Previewing the 23 local elections of 25th June 2026

Twenty-three polls are taking place on 25th June 2026. Let’s dive straight in:

Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch; and
Rhyl South

Denbighshire council, Wales; caused respectively by the resignation of Plaid Cymru councillor Huw Elfed Williams and by the death of Labour councillor Jeanette Chamberlain-Jones.

This is one of the biggest weeks Andrew’s Previews has ever covered, with 23 standalone local elections and by-elections taking place in all three countries of Great Britain. There are 24 seats up for election, with the defences being 7 for Labour, 4 each for the Greens, the Lib Dems and Reform UK, 2 each for Plaid Cymru and independent councillors, and one for the Conservatives - or at least, that’s what happened when these seats were last contested. In a few cases defections will confuse the issue a bit. With such a varied menu, there will be something here for everyone to enjoy whatever your political persuasion.

Five of today’s elections take place in Wales, with four of these being to replace councillors who had to stand down after being elected to Senedd Cymru last month. The exception is Rhyl South ward, where the outgoing councillor Jeanette Chamberlain-Jones died in March so this by-election has taken some time to organise. Chamberlain-Jones had continuous service on Denbighshire council since her first election in 2004, and her civic positions included serving as the Denbighshire council chairman in 2012-13 and as mayor of Rhyl. She represented Rhyl South ward, which you will not be surprised to find covers the southern fringes of Rhyl town along the A525 road towards Rhuddlan.

This is a very different area from Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch ward, a name which for the benefit of those who don’t know Welsh refers to a church (llan) by a waterfall (rhaeadr) in the Cinmeirch area. The village of Llanrhaeadr lies further up the Conwy valley and the A525 road, between Denbigh and Ruthin; the ward extends into the high ground to the west to take in the communities of Cyffylliog and Nantglyn, together with large chunks of the Clocaenog Forest and the northern part of the Llyn Brenig reservoir which supplies Liverpool with drinking water. The forest is one of the last holdouts of the red squirrel in Wales, while Llyn Brenig is a favourite nesting location for ospreys. By the magic of modern technology, here is live coverage from the local osprey nest:

The vote here is vested in Denbighshire’s human residents. The last Denbighshire council elections in 2022 returned 19 Labour councillors, 12 independents, 8 for Plaid Cymru, 6 Conservatives, 2 Greens and 1 Lib Dem. Despite their big lead in seats Labour actually finished third in votes cast, which is largely due to their vote and organisation being strongly concentrated in Rhyl and Prestatyn; most wards outside those two towns didn’t have a Labour candidate. Labour and Plaid Cymru formed a coalition to run the council in 2022, but two subsequent Labour by-election losses to the Conservatives in Rhyl and Prestatyn have combined with defection losses to leave the ruling coalition in a minority.

Rhyl South ward was a straight fight between Labour and the Conservatives in 2022, with Labour prevailing by 63-37. At Westminster this is part of the Clwyd North seat represented by first-term Labour MP Gill German; but Labour drew a blank here in the Senedd election last month when the Clwyd constituency returned 3 Reform UK MSs, two Plaid Cymru and one Conservative - the party’s Welsh leader Darren Millar. This was based on vote shares of 32% for Reform UK, 28% for Plaid Cymru, 20% for the Conservatives and 10% for Labour.

The political context is very different in Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch, which was gained by Plaid Cymru in 2022 following the retirement of the ward’s previous independent councillor: Plaid’s (Huw) Elfed Williams won by 69-31 in a straight fight with the Conservatives. In the 2019 Westminster election Williams had been the Plaid Cymru candidate for Clwyd West, which then covered this area. Boundary changes in 2024 and 2026 have since placed Llanrhaeadr within the Labour-held Westminster seat of Bangor Aberconwy and the Senedd constituency of Bangor Conwy Môn, where Plaid Cymru topped the poll in May with 45% of the vote and won 3 out of 6 seats. Third on the Plaid list here was Elfed Williams, who has now left his Denbighshire council seat behind to take up his new duties in Cardiff Bay.

Both of the resulting by-elections have rather larger fields than the straight fights they saw in 2022. In Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch the defending Plaid Cymru candidate is Hefin Edwards, who gives an address in Nantglyn and previously contested this ward in 2017. The Conservatives are hoping for a win with Beryl Wynne, who was last seen on a ballot paper in the 2017 Denbighshire elections when she contested Ruthin ward. Also standing here are Nigel Deed for Reform UK and two independent candidates, Ian Evans (who gives an address in Denbigh) and Cai Williams.

In Rhyl South the defending Labour candidate is Crispin Jones, who was in third place on the Labour list for Clwyd at the recent Senedd elections: he is a Rhyl town councillor who has previously had a business career and now runs Gill German MP’s office. The Conservatives have reselected Gloria Lambert, a Rhuddlan town councillor who was one of the losing candidates here in 2022. We also have interventions here from the Lib Dems’ Keith Kirwan, Plaid Cymru’s Bleddyn Rhys, the Greens’ Desmond Rooney and Reform UK’s Tony Thomas, a former Conservative councillor for Rhyl East ward who was in sixth and last place on the Reform UK list for Clwyd last month.

Llanrhaeadr-yng-Nghinmeirch

Westminster constituency: Bangor Aberconwy
Senedd constituency: Bangor Conwy Môn
ONS Travel to Work Area: Rhyl
Postcode districts: LL15, LL16

Nigel Deed (RUK)
Hefin Edwards (PC)
Ian Evans (Ind)
Cai Williams (Ind)
Beryl Wynne (C)

May 2022 result PC 497 C 219
Previous results in detail

Rhyl South

Westminster constituency: Clwyd North
Senedd constituency: Clwyd
ONS Travel to Work Area: Rhyl
Postcode district: LL18

Crispin Jones (Lab)
Keith Kirwan (LD)
Gloria Lambert (C)
Bleddyn Rhys (PC)
Desmond Rooney (Grn)
Tony Thomas (RUK)

May 2022 result Lab 661/605 C 395/394
Previous results in detail

Llangennech

Carmarthenshire council, Wales; caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor Carmelo Colasanto.

The first of our three by-elections this week in southern Wales is going to be a repeat of a ward which appeared in this column only last August, as the electors of Llangennech ward in Carmarthenshire are called out to the polls for the third time in ten months.

The village of Llangennech lies east of Llanelli, on the western side of the Loughor estuary; it is bypassed by the A4138, the main road link from Llanelli to the M4 motorway, and it has a little-used railway station on the Heart of Wales line. Llangennech was once the site of several collieries, and it also served a military function as the location of a large Royal Navy stores depot. All of this is gone now, but other industries have sprung up to fill the gap and Llangennech’s good road links have also turned it into something of a commuter centre. It might be indicative that the ONS have included Llangennech within the Travel to Work Area for Swansea rather than nearby Llanelli.

Despite this Llangennech is part of the Westminster constituency based on Llanelli, which is held by the Labour Party. Dame Nia Griffith, a junior frontbencher with responsibilities for Wales and equalities, has been the local MP since 2005; but she was re-elected fairly narrowly for her sixth term in 2024 against competition from Reform UK and Plaid Cymru.

But when this ward went to the polls in May’s Senedd election as part of the Sir Gaerfyrddin constituency, Labour polled just 7.7% of the vote and were a long way off winning even one seat. Plaid Cymru topped the poll across the constituency, leading the Reform UK list by 43-33; those two parties shared the six seats evenly between themselves.

The Sir Gaerfyrddin constituency helpfully has the same boundaries as Carmarthenshire county council, which returned a bare majority of Plaid Cymru councillors in 2022: Plaid won 38 seats against 23 for Labour and 14 independents. A defection loss has since tipped the ruling Plaid group into a minority with 37 seats, while Reform UK took two by-elections off Labour last year - one of them here in Llangennech ward.

Before the establishment of the modern Carmarthenshire county council in 1996, Llangennech returned one member of Dyfed county council. Between 1977 and 1989 that councillor was Plaid Cymru’s Hywel Teifi Edwards, who is notable enough for Wikipedia. As well as his Welsh nationalism, Edwards was an academic who rose to become head of the Welsh Language department at University College of Swansea; he also wrote a number of books on historical subjects ranging from the Bryn Seion Presbyterian chapel in Llangennech to the history of the National Eisteddfod of Wales. He died in 2010 and so he did not live to see the disgrace of his son, the former BBC newsreader Huw Edwards.

Plaid Cymru continued to have the upper hand in Llangennech’s local elections into the early years of the 21st century, and it’s only in the last decade that their grip has slipped. The ward’s first Labour councillor this century was Gary Jones, who gained one of Llangennech’s two seats in 2017; in 2022 Labour won the second seat here, as the Labour slate defeated Plaid Cymru by 62-38 in a straight fight. On the same day the elections to Llangennech community council, which has the same boundaries as this ward, returned seven Labour and five Plaid Cymru councillors.

Labour councillor Gary Jones died in May 2025 provoking the first Llangennech ward by-election of this term, which was held on 7th August last year. It was a harbinger of things to come, with Labour falling to third place on 24% behind Plaid Cymru on 30% and Reform UK’s Carmelo Colasanto, who won the 2025 Llangennech by-election with 43% of the vote.

Carmelo Colasanto resigned his seat nine months later because he has now gone on to greater things. In May he was elected to the Senedd, from second place on the Reform UK list for Sir Gaerfyrddin. Of the eight new Reform UK MSs who were previously local councillors, Colasanto is the only one who won his council seat on the Reform UK ticket; the other seven were all elected as Conservative or independent councillors before defecting to their new party.

Defending the second Llangennech by-election of this term for Reform UK is Gavin Rashbrook, who is a sales consultant. Plaid Cymru are defending second place and hoping for more with their candidate Iwan Griffiths, who stood here in 2022 without success and was in an unwinnable position on the Plaid list for Sir Gaerfyrddin in May. Labour’s Jordan Sargent is back for another go after his third-place finish in last year’s by-election. That poll had an all-male ballot paper, and yet again no female candidates have been nominated in Llangennech: also standing here are Justin Griffiths for the Lib Dems, Craig Griffiths for the Conservatives, independent candidate Sean Hogan and Michael Willis of the Greens. Intending Conservative, Plaid Cymru and Lib Dem voters should check carefully which candidate called Griffiths they are putting their cross against.

Westminster constituency: Llanelli
Senedd constituency: Sir Gaerfyrddin
ONS Travel to Work Area: Swansea
Postcode districts: SA4, SA14

Craig Griffiths (C)
Iwan Griffiths (PC)
Justin Griffiths (LD)
Sean Hogan (Ind)
Gavin Rashbrook (RUK)
Jordan Sargent (Lab)
Michael Willis (Grn)

August 2025 result RUK 694 PC 489 Lab 380 LD 26 C 14 Gwlad 6
May 2022 result Lab 981/686 PC 590/587
Previous results in detail

Dowlais and Pant

Merthyr Tydfil council, Glamorgan; caused by the resignation of David Hughes.

We now travel east from the Llanelli area to reach an area which is synonymous with iron and steelmaking. In 1759 nine business partners established the Dowlais ironworks on a hillside to the east of Merthyr Tydfil, a location where the presence of all the required raw materials for ironworking - iron ore, limestone, and coal to power the furnaces - outweighed the disadvantages of the sloping site. John Josiah Guest became the majority owner in 1815 and rode the Industrial Revolution to build up one of the largest ironworks in the world: Dowlais won an enormous amount of work off the back of supplying the tracks for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1821, and by 1845 the site had 18 blast furnaces in operation and employed more than 7,000 men.

