Another busy day at the office, with a total of nine principal council by-elections reported to ALDC for Thursday 5th July. Unfortunately, not a great set of results for Liberal Democrats, with a loss to Labour and some tough results elsewhere, but we’ll start with the good news.
The Grove ward of the London Borough of Kingston has been Liberal Democrat-held for three decades. With a strong borough-wide Liberal and Lib Dem heritage, and a sitting MP, the Grove by-election was a ‘must-win’ against the Conservatives. Metropolitan fights against the Tories have been slightly more complicated post-coalition as some Labour supporters are now longer as squeeze-able as they once were (Labour here doubled their vote-share to 20 per cent), but we held enough of theirs, and turned enough of our own vote out, to win with a majority of thirty-three. Our congratulations to Rebekah Moll (pictured, centre) and the Kingston Lib Dem team.
Elsewhere, Labour appeared to have the best of it, with three gains and two holds out of the remaining eight results. Two gains came from the Tories, in Thanet’s Westgate-on-Sea (with an honourable mention to Bill Furness and the Thanet team for making sure we had a Lib Dem on the ballot) and in the Tollesbury ward of Malden Borough. Labour’s third gain was from us, in the Allerton and Hunt’s Cross ward in Liverpool, a disappointing result for a hard-fought campaign but with signs of progress after two difficult sets of local elections. Labour’s holds were in Liverpool’s Riverside and St Helen’s ward in Chesterfield.
The rest look like this, the Green Party held a Malvern Hills seat in Malvern West, and the Conservatives held on in West Malling and Leybourne ward of Tonbridge and Malling, and the Heyhouses ward in Fylde, despite being run fairly close by an Independent.
The busy spell continues with a further eight by-elections on Thursday 12th. The very best of luck to all of our councillors, candidates, and campaigners across the country.
Craig Whittallcraig.whittall@aldc.org