My analysis of British local by-elections from 28 September and 30 September 2021

Readers, the results of British local by-elections in the week commencing 27 September 2021 were as follows:

(28/09/2021):

Broadland DC, Brundall (double by-election): Green 594/530 (36.5%, +16.9%), Conservative 480/453 (30.3%, -11.3%), Liberal Democrats 425/303 (23.6%, +7.1%), Labour 161/137 (9.7%, -12.7%). Two Green gains from Conservative.

Broadland DC, Old Catton & Sprowston: Conservative 721 (50.0%, +2.5%), Labour 332 (23.0%, +4.6%), Liberal Democrats 278 (19.3%, +1.8%), Green 110 (7.6%, -8.9%).

(30/09/2021):

East Hampshire, Horndean Downs: Green 320 (49.2%, +33.3%), Conservative 291 (44.7%, -8.0%), Independent (Alexander) 40 (6.1%, -12.6%). Green gain from Conservative.

East Staffordshire DC, Tutbury & Outwoods: Conservative 549 (44.3%, -13.4%), Independent (Anderson) 464 (37.5%), Labour 186 (15.0%, -27.2%), Green 39 (3.2%).

Eden DC, Penrith West: Liberal Democrats 173 (43.5%, +1.4%), Conservative 87 (21.9%, -1.8%), Independent (Thomson) 51 (12.8%), Labour 40 (10.1%, -9.4%), Putting Cumbria First 28 (7.0%), Green 19 (4.8%). Liberal Democrat gain from Conservative.

Sunderland MBC, Hetton: Labour 661 (31.6%, -1.7%), Liberal Democrats 634 (30.3%, +26.6%), Independent (Geddis) 386 (18.5%, -3.1%), Conservative 303 (14.5%, +8.8%), Independent (Allen) 67 (3.2%), Green 41 (2.0%). All changes are since May 2019.

Swale DC, Priory: Liberal Democrats 215 (38.1%, -13.7%), Conservative 173 (30.6%, +1.5%), Green 128 (22.7%, +15.2%), Labour 49 (8.7%, -3.0%).

West Suffolk DC, The Rows: Conservative 428 (65.2%, +26.1%), Labour 126 (19.2%), Liberal Democrats 102 (15.5%). Conservative gain from Independent. [No Independent candidates this time].

This week saw some historic breakthroughs for the Green Party, just before the result of their 2021 leadership election was announced (this will be covered in a separate blog post tomorrow). It saw the first Green Party councillors elected to Broadland District Council in Norfolk and also the first ever Green Party councillor elected at principal authority level anywhere in Hampshire. They also did well in the Priory by-election in Swale (covering the northern quarter of the town of Faversham), which also shows the Liberal Democrats' high reliance on incumbency votes at a local and national level outside middle-class, highly educated towns and suburbs (and even in them sometimes, as Faversham like so many towns close to London is heading in that direction).

Labour did poorly all round in this week's set of by-elections, and their recent conference has not helped them. They were lucky to avoid losing the Hetton by-election to the Liberal Democrats especially with Sunderland Council's continuing problems with corruption and nepotism in its Labour group, and they were also hit hard in the Tutbury & Outwoods by-election by one of their former candidates standing as an independent (and that by-election was their only realistic chance of a gain this week). The Conservatives overall fared worse, though, because they were defending more favourable territory and their gain in West Suffolk was a foregone conclusion in a small East Anglian town with no independent candidates standing to replace the former independent. It was not a good week for independent candidates, either, as two who had stood in a previous election in that ward found themselves  caught in a tactical squeeze.




Comments

  1. imogen2 October 2021 at 11:12

    Thanks Alan.
    Could noting turnout in these elections be another useful lens through which to view the events and add to understanding?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My analysis of local by-elections from 22/11/18

Readers, the results of this week's British local by-elections were as follows: Enfield LBC, Bush Hill Park: Conservative 1540 (52.4%, +12.7%), Labour 828 (28.2%, -8.3%), Liberal Democrats 313 (10.7%, -0.8%), Green 127 (4.3%, -6.6%), WEP 79 (2.7%), Independent (Oyaloyu) 50 (1.7%). [UKIP did not stand] Westminster LBC, Lancaster Gate: Conservative 913 (47.2%, -1.5%), Labour 684 (35.4%, -1.0%), Liberal Democrats 275 (14.2%, -0.7%), Green 62 (3.2%). Windsor & Maidenhead UA, Datchet: Conservative 525 (56.0%, -3.1%), National Flood Prevention Party 223 (23.8%), Labour 121 (12.9%, -9.1%), Liberal Democrats 48 (5.1%,-13.8%), Green 21 (2.2%). Wirral MBC, Upton: Labour 1490 (61.3%, +3.1%), Conservative 705 (29.0%, +0.4%), Green 151 (6.2%, -0.5%), Liberal Democrats 83 (3.4%, -0.8%). [TUSC did not stand] All changes are since May. The open divisions in the Conservatives, which resulted in a failed attempt to call for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May by the European Researc...
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian ...
Read more

On the French local elections of 2020: Vive le surge de vert!

The French local elections finally concluded yesterday, having been originally scheduled to take place on 15 March; they were postponed due to the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  The most sensational story of these elections was the many triumphs by the main French Green Party, Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV). In major French cities (those with more than 100,000 people), EELV captured the mayoralties of Annecy, Besancon, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, and Tours. They also performed impressively in the munciipal elections for those cities as well. However, in the midst of all this triumph there was one notable setback for them: Eric Pollie, the first Green Mayor of a major French city, decided to contest the mayoral election there as an "Independent Left" (divers gauche) candidate instead. Furthermore they narrowly missed out on unseating former PS leader Martine Aubry from her post as Mayor of Lille; in the second round she held on by 227 votes, a sig...
Read more