Following Sir John Josiah’s death control of the business passed to his widow Lady Charlotte Guest, a fascinating figure in her own right who had introduced welfare schemes for the workforce and went on to publish the first single-volume collection of the Mabinogion in Welsh and English, and to the works manager G T Clark who revitalised the Dowlais works by licensing the Bessemer process for steel production and developing the Goat Mill, at the time the most powerful rolling mill in the world. The Guest family eventually sold their interest in the Dowlais ironworks in 1899 to industrialist Arthur Keen, who merged it with the Midlands metalbashing firm of Nettlefolds three years later to form Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds.

Today GKN is still in business as a large British multinational company in the aerospace and automotive sectors - neither of which existed back in 1759, of course. In 2023 the firm’s parent company spun off GKN’s automotive and powder metallurgy business into a new firm, which took the name Dowlais Group after the the Dowlais Ironworks of all those years ago. Dowlais was listed on the London stock exchange, and it was a member of the FTSE 250 until it was taken over earlier this year by an American firm.

Meanwhile, on the eastern slopes above Merthyr not much is left of the Dowlais ironworks, which finally went cold in 1987. These days the main factories in Dowlais are in the food sector, with OP Chocolates and the St Merryn meat-packing plant being major employers. Mining and quarrying is also still a feature of the ward: part of the large Ffos-y-fran opencast coalmine is within the ward boundary, as are a number of quarries on the southern slopes of the Brecon Beacons. The A465 Heads of the Valleys Road links all this to the outside world, and long-running works to rebuild the road junction at Dowlais Top were completed last year. There is also some tourism here: a small part of the ward is within the Bannau Brycheiniog national park boundary, and the village of Pant is the southern terminus of the narrow-gauge Brecon Mountain Railway.

Sir John Josiah Guest was the first MP for Merthyr Tydfil, which was enfranchised by the First Reform Act in 1832 and increased to two MPs by the Second Reform in 1868. One of them was the first Labour Party leader Keir Hardie, who served the town from 1900 until his death in 1915. The Merthyr Tydfil parliamentary borough of 1832-1918 was larger than the present council area, as it also included Aberdare and Mountain Ash in the Cynon valley to the west; in fact, its boundaries were not that dissimilar to the Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare seat created by the 2024 redistribution, although that seat only has one MP. He is Labour backbencher Gerald Jones, who was first elected in 2015 for the predecessor seat of Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney.

Jones defeated the previous Cynon Valley MP Beth Winter for the 2024 Labour selection here. Winter subsequently quit the Labour Party, and after some involvement with Your Party she was an independent candidate in the 2026 Senedd election in Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr, polling 3.2% which was nowhere near enough to win a seat. Plaid Cymru topped the poll in this constituency in May, polling 39% and winning 3 seats; Reform UK won 31% and 2 seats, and Labour scraped into the final seat with 13% of the vote.

Not that this has much relevance in the context of elections to Merthyr Tydfil council, which have been closely fought for many years between Labour and independent candidates. The town’s ward boundaries haven’t seen any change since the 1980s, and the only effect of the 2022 boundary review here was to rename two wards and to remove a councillor from three wards which were oversized: Dowlais ward was affected by both of these changes, as Pant was added to the ward name and its representation was cut from four councillors to three. The cut in the council size from 33 councillors to 30 might not have been a wise choice, as was demonstrated when the 2022 Merthyr elections returned a tie with 15 Labour and 15 independent councillors; the present administration is a coalition of Labour and some of the independents.

The renamed Dowlais and Pant returned three independent councillors in 2022 by the wide margin of 64-28 over Labour. One of them was David Hughes, who was re-elected for his second term of office having gained his seat from Labour in 2017. In 2025 Hughes joined Reform UK, and last month he was elected to the Senedd in second place on the Reform UK list for Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr.

Reform UK will want to convert their defection gain into a by-election gain here, and they have selected Terry Donegan. One new independent candidate has come forward: Nick Meaney is a former Army military intelligence veteran who now works in cybersecurity and property development. Labour have selected Dean Barrett, who gives an address in the ward. Also standing are James Cushen for Plaid Cymru, Janeen Davies for the Greens and Roxanne Richardson for the Conservatives.

Westminster constituency: Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare
Senedd constituency: Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr
ONS Travel to Work Area: Merthyr Tydfil
Postcode district: CF48

Dean Barrett (Lab)
James Cushen (PC)
Janeen Davies (Grn)
Terry Donegan (RUK)
Nick Meaney (Ind)
Roxanne Richardson (C)

May 2022 result Ind 1120/951/803/226 Lab 485/480/470 PC 147
Previous results in detail

Treorchy

Rhondda Cynon Taf council, Glamorgan; caused by the resignation of Plaid Cymru councillor Sera Evans.

Our last Welsh by-election today lies in the Rhondda valley. Treorchy was one of the many towns in the Valleys of South Wales created by the coal mining industry: the first colliery here, at Abergorki, opened for business in 1859, and by 1875 the street pattern of the town was well advanced. But all of Treorchy’s pits had closed by the end of the 1970s, and these days retail is the town’s largest economic sector: in 2020 Treorchy was named UK High Street of the Year, with the judges noting the town’s large number of independent shops, so the local businesses must be doing something right. Treorchy and Ynyswen railway stations are on the recently-electrified Rhondda branch of the Valley Lines network, while the village of Cwmparc lies on a side valley leading up to the mountain pass at Bwlch y Clawdd.

The Bwlch summit is one of only two road links between the Rhondda and the Ogmore valley, which were combined for Parliamentary purposes in 2024 to elect a single MP. This is Labour’s Sir Chris Bryant, a junior trade minister who had represented the predecessor seat of Rhondda since 2001. In the Senedd Treorchy is part of the Afan Ogwr Rhondda constituency, which in 2026 gave 37% of the vote and 3 seats to Plaid Cymru, 34% and 2 seats to Reform UK, and 17% and 1 seat to Labour: the Labour MS Huw Irranca-Davies is now the Llywydd or presiding officer of the Senedd, while the outgoing Labour MS for Rhondda Buffy Williams was ranked second on the Labour list and lost her seat.

Top of the Plaid Cymru list here in May was Sera Evans, who is originally from Cwmparc and was a long-serving councillor for Treorchy: she was first elected here in 2008, when she was 26 years old. In elections to the Labour-controlled Rhondda Cynon Taf council Treorchy has often leaned towards Plaid Cymru, but at the most recent poll in 2022 - at which a boundary review cut Treorchy ward down from three councillors to two - the ward gave 55% to Labour and 39% to the Plaid slate. Much of the Labour lead was a personal vote for their main candidate Bob Harris, and Sera Evans was able to hold Treorchy’s other seat for Plaid.

Evans is off to the Senedd and the defending Plaid Cymru candidate is Richard Clarke, who came to prominence in the area last year for leading the campaign to remove a gate which had closed off public access to Cwmparc forest - a row which inevitably was dubbed by the local press as “Gategate”. The Labour candidate is David Morris, who previously contested this ward in 2017. Also standing are Cerys Walker for the Conservatives, Daniel Buck for the Greens and Craig Ford - who was a Conservative candidate in the last two Rhondda Cynon Taf elections - for Reform UK.

Westminster constituency: Rhondda and Ogmore
Senedd constituency: Afan Ogwr Rhondda
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cardiff
Postcode districts: CF42, CF43

Daniel Buck (Grn)
Richard Clarke (PC)
Craig Ford (RUK)
David Morris (Lab)
Cerys Walker (C)

May 2022 result Lab 1407/978 PC 1004/998 C 139
Previous results in detail

Dawlish South West

Teignbridge council, Devon; caused by the death of Liberal Democrat councillor Mike James.

Moving into England, the summer holiday season is nearly upon us, the sun has got his hat on and that means boom time for the south-west. The Devon town of Dawlish will expect to get a fair chunk of that business thanks to its location on the English Riviera coast, around 12 miles south of Exeter, and on the Great Western railway line which takes a spectacular course along the seafront: overlooking the beach here, tunnelling through the cliffs between Dawlish and Teignmouth there.

The railway alignment here is the outcome of one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s more harebrained schemes, in which trains between Exeter and Newton Abbot were to be drawn by atmospheric pressure from a vacuum pipe between the tracks. This did actually operate for a period in 1847-48, but was quickly abandoned due to technical problems. The atmospheric scheme required level track, which forced a course close to sea level which has proven to be vulnerable to the elements, and part of the line at Dawlish was washed away by a storm in 2014. The constant battle here against coastal erosion has raised questions over the long-term sustainability of the line through Dawlish, which is the only railway connection to Plymouth and Cornwall.

Dawlish South West ward covers the southern half of the town together with the parish of Ashcombe to the west. It has returned the Liberal Democrat slate at both elections since the current boundaries were introduced in 2019, but this masks some turmoil in the ranks: the ruling Lib Dem group on the council had split in the 2019-23 term, and outgoing Lib Dem councillor for this ward John Petherick sought re-election in 2023 as an independent candidate without success. Shares of the vote here in the 2023 Teignbridge council election were 39% for the Lib Dems, 27% for independents and 23% for the Conservatives.

Following that election Martin Wrigley became leader of the council, and he kept that position until he was elected to Westminster in 2023 as the Lib Dem MP for the local seat of Newton Abbot. Wrigley has kept his Teignbridge council seat but he stood down last year from Devon county council, where he had represented Dawlish since 2021; the Lib Dems held that seat narrowly against a challenge from Reform UK. The Liberal Democrats also hold the Exminster and Haldon county division, which covers the Ashcombe part of this ward.

This by-election will replace Lib Dem councillor Mike James, who died in April at the age of 89. Despite his advanced age James was in his first term as a Teignbridge councillor, but he did have previous local government experience as a Torbay councillor from 2003 to 2007. He had been a footballer in his youth with Cardiff City, and it was his work as a football coach that initially brought him to Devon.

Defending this seat for the Lib Dems is another candidate with previous local government experience outside Teignbridge district - in fact, one who is notable enough for Wikipedia. Pat Hackett is a former leader of Wirral council in Merseyside, where he was a Labour councillor for New Brighton ward from 1994 to 2008 and again from 2011 until his resignation in 2020; he was the mayor of Wirral in 2016-17, and he led a minority Labour administration from 2019 to 2020. Hackett has now retired to another seaside resort in Devon and joined the Lib Dems, and he was elected to Dawlish town council earlier this year in an unopposed by-election. This time there is no independent candidate standing, so a fair number of votes are up for grabs. The Conservative candidate is Joe Dagger, who stood in another Teignbridge council by-election in Teignmouth West ward last year. Also on the ballot are Reform UK’s Sue Whiteing and Scott Williams of the Green Party.

Westminster constituency: Newton Abbot
Devon county council division: Dawlish (part of Dawlish parish), Exminster and Haldon (Ashcombe parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Exeter
Postcode district: EX7

Joe Dagger (C)
Pat Hackett (LD)
Sue Whiteing (RUK)
Scott Williams (Grn)

May 2023 result LD 767/553 Ind 537/417 C 453 South Devon Alliance 223
May 2019 result LD 722/702 C 561/518 Grn 405 UKIP 277
Previous results in detail

Goldsmid

Brighton and Hove council, East Sussex; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Jackie O’Quinn.

