November 11th is, of course, the day on which we all reflect on both the fragility and the price of the freedoms we are lucky enough to enjoy. It also adds an extra resonance to the act of voting in an election that can often be lost on the other 51 Thursdays of a year. There were five principal council by-elections that took place on the 11th and ALDC received reports of one election contested out in the towns. The current political cold snap continues, with very little to cherry pick for Liberal Democrats; of the five elections, we were defending none, we stood candidates in two, and neither of those changed hands.
It was a good day for Independents. An Independent held the one seat they were defending in the Hunsdon ward of East Hertfordshire District, and another took the Forres seat on Moray Council in Scotland from the Tories, who collapsed into third behind the SNP and the eventual Independent winner on first preferences. The remaining three seats were all holds for the Conservative Party; a marginal decline in vote-share in the Rushall-Shelfield ward in Walsall wasn’t enough for Labour, who remained 28 votes behind. The last time the Walsall seat was contested, the local Lib Dem team took a respectable 17.8%, but the absence of a candidate somewhat hampered efforts to build on that this time around. On the Isle of Wight, Labour’s first attempt to win the Chale, Niton, and Whitwell ward yielded a haul of 76 and our candidate Malcolm Groves kept the Lib Dem vote steady. Finally, in a three-way thriller in Bury St Edmunds Tower division of Suffolk County Council, the Tories held the second-place Independent off by 55 votes, and the Liberal Democrats placed fifth with a fraction less of the popular vote than in 2009. There’s a little bit of silver glinting around the November clouds, none of our candidates registered a dramatic decrease in their vote-share and we did pick up a seat in the Pill ward of Saltash Town Council.
As the nights draw in and the air gets brisker, ALDC have rustled up some very fetching Christmas card and calendar templates for those character-building Winter rounds! They can be accessed at the members-only section of the ALDC site here. It’s onwards and upwards next week with a further six principal council by-elections, there’s a double election in Croxteth in Liverpool and one of those seats is the week’s only Lib Dem defence. The very best of luck to all our candidates and campaigners across the country.
Craig Whittall
craig.whittall@aldc.org