Andrew's Previews 2020: The year 2020, told through local by-elections

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Tamworth council, Staffordshire; both caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Richard Ford. Defending for the Conservatives is Peter Berry, who represents the area on Thorpe St Andrew town council. Labour have selected the wonderfully-named Calix Eden. Brian Howe completes the candidate list for the Lib Dems. Outgoing councillor Baker-Smith doesn’t appear to have completely left her Isle of Wight roots. She was working remotely in an NHS job which is nominally based there, and she quit Manchester council in July to spend more time on the island caring for a family member. These are normally Conservative-voting areas. County councillor Rupert Simmons represented this area for almost 26 years until his death in April at the age of 70, starting his political career in 1997 on Heathfield and Waldron parish council; he had served continuously on East Sussex county council since 2001, and was also a Wealden district councillor from 1999 to 2003. His sixth and last re-election to the county council came in 2021 with a big lead of 59–19 over the Green Party. Now, unlike some other cities, Oxford’s ring road doesn’t necessarily mark the end of the urban area: large parts of Oxford’s south-east fringe are outside the ring road. This includes the former village of Littlemore, which has existed for a very long time but only got a parish church in 1838; its first incumbent was John Henry Newman, who later became a Roman Catholic cardinal and a saint. Newman gives his name to the local primary school. Littlemore ward also takes in the Oxford Science Park and the Kassam Stadium, home of Oxford United FC, both of which are on the southern edge of the city.

Five years ago, the seaside resort of Worthing had no Labour councillors. This column covered the election of the first Labour councillor there, at the Marine ward by-election in August 2017. A full electoral cycle later, the once-large Conservative majority has disappeared to the extent that Labour are now the largest party on the council: they hold 17 seats against 17 Conservatives (who run the town as a minority), two Lib Dems, a Green and an independent. We have the realistic prospect of Labour going from nothing to majority in Worthing in less than five years. St Helens is the smallest of England’s 36 metropolitan boroughs in terms of council size, with a total of 48 councillors. All of them were up for re-election in May with new ward boundaries being introduced; this resulted in an increased Labour majority with 35 council seats against 4 Lib Dems and three seats each for the Conservatives, Greens and independents. Moss Bank ward was left almost untouched by the boundary changes so we can read its political history over quite a long period: it was a safe Lib Dem ward until the Merseyside Lib Dem vote evaporated in 2010 on the formation of the Coalition, and has been a safe Labour ward since then. In May the Labour slate polled 52% here with the Conservatives and Lib Dems on 17% each. In May 2023 the Tories lost their majority on Broadland council, falling from 33 to 21 seats out of a possible 47, and that cost them power. All the other councillors (14 Lib Dems, 8 Labour and 4 Greens) have joined together in a traffic-light coalition, under a Lib Dem leader. The result in Thorpe St Andrew North West was closer than in the October 2022 by-election, but a Labour lead of 48–42 was enough for Labour to take all three seats in the ward.

Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Beaconsfield (Denham and Fulmer parishes); Chesham and Amersham (Gerrards Cross East parish ward of Gerrards Cross parish) So, defending this seat for the Conservatives is Neil Waller, an NHS finance manager and former Wealden councillor who lost his seat two months ago in Crowborough South West ward. The Greens have selected Anne Cross, an interfaith minister who lives in Heathfield. The Lib Dems also put a nomination in, but their candidate has withdrawn and will not be on the ballot; that leaves this by-election as a straight fight between Waller and Cross. The military have vacated the Royal William Victualling Yard to the west of the ferry port, but the Marines and the Royal Artillery are still in situ at the 17th-century Royal Citadel which overlooks the Hoe and Sutton Harbour to its east. Because of all this naval infrastructure, Plymouth was a major target for enemy bombing in the Second World War. By the time the war was over, large parts of the city centre had been destroyed. What was essentially a Coventry-style complete rebuilding of the city centre gave us Armada Way, a north-south tree-lined boulevard running through a brand-new central shopping district. Armada Way was subsequently pedestrianised. The 1950s buildings around it are now 70 years old, and there was a general feeling that the area needed some freshening up and making more attractive to city centre visitors. So the obvious answer was to send contractors in, under cover of darkness, to chop down all the trees.