We stay on the south coast for our next poll, which is in the town of Hove Actually. It’s here that we find the Goldsmid ward, whose name is a reference to a prominent Jewish family who owned and developed much of Hove in the 19th century.

The Goldsmids had made their fortune in stockbroking and London finance, and the first of them to be associated with Hove was Isaac Goldsmid who was a director of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. Isaac was the first Jew to receive a UK hereditary title - he was made a baronet in 1843 - and he was one of the key figures in the eventual lifting of disabilities on British Jews in the mid-19th century. Several of his descendants went on to serve as MPs. In 1830 Sir Isaac Goldsmid had bought the Wick Estate, 250 acres of land in Hove and nearby Preston, and he had a large house built for the use of him and his family called Wick Hall, to the north of Brunswick Square.

The modern-day Wick Hall is a block of flats close to St Ann’s Well Gardens, which were originally laid out by the Goldsmids around a mineral spring and are now in municipal ownership. This is the largest open space in the modern Goldsmid ward, with second place going to the County Ground which has been the home of Sussex county cricket club since 1872. Also here is Hove railway station, a junction station on the West Coastway line, which makes Goldsmid ward commutable to London. The ward’s census return does have something of an educated commuter demographic.

This area is in the parliamentary seat of Hove and Portslade, whose MP is a prominent figure. Peter Kyle, who gained what was then called the Hove constituency from the Conservatives in 2015 against the national trend, has sat in Cabinet throughout the Starmer administration: he currently holds the posts of business and trade secretary and President of the Board of Trade.

The city of Brighton and Hove was gained by Labour in the 2023 local elections, after a long period of no overall control where sizeable Conservative, Green and Labour groups were unable to make sufficient headway against each other to get an overall majority. Goldsmid ward was closely fought between the Conservatives and Labour until a July 2009 by-election was gained by the Greens, after which it turned into a fight between Labour and the Greens. So the big Labour win here in 2023 - 47% for Labour, 27% for the Greens, 10% for the Conservatives - is a bit out of kilter with previous results, although ward boundary changes for the 2023 election complicate this.

This by-election is to replace Labour councillor Jackie O’Quinn, a retired teacher who was first elected here in 2015 and served as mayor of Brighton and Hove in 2023-24. O’Quinn, who had left the Labour Party earlier this year, stood down from the council at the start of May to focus on family, friends and other interests.

Defending this seat for Labour is Philip Berman, a former TV producer who now makes and edits podcasts. The Greens have already gained two Brighton and Hove by-elections in this term, including in the neighbouring Brunswick and Adelaide ward two years ago, and they will be hoping for more with their candidate Nadia Barton Ahmad who is coming to the end of her degree in global development at the University of York. Younger still is the Conservatives’ Louis Bird, an 18-year-old who is currently taking his A-levels at BHASVIC, the Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College. We also have candidacies from Kim Leyland-Walker for the Lib Dems, Glenn Kelly for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition ad Luke Willmoth for Reform UK.

Parliamentary constituency: Hove and Portslade Actually
ONS Travel to Work Area: Brighton
Postcode districts: BN1, BN3

Nadia Barton Ahmad (Grn)
Philip Berman (Lab)
Louis Bird (C)
Glenn Kelly (TUSC)
Kim Leyland-Walker (LD)
Luke Willmoth (RUK)

May 2023 result Lab 2426/2421/2261 Grn 1369/1211/1085 C 498/481/456 Brighton and Hove Ind 490 LD 350/342/274
Previous results in detail

North Acton

Ealing council, London; caused by the resignation of Green Party councillor Simon Anthony.

Our next five polls are in Greater London, and four of them have been triggered by the departure of Green Party councillors who were elected in May but turned out to be unable or unwilling to serve. First up is the poll to replace Simon Anthony, a newly-elected Green councillor in Ealing who resigned on health grounds just after his election.

Anthony was elected in North Acton ward, which is centred on the Underground station of that name: this is the junction between the Central line’s two western branches, to West Ruislip and to Ealing Broadway. The ward also includes the Elizabeth line station at Acton Main Line; other Underground stations at West Acton (Central line) and Park Royal (Piccadilly line) are on the ward’s western boundary, while the eastern end of the ward is a construction site for High Speed 2 whose Old Oak Common station will be just outside the ward boundary when it finally opens for business. North Acton’s good road and rail freight connections - the A40 Western Avenue runs through the ward - have made it an attractive location for industry, and much of the northern half of this ward is occupied by the massive Park Royal industrial estate.

North Acton is part of the Ealing Central and Acton constituency, which has been represented since 2015 by Labour backbencher Rupa Huq - sister of the former Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq. Labour also run Ealing council which was one of their relative high points in the 2026 London local elections, with the party retaining a large majority here while other London boroughs fell like ninepins. In the final reckoning Labour won 46 seats to 13 Lib Dems, 5 Greens, 5 Conservatives and an independent.

That’s not to say that the election in Ealing wasn’t all plain sailing for Labour. The party still lost 13 seats, and one of them was in North Acton ward which split its representation. Labour finished with 30% of the vote and held two of the three seats they were defending, the Green Party polled 28% and elected Simon Anthony, the Conservatives (who had been a distant second here in 2022) scored 13% and Reform UK finished on 12%.

Defending this by-election for the Green Party is Marijn van de Geer, who stood in the neighbouring East Acton ward in May; Geer was the Green candidate for the Ealing and Hillingdon constituency in the 2021 London Assembly election, and she has previously been a prominent figure in Extinction Rebellion. The Labour candidate Gareth Shaw is a former Ealing councillor for Walpole ward, who sought re-election in South Acton last month and was defeated there. The Conservatives have reselected Sally Gorman who stood here in May. Reform UK have nominated Jonathan Notley, who contested North Greenford ward last month. Also on this ballot are Abdi Ahmed for the Lib Dems and Craig Smith for the Ealing Community Independents, which is the local Your Party franchise.

Parliamentary constituency: Ealing Central and Acton
London Assembly constituency: Ealing and Hillingdon
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: NW10, W3

Abdi Ahmed (LD)
Marijn Geer (Grn)
Sally Gorman (C)
Jonathan Notley (RUK)
Gareth Shaw (Lab)
Craig Smith (Ealing Community Ind)

May 2026 result Lab 1356/1296/1186 Grn 1298/1051/1001 C 592/551/502 RUK 530/496/449 LD 511/396/386 Rejoin EU 201 TUSC 83
May 2022 result Lab 1872/1544/1512 C 717/674/666 Grn 669 LD 460/377/346 Ind Network 223/153 TUSC 110
Previous results in detail

Dalston; and
Hackney Central

Hackney council, London; caused respectively by the election of Zoë Garbett as mayor of the borough and by the disqualification of James Tilden. Both were Green Party councillors.

We now travel to the scene of one of London Labour’s worst results in May - the borough of Hackney, where the Green Party convincingly won the elected mayoralty and overall control of the council. The new mayor of Hackney is Zoë Garbett, and one of today’s by-elections is a result of her being too successful in May’s elections. As well as defeating Labour’s Caroline Woodley in the mayoral election by 47-36, Garbett was also re-elected as a councillor for Dalston ward by the massive margin of 60-29. She can’t hold both positions at once, because that would give her two votes on the council - one as mayor, one as a councillor - so under the rules Garbett’s councillor seat was vacated and a by-election triggered for Dalston ward.

The other Hackney by-election today is a result of a failure in the Green Party’s candidate vetting process. James Tilden, who was elected on the Green ticket in Hackney Central ward, was not eligible to stand for election to Hackney council because he works for the council as a primary school teacher. Drawing a wage from a council which you sit on is an obvious conflict of interest.

The returning officer does not have the power to reject nominations because they suspect that the candidate might be disqualified. Instead, the responsibility lies on the candidate and their party not to put themselves in positions like this. Tilden, as part of his nomination papers, will have signed a declaration stating that to the best of his knowledge he was not disqualified from being elected. His election agent should have been experienced enough to see that Tilden’s employment might be a problem, and questions should have been asked which would have revealed his disqualification to the party.

Instead we have ended up with the situation that the Hackney Greens have allowed somebody to stand who shouldn’t have been on the ballot in the first place, the electors have voted for that person to take office, and the electors are now being told that they got it wrong and a new by-election will have to be held at a cost of five figures of council taxpayers’ money. It does not reflect well on the Hackney Greens that they allowed this to happen. This is not a new situation - all major political parties have cocked up like this at some point - but it’s still an inconvenient and wholly avoidable mess for everyone involved. And unfortunately it isn’t the only Green vetting failure this year, as we shall see in the next section.

The two Hackney wards up for election today border each other and are linked together by the Overground. Hackney Central ward is centred on Hackney Downs railway station, a junction station on the Weaver line which is linked to Hackney Central railway station on the Mildmay line. The latter station is convenient for Hackney Town Hall, a striking 1930s Art Deco building, and for the adjacent Hackney Empire theatre which has been here since 1901 and is still going strong. Stand-up comedy is particularly well represented on the Empire’s list of future performances.

Dalston ward lies one stop to the west along the Mildmay line, with Overground stations at Dalston Kingsland on that line and Dalston Junction on the Windrush line. At the eastern end of the ward we find Fassett Square, which was the inspiration for Albert Square in EastEnders; the show’s designers also based Walford’s market on the street market at Ridley Road in Dalston. This area once had a large Jewish population, which led to occasional violent confrontations in the 1960s when Ridley Road was a meeting-point for neo-Nazis.

Judaism is not a major feature of Dalston’s census return now, but the ward is demographically extreme in other ways. In the 2021 census it ranked 4th in England and Wales for residents working in professional, scientific and technical activities (20.9%), 5th for residents born in Oceania (3.6%) and 9th for residents aged between 30 and 44 (36.0%); there were also top 100 returns for households with no access to a car (73.0%), residents with degree-level qualifications (65.7%), residents in lower managerial, administrative and professional occupations (28.2%) and residents born in the EU-14 states (12.4%). Hackney Central ward has top 100 returns for in most of the above categories, and also ranks 5th for residents born in British overseas territories (0.5%, 5th) and in the top 100 for the arts, entertainment and recreation sector (7.1%), socially-rented households (48.1%), Black population (26.8%) and households which are flats or apartments (86.9%).

Both of these wards are within the Hackney South and Shoreditch constituency, whose Labour MP since 2005 has been Dame Meg Hillier who holds the powerful Commons position of chair of the Treasury select committee. Hillier had previously served from 2000 to 2004 as the first London Assembly member for the North East constituency, which takes in Islington and Waltham Forest boroughs as well as Hackney. These wards both swung strongly to the Green Party in the 2026 Hackney council elections, with the Green lead over Labour being 60-29 in Dalston as already noted - although some of this was a personal vote for Zoë Garbett who was a long way ahead of her running-mate - and 47-29 in Hackney Central.

In the Dalston by-election to fill Mayor Garbett’s council seat, the defending Green candidate is Manal Massalha who has a PhD in sociology from the LSE: according to her website, she is a social documentary photographer and an urban ethnographer. Labour have selected Grace Adebayo, who was a councillor for this ward until she lost her seat in May and is now trying to get back at the first opportunity. Also standing in Dalston are Peter Munro for the Lib Dems, Jerry Sulaiman for the Conservatives and Ivon Fleming for Reform UK.

