Previewing the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election and the five council by-elections of 30th July 2026

Six by-elections on 30th July 2026, and we’ll start with the big one:

Caused by the resignation of Labour mayor Andy Burnham.

For almost 16 years now, Andrew’s Previews has been talking about by-elections. There are enough of these to keep a weekly column going, but it’s quite rare for an individual person to be called out to vote to fill a casual vacancy. In any given year this will happen to around 2% of the electorate (give or take), so you could be waiting decades for it to happen to you. I’ve never voted in a by-election myself before, so today is a new event for me - as it will be for many thousands of people. Welcome to what, in electorate terms, is the biggest by-election ever staged in the UK: for the elected mayoralty of Greater Manchester.

Whoever wins today’s poll has big shoes to fill - those previously occupied by our new Prime Minister. Over the last month and a half, Andy Burnham has made a seamless transition from Greater Manchester Mayor to Makerfield MP to leader of the Labour Party and to Number 10. Both Number 10s, in fact: Burnham has quickly set up a new regional Prime Minister’s office in central Manchester, just across Albert Square from the town hall, which will have responsibility for (among other things) devolution in England.

Devolution is something close to the new boss’ heart, particularly given his previous job as head of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. There are quite a few combined authorities in England now, some with elected mayors, some not, with a range of powers depending apparently on demand for new powers from the local politicians and the capacity to take those new powers on.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority is the oldest of these, being first established in 2011, and this was one of the first six areas to get an elected mayor in 2017. GMCA is possibly England’s most powerful combined authority. According to the booklet which the returning officer for this election has sent to me and to all the other electors,

The Mayor is a major figure in the political life of the city region, with unique powers and responsibilities. This includes setting budgets and priorities for a number of Greater Manchester’s public services including transport, housing and planning, as well as the fire and rescue service. The Mayor also serves as the Police and Crime Commissioner for Greater Manchester Police, and acts as an ambassador for the city region, working alongside Greater Manchester’s 10 councils.

The mayoralty here has always had police and crime commissioner powers, so the November 2012 election for Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner proved to be the only poll for that post. This was won easily by Labour candidate Tony Lloyd, who won in the first round with 51% of the first preferences against 16% for the Conservatives and 15% for the Lib Dems. To date, no Greater Manchester-wide election has ever gone to a runoff. Lloyd had resigned as MP for Manchester Central in order to stand in the election, and the simultaneous Manchester Central by-election safely returned Labour candidate Lucy Powell.

Tony Lloyd was originally due for re-election in 2016, but by that point plans were well advanced to convert his position to a mayoralty. Lloyd was named as interim mayor and his term of office was extended to May 2017 when the first Greater Manchester mayoral election was due. However, the Labour nomination went not to Lloyd but to Brown-era cabinet minister Andy Burnham, who had been the MP for Leigh since 2001 and had twice stood unsuccessfully for the Labour leadership. This proved to be an inspired move, and in what was generally a poor set of local elections for Labour Burnham delivered a crushing Labour win: he defeated his Conservative rival by 63-23. He didn’t seek re-election as MP for Leigh in the 2017 general election a month later, in which Tony Lloyd made a quick return to elected politics as Labour MP for Rochdale. Lloyd went on to serve that seat until his death in 2024.

Andy Burnham was originally due for re-election in 2020, but the pandemic forced a one-year postponement - during which he came to national attention as the “King of the North”, visibly sticking up for his region. Closer to home, Burnham was busy trying to combat rough sleeping in Manchester and trying to build a public transport network worthy of England’s second city - in the teeth of opposition and legal challenges from the bus companies, who had the most to lose from this. Burnham sought re-election for a second term in 2021 and won an even more spectacular mandate than four years previously, defeating the second-placed Conservative candidate by 67-20. A ward-level breakdown of the count was put together, and Andy Burnham topped the poll in every single Greater Manchester ward - even the staunchest and richest bastions of the middle-classes voted Labour in that election. Again, this was in the context of a terrible set of local elections for Labour elsewhere in England: the Johnson Conservative government was at the height of its powers and generally did very well that year.

The 2021 mayoral election address booklet for that year had on its cover a map of the ten Greater Manchester boroughs, which set going the imagination of a young lad from the county. His mum saw the result and put it on Twitter:

This went viral, an outcome for which I must take a large amount of the blame, and said mum unexpectedly found herself doing the rounds of the local and national media for a couple of days after this. Sorry about that Jane.

