UK local by-elections, 2024

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's also the case of the Winchester by-election in 1997: Mark Oaten* (LibDem) was declared the winner over the incumbent Gerry Malone (Con) by two votes. The count was poorly conducted, and an Election Court unseated Oaten after an election petition was launched by Malone, as it was held that the outcome of the election was uncertain. Oaten won the ensuing by-election by over twenty thousand votes.

_{*Who, despite this, is better known for the ending of his parliamentary career rather than its beginning...}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is actually the third party that Sharer will represent on Hackney council: when he was first elected (thirty years ago) it was for Labour. Adding to the complexities of this particular ward, incidentally, is the fact that many of the Hasidim who live there are Satmar.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Mrs Girvan: You forgot your sandwich again, Mr Jedburrah.

Darius Jedburgh: Mrs Girvan, mince between two slices of white bread is not my idea of LUNCH. Hell, I'd rather eat the damned Bible.

Mrs Girvan: (outraged) Mr Jedburrah!

Darius Jedburgh: (heading up the stairs) Jed-BURG!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I’d even suggest that in the fabled “Canada 1993” outcome Berwickshire et al might be one of the survivors.

Note that the two survivors in 1993 were not ones that one would guess generically. Charest's majority at Sherbrooke was very large in 1988 but then this was true of many other provincial ridings in Quebec that year and it had only a very weak PC history before 1984, while the PC majority at Saint John in 1988 was only 4.5pts: Wayne actually increased the PC majority there amidst complete national collapse in 1993!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I’d even suggest that in the fabled “Canada 1993” outcome Berwickshire et al might be one of the survivors.

Note that the two survivors in 1993 were not ones that one would guess generically. Charest's majority at Sherbrooke was very large in 1988 but then this was true of many other provincial ridings in Quebec that year and it had only a very weak PC history before 1984, while the PC majority at Saint John in 1988 was only 4.5pts: Wayne actually increased the PC majority there amidst complete national collapse in 1993!

Saint John was never even a Tory stronghold. It was always a swing

Exactly! If a Canada '93 situation were to somehow occur (and as the Canadian House of Commons is a lot smaller than the British one so two seats would translate to about four and a half) then the list of last survivors would likely also be distinctly odd.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, one of them being a *gain* would be a true "chef's kiss" moment

Right now, I am unironically more concerned about the outcome there than in multiple constituencies where Labour lost by more than 20pts in 2019...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Does a strong association with the asbestos industry lead to places developing the weirdest possible political histories? Consider also Rochdale.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The council was only created in 1995. But random rogue results are common in Welsh local government and usually reflect local grumblings or scandals of one sort or another.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So, the issue of partisan contestation of local elections in Britain is a complex one. Before the middle 1970s (middle 1960s in London) local government was organized in a very different way to the various systems that people will be more familiar with now. From 1889 the main unit of local government in England and Wales¹ was the county, beneath which there were a serious of small districts with a variety of different names² and few actual powers in practice and even less after the 1940s when they were cut out of the planning process. What they mostly did in practice was raise the rates that they county councils then spent. Some urban areas were allowed to run their own affairs outside the county system and were, in effect, treated as their own counties: these were called County Boroughs and included most large provincial cities. Local democracy was not new to the county boroughs (as Municipal Corporations under the previous system most had over fifty years of experience of contested partisan elections of one sort of another) but it was to most of the country. It was also the case that party labels were not printed on ballot papers (and would not be until the 1970s) which meant that the exact organization of local political groups ended up being a largely local affair: things were very formal in some county councils right from the start, but took on a very informal character in others, with some not even really abandoning that model until the abolition of the old county councils in the 1970s. Group names and organizational structure was also not uniform: on the London County Council the Liberals formed an alliance with local trade unionists to create the Progressive Party, while the Conservatives organized first as the Moderate Party and then as the Municipal Reform Party. In Birmingham the Conservatives continued to be known as the Unionists after the Liberal Unionist Party formally merged into the Tories and only abandoned the name in the late 1940s after the shock of losing control to Labour for the first time and due to the tarnishing of the Chamberlain name. Antisocialist 'alliances' (which always ended up simply as Conservative groups in practice) using labels such as 'Progressive' were also common in Scotland and existed elsewhere, especially in the North of England. The point, though, is that everyone knew who all of these groups actually were, and the same was true of places with more informal arrangements: if you lived in, say, Caernarfonshire and your local county councillor was a union official at Dinorwic you knew perfectly well which party he was a member, or at least, a supporter of. The pattern was similar at district level, though matters were usually more relaxed (as, again, these councils didn't actually do much).³ This was was especially true of the rural districts: except in some mining regions (and even then not all of those) it was generally thought to be a complete waste of time to make district elections a partisan matter, especially as finding candidates could be a pain: there were RDs that never saw a contested election in their entire history. A final complicating issue was that of Aldermen: these were councillors elected by the council (rather than the electorate) and were a feature of county, county borough and municipal borough councils, but not the other types. Councils were free to elect these according to whatever system they liked, and things could get quite nasty when the balance of power was tight. This provided a strong incentive for people who preferred a more collegiate way of running things - as power brokers in rural areas are apt to - to argue against the formation of party groups

<sub>1. Scottish local government was organized in a different way again, though the broad outlines were similar.
2. Which related more to the level of civic dignity granted to the district than to its actual powers. In order of seniority the principal types of district were Municipal Boroughs (known as Metropolitan Boroughs in London), Urban Districts and Rural Districts).
3. The big exception turned out to be certain affluent London suburbs and commuter towns, thus the sudden emergence of the Ratepayer groups in the 1920s.</sub>

[Filuwaúrdjan]

For those who like a really deep cut, Until the 1980s Grangetown tended to vote Labour in General Elections but was a marginal ward that often narrowly returned Conservatives in local elections, the latter being a legacy of the machine politics and, ultimately, political issues (temperance!) of another age. At least one of the Conservative candidates in the ward back then always had an Irish surname, as a rule.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

(Yes, that's a joint candidate between Plaid Cymru and the Greens; this arrangement already existed in 2022.)

Plaid Cymru/Green alliances and electoral deals go back to the early 1990s, with mixed results.

It has fairly clearly retarded the potential progress of the latter, but it's their life and their funeral, I suppose.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

...Friockheim?!?! Ah, I see it was one of those odd planned 19th century industrial villages that Scotland has a surprisingly large number of, thus the highly peculiar name.