The Green defence in the more difficult Hackney Central ward falls to Noah Birksted-Breen, who runs a theatre company and teaches international relations at Queen Mary University of London; in May he contested Springfield ward. He is up against another former Labour councillor who lost their seat in this ward in May, Sheila Suso-Runge. The Hackney Central ballot also features Ken Gabbott-Rolph for the Lib Dems, Vahid Almasi for Reform UK and Serban Bay for the Conservatives.

Dalston

Parliamentary constituency: Hackney South and Shoreditch
London Assembly constituency: North East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: E8, N16

Grace Adebayo (Lab)
Ivon Fleming (RUK)
Manal Massalha (Grn)
Peter Munro (LD)
Jerry Sulaiman (C)

May 2026 result Grn 1862/1394 Lab 897/635 LD 140 C 102/72 RUK 87
May 2022 result Grn 1446/920 Lab 1199/727 LD 138 Ind Network 89/87
May 2018 result Lab 1237/978 Grn 957/545 Women’s Equality Party 314 LD 154/99 C 98/93
May 2014 result Lab 1173/1067 Grn 664/489 LD 170/146 C 139/101 UKIP 90
Previous results in detail

Hackney Central

Parliamentary constituency: Hackney South and Shoreditch
London Assembly constituency: North East
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: E5, E8

Vahid Almasi (RUK)
Serban Bay (C)
Noah Birksted-Breen (Grn)
Ken Gabbott-Rolph (LD)
Sheila Suso-Runge (Lab)

May 2026 result Grn 2061/1818/1681 Lab 1295/1237/1176 LD 317/294 Ind 242 RUK 203 C 202/174/127 TUSC 73/59
May 2022 result Lab 2214/1994/1877 Grn 651/561/519 LD 268/170/158 Ind Network 214/189/173
May 2018 result Lab 2475/2142/1917 Grn 629/576/438 LD 256/215//190 C 186/177/139
July 2016 by-election Lab 1354 Grn 178 LD 113 C 101 Ind 55
May 2014 result Lab 2094/2082/1916 Grn 751/738/717 LD 240/202 C 190/184/167
Previous results in detail

Northumberland Park; and
Woodside

Haringey council, London; caused respectively by the disqualification of Green Party councillor Jayon Henriques and by the resignation of Labour councillor Hasret Bozdorgan.

The latest in our series of by-elections caused by London Green councillors being returned while ineligible comes in Haringey, where we have two crucial polls taking place. One is to replace that disqualified Green, Jayon Henriques. The reason for Henriques’ ineligibility has not been disclosed, but the rumour this column heard is that a previous criminal conviction is involved: persons who have been sentenced to three months or more in prison within the previous five years, including suspended sentences, are barred from being councillors. To repeat my comments above, this is a vetting failure by the Haringey Greens who should have picked up on Henriques’ disqualification (whatever it was) well before his nomination papers went in. The other by-election is to fill a seat vacated by Labour’s Hasret Bozdorgan, who handed in her resignation within two weeks of her election for personal reasons which apparently transpired after polling day.

These by-elections are crucial. The 2026 Haringey council election saw Labour lose control of the borough, and the Green party finished one seat short of a majority on 28 seats. Labour won 21 and the Lib Dems 8. Both of the wards up for election today were closely fought in May, returning two Labour councillors and one Green each. If the Greens win both of today’s Haringey by-elections, that will give them a council majority.

The Green defence is in Northumberland Park ward which lies in the Lea valley on the eastern edge of the borough. The ward is centred on Northumberland Park railway station, which is served by local trains on the Lea Valley line between Stratford and Meridian Water. There are no Tube stations here but London Underground have a presence nonetheless: the depot for Victoria Line trains is at Northumberland Park, this being the only place where you see a Victoria Line train above ground. The ward’s western boundary is the High Road in Tottenham, and the ward includes the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium which is England’s third-largest football stadium. As well as Spurs, this is the home of the UK’s NFL American football games and it will host five games at the forthcoming Euro 2028 football tournament.

At the far end of White Hart Lane we reach Woodside ward, which is centred on Woodside Park and covers the northern part of Wood Green. There is no wood here so do not be fooled by the ward name, but there is quite a lot of green space in various public gardens and recreation grounds. Municipal buildings here include Haringey civic centre, which was built for the old Wood Green borough council in the late 1950s and is Grade II listed for its Scandinavian-influenced design. Wood Green underground station, on the Piccadilly line, lies on the ward’s southern boundary.

In the 2021 census Woodside ward made the top 20 wards in England and Wales for the White Other ethnic group (34.0%), and was in the top 100 for residents born in Bulgaria or Romania (8.1%), in Malta or Cyprus (2.1%) or in non-EU European states (9.1%). Northumberland Park also scores in the top 100 for residents born in those countries, but it is multicultural in a different way: it is in the top 20 wards for Black population (36.4%) and makes the top 100 for residents born in Africa (13.6%), the Americas and Caribbean (9.4%) or in British overseas territories (0.3%). Northumberland Park also ranks 3rd of all the wards in England and Wales for residents working in the administrative and support service sector (12.9%).

Since 2024 Woodside ward has been part of the Southgate and Wood Green parliamentary seat, which has been represented since 2024 by Labour backbencher Bambos Charalambous. The MP for Northumberland Park ward is rather more high-profile: David Lammy, who holds the posts of deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and justice secretary, has represented the Tottenham constituency since he won a by-election in 2000.

One factor in the Greens falling short of a majority on Haringey council this year is that they had an electoral pact in three wards with the Haringey Socialist Alliance, the local Your Party franchise. The latter party was built around two councillors who had defected from Labour in the 2022-26 term, and going into the 2026 election they had a joint group on the council with a Labour to Green defector and a Green by-election winner. The resulting electoral pact affected three wards where the Greens stood one candidate and the Haringey Socialist Alliance ran two in what was effectively a joint slate. One of the wards subjected to this was Northumberland Park, where the topline voting figures ended up as 32% and two seats to the Labour slate, 29% and one seat to the single Green candidate Henriques, and 21% to the two-person Haringey Socialist Alliance slate. There were no such shenanigans in Woodside ward which simply turned in a close result: 38% and two seats for Labour, 37% and one seat for the Greens, and 10% for the Lib Dems who were best of the rest.

Defending the Northumberland Park by-election for the Greens is Rose Dakuo, a community organiser who came to the UK as a refugee from the Ivory Coast in 1998. Labour’s Ajda Ovat is trying to get straight back on the council after losing her seat here in May: she had represented Northumberland Park ward from 2022 to 2026 and had sat on the council’s cabinet. This time there is no Haringey Socialist Alliance candidate so a fair number of votes are up for grabs. Also standing in Northumberland Park ward are Kenny Ajao for the Conservatives, Ian Sinclair for Reform UK and David Schmitz for the Lib Dems.

Another former Haringey Labour councillor trying to get his seat back today is Thayahlan Iyngkaran, an NHS radiologist who is the defending Labour candidate in the Woodside by-election: Iyngkaran previously represented this ward from 2022 to 2026. Here the Greens have selected Elara Shurety, who is a PhD student at King’s College London studying damp and mould in the context of housing regeneration. The Lib Dems’ Rakeebah Rahim, who is Guyanan by birth, is trying to get into elected politics after she recently called time on a long and successful legal career. The Woodside ward ballot is completed by Mikeleno Fureraj for the Conservatives and Ruth Price for Reform UK.

Northumberland Park

Parliamentary constituency: Tottenham
London Assembly constituency: Enfield and Haringey
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: N17, N18

Kenny Ajao (C)
Rose Dakuo (Grn)
Ajda Ovat (Lab)
David Schmitz (Grn)
Ian Sinclair (RUK)

May 2026 result Lab 1238/1237/1022 Grn 1135 Haringey Socialist Alliance 823/622 C 270/241/227 RUK 231 LD 182/170/125
May 2022 result Lab 1751/1748/1658 Grn 307 C 264/234/187 LD 184/161/161
Previous results in detail

Woodside

Parliamentary constituency: Southgate and Wood Green
London Assembly constituency: Enfield and Haringey
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode districts: N17, N22

Mikeleno Fureraj (C)
Thayahlan Iyngkaran (Lab)
Ruth Price (RUK)
Rakeebah Rahim (LD)
Elara Shurety (Grn)

May 2026 result Lab 1434/1337/1151 Grn 1394/1334/1158 LD 388/355/293 C 316/264/246 RUK 266/240/200
May 2022 result Lab 2077/2073/1770 Grn 711 LD 454/440/402 C 373/291
Previous results in detail

Bushey Park

Hertsmere council, Hertfordshire; caused by the death of Liberal Democrat councillor Shailain Shah.

Staying within the M25, we come to the Hertfordshire town of Bushey which lies south-west of Watford, just outside the Greater London boundary and close to the M1 motorway. This is a middle-class outer suburb of London, although it lacks a railway connection to the capital - Bushey railway station is in fact in Watford, and a proposed extension of the London Underground Northern Line to Bushey Heath was abandoned following the outbreak of the Second World War and the subsequent designation of the area around the proposed terminus as greenbelt. In the 2021 census Bushey Park made the top 25 wards in England and Wales for residents working in real estate activities (4.4%) and the top 15 wards for Judaism (28.2%).

The park in this ward is the King George Recreation Ground located at the centre of the ward’s housing, while much of the south-west corner of Bushey Park ward is occupied by the private St Margaret’s School. There is no actual park called Bushey Park. There is Bushy Park, the location of the first Parkrun, but that is not here: it is in south-west London, so getting the two mixed up is not advisable.

Bushey lies at the western end of Hertsmere district, which takes in a number of towns just off the northern edge of Greater London. This has the same boundaries as the Hertsmere parliamentary seat represented since 2015 by the former deputy Prime Minister Sir Oliver Dowden. He had a large majority in 2024, but a year previously the Conservatives had lost control of Hertsmere council to a a Labour/Lib Dem coalition. The latest council composition has 12 Labour and 7 Lib Dem councillors against 14 Conservatives, 3 councillors in the Hertsmere First group and 2 Reform UK defectors, so a Conservative or Reform UK gain in this by-election would tip the ruling coalition into a minority.

The Lib Dems won three of Bushey’s four wards in 2023 for a total of nine seats, including Bushey Park ward which they gained from the Conservatives by 52-40. The most recent poll here was the 2025 Hertfordshire county council election, in which the Conservatives narrowly held off a Liberal Democrat challenge in Bushey South division.

This by-election is to replace Shailain Shah of the Liberal Democrats, who died in April while on holiday in Japan with his wife and friends. Shah was in his first term on the council, where he brought his long professional experience as a financial adviser to the town hall as chair of the council’s audit committee.

Defending this seat for the Lib Dems is Annabel Hennessy, a retired doctor who should perform better here than her last-place performance in last year’s Borehamwood South by-election. The Conservatives have reselected Linda Silver, who was previously a councillor for this ward from 2008 until she lost her seat in 2023. Electors here also have the option of voting for Labour’s Robin Short, Reform UK’s Katie Elman or the Greens’ John Humphries.