Burnham’s second and third terms saw his transport plans come together with the creation and improvement of the Bee Network, bringing Greater Manchester’s buses and the tram network back under public control and delivering a massive fare cut in the process - Greater Manchester was the first area to cap its single bus fares at £2, a policy which has been maintained since then. Bus franchising started in Bolton and Wigan in September 2023 and was completed in January 2025 in the south of the county, enabling things like daily- and weekly-capped contactless fares for buses and trams to be introduced. We have also seen major investment in the buses themselves, with new vehicles running more often and for later in the evening: yellow Bee Network buses are now a very familiar sight on the county’s roads.

Those readers who are used to the quality and convenience of London’s transport network might wonder what all the fuss is about, but Greater Manchester had to fight for what you take for granted. Longtime readers of this column will know that I am prone to the occasional bus rant, so it’s good to rant positively for once.

All this hard work gave Andy Burnham his biggest win yet when he won his third mayoral term of office in May 2024 with 63% of the vote; the Conservatives finished as best of the rest, on just 10%. This was a significantly better Labour score than they polled in the 2024 general election two months later, when the county’s voters gave 43% of the vote to Labour candidates against 17% for Reform UK and 16% for the Conservatives. Labour won 25 of Greater Manchester’s 27 constituencies, with the other two seats - Cheadle and Hazel Grove - going to the Liberal Democrats.

The Labour vote across Greater Manchester then proceeded to collapse like elsewhere in the country. Reform UK won their first council seat here in April 2025, gaining a Tameside council by-election in Longdendale ward from Labour (above), and followed up with a second by-election gain in Rochdale’s Balderstone and Kirkholt ward the following month. In October 2025 Labour lost by-elections in Wigan Central ward to Reform UK and in Trafford’s Broadheath ward to the Conservatives; in April 2026 Reform UK gained two more council seats, in Tottington ward (Bury) from the Conservatives and in Barton and Winton ward (Salford) from Labour.

Meanwhile, in January 2026 the Labour MP for Gorton and Denton, Andrew Gwynne, tendered his resignation. Officially this was for health reasons, but in practice Gwynne had lost the Labour whip following a scandal over a bad-taste WhatsApp group which he was running and whose members included a large number of Tameside Labour figures. For the resulting by-election in February Labour found themselves squeezed between Reform UK from the right and the Greens to the left, and a late swing gave a clear win to the Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer. She is the first elected Green Party MP not only for Greater Manchester, but in the whole of northern England. Mayor Burnham had applied for the Labour nomination for that by-election, but he was blocked from standing by Labour’s National Executive Committee.

Click to embiggen

We saw a similar story across the county in the May 2026 local elections, at which one-third of the seats in all ten Greater Manchester boroughs were up for election. Totting up the votes cast across the county’s 216 wards gives 31% to Reform UK, 24% to Labour, 19% to the Green Party and 10% to the Conservatives. In seat terms Reform UK finished on 106 councillors, Labour won 35, the Greens 30 (mostly in Manchester), the Liberal Democrats 19 (mostly in Stockport, where they gained overall control), and the Conservatives 11; the other 15 seats split 4 to independent candidates, 3 to the Workers Party, 2 to Horwich and Blackrod First, 2 to the Oldham Group, 2 to Radcliffe First, 1 to the Edgeley Community Association and 1 to the Independent Network. Reform UK polled the most votes in seven boroughs (including Bury, where they won fewer seats than Labour), the Lib Dems topped the poll in Stockport, and the Greens carried Manchester and also Trafford (where they won fewer seats than Labour). These figures include the result from Moorside ward in Bury, where the poll had to be postponed to June after the Reform UK candidate died during the election campaign. Full results have been added to the Local Elections Archive Project.

The thirds electoral system meant that despite this drubbing Labour had impregnable majorities this year in most of the boroughs up for election - including Wigan, where Labour had failed to win a single seat. This is important because the mayor only has one vote in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, whose other ten members are the ten borough council leaders - currently eight Labour, one Lib Dem and we’ll come back to the other one in a moment. Salford council has its own elected mayor (currently Labour’s Paul Dennett, who was also Andy Burnham’s deputy mayor and is keeping the Greater Manchester mayoral chair warm pending this by-election); Bury, Manchester, Rochdale, Trafford and Wigan councils have Labour majorities; Stockport has a Liberal Democrat majority; and Labour are currently running minority administrations in Bolton and Tameside.

That leaves Oldham, where the previous Labour council leader Arooj Shah resigned following May’s election and four successive meetings have failed to elect a new council leader in the nearly three months since then. The current composition of Oldham council is 18 Labour, 16 Reform UK, 10 Oldham Group, 6 Lib Dems, 4 Conservatives, 2 councillors in the Independent Group, 2 Royton Independents, 1 councillor for the Failsworth Independent Party, and 1 independent. Nobody is anywhere near the 31 seats required for an overall majority, and the council has descended into a three-way stalemate between Labour, Reform UK and an alliance of the Oldham Group, Lib Dem and Conservative councillors.

