Andrew's Previews 2020: The year 2020, told through local by-elections

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Plymouth is a port and a naval city, and always has been. The Royal Navy have been in situ in nearby Devonport for centuries; the civilian port on the Tamar estuary saw the departure of the Mayflower pilgrims in 1620, and continues to be an important point of entry to the UK with regular international ferries to Roscoff in Brittany and to Santander in Spain. Outgoing councillor Baker-Smith doesn’t appear to have completely left her Isle of Wight roots. She was working remotely in an NHS job which is nominally based there, and she quit Manchester council in July to spend more time on the island caring for a family member. For the other East Midlands region we take another trip to England’s “smallest” “county” as we come to Uppingham, which with a population of just under 5,000 is the second-largest metropolis in Rutland. Uppingham is best-known to outsiders for its public school, which clearly shows up in its 2011 census return: the ward’s proportion of 16- and 17-year-olds (10.2%) is the sixth-highest of any ward in England and Wales and the highest figure for any ward in the East Midlands, and Uppingham ward is also in the top 50 for those employed in education (22.4%). The pupils are of course too young to vote, and for the adults Uppingham’s elections are curiously balanced affairs with no party ever standing a full slate for the three available seata. Four of the ward’s five ordinary elections this century have returned candidates from three different political traditions, including the 2019 election at which the Tories’ Lucy Stephenson and independent Marc Oxley were re-elected, while the Green Party’s Miranda Jones (who had been the Labour candidate here in 2015) defeated Tory councillor Rachel Burkitt for the final seat.

That gives the Tories a trifecta in this corner of Staffordshire, as they also have majorities on both Staffordshire county council and Newcastle-under-Lyme council. It perhaps helps that neither of those authorities had elections in 2023, which was not a good Tory year in Staffordshire; Newcastle council has an unusual electoral cycle and its last elections were in May 2022. The Conservatives had taken control of a hung council through defections in the 2018–22 term, and the 2022 borough elections saw this confirmed by the voters: Newcastle council returned 25 Conservative councillors against 19 for Labour. Sir Edward Codrington resigned from the Commons in 1840. Now, one does not simply resign as an MP: instead you have to be appointed to an Office of Profit under the Crown which exists for the sole purpose of vacating your parliamentary seat. There are two such offices of profit in use today, the Chiltern Hundreds and the Manor of Northstead; but other similar offices have been used in the past. Codrington was the last MP to resign by being appointed as Steward of the Manor of East Hendred, and the appointment went through despite the fact that the Crown had actually sold that manor in 1823. It seems that nobody had told the Parliamentary authorities about this at the time, and at least seventeen later appointments were made to the Manor of East Hendred before the penny dropped. Codrington died in 1851, and the post of Steward of the Manor of East Hendred has been vacant ever since. Our Welsh by-election this week takes place in the south-eastern corner of the county. Devauden ward is a hilly and rural area lying between the Wye valley to the east and the Usk valley to the west. The other North East council to watch is Hartlepool, whose entire representation was up in 2021: the parliamentary seat was a historic Conservative by-election gain, while the party may also be ruing its decision not to stand more candidates in the simultaneous Hartlepool council election. The whole council was up for election last year on new ward boundaries, but the Conservative dominance in the ward map only netted them 13 seats out of 36 because they only stood 13 candidates: there are 12 independent and/or localist councillors and 11 Labour members, giving a very balanced council. There is little scope for Labour gains in Hartlepool because the party are defending seven of the 13 seats up for election this year; holding what they have got will be a decent result.

The timeline means that it may be difficult for the Labour party to turn that lead into significant gains this time. The Labour party are defending over half of the seats up for election this year, and a large proportion of this set of elections is Greater London where Labour performed particularly well at the last local elections in 2018. Additionally, the big Conservative lead in the 2021 local elections turned into major gains in the rotational councils, and with those seats now in the bank for the Conservatives until 2024 the opposition parties will have to do just as well, in the other direction, to make significant headway.