Parliamentary constituency: Hertsmere
Hertfordshire county council division: Bushey South
ONS Travel to Work Area: London
Postcode district: WD23

Katie Elman (RUK)
Annabel Hennessy (LD)
John Humphries (Grn)
Robin Short (Lab)
Linda Silver (C)

May 2023 result LD 1225/1184/1068 C 925/873/840 Lab 188/155/140
May 2019 result C 1241/1231/1153 LD 327/296/290 Lab 309/286/245
Previous results in detail

Stort Valley

Uttlesford council, Essex; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Janice Loughlin.

There is a village in Essex called Ugley. It has a Women’s Institute.

Unfortunately the Ugley WI got tired of the jokes and they eventually changed their name to the “Women’s Institute Ugley Branch”. The annual Ugley Farmers Market, however, is still going strong; as is the Ugley Village Hall, which is one of the four polling stations for today’s Uttlesford council by-election in Stort Valley ward. According to the notice of poll, there are 395 Ugley electors.

The Stort is a minor river which rises in eastern Hertfordshire and flows south through north-western Essex to meet the Lea at Hoddesdon. It is named after the town of Bishop’s Stortford, not the other way round as 16th-century cartographers assumed. The Stort Valley ward covers four parishes to the north of Bishop’s Stortford, the largest of which is Manuden; three of these parishes are actually in the valley, while Ugley lies to the east on the old road between London and Cambridge.

Stort Valley ward is covered by the North West Essex constituency represented by the Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch. The latest election here was only last month as part of the Stansted division of Essex county council, which was retained by the Conservatives on new boundaries.

This area is part of the Uttlesford district of Essex, which is named after an ancient hundred that once covered the north-west corner of the county. Uttlesford council has been run since 2019 by a residents’ party, the Residents for Uttlesford, who have recently fallen into a minority on the council as a result of defection losses. However, in Stort Valley ward the Residents have given a free run to veteran Liberal Democrat councillor Janice Loughlin, who was first elected here in an April 2000 by-election and had continuous service from then until she resigned last month on health grounds; she is being treated for cancer. Loughlin was last re-elected in 2023 with a 58-28 lead over the Conservatives. By a curious coincidence, in both the 2019 and 2023 elections in Stort Valley the same total number of votes was cast (635); not only that, but the Conservative candidates polled exactly the same number of votes on each occasion, 176. Presumably this wasn’t the same 176 people.

Defending that big Lib Dem lead from 2023 in this by-election is Paul Bawlett, who teaches children with special needs and gives an address in Farnham within this ward. The Conservative candidate is George Braeckman, a young farmer who is a parish councillor in the neighbouring parish of Stansted Mountfitchet. Reform UK’s Philip Hoy, who was the runner-up in the county council election here last month, completes the ballot.

Parliamentary constituency: North West Essex
Essex county council division: Stansted
ONS Travel to Work Area: Cambridge
Postcode districts: CB11, CM22, CM23

Paul Bawlett (LD)
George Braeckman (C)
Philip Hoy (RUK)

May 2023 result LD 366 C 176 Lab 57 RUK 36
May 2019 result LD 459 C 176
May 2015 result LD 639 C 551
Previous results in detail

Roman Bank and Peckover

Cambridgeshire county council; caused by the disqualification of Reform UK councillor Andy Osborn.

We now open the Councillors Behaving Badly file to come to the second, and definitely the most controversial, of this week’s Reform UK defences. The setting is the Fens of northern Cambridgeshire, a low-lying area which has been reclaimed from the marshes and which was once subject to flooding, and the Roman Bank is an earthwork just to the north of Wisbech which protected the parishes of Leverington and Newton-in-the-Isle. It was built as a sea defence, but the sea is now a long way away. Historians and archaeologists have found nothing to suggest that the Roman Bank has anything to do with the Romans.

Meanwhile the name Peckover is a tribute to the Wisbech Quaker banking family of that name. Alexander Peckover, who entered the House of Lords in 1907 as the first Lord Peckover, was a partner of the Peckover Bank which ended up as part of the Barclays empire, while his sister Priscilla was a noted pacifist who was nominated on several occasions for the Nobel Peace Prize. They lived at the 18th-century Bank House, located in Wisbech on the North Brink which is the northern bank of the River Nene. In 1948 the Peckover family gave Bank House to the National Trust, who have opened it to the public under the name of Peckover House and Garden. Not far away along the North Brink is Wisbech Town Hall, where the town council still use the ceremonial mace presented by Alexander Peckover to the old Wisbech borough council.

The town council meetings are presided over by the mayor of Wisbech, who in 2024-25 was Sidney Imafidon. He is a Nigerian by birth who worked all over the world before coming to the UK in 1995. After some years driving minicabs in London and working as a cleaner on the London Underground, Imafidon settled in Wisbech in 2018 and built up a property portfolio by buying, renovating and letting out derelict buildings.

In April 2025 there was an unsavoury incident between Imafidon and Reform UK supporters in the run-up to the Cambridgeshire county council elections. A number of Reform UK organisers including Andy Osborn, who ran the North East Cambridgeshire branch of the party and was standing in the election for Roman Bank and Peckover division, were campaigning in the Wisbech marketplace on 11th April. Questions were raised as to whether they had a licence for a stall and whether it was being used for political purposes, and Imafidon asked the Reform UK supporters to move. In the resulting exchange Osborn allegedly asked Imafidon to “speak English”. Imafidon is black. This did not go down well.

Two weeks later Osborn was at a postal vote verification session alongside Samantha Hoy, who was seeking re-election as the Conservative county councillor for Wisbech East, and her party colleague Steven Tierney. They got into an argument, with Osborn telling the court that Hoy had said to him “Oh, you can hear now there is not a black man in the room”.

Later that day, Andy Osborn posted on Facebook:

“Samantha Hoy worked in the care industry but allegedly was sacked for fraud no wonder Wisbech is in such a state. Reform UK will fix it.”

Let the record show that Samantha Hoy still works in the care industry to this day, she has never been sacked and she has never been accused of fraud. Hoy was rightly outraged at what Osborn had written, responding online that the claims were “an absolute lie and extremely defamatory and damaging”. She also reported the matter to Cambridgeshire police.

Samantha Hoy was ultimately re-elected as the Cambridgeshire county councillor for Wisbech East division. Andy Osborn also won his seat in Roman Bank and Peckover division, which combines Wisbech west of the River Nene with a number of other Fenland parishes, including Cambridgeshire’s northernmost parish of Tydd St Giles. He polled 45% of the vote, to 29% for the defeated Conservative county councillor Simon King and 19% for the Liberal Democrats.

In the 2023 Fenland council election the Lib Dems had carried Parson Drove and Wisbech St Mary ward, part of which is in this division, with the Conservatives winning the other Fenland council seats in the area. The local Conservative MP is Steve Barclay who has represented the North East Cambridgeshire seat since 2010; Barclay was a high-profile Cabinet minister for much of the last Conservative government, and he now chairs the Commons finance committee.

Following the 2025 Cambridgeshire elections Andy Osborn was charged with making a false statement of fact in relation to a candidate’s personal character or conduct, contrary to section 106 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. Although this is an electoral offence, it was not dealt with by the Election Court but instead proceeded through the ordinary magistrates’ court process. Osborn stood trial before Westminster magistrates in April and was found guilty, with the court rejecting his defence that his Facebook account had been hacked.

District Judge Nina Tempia fined Osborn £1,000, plus £400 costs and a further £400 victim surcharge. As Osborn has been found guilty of an illegal practice under electoral law, the penalties in section 173 of the 1983 Act also apply: he is disqualified from holding any elective office for three years, and he has also been struck off the electoral register for that period. Cambridgeshire county council eventually declared his seat vacant in May, after the time limit for Osborn to appeal his conviction expired.

Defending the resulting by-election for Reform UK is Chris Tirrell, who runs a farm shop in Leverington within the division. As well as trying to pick up the pieces left by the lies of his predecessor, Tirrell’s campaign has also had to deal with a police investigation into one of his Reform UK party colleagues for allegations made about the Conservative candidate in this by-election; on this occasion Cambridgeshire police concluded that no offence had been committed. The Conservative candidate is a very high-profile one: Dame Jackie Doyle-Price, who has recently moved to the Fenland area, was the Conservative MP for Thurrock in Essex from 2010 to 2024 and she was a junior minister in the May and Truss administrations, with her DBE coming in Truss’ resignation honours. Standing for the Lib Dems is Diane Cutler, who is a Fenland councillor for Parson Drove and Wisbech St Mary ward of which the Parson Drove part is in this division. Labour’s Benedict Allen and the Greens’ Jonathon Lilley complete a ballot paper of five candidates.

Parliamentary constituency: North East Cambridgeshire
Fenland council wards: Leverington and Wisbech Rural, Wisbech Riverside (part west of River Nene), Parson Drove and Wisbech St Mary (part: Gorefield and Parson Drove parishes and part of Wisbech St Mary parish)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Wisbech
Postcode districts: PE12, PE13

Benedict Allen (Lab)
Diane Cutler (LD)
Jackie Doyle-Price (C)
Jonathon Lilley (Grn)
Chris Tirrell (RUK)

May 2025 result RUK 1398 C 919 LD 600 Lab 122 Grn 97
May 2021 result C 1728 LD 895 Lab 242 Grn 137
May 2017 result C 1455 LD 615 UKIP 364 Lab 252
Previous results in detail

Camp Hill

Nuneaton and Bedworth council, Warwickshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Sarnjit Kaur Dhillon.

Moving into the West Midlands, we come to a town where Reform UK have run rampant over the previous two years. Nuneaton has often returned volatile election results in this century, something which is exacerbated by the fact that many of its wards are demographically similar to each other: when one party wins, it often wins big.

In the 2025 Warwickshire county elections and the 2026 Nuneaton and Bedworth council elections, the big winner was Reform UK who won 15 of the 19 seats up for election in May. The other half of Nuneaton and Bedworth council was elected in 2024 which was a very close result between Labour and the Conservatives, so Reform UK are now the largest party on the council with 15 seats; they have formed a minority administration against 10 Labour councillors plus this vacancy, 9 Conservatives and 3 Greens. The new Reform UK council leader, 19-year-old George Finch, is also doing double duty as the leader of Warwickshire county council. Had the former Labour council leader Chris Watkins got his way, this year’s election might not have happened at all: Watkins had made a formal request to the government that the 2026 Nuneaton and Bedworth council election be postponed against the wishes of the majority of councillors, and he got no-confidenced by the council for it.

Camp Hill is a north-western suburb of Nuneaton, which was developed by the National Coal Board in the 1950s on the grounds of a former 18th-century mansion. The estate has suffered from serious social problems as the coal industry in Nuneaton died, and Camp Hill was the subject of a major regeneration scheme in the 2000s. The Camp Hill ward which existed at the time of the 2021 census had a very working-class demographic profile; boundary changes for the 2024 election removed the eastern part of the ward, including Judkins Quarry whose spoil heap - the so-called “Mount Judd” - is a landmark for locals and for travellers on the West Coast main line.

In Nuneaton and Bedworth council elections Camp Hill was generally in the Labour column up to 2024, but it did return a BNP councillor in 2008 - the BNP councillor resigned the following year due to work commitments and Labour gained the resulting by-election - and the ward voted Conservative in 2021. The outgoing ward councillor Sarnjit Kaur Dhillon, also known as Sharon Dhillon, was first elected in 2024; she stood down on health grounds just after the 2026 local elections. Reform UK won Camp Hill very easily in May with exactly twice the Labour vote, 740 votes against 370: the percentage shares were 46% for Reform UK, 23% for Labour and 18% for the Greens.