To put the position in Oldham briefly, Reform UK are not prepared to work with Labour under any circumstances; a Labour-led administration also appears to be unacceptable to the alliance (it might be relevant here that Arooj Shah, who is extremely unpopular with all the other parties, is still the Labour group leader); and the alliance’s price for doing a deal with Reform UK is reported to be approval for a new Muslim cemetery in Oldham, which is a manifesto commitment for the Oldham Group and a red line for Reform UK. Perhaps it doesn’t help in this connection that the Reform UK group is entirely white and all but one of the Oldham Group councillors are Muslim.

The minutes of the last Oldham council meeting on 15th July contain a reference to section 5 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, under which the council’s monitoring officer can force the issue if necessary by giving notice that the council is about to do something illegal: in this case, failing to elect a leader within a reasonable amount of time. There would then have to be an emergency full council meeting within 21 days. But whatever course is taken, in order to get out of this mess two of the Oldham council blocs will need to swallow their pride and do a deal quickly before central government loses patience and sends in the Commissioners. Because if that happens, then everybody loses.

The political chessboard in Oldham might be full of blocked pawns with little room for manoeuvre, but Labour’s drubbing in Greater Manchester and the wider country in May prompted the sort of sacrifice that chess writers give an exclamation mark to for a good move. Josh Simons, the Labour MP for Makerfield, resigned his seat - a seat in which Reform UK had polled 50% of the vote in May 2026 to 27% for Labour and 10% for the Green Party - for the stated reason of bringing Andy Burnham back into the House of Commons after nine years away. The gambit worked. After one of the most high-profile by-elections of recent years, on a turnout higher than in the previous general election - which is almost unheard of for a parliamentary by-election - Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election on 18th June with a 55-35 lead over the Reform UK candidate. Within five weeks, he was Prime Minister.

Burnham was required to resign as mayor of Greater Manchester in order to take up his new Commons seat, because the mayor is also the Greater Manchester police and crime commissioner. Which means that the ridiculous PCC by-election timing rules apply, forcing this by-election to take place in the middle of the school summer holidays. As stated, this will be the biggest by-election ever staged in the UK with around 2.1 million people eligible to vote; this breaks the previous record set by the West Midlands police and crime commissioner by-election in August 2014, which had an electorate of slightly less than two million. That poll was also in the middle of the school summer holidays, and the turnout only just broke 10%. Hopefully Greater Manchester can do better than that.

One other thing to note is that this mayoral by-election will be held under the Supplementary Vote system, which has now been reintroduced for combined authority mayors following the passage in April of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026. If nobody reaches 50% of the vote on first preferences, then the top two candidates will qualify for a runoff round of counting in which everybody else’s second preferences will be redistributed. The ballot paper has two columns, please mark your first preference in the left-hand column and your second preference in the right-hand column.

Defending for Labour is Bev Craig, who already sits on the Greater Manchester Combined Authority as leader of Manchester city council: she has been a councillor for Burnage ward since 2011 and leader since 2021. Craig was appointed OBE in the last New Year honours list for services to local government. Should Craig be elected, then her Manchester council seat would be vacated and a by-election would follow in Burnage ward, probably in September; which would mean the electors of Burnage turning out for their fourth election in six months, because that ward is part of the Gorton and Denton constituency which the Greens gained in February. (That is not a record, by the way: in 2016 Tooting ward in Wandsworth had the London Mayor and Assembly election, a parliamentary by-election, the EU referendum and a local by-election within a period of 16 weeks.) Similar comments apply to the other candidates in this election who are councillors.

The Conservative candidate is Phil Eckersley, who is deputy leader of the Conservative group on Trafford council. Since 2023 he has represented Bowdon ward, a very upmarket area on the southern edge of Greater Manchester which includes south-western parts of Altrincham, the stately home of Dunham Massey and a few villages to the west of Altrincham.

Third place in 2024 went to independent candidate Nick Buckley, who had previously stood for Reform UK in 2021 and subsequently had a poor outing as the Advance UK candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election. Buckley has not returned and his 7.6% from last time is up for grabs. We do have one new independent candidate on the ballot in Marcus Farmer, who previously stood in the 2017 and 2021 mayoral elections and failed to trouble the scorers much on either occasion; Farmer did not submit an address for the official mayoral by-election booklet, which is not a particularly good sign for his chances this time. Defending fourth place with 7.5% and hoping for more is Reform UK’s Sian Astley, a landlord and businesswoman who is leader of the party’s group on Manchester council; she was elected in May as a councillor for Baguley ward in Wythenshawe. The Green Party candidate who finished fifth in 2024 with 6.9% was Hannah Spencer, who has since gone on to greater things by winning the Gorton and Denton by-election; as such the Greens have changed candidate to Geraldine Coggins, who is leader of the party’s group on Trafford council where she has represented Altrincham ward since 2018. Sixth and last place last time went to the Lib Dems on 4.2%, and they have gone for another Manchester councillor: Richard Kilpatrick was first elected for Didsbury West ward in 2018 and he has continuous service since 2023. And one new party has come forward: Restore Britain, who have bought up quite a lot of time on the electronic billboards, have nominated Marlon West who is a campaigner against child sexual exploitation and a former mental health nurse. Emphasis on the word “former” here, given that during the election campaign West’s professional body suspended his registration for 18 months for offensive social media. West, who lives in Tameside, is the only candidate not to give an address in Manchester or Trafford.

