Christmas came early for Sheffield Liberal Democrats yesterday with Willis Marshall’s win in Woodhouse – site of much of the battle of Orgreave – by 10 votes ahead of Reform, gaining the seat notionally from Labour.
The vacancy was brought about by the sad death of Councillor Paul Wood of Sheffield Community Councillors, the group that split from Labour after defying the whip on a vote on the local plan, but was largely made up of the previous Labour leadership, ousted by a Campaign Improvement Board against the wishes of local Labour members.
Willis and the team put in a tremendous campaign, backed by our position as the main alternative to Labour on Sheffield Council (27 seats to their 36, no Reform) but it is clear that Reform also had a compelling offer to the voters. My sense of the campaign is that there was a substantial ex Labour now anti Labour vote up for grabs. Our campaign on the winter fuel allowance was very popular. Woodhouse has sent a message to Keir Starmer. But clearly many voters felt a Reform vote was the way to send that message.
When the party of government has spent 14 years building up expectations and then comprehensively trashed those expectations in less than 14 weeks, public services are a mess, public finances are a mess, there are riots on the streets, and nothing is getting built because everything costs 5 times as much as it should and takes 5 times too long to do; other parties have to show they understand the problem and have some answers. If nothing better is offered, the simple, compelling and wrong answers of a party like Reform will attract votes.
I stood in the last Woodhouse by-election in July 2010. I came an OK second to Labour, UKIP showing a decent third. Woodhouse then was one of the areas most solidly voting Labour out of tradition and this was the early days of the coalition government. Today, traditional voting is a fraction of what it was 14 years ago. But at least in 2010 the incoming government seemed to have an answer to the mess made by the previous lot. We are in dangerous times if the current government can’t even do that.
* Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield.
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6 Comments
Well done Willis … don’t forget our agreement
Regards
JanetM
This could be the start of a trend. If Labour continue on their current course they will lose hundreds of seats on councils up and down the country in the years ahead.
Congratulations to Willis and the Sheffield party on their victory.
Great news which shows that Labour can be defeated in their traditional seats. Now that Labour is showing how useless it is in Government there are many Sheffield’s waiting in the wings.
It is remarkable that more than half of the voters voted for a different party this time compared to last time. It is no surprise that the Labour vote has collapsed, the big question is who benefits? Delighted to see that it is the Lib Dems, alarmed also to see that it is the Reform party as well. I suspect the Greens will do well in their targetted wards as well.
The prospects are that the Lib Dems, Greens and Reform will all be fighting to replace Labour in Sheffield.
It is Reform the party needs to worry about.There has to be concrete improvements to show that they have nothing to offer the country
Very significant result. Congratulations to the Sheffield party. Now to find the means to translate this to parliamentary contests which we have all – including Sheffield – failed to do for fifteen years. The results in the big cities at this year’s general election were almost all appalling.