The list of famous people associated with mining areas is often dominated by sportsmen, but possibly the most famous former pupil of Oakdale Comprehensive School (now Islwyn High School) was too young to have gone down the pits. Joe Calzaghe was born in London and spent some of his early life in his father’s native Sardinia, but he grew up in this corner of South Wales before embarking on a stellar boxing career. Calzaghe retired from the ring in 2009 with a perfect record of 46 wins from 46 professional fights, having unified three of the four super-middleweight world titles and spent more than a decade as WBO super-middleweight world champion before moving up to win more world titles at light-heavyweight. This from a lad who was bullied at high school, and left Oakdale Comprehensive without taking any GCSEs. If you got your GCSE results last week and they weren’t what you hoped for, remember that you’ve got a long life left to either put that right or make your mark in some other way. Moving over to Greater Manchester, it’s time yet again to talk about the Greatest Town in the Known Universe. I swear, every time I talk about my town’s politics things get more complicated. It’s only just over four years since I wrote in this column that It’s the council who get to have the final say on important matters like how often the bins are emptied, how often the roads are resurfaced, and how much their employees get paid for doing that. It’s the council who get to have the final say on important matters like where shops can be opened, how our libraries are run, where our children’s schools are located, where new housing is to be built, whether new housing is to be built. It’s the council that registers our hatchings, matchings and dispatchings, and that supports its more vulnerable residents in between through one of the largest parts of the local government budget — social services. To do all this our 400 or so local councils, between them, employ around two million people — a figure that has reduced by a third since 2010 as central government, who stump up the bill for much of this, have slowly turned the financial thumbscrews.Sir Edward Codrington resigned from the Commons in 1840. Now, one does not simply resign as an MP: instead you have to be appointed to an Office of Profit under the Crown which exists for the sole purpose of vacating your parliamentary seat. There are two such offices of profit in use today, the Chiltern Hundreds and the Manor of Northstead; but other similar offices have been used in the past. Codrington was the last MP to resign by being appointed as Steward of the Manor of East Hendred, and the appointment went through despite the fact that the Crown had actually sold that manor in 1823. It seems that nobody had told the Parliamentary authorities about this at the time, and at least seventeen later appointments were made to the Manor of East Hendred before the penny dropped. Codrington died in 1851, and the post of Steward of the Manor of East Hendred has been vacant ever since. To take the county council by-election first, the defending Labour candidate is saxophonist and part-time music teacher Trish Elphinstone. The Conservatives have selected Tim Patmore, who previously contested Rose Hill and Littlemore division in 2013. Standing for the Greens is David Thomas, a former leader of the Green group on the city council; Thomas works as an engineer in the water industry. Also standing are independent candidate and Littlemore parish councillor Michael Evans who also contested this county council seat in 2021, Theo Jupp for the Lib Dems and Callum Joyce for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. This urban bias translates into a Labour-voting bias. Most of the seats up this year were last contested in 2018, and the Local Elections Archive Project database shows that that year (in England only) 41.2% of the votes were cast for Labour, 31.8% for the Conservatives, 14.0% for the Liberal Democrats, 6.7% for the Green Party, 2.1% for independent candidates, 1.3% for UKIP and the remaining 2.9% for localists and other parties. In terms of council seats, Labour won 2,359, the Conservatives 1,338, the Liberal Democrats 540, the Greens 39, independents 61, UKIP 3 and localists and the rest won 84. The Swadlincote South county division takes in the town centre, a large industrial area to the west and housing in the south of the town. The presence of the Leicestershire county boundary not far to the south-east and greenbelt land to the west means that most of Swadlincote’s urban growth has taken place in a northerly or southerly direction, resulting in the urban area absorbing the former village of Church Gresley. This was another industrial place, with pottery being the main local industry: the distinctive blue-and-white Cornishware kitchen pottery was manufactured in Church Gresley well into the 21st century. Before we start this week, there are a couple of corrections to the Leicester piece from last week. Aasiya Bora may have finished as runner-up in last week’s by-election, but in fact she placed third in last year’s poll. Keith Vaz is no longer the chair of the Leicester East branch of Labour; he is now the constituency party’s campaigns officer, which can’t be a particularly comfortable position to hold given his candidate’s disastrous performance last week.