There were six principal council by-elections reported to ALDC, and none changed hands. It was a great day for our Focus team in Chelmsford, however, who held both the Borough and County seats that were being contested.
These two Tory-facing seats have a proud Lib Dem pedigree, Chelmsford’s Patching Hall ward has been held by the party since 1979 and the Chelmsford North division of Essex County Council has been held (with a brief hiatus between 1989-93) since 1981. The cause of the by-election was the death of respected councillor and campaigner Tom Smith-Hughes, whose decades of hard work in the area gave candidates Paul Bentham and Stephen Robinson a strong foundation from which to launch their campaigns. Stephen’s campaign for the county seat was also helped by his profile as a Chelmsford Borough Councillor and the record of action that he had already begun to build in one half of the division. Paul Bentham began his journey toward becoming a Liberal Democrat councillor as a new activist during the general election.
The Chelmsford team pulled together a wide group of helpers from across the county and began the campaign with an A3 tribute to Tom and introduction of the candidates. This was followed up by an A3 Focus, and an A4 Focus sub-divided between the four areas of the division, with area-specific issues and enveloped return sheet. Target pools were drawn from every category with the exception of Hard Con and Anti, with the Labour vote finally squeezed by roughly 4% on 2011’s all-out elections. Connect’s Virtual Phone Bank (VPB) showed its utility, with a wide uptake (including one volunteer phoning from as far afield as Brussels!) and a good number of contacts. In fact, the VPB team are looking at forming a regional phone bank using Connect for future contests. The Tories fought hard, with four full-colour A4 leaflets and extensive national phone-banking, as did UKIP, who put out a national-issues A5 and local-issues A4 with bar chart, siphoning a good number of erstwhile Conservative voters and keeping the Lib Dems well ahead of the pack in both seats. Congratulations to Paul, Stephen,and the Essex Lib Dem team – a great day at the office!
Elsewhere, we failed to stand a candidate Blaby’s Ravenhurst and Fosse ward which was, in the end, an unremarkable Labour hold. Every other seat was held by the Tories; in South Northamptonshire’s Grange Park we stood a first-time candidate and took 24% of the vote – the Conservatives did take all the rest, but onwards and upwards. The same applies in the Brompton ward of Kensington and Chelsea, we were only two votes off second-place, and just 549 votes from a famous victory! Finally, Charnwood’s Sileby didn’t end well, with the BNP beating us into fourth.
Congratulations again to the Chelmsford team, and the very best of luck to all of our candidates and campaigners in the field.
Craig Whittallcraig.whittall@aldc.org
Lucie says
. The context in which this elticeon was fought was very different to 2006. In 2006 the Tories were taken by surprise. They regarded Belsize as a safe seat and concentrated their engergies elsewhere (Hampstead and Gospel Oak). In 2009 they threw themselves heart and soul into winning back Belsize, in a make or break effort to regain political momentum from the Lib Dems. The Tories are currently riding high in the national opinion polls and Belsize is a generally affluent area with many "natural" Tory voters. After all that effort, to see the Tory share of the vote rise by a derisory 1.3%, while the Lib Dems added a further 5% to their total must be hugely demoralising. Especially after the Tories' shock defeat in Hampstead last year (again at the hands of the Lib Dems).If the Tories can't win in Belsize and Hampstead, how can they present themselves as credible challengers in the Hampstead & Kilburn constituency?So great news for the Lib Dems, a terrible result for the Tories and a real shot in the arm for Ed's campaign to become MP for Hampstead and Kilburn.