This by-election is big enough that three opinion polls of the county have been attempted, all of which show Labour’s Bev Craig in a clear first place on 38% or 39% of the first preferences and going on to win the runoff with a score in the low to mid 60s. Find Out Now, who were first in the field, had the Greens getting into the final round; two later polls from YouGov and More in Common gave second place to Reform UK. We will see whether these polls were a good guide to the result once the votes come out of the ballot boxes on Friday. In the meantime, I’m off to the polling station and if you live in Greater Manchester I hope you will make that journey too. You will be most welcome.

Parliamentary constituencies: Altrincham and Sale West; Ashton-under-Lyne; Blackley and Middleton South; Bolton North East; Bolton South and Walkden; Bolton West; Bury North; Bury South; Cheadle; Gorton and Denton; Hazel Grove; Heywood and Middleton North; Leigh and Atherton; Makerfield; Manchester Central; Manchester Rusholme; Manchester Withington; Oldham East and Saddleworth; Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton; Rochdale; Salford; Stalybridge and Hyde; Stockport; Stretford and Urmston; Wigan; Worsley and Eccles; Wythenshawe and Sale East

Sian Astley (RUK)
Geraldine Coggins (Grn)
Bev Craig (Lab)
Phil Eckersley (C)
Marcus Farmer (Ind)
Richard Kilpatrick (LD)
Marlon West (Restore Britain)

May 2024 result Lab 420749 C 68946 Ind 50304 RUK 49532 Grn 45905 LD 28195
May 2021 result Lab 473024 C 137753 Grn 30699 LD 22373 RUK 18910 EDP 9488 Ind 6448 Ind 2182 Ind 1907
May 2017 result Lab 359352 C 128752 LD 34334 Grn 13424 EDP 11115 UKIP 10583 Ind 5815 Ind 3360
November 2012 PCC result Lab 139437 C 42478 LD 40318 Ind 26664 UKIP 23256

Bolton council, Greater Manchester; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Abdul Atcha.

Go on. Was this the sort of image that came into your head when you thought of Bolton? Well, for once in this column I’m going to tell you that you’re not far wrong. This is a publicity still for Spring and Port Wine, a 1970 film based on a Bill Naughton play, set and filmed in Bolton, in which James Mason plays Rafe Crompton, the head of a family which is going through a bad few days. It’s a fine example of kitchen-sink drama. Here’s a clip.

The Crompton family’s house in the film still stands at the far end of Grisdale Road, in the Rumworth ward of Bolton. This is a ward of densely-packed housing overlooking the town centre from the south-west.

Anyone from the Greatest Town in the Known Universe will be able to watch Spring and Port Wine and play the game of “identify the location”; but the Rumworth of 1970 frozen in that film is rather different to the Rumworth of 2026. Many (but by no means all) of the mills between St Helens Road and Deane Road have fallen victim to the predations of Fred Dibnah. New industries which have moved in to replace textiles include the University of Bolton Greater Manchester, whose campus lies just outside the boundary of Rumworth ward. A more surprising feature of the area is Steaks on a Plane, an aeroplane fuselage parked next to Deane Road and used as a restaurant.

This area has also changed socially since 1970. When this column last covered Rumworth ward in September 2022, I mused that if you made Spring and Port Wine in the same location today, a lot of the themes might well be exactly the same but the family would likely be Muslim. Well, a few months later I saw a revival of the play at the Bolton Octagon Theatre which featured a mixed-race Crompton family: Daisy Crompton was played by Mina Anwar and Rafe by Les Dennis. Family Fortunes it was not, but the acting was excellent and I think that my theory was proved.

The boundaries of Rumworth ward have changed slightly since the 2021 census was taken, but not by enough to change its nature. On the previous boundaries Rumworth was in the top 30 wards in England and Wales for Islam (66.8%) and the top 75 for Asian ethnicity (59.2%), mostly of Pakistani heritage. The ward is also in the top 100 in England and Wales for adults who are economically inactive due to looking after home or family (14.3%), for adults who have never worked or are long-term unemployed (24.0%), for adults with no qualifications (34.7%), for adults employed in the wholesale and retail sector (24.4%), for terraced housing (61.8% of households), for residents aged under 16 (27.4%) and for residents born in Asia or the Middle East (27.4%).

