday by-elections may be rare and weird but they are very welcome when they result in a Lib Dem GAIN.
Paul Follows took the Waverley, Surrey seat of Godalming Central an Ockford. We didn’t even stand a candidate there in 2015. We had a reasonable record there, pulling in 400-500 wards in previous years but this is a very good leap forward for us.
Godalming Central & Ockford (Waveney) result:
LDEM: 37.8% (+37.8)
CON: 35.0% (-6.5)
LAB: 21.5% (-4.6)
GRN: 5.7% (+5.7)No 'Something New' party (-17.0) and UKIP (-15.4) as prev.
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) December 14, 2017
Well done to the whole Waverley Lib Dems team.
There was one other by-election yesterday which resulted in a Labour hold in Exeter but with the Lib Dems gaining more than any other party – securing over 9% of the vote when we didn’t stand last time.
Newtown & St Leonard's (Exeter) result:
LAB: 54.6% (+1.2)
CON: 26.8% (+1.5)
LDEM: 9.4% (+9.4)
GRN: 7.2% (-5.7)
UKIP: 2.1% (-3.2)— Britain Elects (@britainelects) December 13, 2017
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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16 Comments
Fantastic result in Godalming. And very creditable in Exeter, though the +/- percent figures suggest we didn’t stand there last time, which I believe we did.
Paul Follows also won the corresponding Godalming Town Council ward from the Tories on the same boundaries, the main difference being there was no Green candidate:
Town: LD 294 Con 252 Lab 162 (winning margin 42)
Borough: LD 266 Con 246 Lab 151 Green 40 (winning margin 20)
So an interesting illustration of the impact of the Greens standing a candidate in a Tory-LD contest: Con -6 Lab -11 Lib Dem – 28
Another gain from a standing start. The third such in as many weeks, I think? “Oh well we didn’t stand last time so I don’t think there’s any point now,” doesn’t sound like such a good excuse any more. 🙂
Well done to Exeter LibDems as well.
So The LibDems now have one seat on Waverley Borough Council, a council which in the past they have controlled, and two on Godalming Town Council which was once a Tory-free zone. That’s a measure of how far they have fallen since the beginning of this century. Are last night’s results the beginning of a fight-back, or just a flash in the pan?
Meanwhile in Perth, England’s cricketers, already two:nil down in the series, reached the close of the first day of the third Ashes Test on 305 for 4 with Dawid Malan not out on 110 and Jonny Bairstow not out on 75. is this the beginning of a fight back or just another flash in the pan?
Nick: realism tonight I expect: by elections in Salford, Wigan, Newcastle under Lyme etc.
Could be the 2 -4% results.
Godalming : Lib Dem won the County North Ward last year and seem to be restoring the old status quo in that commuter paradise.
BUT of course much of it is regaining the old “protest vote” which in coalition years went seemingly all over the place, left, right and centre.
@ Theakes. But they won that County Council seat on a “progressive alliance” ticket: courtesy Labour pulling out of the contest to give them a free run against the Tories.
Well done another great result! celebrate every victory and start looking forward. We know what to do to win lets get at it.
Great for morale as we look forward to next year’s locals. Following from Paul Kennedy’s comment on the Godalming result it is odd to note that turnout was actually marginally higher in the Town than Borough contest and one can surmise from the numbers that maybe the 40 Green voters in the Borough contest switched approximately 4/10/26 to Con/Lab/LDem in the Town contest in the absence of a green candidate.
“it is odd to note that turnout was actually marginally higher in the Town than Borough contest”
Very marginally: The collective efforts of the parties managed to galvanise 708 votes (20.3% of the registered electors) for the Town Council election, 703 (20.1%) for the Borough Council.
This is most certainly not the start of a fightback, our Local results have been improving steadily since July, of course theres a long way to go & so far theres been no significant improvement in our National Polling. Lets see what tonight brings.
Well done to all involved, great results. I had a look into the “Something New” party and it looks like they are getting old. The last newsitem on their website was in May. In policy terms they look like the LIb Dems. It just shows again that it is a waste of time trying to create a new party from scratch under our voting system.
@ Geoffrey Payne; The Waverley LibDem website is slightly more up to date than that of “Something New”; it contains an exhortation to vote for Ollie Purkiss on 8 June. With endearing modesty, it does not mention this week’s by-elections.
The Waverley result is encouraging but actually the two very solid holds are far more important to the party, in bigger wards. But all we see here is sarcasm from a couple of the usual trollers…
Better baselines in Salford and Barnsley but of course no UKIP, Green or others so we pick up the whole third force protest vote.
Newcastle and Wigan are best not mentioned.
Merry Christmas Tony. Let’s hope the New Year and May especially is better for us.
Merry Christmas, Tony. I’m sorry that you have lost the ability to distinguish telling it as it is from sarcasm.