Good news – coming to you a little later than usual due to me drinking wine with my friends in the bar at the Scottish Conference hotel – from Oxfordshire.
Hailey, Minster Lovell & Leafield (W. Oxfordshire):
LD: 46.7% (+34.0)
CON: 41.5% (+3.8)
LAB: 5.8% (-4.5)
GRN: 3.1% (-2.8)
UKIP: 2.9% (+2.9)— Britain Elects (@britainelects) March 9, 2017
Well done to Kieran Mullins and his team for that amazing swing.
The rest of the by-elections were a clean sweep for the Tories – but there were some healthy vote share increases for us.
Red Horse (Stratford on Avon) result:
CON: 53.4% (-9.0)
LDEM: 29.8% (+20.3)
UKIP: 10.3% (-4.8)
GRN: 6.5% (+6.5)
No Labour as previous.— Britain Elects (@britainelects) March 9, 2017
Philip Vial was our candidate here.
Joanna Burrows fought the Exton Ward in Rutland:
Exton (Rutland) result:
CON: 59.5% (+6.5)
LDEM: 30.8% (+11.6)
UKIP: 9.8% (-5.0)
No Ind as previous.— Britain Elects (@britainelects) March 9, 2017
Derwent ward in Derby was a Conservative gain from UKIP so I suspect that tactical voting was in play here, affecting our Simon Ferrigno’s vote.
Derwent (Derby) result:
CON: 37.1% (+28.1)
LAB: 28.7% (-2.4)
UKIP: 25.2% (-7.2)
LDEM: 9.0% (-15.4)— Britain Elects (@britainelects) March 9, 2017
Brendan Wyer got a respectable showing from a standing start in Broxbourne:
Waltham Cross (Broxbourne) result:
CON: 41.0% (-3.5)
LAB: 40.8% (-14.8)
UKIP: 12.6% (+12.6)
LDEM: 5.6% (+5.6)— Britain Elects (@britainelects) March 9, 2017
Freja Waterhouse flew the Lib Dem flag in Hertford Castle:
Hertford Castle (East Hertfordshire) result:
CON: 49.0% (+8.2)
LAB: 17.1% (-2.9)
LDEM: 15.5% (+15.5)
GRN: 13.0% (-4.7)
UKIP: 5.4% (+5.4)— Britain Elects (@britainelects) March 9, 2017
We await one result from Harrow.
* 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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19 Comments
Well done to all involved. Legacy of Witney
Sorry hit ‘post’ by accident. Can’t even blame the wine at the Scottish conference……
Meant to say I wonder if this shows the legacy that can be left from a good parliamentary by-election campaign, an example of what Ed Fordham was talking about in Stoke?
Philip from Shipston was our candidate. You will have met him (he was my tenant in Leicester during the nineties) – Philip Vial.
Are the figures for Derwent (Derby) correct ? The Conservatives seem to have moved from 9% previously to 37.1% They were not the obvious party to beat UKIP as Labour was just 1.3 % behind before. Maybe Labour (Leave ?) voters switched to the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats switched to Labour. Disappointing result.
@nvelope2003 – from the Derby Council website here is the result for this ward in 2016:
Con 814
Lab 811
UKIP 660
LD 155
Compared with last year, this result doesn’t look quite so strange. The comparison on Brian Elects appears to be with 2014, although there were elections in 2015 and 2016.
The Derwent result is right. However for some reason no-one mentions the elections held there in 2015 & 2016. The big fall in the Lib Dem percentage occurred between 2014 & 2015:-
2015: Lab 42.5%, Con 27%, UKIP 23.5%, Lib Dem 7%
2016: Cons 33%, Lab 32%, UKIP 27%, Lib dem 6%
So yesterdays 9% is an increase on the last 2 years!!!
The same sort of thing occurred in the reporting of the Redcar Hutton by election last.
Actually our % fell compared to the by election of 2016.
Caron West Oxfordshire makes a great headline, but overall we have slipped back on the dizzy heights of the last few weeks with the Conservatives certainly picking up after Copeland. On the current basis the Cons and LIb Dems wil probably make net gains in May, for the Cons it could be significant.