Strongly-Muslim wards in the Pennine textile towns can be extremely volatile at election time, depending on what is going on in the local mosques or on the religion of particular candidates. Party labels might or might not come into it. And Rumworth ward is a case in point. This was a strongly-Labour ward up to May 2022, when Ayyub Patel had a go at the ward as a Conservative candidate and came a strong second; he then won a September 2022 by-election, gaining his seat from Labour.

In May 2023 there was an all-out election in Bolton when the current ward boundaries came in, and Labour narrowly got all three seats back with Patel finishing as runner-up and losing his seat. Then in May 2024 Patel tried again, this time as an independent candidate, and he won his seat back. As such, he was not on the ballot in May 2026, when there was a huge swing to ... the Green Party, whose candidate Ismail Ibrahim defeated Labour councillor Sajid Ali by 50-35. There was no independent candidate in Rumworth on that occasion.

Following the 2026 election the Labour minority administration in Bolton continued, but their position is precarious and a successful defence of this by-election would certainly be helpful to them. The latest composition has 19 Labour councillors plus this vacancy against 10 Conservatives, 10 Reform UK, 5 Horwich and Blackrod First councillors (including John Scoble, who won a by-election in Horwich North ward at the start of this month), 5 Lib Dems, 4 Greens, 3 Farnworth and Kearsley First, 2 Communities First councillors including Ayyub Patel, and an ex-Conservative independent.

The current parliamentary seats in Bolton were drawn based on a previous ward map which has left Rumworth ward divided between constituencies, but the vast majority of the ward is in the Bolton South and Walkden seat. (Those of a sensitive disposition are advised not to find out what the local pronunciation of Walkden is.) This seat is held by Labour backbencher Yasmin Qureshi, who was first elected for the predecessor Bolton South East constituency in 2010. The area south of Deane Church Lane which was added to this ward in 2023 is included within the Bolton West constituency represented by Labour’s Phil Brickell.

This by-election is to replace Labour councillor Abdul Atcha, who is stepping down from the council in order to take up a new job. He was first elected for Rumworth ward in 2022 and then re-elected in 2023 for a four-year term, so whoever wins here today will need to seek re-election again next year.

Defending this seat for Labour is Sajid Pathan, whose previous electoral history is a curious one: Pathan last sought election in 2024 when he contested Hulton ward on the Gallowayite ticket of the Workers Party of Britain, and in 2023 he was on the Conservative slate for Great Lever ward. The Greens have selected Alan Johnson, who is retired from a career in structural engineering and social care; Johnson has been standing for the party in Bolton for decades, and he last contested Rumworth ward in 2024. Also on the ballot paper are Ghansham Patel for Reform UK, Gillian Wroe for the Lib Dems, Marcellus Mbah for the Conservatives and two independent candidates: Wendy Hopkinson is a former Green Party figure who stood in May as an independent candidate for Breightmet ward, and Yusuf Davda is a local resident and business owner who was on the Conservative slate for this ward in 2023.

Parliamentary constituency: Bolton South and Walkden (most of ward), Bolton West (south of Deane Church Lane)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Manchester
Postcode district: BL3

Yusuf Davda (Ind)
Wendy Hopkinson (Ind)
Alan Johnson (Grn)
Marcellus Mbah (C)
Ghansham Patel (RUK)
Sajid Pathan (Lab)
Gillian Wroe (LD)

May 2026 result Grn 2346 Lab 1659 RUK 463 LD 137 C 119
May 2024 result Ind 1990 Lab 1244 Grn 550 C 153 RUK/Bolton for Change 139 LD 48
May 2023 result Lab 2491/2484/2238 C 2019/1975/1829 Grn 374/296 RUK/Bolton for Change 163 LD 99
Previous results in detail

Isle of Anglesey council, North Wales; caused by the death of Plaid Cymru councillor Ken Taylor.

We’ll now travel west and go offshore to the Isle of Anglesey. The ward name “Bro’r Llynnoedd” can be translated as “the District of the Lakes”, which is a reference to a number of freshwater lakes at the western end of Anglesey. Llyn Dinam, Llyn Penrhyn and Llyn Traffwil are close to the village of Llanfihangel yn Nhowyn, and Llyn Llywenan is some distance to the north.