Reform UK also won the larger Camp Hill division of Warwickshire county council in May, gaining that seat from the Conservatives. The Nuneaton parliamentary seat last went to the polls in 2024 before the turquoise tide got going, and that constituency has voted for the government at every election since 1983 with the exception of 1992. Its first-term Labour MP is former North Warwickshire councillor Jodie Gosling.

It’s in that context that Labour will attempt to defend Camp Hill ward in this by-election. They have reselected Eric Amaechi, the councillor who lost his seat here in May; he works for the NHS in cybersecurity, and he had been first elected to the council in 2024 after a number of previous failed attempts in other wards. Reform UK have gone for Peter Gilbert, who previously served from 2017 to 2025 as a Conservative member of Warwickshire county council representing Bedworth West division; Gilbert has only been in the party for about five minutes, as he was a Conservative candidate for Exhall ward in last month’s Nuneaton and Bedworth election. There is no Green challenge this time and only one other candidate has come forward: that’s Hari Khela for the Conservatives.

Parliamentary constituency: Nuneaton
Warwickshire county council division: Camp Hill
ONS Travel to Work Area: Coventry
Postcode district: CV10

Eric Amaechi (Lab)
Peter Gilbert (RUK)
Hari Khela (C)

May 2026 result RUK 740 Lab 370 Grn 285 C 185 TUSC 24
May 2024 result Lab 575/523 C 346/293 TUSC 117
Previous results in detail

Wilnecote

Tamworth council, Staffordshire; postponed from 7th May due to the death of Labour candidate Sian Foster.

We now come to a piece of unfinished business from 7th May 2026, in a council where Reform UK won 9 out of 9 seats in May and they now have the chance to make it 10 out of 10. Wilnecote is Staffordshire’s south-easternmost ward, covering outer suburbs of Tamworth located between the Midland railway line to the east and Watling Street to the north. This is an area with easy access to Birmingham via the M42 motorway and Wilnecote railway station, but its demographic doesn’t exactly scream the word “commuter”: in the 2021 census Wilnecote was in the top 70 wards in England and Wales for adults with “level 2” qualifications, which are 5 or more GCSEs or equivalent but nothing higher.

In Tamworth council elections Wilnecote ward has often been closely fought between the Conservatives and Labour, but the Tories have normally held the upper hand in common with much of Tamworth: since the current ward boundaries were introduced in 2002 Labour have only won the ward in 2002, 2012, a 2013 by-election, 2016, 2023 and 2024. The 2024 result was unusually poor for the Conservatives who lost votes to Reform UK on their right flank: Labour won Wilnecote that year by 55-32.

That 2024 Tamworth council election came in the wake of the Labour gain in the October 2023 Tamworth parliamentary by-election. The by-election winner Sarah Edwards was subsequently re-elected for a second term as the town’s MP in July 2024.

Since then Reform UK have run rampant in the town’s elections. The turquoise tide won all five of Tamworth’s Staffordshire county divisions in 2025, racking up large majorities in the Wilnecote and Watling divisions which cover this ward. So far Reform UK have followed suit in the 2026 Tamworth council elections. With this result to come Labour have formed a minority administration with 13 seats, against 10 for Reform UK, 3 Conservatives, 2 Greens and an independent.

One complicating factor of the 2026 Tamworth elections is that the Conservative group had split down the middle before the election and most of the councillors up for re-election this year were actually ex-Conservatives who had gone independent. This includes Tina Clements, who is seeking re-election for her fifth term of office as an independent candidate after winning in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 as a Conservative. The official defending Conservative candidate is James Trafford, who is not to be confused with the Manchester City goalkeeper of that name who has gone to the World Cup in England’s squad; this James Trafford is, according to his LinkedIn, an “experienced Apprenticeships Operations Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the Training sector”. Labour’s replacement candidate, after Sian Foster died during the election campaign causing this poll to be postponed, is Jenny Khalfan. Standing for Reform UK is Tracey Dougherty, who is the Staffordshire county councillor for Lichfield Rural East. And the Green Party complete the ballot paper with Kyle Brown, who is the party’s first candidate here since 2019.

Parliamentary constituency: Tamworth
Staffordshire county council division: Wilnecote (most), Watling (small part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Birmingham
Postcode district: B77

Kyle Brown (Grn)
Tina Clements (Ind)
Tracey Dougherty (RUK)
Jenny Khalfan (Lab)
James Trafford (C)

May 2024 result Lab 969 C 570 RUK 234
May 2023 result Lab 763 C 588 Ind 379 UKIP 77
May 2022 result C 955 Lab 916
May 2021 result C 1181 Lab 699 Ind 141 UKIP 74
May 2019 result C 833 Lab 504 UKIP 391 Grn 213
May 2018 result C 1092 Lab 735 Grn 170
May 2016 result Lab 847 C 797 UKIP 407
May 2015 result C 1942 Lab 1236 UKIP 982 Grn 207
May 2014 result C 869 Lab 732 UKIP 565 Grn 113
May 2013 by-election Lab 890 C 873 LD 87
May 2012 result Lab 1006 C 739
May 2011 result C 1354 Lab 1150
May 2010 result C 2221 Lab 1966
May 2008 result C 935 Lab 686 Ind 218
May 2007 result C 1007 Lab 868
May 2006 result C 1135 Lab 871
June 2004 result C 895 Lab 889
May 2003 result C 610 Lab 581
May 2002 result Lab 844/835/775 C 569/522/502
Previous results in detail

Stretton

Staffordshire county council; caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor Barry Martin.

In these days when the World Cup is on, we can expect that there will be quite a lot of demand for Burton upon Trent’s main export - beer. So let’s stay within Staffordshire by going for a Burton.

The name of the Stretton county division refers to the Roman road of Ryknild Street, which runs along the north bank of the River Trent between Lichfield and Derby. Much of Ryknild Street remains in use today as the A38 trunk road, but the modern dual carriageway deviates to the west of the Roman line to bypass Burton town centre.

Stretton marks both the northern end of the Burton bypass and the northern end of Burton’s built-up area, although it was never part of the old Burton upon Trent county borough. Despite that some of Burton’s industry has spilled over into Stretton parish, notably the large Pirelli factory which has been making tyres here for almost a century. Stretton’s housing stock is mostly postwar and has high levels of owner-occupation. The division also extends to the west to include the Horninglow area, which is purely residential.

Unusually, Burton upon Trent was a county borough but never a parliamentary borough, which was due to the town’s rather small population: at the 1970s reorganisation Burton was the second-smallest county borough in England by headcount, after Canterbury. The Burton parliamentary seat has always been a county division of Staffordshire with boundaries that include the town of Uttoxeter to the west, and because of that Burton tends to have a Labour MP only in landslide years. In 2024 the newly-renamed seat of Burton and Uttoxeter was gained for Labour by Jacob Collier, who grew up in Stretton and came to the Commons from the Nottinghamshire fire and rescue service. He defeated one-term Tory MP Kate Kniveton, who had taken the seat over in 2019 from her abusive ex-husband Andrew Griffiths.

The Burton and Uttoxeter parliamentary seat has similar boundaries to the East Staffordshire local government district, where Labour won an overall majority in the 2023 council elections to end eight years of Conservative rule. Stretton ward tends to be safely Conservative, but their brand was damaged a bit here by two by-elections in September 2017 and February 2018: the second one came after Dale Spedding, the the winner of the first by-election, resigned after two months citing harassment from his constituents.(Spedding returned to the council the following year in a different ward, and again resigned within twelve months.) Independent candidate Graham Lamb finished as a close runner-up in the 2018 by-election, and he went on to gain one of the ward’s three seats from the Conservatives in 2019. He retired in 2023, and his seat was gained by Labour rather than reverting to the Conservatives: this gave Stretton ward split representation with two Conservative councillors and one Labour. The Conservatives successfully defended a subsequent by-election in that ward in September 2024. The Stretton county division also takes in a large chunk of Horninglow and Outwoods ward, which returned the Labour slate in 2023.

The most recent poll here was the 2025 Staffordshire county elections in which Reform UK ran riot across the county, and Stretton was one of the 49 seats they won. New county councillor Barry Martin was elected with 39% of the vote, against 30% for the Conservatives and 19% for Labour. Martin’s year on the county council was not an edifying one: within days of his election he described his new democratic duties on Facebook as “dull and boring” and mulled over resigning, while in November the council’s standards committee upheld two complaints from Stretton parish council relating to his social media activity. He eventually resigned in May 2026 after a year in office, having not attended a council meeting since December; the Reform UK leader of the council ascribed Martin’s resignation to health reasons and a recent family bereavement.

Defending the resulting by-election for Reform UK is Jonathan Pyke, who was one of the few losing Reform UK candidates in last year’s Staffordshire elections when he finished as runner-up to Labour in Burton Trent division. The Conservatives have reselected Bernard Peters, who was the county councillor for the predecessor Horninglow and Stretton division until he lost his seat last year; he represents Brizlincote ward on East Staffordshire council. Also back from last year is Labour’s Shelagh McKiernan, who is an East Staffordshire councillor for Shobnall ward. Only one other candidate has come forward, Jack Mellor of the Green Party.

Parliamentary constituency: Burton and Uttoxeter
East Staffordshire wards: Stretton (nearly all), Horninglow and Outwoods (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Burton upon Trent
Postcode districts: DE13, DE14

Shelagh McKiernan (Lab)
Jack Mellor (Grn)
Bernard Peters (C)
Jonathan Pyke (RUK)

May 2025 result RUK 1214 C 938 Lab 605 LD 206 Grn 140
Previous results in detail

Farnworth

Halton council, Cheshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Aimee Skinner.

Our final three English polls this week are all in territory which was once Lancashire but no longer. Much of southern Lancashire became part of either Greater Manchester or Merseyside in the 1974 reorganisation, but the town of Widnes ended up in Cheshire as part of the Borough of Halton, which combined it with Runcorn on the far side of the Mersey.

It’s in the Widnes half of the borough that we find Farnworth ward, which covers the north-east corner of Widnes town. The southern boundary of this ward is the arrow-straight railway line between Liverpool and Manchester via Warrington, and just outside the ward boundary is Widnes railway station - which originally opened as Farnworth (Widnes) railway station. Here we find a plaque commemorating that Paul Simon’s song Homeward Bound was written at the station in 1965 - although it’s fair to say there’s some controversy over this, and after I told this story in a Preview some years ago I got a comment from someone who claimed to have made the whole Homeward Bound/railway station thing up. Which is a bit odd, given that Paul Simon tells the story himself. Wherever Homeward Bound was actually written, it’s a great song.

In the 2021 census Farnworth made the top 60 wards in England and Wales for Christianity (68.4%), which is a regular feature of the census return for north-west England. The ward has high levels of owner-occupation, and easy access not just to the railway line into Liverpool but also to the M62 motorway.

Since the 2024 general election Widnes has been in a constituency entirely north of the River Mersey, with the name of Widnes and Halewood. This and the predecessor Halton constituency have been represented since 1997 by long-serving Labour backbencher Derek Twigg, who had no trouble being re-elected in 2024 for his eighth term of office.

