NEW By-election Breakdown 15/03/2018

The breakdown has quickly become a feature of Thursday evenings as political anoraks across the land await updates on twitter for results from that week’s local council by-elections. They provide a good weekly stock take of how the parties really are fairing out their on the doorsteps and in real ballot boxes, not merely in opinion polls.

Last week’s article about the eight contests, in which we sadly only predicted 50% correctly, was nonetheless viewed over 6,000 times. We are humbled, surprised and grateful.

Onwards to a trio of English by-elections, a mere seven weeks from the all-important local elections on 3rd May. Today we are in Redcar & Cleveland in the north east and in the historic Lincolnshire town of Stamford.

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Redcar & Cleveland UA, Longbeck Ward (Independent resigned, 4 candidates: Con, Lab, LD, Ind)
2007 election results: Ind 1194/495/427, Con 738/697/486, Lab 422/375/334, LD 180/171/158
2011 election results: LD 815/748/643, Con 776/ 583/570, Lab 769/717/694, Ind 343
2015 election results: Con 1402, Ind 1220/863/ 655, UKIP 1083, Lab 1003/860/804, LD 764

We start the action tonight with a free-for-all triggered by the resignation of Cllr Mike Findley MBE who expressed his “deep regret and sadness” at having to stand down from the role. Mike who suffers with Motor Neurone Disease has been a councillor for a combined total of around 10 years, and has raised almost £200,000 for MND research.

Well done Mike! He leaves big shoes to fill for this seat, and we have four candidates keen to take.

First up is the Labour party whose candidate 18-year-old Darcie Shepherd is one of the youngest candidates to stand for the party in a by-election. She’s certainly won the hearts of the local Momentum crew who have described her as an “excellent candidate, committed campaigner & socialist a tireless campaigner for so many things that matter, NHS, for women & for young people & education”. 

A fairly strong endorsement that has resulted in Darcie getting one of the biggest campaign crews out on the streets a by-election that we have seen in recent times. To put it into context, there are Tory MPs who would be chuffed with this size of a canvas team during a General Election campaign.

The Tories may not have the numbers, but they do have the...ahem… experience, when it comes to activists in this seat...

 

 

On paper, this is a strong possible gain for a gain for the Conservatives. But after last week’s disastrous result, and an strong independent candidate, we don’t think the blue team are going to pull this one off. 

At least the Tories’ Vera Rider has gained herself a new LinkedIn picture out of the whole ordeal. Every cloud, Vera.

 

 

 

Independent candidate Vic Jeffries is our choice for this seat. He is a former Redcar Councillor and seems to be very popular in the local area. Even with a Red Army and a Blue Rinse on his heels, we think that Vic is back.

PREDICTION: INDEPENDENT GAIN

 

South Kesteven DC, Stamford St George's Ward (Conservative resigned, 5 candidates: Con, Lab, LD, Green, Ind)
2007 election results: Ind 522, LD 436, Con 370/347
2011 election results: Ind 426/306, Con 409, Lab 322/319, LD 272, Green 142
2015 election results: Con 926/588, UKIP 539, Stamford 525/403, Lab 441/441, Green 346

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South Kesteven DC, St John's Ward (Conservative resigned, 5 candidates: Con, Lab, LD, Green, Ind)
2007 election results: LD 909/838/811, Con 794/766/721
2011 election results: Con 1232/1103/1014, Ind 629/600, LD 551/485, UKIP 435
2015 election results : Con 1385/1273, Stamford 820/784 UKIP 620

These two contests in the historic town of Stamford, just off the A1 provide an interesting test for the Conservatives who we note lost every single seat they were defending last Thursday.
 

 

 

They local Tories will be stretched with contests in two different wards here, one of which is the north eastern corner of the town (St George’s) and the other runs along the western side of the town where the ward boundary appears to be the A1, formerly known as the Great North Road.
 

 

Looking at the previous results here we can see the Tories struggling to defend on two fronts. As recently as 2007 St John’s elected 3 Liberal Democrats with an independent slate coming within 453 votes of taking a seat. We think the Conservatives will hold the St George’s seat and lose the St John’s seat to the Liberal Democrats. We note that the Lib Dem candidate Harrish Bisnauthsing was a councillor here up until 2011. 

Prediction: Conservative Hold (St George’s) & Lib Dem Gain (St John’s) 

A massive credit goes to our fellow council by-election fanatics on the Vote UK Forum where we got our previous vote totals from.​

So far we have predicted 67 out of 83 results correctly.

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