There is also open water on the western boundary of Bro’r Llynnoedd ward, which follows the shallow strait that separates Anglesey proper from Holy Island to the west. All communication links to and from Holy Island - and on from there to Ireland, via the ferry from Holyhead - converge on the village of Valley, which is the railhead for this ward. Valley is home to the largest of the three polling stations for this by-election, the other two being at Caergeiliog on the old A5 and at Bodedern to the north.

Possibly the most famous person who grew up in this area is the now-retired Welsh rugby star George North, who was actually born in England but moved to Anglesey at the age of two. North attended the secondary school in Bodedern which also educated Gareth Williams, who went on to become a mathematician with GCHQ. Williams was found dead in his London flat in 2010 in circumstances which have never been satisfactorily explained: his body was found inside a sports bag which had been locked from the outside.

Defence employment of a different kind dominates the economy of Bro’r Llynnoedd ward, which ranks in the top 70 wards in England and Wales for residents employed in public administration and defence (16.7%). This is thanks to the presence of RAF Valley, a large airfield which has been in operation since 1941; it is presently used for pilot training and as the headquarters of the RAF’s mountain rescue service. Among the many airmen who have passed through Valley over the years are Prince William, who learned to fly Sea King search and rescue helicopters here in 2010. RAF Valley’s accommodation blocks are mostly located next to Llyn Penrhyn.

Bro’r Llynnoedd ward was created in 2022, mostly from territory which was previously in Llifon ward. At the only election held here to date the ward split its two seats between independent councillor Gwilym Jones and Plaid Cymru’s Ken Taylor, with topline figures of 43% for Jones, 35% for Plaid and 22% for the Conservatives. This by-election is to replace Plaid Cymru’s Taylor, who suddenly died in May.

The Isle of Anglesey council is run by Plaid Cymru, who topped the poll in May’s Senedd election across the larger constituency of Bangor Conwy Môn: that seat returned 3 Plaid MSs, 2 Reform UK and 1 Conservative. Top of the Plaid list here was the party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, who is now the First Minister down in Cardiff Bay. Plaid also gained the Ynys Môn Westminster seat in 2024, with the then Anglesey council leader Llinos Madi gaining her seat from the Conservatives.

Anglesey council’s Plaid Cymru group has slipped from 21 out of 34 councillors at the 2022 election to 17 now following defection losses and a by-election loss to Reform UK earlier this year in the neighbouring Ynys Gybi ward, so Plaid need to hold this seat to preserve their council majority. Their defending candidate is Jon Taylor, who is a grandson of the late Ken Taylor. This time there is no independent candidate so quite a lot of votes are up for grabs. The Conservatives have picked Margaret John, who was their losing candidate in the Ynys Gybi by-election in February, and we have interventions from two parties who were not on the ballot here in 2022: the Greens’ Nick Bounds and Reform UK’s Richard Jones were both unsuccessful candidates for the Senedd here in May.

Westminster constituency: Ynys Môn
Senedd constituency: Bangor Conwy Môn
ONS Travel to Work Area: Bangor and Holyhead
Postcode district: LL65

Nick Bouds (Grn)
Margaret John (C)
Richard Jones (RUK)
Jon Taylor (PC)

May 2022 result Ind 830/480 PC 670 C 431/298
Previous results in detail

South Holland council, Lincolnshire; caused by the death of independent councillor David Wilkinson.

Now for something completely different, as we transfer into the flat land of the Fens. The small market town of Long Sutton lies not far off the south coast of the Wash, the large bay which lies between Lincolnshire and Norfolk, and it is on the main road running along the south side of the Wash. Its largest employer is a factory making tinned food for the Princes group, and this gives Long Sutton a rather working-class economic profile. Other villages within the ward include Lutton to the north and Tydd St Mary to the south, close to the tripoint of Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire which lies in the River Nene.

Since the present ward boundaries were introduced in 2007, Long Sutton ward has been entirely fought in South Holland council elections between Conservatives and independent candidates. The independents normally have the upper hand, including at the last by-election here in August 2012, but Long Sutton ward generally returns a mix of Conservatives and independents - and that political split was guaranteed when the 2023 candidate list came out and there were two Conservatives and two independent candidates standing for the three available seats. In the end the votes split 50-50 between the two groups and the three outgoing councillors - independents Andrew Tennant and David Wilkinson, and the Conservatives’ Jack Tyrrell - were all re-elected. Tenannt and Wilkinson were not affiliated to the South Holland Independents, which emerged as the main opposition to the Conservatives here at the 2023 election.

Several of the South Holland Independent and Conservative councillors have since joined Reform UK, which did well in this area at the 2025 Lincolnshire county elections. Long Sutton itself is part of The Suttons division, which was close three ways between RUK, the Conservatives and the South Holland Independents; Reform UK won the Holbeach Rural division which covers the outlying villages of this ward more convincingly. Reform UK were also second in July 2024 in the South Holland and The Deepings constituency, which has only had one MP since its creation in 1997: the Conservatives’ Sir John Hayes was re-elected two years ago for his eighth term of office.