Halton council was one of those districts where Reform UK ran rampant in May, but where Labour had done so well in the previous two years that their council majority was secure regardless. Of the 19 Halton seats up for election this year, Reform UK won 16, the Lib Dems held one and just two seats stayed with Labour: that gave an overall council of 32 Labour, 16 Reform UK, 3 Lib Dems and 3 independents.

One of the seats which Labour held onto was Farnworth, which was an open seat going into this year’s election after the outgoing Labour councillor Val Hill died shortly before the end of her term. But the final Labour majority here against the turquoise tide was just one vote, with new Labour councillor Luke Williams defeating the Reform UK candidate by 837 votes to 836. In percentage terms Labour and Reform UK both scored 36%, with the Greens third on 14%. The previous three results here had been straight fights between the Conservatives and Labour, with very one-sided results in Labour’s favour.

We now have a second vacancy in Farnworth ward this year, after Aimee Skinner handed in her notice just after the May election for personal reasons. Skinner had represented this ward since the all-out election in 2021, when she was still known by her previous surname of Teeling, and she was re-elected for a second term in 2023. Accordingly, the winner of this by-election will need to seek re-election next year.

Trying to defend this seat for Labour will be Louise Nolan, who is trying to get back onto Halton council after losing her seat in the neighbouring Halton View ward in May. Nolan had previously represented that ward since 2018, originally being elected under her previous surname of Whitley. Reform UK have changed their candidate to Christopher Charlton-Kingsley, who is a travel agent. The Green Party candidate is Kiel Oldfield, who stood in May in Highfield ward. Also on the ballot are Phil Harper for the Conservatives and Dan Clarke, fresh from his deposit-losing performance in last week’s Makerfield by-election, for the Libertarian Party.

Parliamentary constituency: Widnes and Halewood
ONS Travel to Work Area: Warrington and Wigan
Postcode district: WA8

Christopher Charlton-Kingsley (RUK)
Dan Clarke (Libtn)
Phil Harper (C)
Louise Nolan (Lab)
Kiel Oldfield (Grn)

May 2026 result Lab 837 RUK 836 Grn 315 C 308
May 2024 result Lab 1046 C 363
May 2023 result Lab 1044 C 439
May 2022 result Lab 1033 C 561
May 2021 result Lab 916/798/763 C 630/622 RUK 183
Previous results in detail

Haydock; and
St Helens Town Centre

St Helens council, Merseyside. The Haydock poll is a by-election caused by the resignation of Reform UK councillor Stephen Mousdell; the St Helens Town Centre poll was postponed from 7th May due to the death of Reform UK candidate Andrew Feeney.

Anybody who has been traipsing around the small towns of the Makerfield constituency for much of the last month will find much of the same sort of territory over the border in St Helens district. In the case of Haydock ward, literally over the border: the entrance to Haydock Park racecourse is less than half a mile south from the town centre of Ashton-in-Makerfield, and the boundary between Merseyside and Greater Manchester runs through the middle of the racecourse car park. The buildings and the racetrack, however, are all in Merseyside.

Haydock Park has both flat and jumps courses enabling racing to go on here all year round, and it’s a tradition in my family to go there each year for the Easter Saturday meeting to try and beat the bookies. Appropriately enough, I had a winner this year with a horse called First Candidate. The course has a statue celebrating the legendary jockey and tax fraudster Lester Piggott, who rode the first and last of his 4,493 UK winners here in 1948 (when he was a 12-year-old schoolboy) and 1994.

Haydock itself is yet another of the old pit towns on the Lancashire coalfield, and we touched in the human toll of this last week by mentioning the Wood Pit explosion that killed 189 miners in 1878. Back in the day some of Haydock’s coal might well have been consumed in the Pilkington’s glass factory, which still occupies a large chunk of St Helens Town Centre ward.

The town centre is currently being redeveloped and needs a fair bit more work doing on it yet, with quite a lot of ugly concrete buildings around in the shopping areas; more modern buildings like St Mary’s indoor market and St Helens Central railway station (on the line between Liverpool and Wigan) show what can be done with a bit of architectural imagination and an acre of Pilkington’s glass. Talking of which, the World of Glass museum, which combines the municipal and Pilkington’s collections with live glassblowing demonstrations, is well worth a visit. Mancunians of a certain age will surely recognise this exhibit.

St Helens town hall is celebrating its 150th anniversary this month, having opened for business in June 1876. It is not a listed building, but in a curious decision the two red telephone boxes outside the main entrance are listed.

The two St Helens wards up for election today are in different parliamentary seats. Haydock is part of the St Helens North constituency represented by first-term Labour MP David Baines, while the Labour MP for St Helens South and Whiston since 2015 has been Marie Rimmer. Baines and Rimmer are both former leaders of St Helens council.

Like in Wigan over the border, Reform UK ran rampant here in May’s local elections; but unlike Wigan, St Helens council has whole-council elections with all of its councillors up for re-election at once every four years. This meant that Reform UK won a large majority on St Helens council: the 7th May elections returned 34 Reform UK councillors against 6 independents, 3 Lib Dems, just 2 Labour and 1 Conservative, with the two seats in St Helens Town Centre ward still to come after one of the Reform UK candidates for that ward died during the election campaign. Labour had enjoyed a big lead in that ward in 2022 - 65-20 over the Conservatives - but the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Haydock was once the political home of the UK’s longest-serving councillor - Labour’s Jim Caunce represented the town from 1951 until his death in 2010 - but the Labour grip had already slipped here before Reform UK came on the scene. The 2019, 2021 and 2022 elections here were won by the Green Party, which makes the 2026 result in Haydock an unusual Reform UK gain from the Greens on vote shares of 40% for the Reform UK slate, 28% for the Green Party and 18% for Labour.

Beating the alphabet to finish top of the poll was Reform UK’s Stephen Mousdell, who tendered his resignation just a week after his election after the Liverpool Echo revealed that he had a sideline starring in hardcore gay pornography on OnlyFans. To be honest, this column struggles to see why that should be a resigning matter. Reform UK did stand by their elected member in public, but Mousdell’s resignation statement suggests that his colleagues and others might have been less supportive behind the scenes.

For the resulting Haydock by-election Reform UK have selected Tony Devanney, who wasn’t far off gaining a seat from the Conservatives in Rainford ward in May. Also trying to transfer here after losing in Rainford ward last month is the Greens’ Amber Johnson. Labour have reselected Owen Farnworth who stood here in May. Paul Hooton, who was a Green Party councillor for this ward from 2021 to 2026 and was runner-up here in May, is standing as an independent in this by-election so presumably there has been a falling-out somewhere; another independent on the ballot is Andrea Blake who stood here under that description in May. Melanie Lee completes the Haydock ballot paper for the Conservatives. The race is on to see who will be Haydock’s next winning First Candidate.

Two seats are up for election in St Helens Town Centre ward so electors here have two votes. Outgoing Labour councillor Michelle Sweeney, who was first elected here in 2018, is seeking a third term of office and she is joined on the Labour slate by new face Michael Fisher; if they win, that would double the size of the Labour group. There is only one Conservative candidate, who is Christine Huskie. In 2022 the only other party to contest St Helens Town Centre was the far-right For Britain Movement; this time we have candidacies from Reform UK’s Jeremy Axworthy and (as replacement for the late Andrew Feeney) Chris Page, and the Greens’ Chloe Graves and James Mellors; the delay to this poll has also enabled independent candidate Thomas Hughes to throw his hat into the ring.

Haydock

Parliamentary constituency: St Helens North
ONS Travel to Work Area: Warrington and Wigan
Postcode districts: WA3, WA11, WA12, WN4

Andrea Blake (Ind)
Tony Devanney (RUK)
Owen Farnworth (Lab)
Paul Hooton (Ind)
Amber Johnson (Grn)
Melanie Lee (C)

May 2026 result RUK 1331/1282/1240 Grn 938/771/692 Lab 607/577/561 Ind 237/229 C 181
May 2022 result Grn 1485/1445/1357 Lab 834/762/756 C 287
Previous results in detail

St Helens Town Centre

Parliamentary constituency: St Helens South and Whiston
ONS Travel to Work Area: Warrington and Wigan
Postcode districts: WA9, WA10

Jeremy Axworthy (RUK)
Michael Fisher (Lab)
Chloe Graves (Grn)
Thomas Hughes (Ind)
Christine Huskie (C)
James Mellors (Grn)
Chris Page (RUK)
Michelle Sweeney (Lab)

May 2022 result Lab 747/700 C 229 For Britain Movement 176
Previous results in detail

George St/Harbour

Aberdeen council, Scotland; caused by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Desmond Buchanan.

Our last two by-elections today are in Scotland, and first up is a ward which appeared on this column only last week, in the Preview for the Aberdeen South Westminster by-election. This was a famous win for the Scottish Conservatives, whose by-election candidate Douglas Lumsden overturned a Scottish National Party majority of 3,758. He ended up with 50% of the vote to 29% for the SNP’s Richard Thomson, a numerical margin of 6,050 votes.

Douglas Lumsden takes over a seat which was vacated by the former SNP Commons leader Stephen Flynn when Flynn was elected to Holyrood last month; and Lumsden’s election to Westminster means that the game of musical chairs continues. He was previously a member of the Scottish Parliament for the North East Scotland region, and he will now have to relinquish that seat. In May the Conservatives won two of North East Scotland’s seven regional seats, and the third candidate on their list Alexander Burnett was re-elected for a third term as the constituency MSP for Aberdeenshire West; so first refusal for Lumsden’s Holyrood seat goes to the fourth candidate on the Conservatives’ 2026 list for North East Scotland. That was James Adams, who is an Aberdeenshire councillor for Fraserburgh and District ward. Assuming that Adams takes up that seat, he would be able to see out the last 11 months of his council term but he would then need to stand down at the 2027 Aberdeenshire council election.

In the meantime, the electors of the George St/Harbour ward of Aberdeen get to go to the polls all over again this week, for an Aberdeen city council by-election which was already in the diary when Stephen Flynn resigned. For those who are wondering why this by-election couldn’t have been held last week on the undercard of the Westminster by-election, which would have saved a lot of time and money for everyone involved, the answer is that Westminster and Scottish council by-elections are very different. Scottish council by-elections use a different electoral system, with transferable voting compared to Westminster’s single X; they have a wider franchise, with 16- and 17-year-olds and a more extensive range of foreign nationals eligible to vote; and, crucially, they are not subject to Voter ID which the present Scottish government considers to be pointless at best.

Let’s look at this from the point of view of the voter. If you turn up at a polling station which is running a Westminster election and a Scottish local election at the same time, and you’re only eligible to vote in one of them, then your name will be marked on the register to indicate that and the poll staff will only give you a ballot paper for the election you’re eligible to vote in. This is not rocket science, it happens all the time where elections with different franchises are combined and it’s easy for everyone to understand, including the voter involved. From the voter’s point of view, the different electoral systems are basically a case of following the instructions on the ballot paper, and if you mess it up and vote using the wrong system then that won’t make your vote invalid. If you vote with preferences in a Westminster election then your ballot will be counted as a vote for your first preference; if you vote with an X in a Scottish local election then that will be treated as a first preference and won’t transfer to any other candidate. So far, so good.