Parliamentary constituency: Bexhill and Battle (Heathfield North and Heathfield South wards), Wealden (Mayfield and Five Ashes ward) Eight weeks later, the Labour group found themselves a man down following the resignation of Labour councillor Drew Moore, who indicated that he could not balance his new democratic duties with a new job. Moore had won the final seat in the ward with a majority of just 33 votes over the lead Conservative Peter Berry, so Labour have work to do to hold this by-election. Kim Leadbeater is unlikely to be MP for Batley for much longer, though. The parliamentary map of West Yorkshire is being heavily redrawn at the next general election, resulting in the Batley and Spen seat being split up. Going forward Batley will be included in a new parliamentary seat of Dewsbury and Batley, which is the successor to the Conservative-held Dewsbury seat but is projected to be safely Labour even in December 2019 conditions. Interestingly Leadbeater has not gone for the Labour selection in Dewsbury and Batley, instead choosing to follow the majority of her electors into the redrawn seat of Spen Valley which is projected to be notionally Conservative. Local by-election results don’t always reflect the national political scene, and we shouldn’t always expect them to. A rising political tide will normally work to lift all boats, but some get lifted more than others and there’s always something going on in the local picture to confound the national one if you look hard enough. Finally, we have the last election to North Yorkshire county council, which returned a Conservative majority at its previous election in 2017: 55 Conservatives against 10 independents, 4 Labour and 3 Lib Dem councillors. There are new division boundaries this year with an increase from 72 councillors to 90. As a result of local government reorganisation the county council will become North Yorkshire’s unitary council in April 2023, with all the district councils underneath it disappearing then. The Tories were much weaker here in the 2019 district council elections: Scarborough council is run by a Labour-Independent coalition, Ryedale by a Lib Dem-independent arrangement, Richmondshire by an independent-led anti-Conservative coalition. The Conservatives do, however, have majorities in Selby, Hambleton and Harrogate districts and hold half of the seats in Craven.So, defending this seat for the Conservatives is Neil Waller, an NHS finance manager and former Wealden councillor who lost his seat two months ago in Crowborough South West ward. The Greens have selected Anne Cross, an interfaith minister who lives in Heathfield. The Lib Dems also put a nomination in, but their candidate has withdrawn and will not be on the ballot; that leaves this by-election as a straight fight between Waller and Cross. This by-election is to replace the late Conservative councillor Nigel Shaw, who passed away in August at the age of 70 after twenty unbroken years representing this ward on Broadland council. He had also served on Norfolk county council in the past. Before settling down to public service here, Shaw had travelled across Europe working as a DJ. This by-election is also crucial for control of East Sussex county council, where the Conservatives have a small majority with 27 out of 50 seats. Two of those Conservative seats are currently vacant, and if the Tories fail to hold both this by-election and another by-election next week in Eastbourne then the county council will fall into No Overall Control. The ward is represented on the City Corporation by the Alderman and two Common Councilmen. Since the last City elections in March 2022 one of the two Common Councilmen for Bread Street has been Emily Benn, Tony Benn’s granddaughter. Emily has served as a Labour councillor in Croydon in the past and has stood three times for Parliament as a Labour candidate, but elections in the City don’t work like that; even politicians who are well-known for being partisan in other fields will normally seek election in the City as independent candidates, as Benn did. This memo was seemingly not received by Harini Iyengar, who stood in Bread Street in 2022 as an official candidate of the Women’s Equality Party and finished last out of four candidates. Defending for the Conservatives is Peter Berry, who represents the area on Thorpe St Andrew town council. Labour have selected the wonderfully-named Calix Eden. Brian Howe completes the candidate list for the Lib Dems.

This section has been corrected — Littlemore became part of Oxford in 1991, not 1974 as originally stated. Rose Hill and Littlemore

At its eastern end the Royal Military Canal passes through Hythe, which was one of the five ancient Cinque Ports charged with defending England from the French in mediaeval times. Hythe is not a port now: its harbour silted up long ago, and vessels crossing the Channel now have to use the ports of Folkestone or Dover to the east. The town, however, remains and is mostly located within the Hythe West division of Kent county council. All these shenanigans have left Plymouth council hung again. A further defection earlier this week left Labour as the largest party on the council; the latest composition following a further defection earlier this week gives 24 Labour councillors, 23 Conservatives plus two vacancies, five councillors in the Independent Alliance group (four ex-Conservative, one ex-Labour), two Greens (one of whom was elected as Labour), and an ex-Conservative independent. It’s a very fine balance. Any Conservative losses in these by-elections will mean that Labour increase their lead on the council, although they will remain short of the 29 seats necessary for a majority. For the city council by-election the defending Labour candidate is Sandy Douglas, an associate professor at Oxford University who works in vaccine development; he was one of the team which developed the manufacturing process for the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. There is a lot of crossover between the county and city council ballot papers, with independent Michael Evans, the Conservatives’ Tim Patmore, the Greens’ David Thomas and the Lib Dems’ Theo Jupp all contesting both polls; the strong independent candidate for Littlemore ward last year is not standing again and she has signed Evans’ nomination papers. The only party other than Labour to nominate a different candidate for the city council is the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, who have selected Rachel Cox for the Littlemore by-election.