We now need to replace David Wilkinson as a South Holland councillor following his death in May at the age of 71. Wilkinson was a long-serving member of the council who was first elected for Long Sutton ward in 2007; he lost his seat to the Conservatives in 2015, but got it back in 2019. Wilkinson was also a parish councillor in Lutton at the time of his death.

This by-election will see a change in council composition, because no new independent candidate has come forward to replace Wilkinson. The Conservatives, who will recover their overall majority on South Holland council if they gain this seat, have selected Naomi Andrews who is a local business owner. The Greens’ James Timpson is an actor and former farmworker, and Reform UK’s Robbie Woods already represents most of this ward as the Lincolnshire county councillor for The Suttons. He completes a ballot paper of three candidates.

Parliamentary constituency: South Holland and The Deepings
Lincolnshire county council divisions: The Suttons (part: Little Sutton and Long Sutton parishes), Holbeach Rural (part: Lutton and Tydd St Mary parishes)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Spalding
Postcode districts: PE12, PE13

Naomi Andrews (C)
James Timpson (Grn)
Robbie Woods (RUK)

May 2023 result Ind 982/782 C 967/624
May 2019 result Ind 1039/899 C 944/885/800
May 2015 result C 2076/1922 Ind 1620/1567/1039
August 2012 by-election Ind 946 C 757
May 2011 result Ind 1658/1369/1220 C 1152/569
May 2007 result Ind 1321/1182/1180 C 802/717/591
Previous results in detail

Uttlesford council, Essex; caused by the death of Residents for Uttlesford councillor Alex Armstrong.

Right, here’s a challenge for those of you who are madly in love with your partner. Go to Dunmow for the next quadrennial Flitch trials in 2028 and claim your prize. All you and your other half have to do is convince a jury that you have been married for twelve months and never had an argument or regretted your marriage in that time, and you could win a Flitch of Bacon. The Dunmow Flitch Trials have been going for an extremely long time - there are references to them in the fourteenth-century Wife of Bath’s Tale from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales - but bringing home the bacon is not as easy as it sounds, because the organisers will hire proper legal counsel to cross-examine you. And, this being the 21st century rather than the 14th, you might also end up as a star of YouTube.

The Flitch trials take place in the Essex town of Great Dunmow, a market town located on a Roman road running west from Colchester. The Roman road has been superseded by the A120, which now bypasses Great Dunmow to the south to provide faster connections from eastern Essex to Stansted Airport. Great Dunmow is divided into two electoral wards, with North ward being residential - and getting more so, as the current map of this ward shows a lot of new housing development. In the 2021 census - which might well be out of date by now given all that new development - Great Dunmow North just made the top 100 wards in England and Wales for Level 2 qualifications (5+ GCSEs or equivalent), which are held by 17.8% of the adult population.

Stansted Airport is the major employer in the Uttlesford local government district, which is named after an ancient hundred of north-western Essex and is based in Saffron Walden. Uttlesford district has similar boundaries to the North West Essex parliamentary seat represented by the Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who was first elected in 2017 for the predecessor seat of Saffron Walden.

Badenoch’s Conservatives haven’t done so well here in recent local elections. In May the Dunmow division of Essex county council voted for Reform UK. And the Conservatives haven’t run Uttlesford council since 2019, when it was gained by a localist party called R4U - or, to give the party its full title, Residents for Uttlesford. R4U have recently lost their majority on the council as a result of defections to Reform UK, but they continue to run the show.

Residents for Uttlesford have topped the poll in Great Dunmow North ward at the last two local elections, but in 2023 the ward split its representation: R4U and the Conservatives both polled 39% of the vote and won one seat each, with Labour coming in some way behind on 12%. The re-elected R4U councillor was Alex Armstrong, who died in May at the age of 77. Armstrong’s political career was most definitely not pointless: he was one of the founder members of Residents for Uttlesford, and during their first term in 2019-23 he was the Uttlesford councillor responsible for sports and leisure.

The prize in this by-election might not be a flitch of bacon, but that hasn’t put off our five candidates. The defending Residents for Uttlesford candidate is Sandi Merifield, who is seeking to get back onto the council after losing her seat in the neighbouring Felsted and Stebbing ward in 2023; Merifield was also the R4U candidate here in May’s Essex county council election, and she will need to seriously improve on her third-place performance then to be in contention here. The Conservatives’ Will Church, who runs a contracting firm, was the runner-up here in 2023 and he is back for another go. Labour have selected Oliver Rogers, a former civil servant who now has a senior role in the NHS and is the clerk to a number of parishes in the area. Also on the ballot are Lorraine Flawn for the Lib Dems and Rod Jones, who was a Residents for Uttlesford councillor for Great Dunmow South and Barnston ward from 2019 to 2023 but now has the Reform UK nomination.