Now let’s throw voter ID into the mix, and say that you turn up to the polling station without acceptable photo ID. The presiding officer would be entitled to give you the Scottish ballot paper but would have to refuse to give you the Westminster ballot paper, a decision which you could quite reasonably see as ridiculous and which would only lead to constant arguments breaking out between the voters and the poll staff. The best case scenario is that nobody gets hurt. The Electoral Management Board for Scotland, a group of returning officers and electoral registration officers which co-ordinates the administration of Holyrood and Scottish local elections, have taken the view that we shouldn’t be putting our election staff in that position, and they have a strong recommendation not to combine polls which require voter ID with those that don’t. Similar guidance has gone out to returning officers in Wales.

So, the eight polling stations in George St/Harbour ward will be open for the second Thursday in a row. They include the Scottish Episcopal cathedral of St Andrew’s and Pittodrie Stadium, where electors resident in the Pittodrie North polling district can cast their ballot in the Sir Alex Ferguson Lounge. George St/Harbour takes in Pittodrie, Aberdeen Beach, the Port of Aberdeen which services the oil industry, and most of the city centre including the Aberdeen council headquarters in Marischal College. As we touched on last week, Marischal College was a university building before the council took it over, and it is the second-largest granite building in the world: only the Escorial in Madrid is larger.

George St/Harbour has an unusually young age profile and tends to have the lowest turnout of Aberdeen’s wards. It is part of the Aberdeen South Westminster constituency won by the Conservatives’ Douglas Lumsden in last week’s by-election, but it is not part of the Holyrood seat of Aberdeen Deeside and North Kincardine now held by Lumsden’s SNP predecessor Stephen Flynn. In May this ward went to the polls as part of the Aberdeen Central Scottish Parliament constituency, which was easily retained for the SNP by their new candidate Jack Middleton who had previously been a special adviser to John Swinney. The Lib Dem candidate Yi-pei Chou Turvey, who came to Scotland from her native Taiwan via Brussels, came fifth and last in the constituency ballot here but was elected to Holyrood as a regional MSP for North East Scotland.

This ward was created in 2007 and took on its current boundaries, with four councillors, in 2017. Both elections on these boundaries had big leads for the SNP on first preferences, with the 2022 election giving 42% and two seats to the SNP and 20% and one seat to Labour. The SNP’s Michael Hutchison and Dell Henrickson and Labour’s Sandra Macdonald were quickly deemed elected, and a close race then developed for the final seat between the Greens, who started on 14%, and the Lib Dems and Conservatives on 11% each. The Conservatives were eventually eliminated 31 votes behind the Lib Dems, and in the final round of counting Conservative transfers enabled the Lib Dem candidate Desmond Bouse (as he was then) to come from behind to defeat the Greens’ Guy Ingerson by 41 votes. Ingerson had also been runner-up here in 2017, when the final seat in George St/Harbour went to the Conservatives.

On the votes cast in George St/Harbour 2022, a count for a single vacancy would have gone to the lead SNP candidate Michael Hutchison by 59-41 over Labour’s Sandra Macdonald, with the Lib Dems nowhere near getting into the final two. Which poses a problem for them in this by-election, and also makes things spicy for the ruling SNP-Lib Dem coalition on Aberdeen council. This currently controls 22 seats (19 SNP and 3 Lib Dems) plus this vacancy against an opposition of 22 - 11 Labour, 6 Conservatives, 4 independents and a defector to Reform UK - so the council majority is on the line here. The Conservatives might well have some momentum from last week’s Westminster by-election result, although it’s fair to say that their strongest parts of the Aberdeen South constituency lie elsewhere.

The outgoing councillor Desmond Buchanan, as he is now called, was an Aberdeen University student when he was elected. He now divides his time between home in Edinburgh and work in Ayrshire, and in May’s Holyrood election he was the Liberal Democrat candidate for Ayr. Buchanan tendered his resignation from Aberdeen council at the beginning of April.

Defending this seat for the Lib Dems is Luke Eveling, who is a 21-year-old Aberdeen University student. The party’s SNP coalition partners have selected Leon Marwick, who used to work in Stephen Flynn’s constituency office and now does the same duty for the Aberdeen North SNP MP Kirsty Blackman. The Labour candidate Edward Obi runs an HR consultancy and is also a charity trustee. Standing for the Scottish Green Party is Charlotte Horne, who was in an unwinnable position on the Greens’ Holyrood list for North East Scotland last month. The Conservatives’ Marco Oosthuizen, independent candidate Aamir Azeem, Fred Bayer of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, Reform UK’s Jordan Brown and Konrad Rekas of the Alliance to Liberate Scotland complete a ballot paper of ten candidates.

Westminster constituency: Aberdeen South
Holyrood constituency: Aberdeen Central
ONS Travel to Work Area: Aberdeen
Postcode districts: AB10, AB11, AB12, AB24, AB25

Aamir Azeem (Ind)
Fred Bayer (TUSC)
Jordan Brown (RUK)
Luke Eveling (LD)
Charlotte Horne (Grn)
Leon Marwick (SNP)
Edward Obi (Lab)
Marco Oosthuizen (C)
Konrad Rekas (Alliance to Liberate Scotland)

May 2022 first preferences SNP 1446 Lab 678 Grn 474 LD 391 C 375 Ind 63
May 2017 first preferences SNP 1595 Lab 837 C 588 Grn 364 LD 206 UKIP 32
Previous results in detail

East Sutherland and Edderton

Highland council, Scotland; caused by the resignation of independent councillor Jim McGillivray.

We finish this marathon week with the latest of the large number of by-elections which the Highland Council seems to generate: this is the 12th Highland by-election of the current five-year term, and the 2017-22 term wasn’t exactly quiet either. Part of the issue is that the Highland council is a large body to start with - it has 74 councillors - and its area of almost 10,000 square miles is larger than a number of European countries, including EU members Slovenia, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta. East Sutherland and Edderton, in common of many of the Highland’s wards, is a long way from the council’s headquarters in Inverness.

Sutherland was always one of Scotland’s most sparsely populated counties, but its modern-day headcount of around 13,000 is still less than half of what it was before the Highland Clearances. The name comes from the era of Viking rule, when the local seat of government was on Orkney and this area was considered to be the southern land of the jarls of Orkney.

The only burgh here was Dornoch on the eastern seaboard, which is still home to a number of old buildings including a cathedral, parts of which date from the 13th century and which was home to the Bishops of Caithness back in the day. The old castle and sheriff court in Dornoch also survive, although they are now a hotel and a restaurant respectively. Dornoch is the largest settlement in this ward, with just over 2,000 of the 6,458 electors.

But when Sutherland gained an elected county council it met in Golspie further up the coast, which has better transport links thanks to its location on the A9 road and the Far North railway line. The railway line takes a long detour inland from Golspie via Lairg in order to get around the Dornoch Firth; the A9, however, crosses the water by the modern Dornoch Firth Bridge, opened by Queen Elizabeth of Glamis in 1991, which has a length of 892 metres. This bridge is the link to the Edderton section of this ward, which is a part of Ross-shire that was presumably included here to make up the numbers. Edderton itself is a small village on the south side of the Dornoch Firth which is home to the Highlands’ oldest working whisky distillery, Balblair.

This ward is part of Westminster and Holyrood seats which both cover Caithness, Sutherland and various parts of Ross and Cromarty. At Westminster the Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross constituency has voted Lib Dem at every election since its 1997 creation with the exception of the 2015 SNP landslide; since 2017 its MP has been the Lib Dems’ Jamie Stone, who chairs the Commons petitions committee. The Lib Dems built on that in May to gain the Caithness, Sutherland and Ross constituency from the SNP, bringing David Green into Holyrood. He unseated the SNP’s Maree Todd, the SNP’s minister for sport, drugs and alcohol policy, but Todd was re-elected to Holyrood nonetheless as a regional MSP for the Highlands and Islands - a post which she previously held in the 2016-21 term.

East Sutherland and Edderton ward was created in 2007 and returns three Highland councillors. Since its first election one of those councillors had been independent Jim McGillivray, who taught computing at Tain Royal Academy for nearly 30 years before entering the world of elected politics via work with Dornoch community council. By his own account, he had never expected to win in 2007 and was quite shocked on the Friday afternoon after the election to be told he had won a seat. It was transfers that got him in: McGillivray had started the count in fourth place 29 votes behind the SNP candidate, but he ended up winning the third and final seat with a majority of 170.

The other two seats that year were won by Ian Ross of the Lib Dems and Deirdre Mackay of Labour. Ross stood down at the 2012 election and his seat was gained by the SNP’s Graham Phillips; Phillips then los his seat to the Lib Dems’ Richard Gale in 2017. In 2022 Labour’s Mackay stood down and Labour did not defend her seat, which was picked up by the SNP’s Leslie-Anne Niven. First preference votes here in 2022 were 36% for the Lib Dems, 27% for the SNP, 19% for McGillivray and 17% for the Conservatives; the Lib Dem and SNP candidates were elected on the first count over the 25% quota, and McGillivray picked up the Lib Dem surplus to win the final seat. If we rerun the 2022 count for a single vacancy, then the Lib Dems’ Richard Gale would beat the SNP’s Leslie-Anne Niven after transfers by the wide margin of 66-34.

Jim McGillivray had intended to retire next year at the end of his fourth term of office, but in the end his health wasn’t up to that. He announced his decision to stand down early on health grounds at the full meeting of Highland council on 26th March, and his resignation took effect at the end of April triggering this by-election.

This might well slightly change the balance of power on Highland council, because McGillivray was not a supporter of the SNP-independent administration which currently runs the show. The SNP are the largest group with 19 councillors and they are in coalition with the 17 independent councillors in the Highland Independent group; in opposition are 16 Lib Dems, the Highland Alliance group of independent councillors which has been reduced to 8 by McGillivray’s departure, 6 Conservatives, 3 Greens, 2 Labour and 2 non-aligned councillors. An SNP gain, or a win for an independent candidate supported by the Highland Independents, would give the ruling coalition half of the councillors.

One new independent candidate has come forward in this by-election: John Murray, who is based in the Golspie area, is an entrepreneur in the food and drink sector who has built up a chain of retail stores in the Highlands. The Lib Dems’ Eric de Venny is a publican and Dornoch community councillor. Standing for the SNP is Rebecca Machin, a retired teacher from Edderton who did not get a good result in the 2024 Fort William and Ardnamurchan by-election, but this is her home turf. The Conservative candidate is Eva Short, who previously stood here in 2017 (being eliminated in fifth place, with her transfers going on to elect McGillivray) and has since then contested two by-elections in the neighbouring Tain and Easter Ross ward. And we also have a challenge from Reform UK, who have selected Jay Ayrey.

This week might have been a record-breaker, but the electoral heat is still very much on and we will have another Super Thursday next week with 12 seats up for election. Stay tuned.

Westminster constituency: Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross
Holyrood constituency: Caithness, Sutherland and Ross
ONS Travel to Work area: Golspie and Brora (East Sutherland), Alness and Invergordon (Edderton)
Postcode districts: IV19, IV24, IV25, IV28, KW8, KW9, KW10, KW11

Jay Ayrey (RUK)
Eric de Venny (LD)
Rebecca Machin (SNP)
John Murray (Ind)
Eva Short (C)

May 2022 first preferences LD 1151 SNP 853 Ind 611 C 546 Libertarian 53
May 2017 first preferences Lab 755 LD 699 SNP 658 Ind 587 C 517 Ind 309 Libertarian 36
Previous results in detail

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Andrew Teale