There were four principal council by-elections on June 14th, with an interesting town council contest thrown into the mix as well.
In East Northamptonshire, we were very pleased to see a candidate selected and the election properly fought. For their troubles, the East Northants Focus team were rewarded with a handsome 20 per cent of the vote in the Barnwell ward, on a decent local election turnout of more than 40 per cent. With the precedent set, we look forward to seeing the East Northamptonshire team moving onwards and upwards, and hopefully finding some shiny new activists in the group of 130 people who got their chance to vote Lib Dem and took it!
Two more by-elections in the south took place in Kent and South Buckinghamshire. Kent’s county division of Tunbridge Wells East saw the Tories drop 17 per cent of their vote share, most of which appears to have decamped into the UKIP column, although the Conservatives held the division by around 150 votes. Our second place in the division was held by just over twenty votes, with UKIP’s surge likely to be drawn from ‘High-Speed 2’ hostility, possibly with a pinch of ‘traditional’ Tory malaise over coalition politics to boot. It looks like a similar story in the Iver Heath ward in South Bucks, where UKIP have piled on nearly 30 per cent of the vote on their first time out, but the result was another comfortable Conservative hold.
Finally, down at the lower-end of the turnout spectrum (and the North Korean end of the results spectrum!), we have Oldham’s Failsworth East. Labour’s 1,199 votes equated to just under 80 per cent of the vote which, bizarrely, represents a 5 per cent decline in vote-share since the last election. UKIP leap-frogged the Failsworth Lib Dem team to take second place, leaving us to lick our wounds and no doubt start working on some “It’s a one-horse race” artwork for next time around!
Finally, a heartening result from out in the towns, as we held the Orchard ward of Bognor Regis Town Council against a Labour Party who were convinced it was already in the bag. The place itself has a long history of Liberal Democrat administration, although currently under Conservative control, and Orchard ward itself has had Lib Dem town councillors throughout most of the council’s 27 year history. We were on the right side of a huge regeneration imbroglio – the Tories were supporting a multiplex cinema development that would be the death-knell for the beloved Picture Drome, which the then-Lib Dem controlled town council had taken into public ownership, to local acclaim, some years previously. UKIP took 100 votes, being not so far from Nigel Farage’s nearby home, but it was a complacent Labour Party who assumed that they were cruising to an historic victory only to find themselves on the wrong side of a 29-vote majority. Great news, and a great win for David Meaghre and the Bognor Lib Dem team.
We have three contests up next week, all taking place on Thursday 21st. The very best of luck to our campaigners and candidates out in the field.
Craig Whittallcraig.whittall@aldc.org