Parliamentary constituency: North West Essex
Essex county council division: Dunmow
ONS Travel to Work Area: Chelmsford
Postcode district: CM6

Will Church (C)
Lorraine Flawn (LD)
Rod Jones (RUK)
Sandi Merifield (R4U)
Oliver Rogers (Lab)

May 2023 result R4U 528/368 C 517/463 Lab 165/152 LD 131
May 2019 result R4U 779/652 C 378/291 LD 114
May 2015 result C 876/856 R4U 795/673 Lab 249 LD 182
Previous results in detail

Eastleigh council, Hampshire; caused by the death of Liberal Democrat councillor Cynthia Garton.

Our final by-election this week is a repeat of a ward which appeared in this column in May last year. It’s in the Eastleigh district of Hampshire, which has a very long history of Liberal Democrat control. Indeed Keith House is one of the UK’s longest-serving council leaders, having run Eastleigh council continuously since 1994.

House is one of the three councillors for Hedge End South ward. Lying immediately to the east of Southampton, Hedge End has grown very rapidly in population since the completion of the M27 motorway in the 1970s: it was only promoted to the status of a town in 1992, and it is still expanding. Most of the space in Hedge End South ward has now been developed for housing, and the ward has high levels of owner-occupation.

The explosive population growth in Hedge End and other Southampton suburbs has often caused problems for the Parliamentary boundary commission, and the boundaries of the Eastleigh and Winchester constituencies tend to change dramatically at each redistribution. The most recent boundary review in 2024 transferred Hedge End out of the Eastleigh seat into a new parliamentary constituency called Hamble Valley, which also takes in the western half of Fareham borough. Fareham borough has traditionally voted strongly for the Conservatives, and this boundary change was good news for the outgoing Conservative MP for Eastleigh Paul Holmes: he got the Conservative nomination for Hamble Valley, and he was re-elected fairly comfortably in 2024 while his old seat fell to the Liberal Democrats.

Local elections here tell a rather different story. This is a strongly Lib Dem ward of Eastleigh council, which in May gave 43% of the vote to the Lib Dems against 27% for Reform UK and 21% for the Conservatives. At the simultaneous election in May for Hampshire county council, the larger county division of Hedge End and West End South turned in a similar result.

Those polls took place a few days after the death of Eastleigh councillor Cynthia Garton, who was first elected in 2016 for the predecessor ward of Hedge End St John’s and transferred here in 2018 following boundary changes. Garton, who had also been a Hedge End town councillor since 1999, was the borough’s mayoress in 2008-09 and mayor in 2021-22. The mayoral chain of office does come with responsibilities, and Garton was in the chair for the marathon Eastleigh council meeting in 2021 to consider the planning application for Southampton Airport’s runway extension: that meeting eventually ran for 22 hours over two days of debate.

Defending the resulting by-election for the Liberal Democrats is Jim Paine, who is the vice-chair of Hedge End town council. Reform UK have changed their candidate to Neil Fleming, who stood in May for Eastleigh council and for the county council in Hamble without success. The Conservatives have again selected Jerry Hall, a businessman who has been contesting local elections here since 1995: Hall previously represented the old Hedge End St John’s ward on Eastleigh council from 2000 to 2006 and again from 2015 to 2018. The Greens’ Keith Day - who was the Labour candidate here in last year’s by-election - and Labour’s Will Banks complete an all-male ballot paper.

Parliamentary constituency: Hamble Valley
Hampshire county council division: Hedge End and West End South
ONS Travel to Work Area: Southampton
Postcode districts: SO19, SO30, SO31

Will Banks (Lab)
Keith Day (Grn)
Neil Fleming (RUK)
Jerry Hall (C)
Jim Paine (LD)

May 2026 result LD 1634 RUK 1017 C 788 Grn 331
May 2025 by-election LD 1266 C 735 RUK 728 Lab 122
May 2024 result LD 1436 C 801 Lab 295 Grn 172
May 2023 result LD 1651 C 778 Lab 231 Grn 175
May 2022 result LD 1921 C 854 Lab 245
May 2021 result LD 1779 C 1412 Lab 237
May 2019 result LD 1878 C 666 UKIP 261 Lab 127 Grn 117
May 2018 result LD 1933/1894/1863 C 1157/1016/1008 Lab 182/173/155 UKIP 133
Previous results in detail

If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them - going back to 2016 - in the Andrew’s Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by becoming a paid subscriber to this blog - which will also you get you early access to the Previews.

Andrew Teale