There were four principal local council by-elections held on Thursday 3rd November. There was a Lib Dem gain from Labour, two Tory holds and an SNP hold . There were no parish or town council by-election results reported to ALDC.
The Inverness South ward by-election ends a run of poor Scottish by-election results, and will be used to encourage activists to keep going to the close of poll for some time to come, seven votes being the margin of victory.
The sitting Labour councillor was jailed for a year for benefit fraud totalling £43,000 . It perhaps is indicative of the different political atmosphere that STV elections generate that this was hardly mentioned in any of the campaign literature from any of the parties. Labour were not in contention in a by-election situation in the ward, and given the extensive media coverage of the trial alienating voters potential second preference voters was not top of anybody’s campaign plan.
There was no big issue in the campaign other than who was the best person for the job but as is usual the SNP did glossy leaflets sloganizing. We focussed on the nitty gritty of the issues that local people raised with us.
The ward is urban by Highland standards including the southern suburbs of Inverness but at 522sq km it is larger than 42 English Authorities. It will therefore surprise few that we did six editions of some Focuses to reflect local concerns.Given the size of the ward our campaign was strong on door knocking and postal vote activity, but we stll did target letters, a survey, two leaflets to every household, a blue letter and a “Good Morning”. A feature of the campaign was a dedicated poster team as the Highland local authority take a relaxed attitude to poster boards on lampposts and it is a battle at every election. This is in not unique, Birmingham, for instance, have the same traditions. It is always strange to realise in the aftermath that many candidates had more Correx poster boards than votes.
This is only our second by-election gain off Labour this year.
Other elections:
Argyll and Bute UA, Oban North and LornEast Staffordshire DC, YoxallLeicestershire CC, Syston Ridgeway