Labour cling on in Newcastle-under-Lyme while Tories humble Reform
We’re unwrapping the first council by-elections of 2025.
Dear reader,
Every Thursday you can almost be sure a nondescript corner of the country is going to the polls to elect a councillor in one of many by-elections held throughout the year. Horse-racing for the political junkies, these fights provide some - emphasis some - insight into what’s happening for the parties nationally.
Because local council votes don’t make general election votes. And nowhere is this adage truer than Hunts Cross in Liverpool which had its own council fight last night.
Here be parts that are reliably Labour in a general election. The incumbent councillors themselves would admit as much. But in council contests Hunts Cross voted in Lib Dem councillors by wide margins in 2023, and re-elected them in 2025. In this by-election the Lib Dems romped home by a wide margin at 51 per cent. Labour put in a performance - a 30 per cent of the vote kind of performance. Nothing to shout home about, though. They fell 4pts on 2023.
Reform, who my modelling says would come a comfortable second to Labour in a general election here, found themselves with only 11 per cent of the vote.
The Lib Dems are the prize chameleon of British politics. Anything to anyone, just dependent on where you live. And here in Liverpool they are the anti-Labour alternative. They pulled in votes who would otherwise go Reform, Independent, and Conservative. Such is the local nature of local politics. Fascinating, but hard to transpose to a national narrative.
It’s the more traditional Tory vs. Lab contests though where those national narratives do carry some currency. Labour clung on in a central part of Newcastle-under-Lyme, against the odds, with 40 per cent of the vote. They are down an eye-watering 28pts on 2022.
Here’s a constituency that left the Conservative column in the Labour landslide of last year. And my modelling from the polls right now fingered this as a neck-and-neck fight between Labour and Reform.
But Reform proved the wet raspberry. They emerged with 22 per cent of the vote, much less than the 39 per cent I modelled them to get. What happened here was the Conservatives. They exceeded expectations and ended up with 29 per cent, up from the 10 per cent my modelling had projected.
For Reform to underperform by 17pts and the Cons to outperform by 19 tells you all you need to know. Ref votes went Con. In terms of the government’s vote (40 per cent instead of 39 per cent) vs the right vote (51 per cent instead of 49 per cent), my modelling won the day. I understand the Cons on the ground in Newcastle-under-Lyme are a well organised bunch. Reform, fresh to the area - despite some historic Ukip strength, are not. Whatever the political air-war, doorknocking is king.
Moving to Scotland, the esteemed by-election previewer Andrew Teale detailed this about one of the fights in Edinburgh: a Lib Dem councillor, elected in a by-election of their own, throwing in the towel one week after winning. Read this.
[N]ewly-elected councillor Louise Spence immediately put her house on the market, quit the Liberal Democrats, and tendered her resignation from the council after just a week in office. Andrew's Previews has covered a few laughable council careers over the last decade and a half, and Spence's story is certainly up there with the best of them. Maybe I should start a Councillors Behaving Ludicrously file.
You won’t believe what happened next.
It’s not all over for Kemi Badenoch
Over at the New Statesman I’ve written on how while the Conservative leader has had a pretty rough start, we shouldn’t be writing her off just yet.
Voters are still unsure what to think of her. But another way of looking at it is this: she’s just not breaking through. When you compete on a one-to-one for HM Government, you’re guaranteed free hits every Wednesday at Prime Minister’s Questions. But competing with another party leader on the right of politics, Nigel Farage?
Well, that’s a little more tricky.
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Thanks for reading
That covers the first Substack post from Britain Elects. Let’s see what we can make of this. I’ve been Ben Walker. Have a great weekend.