Having looked at the Derby local; press, the obvious lesson to be learned is about presentation.
The elections that are coming up in May will take place mainly in the counties. This is fortunate for Labour, because most of the strongly Labour parts of those counties have gone unitary. Corbyn can easily dismiss a terrible performance in the counties as irrelevant to Labour.
So let us look at those by-elections over the last few weeks that have taken place in counties. Most show at least a modest increase in Lib Dem support, and a marked increase in areas that have been worked. We should expect gains, but not on the scale of 1985 and 1993.
The wild card is the landing of Council Tax bills on doormats. It will be hard for the Tories to pin those on the last Labour government.
It was partly driven by someone who was an LD and nearly won against Labour and then became a Conservative and stood and won on that ticket – a local resident called Richard Hudson. In a sense it’s similar to when Lib Dems work hard around a local campaigner and `good egg` to gain the seat. What must be worrying for the Lib Dems is that in various places the Tories are getting their acts and messages together to win seats not just in Derby in a ward that was Labour since Eve was a lass also Waltham Cross last night albeit by 4 votes. And it’s more difficult as they are a party of government!
Are the LDs picking up council seats in posh areas and Leave areas when they do the work and tories picking up in marginal/leave/`Labour`areas when they do similar work? Terrible news for the Labour party and UKIP if it’s true.
The ‘dizzy heights of a few weeks ago’ was never going to last. These are still good results, continuing an extraordinary run.
The Tories’ success is interesting. Especially this week: it’s been years since I saw a budget being so poorly received by the media. And yet people all over the country still trooping out to vote for them. Even in the ward they lose they increased their vote…. I can’t believe she is not thinking about calling that early GE!
Those Hailey figures are interesting. One wonders where the increase in the LD vote came from. Could it be that we are looking at “shy liberals”?
Frank: previous Independant vote?
We had another council by-election on Thursday, but the count was this morning and I have just sent the data to ALDC.
LB Harrow, Roxbourne Ward
LD Marshel Amuthasaran 240 (9.70%)
UKIP 148 (5.98%)
Labour 1554 (62.79%)
Conservative 533 (21.54%)
Majority 1021
Turnout 26.3%
Comparison with the last all-up Council election in 2014 is not straighforward because a split in the Labour group on Council led to the Independent Labour Group standing against official Labour candidates. Those results were:
Labour 1921 (52.06%), 1802, 1689
Conservatives 862 (23.36%), 743, 640
Independent Labour 778 (21.08%), 540, 498
LD 353 (9.57%), 278
Turnout 40%
Labour will trumpet their gain in vote share, but if you add together the Labour and Independent Labour votes, they have lost ground. The Conservatives have also lost ground slightly, while we have gained slightly.
Why do you use the Britain Elects stuff when they can’t even be bothered to give the actual figures? Not good enough really!
Thanks for the information. A bit more reassuring
It is not clear why this was a Conservative gain from UKIP though. It seems more like a Conservative Hold
The trend that screams each week is UKIP are dead in the water. Tis only the media keeping that punctured balloon even vaguely aloft. No membership, no leadership, no money and no plan.
Frankie: well UKIP have not been much good at local government or any other kind of government. Names put on the ballot paper who do not have the qualifications, did not expect to win and sometimes misbehave and have to be disciplined as happened locally. But it is too early to write them off completely.
I’m not writing them off, their appeal to predice has and has the ability to play well. They are not a party in the traditional sense just a Rag tail and Bob tail collection of angry people, hence their inability to function when they gain seats. The media however love them, in our society of instant gratification they are the party of choice. In many ways you could say they are the Big Brother party, but not quite in the way Orwell ment Big Brother more the channel 5 variety.
The Waltham Cross (Broxbourne) result is better than may appear. The ward is one of the weakest for us in the Council area. It has three Cllrs, all previously Labour. We have not had a candidate for some number of years. Our campaign was one leaflet and no canvassing/GOTV. Set against this, our 5.7% not so bad 🙂