Previewing the Haslemere by-elections of Tuesday 7th July 2026

Two by-elections on Tuesday 7th July 2026:

Haslemere

Surrey county council; and

Haslemere West

Waverley council, Surrey; both caused by the death of Liberal Democrat councillor John Robini.

This week Andrew’s Previews is giving you two pieces for the price of one thanks to a rare Tuesday by-election. We are on the southern edge of the county of Surrey, close to the point where Surrey, Hampshire and Sussex all meet.

The town of Haslemere is up in the hills, on the direct railway line between London and Portsmouth. The A3 road passes to the west of Haslemere and travels under those hills in the Hindhead Tunnel, whose southern portal is part of this ward. Haslemere’s population started to grow in the 19th century with the coming of the railway, and it attracted wealthy commuters with a taste for the arts; Many buildings in the town are in the Arts and Crafts style.

It says something that the writers of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister thought that Sir Humphrey Appleby lived in Haslemere. Presumably he would have caught the commuter train to Waterloo for another day running rings around Jim Hacker and Bernard Woolley in the offices of the Department of Administrative Affairs - and, in time, 10 Downing Street.

As a patron of the arts, Sir Humphrey might well have enjoyed the Haslemere early music festival which was organised for many years by the Dolmetsch family. Arnold Dolmetsch, who lived in Haslemere from 1917, was a French musician who had come to London in the 1880s to study at the Royal College of Music and he became an enthusiast for early music and vintage instruments. This included the revival of the recorder, both as a serious musical instrument and as a gateway drug for children to learn how to read and perform music. If you tried to play the recorder in school, you have the Dolmetsches to thank for that: Arnold Dolmetsch and his son Carl ran a firm making recorders here in Haslemere for most of the 20th century.

Haslemere was given a borough charter by Elizabeth I, which made it one of the rotten boroughs which were entitled to elect two MPs up until the First Reform Act of 1832. In more recent years the town has had an unbroken line of Conservative MPs for over a century, with the current incumbent being Greg Stafford who won the first election for the Farnham and Bordon constituency in 2024. Stafford’s father’s family were originally from Haslemere, where his grandparents ran a sweetshop.

Haslemere’s local government is being reorganised, and today’s two by-elections here are to the old local government structure which will be swept away next April. They follow the death in May of John Robini, a former police officer who was a long-serving Liberal Democrat activist in this corner of Surrey. Robini was first elected in 2003 as a Lib Dem member of Waverley council, which is based in Godalming and covers a large chunk of Surrey’s southern rural fringe; but he lost his seat in Haslemere Critchmere and Shottermill ward to the Conservatives in 2007 and didn’t get it back until 2019. In 2023 this ward was redrawn with the new name of Haslemere West, and it returned the Lib Dem slate by the emphatic margin of 64-22 over the Conservatives.

John Robini had also been elected to Surrey county council in 2021 after many years of trying, defeating the Conservatives by 50-43 in the Haslemere county division. This division helpfully has the same boundaries as the Haslemere ward of the new West Surrey council, which went to the polls in May; this returned the Lib Dem slate with 45% of the vote, against 22% for the Conservatives and 16% for Reform UK, and its Lib Dem councillors Oli Leach and Terry Weldon will take up their full roles next April once the reorganisation is complete.

The two by-elections to replace Robini have a large crossover of candidates, with only the defending Lib Dems selecting different candidates for each vacancy. They have gone for the two shadow West Surrey councillors for Haslemere. For the county by-election in Haslemere division the Lib Dem candidate is Terry Weldon, who previously campaigned against apartheid in his native South Africa and now works part-time delivering medicines for a local pharmacy. Weldon is already a Waverley councillor for Haslemere East ward, so the Waverley council by-election in Haslemere West needs a different Lib Dem candidate: he is Oli Leach, who topped the poll here in May by a large margin and runs a coffee shop and wine bar in the town. The Conservative candidate in both by-elections is Tony Byfield, a political statistician who was an octochamp and quarter-finalist in series 89 of Countdown (covering the first half of 2024); Byfield has spent time in different countries as an elections observer, and in May’s West Surrey council election he was the runner-up in Haslemere ward. Also returning from May’s election in Haslemere is Reform UK’s Barb Witt, an evangelical Christian preacher who has migrated to Haslemere from her native Arkansas in the USA. Completing both ballots is the Green Party’s Thomas Shrive.

Haslemere

Parliamentary constituency: Farnham and Bordon
Waverley council wards: Haslemere East, Haslemere West, Hindhead and Beacon Hill (part)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Guildford and Aldershot
Postcode districts: GU26, GU27

Tony Byfield (C)
Thomas Shrive (Grn)
Terry Weldon (LD)
Barb Witt (RUK)

May 2026 West Surrey result LD 2441/1814 C 1214/1177 RUK 857/735 Grn 803/638 Lab 115
May 2021 result LD 2038 C 1751 Lab 287
May 2019 by-election Ind 2665 C 1159 Lab 263
May 2017 result C 1849 LD 990 Grn 304 Lab 300 UKIP 164
May 2013 result Ind 1208 C 1188 UKIP 573 LD 285 Lab 154
Previous results in detail

Haslemere West

Parliamentary constituency: Farnham and Bordon
Surrey county council division: Haslemere
ONS Travel to Work Area: Guildford and Aldershot
Postcode districts: GU26, GU27

Tony Byfield (C)
Oli Leach (LD)
Thomas Shrive (Grn)
Barb Witt (RUK)

May 2023 result LD 856/761 C 293/257 Lab 183
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