The big prize in the South West will be the election to Somerset county council, which will become the unitary council for Somerset in 2023 when the districts under it are abolished. This last went to the polls in 2017 when the Conservatives won a large majority — 35 seats, against 12 Lib Dems, 3 Labour, 3 independents and 2 Greens. The county council is doubling in size this year, so multiply those figures by 2 for a par score. This Conservative majority is large but not particularly strong, and there are a lot of marginal divisions here. Let’s start the week on the Saxon Shore. The southern coast of Kent has changed a lot over the last millennium, with extensive silting and a few enormous mediaeval storms creating the flat landscape of Romney Marsh. This has long been recognised as a vulnerable point in any invasion of England, and during the Napoleonic Wars the Royal Military Canal was constructed along the original shoreline, effectively cutting Romney Marsh off from the rest of the country. Rottingdean Coastal has normally been a safe Conservative ward this century, but the Tories lost one of the three seats here in 2019 to independent candidate Bridget Fishleigh who topped the poll; Labour weren’t that far behind the Conservative slate that year either. The by-election is defended by the Conservatives following the resignation of councillor Joe Miller, who first came to the attention of this column in 2013 when he contested a by-election in the neighbouring East Brighton ward at the age of 18. Miller had served as a councillor for this ward since 2015, and in 2019 he was re-elected here at the same time as being elected to the neighbouring Lewes council. He was the Conservative candidate for the local seat of Brighton Kemptown in the 2019 general election, and briefly served as deputy leader of Lewes council. Fareham and Portsmouth are part of one continuous urban area, with Portchester being the hinge in the middle of it. This is because of the presence of the steep Portsdown Hill to the north which forces all lines of communication to run through this ward, including the M27 motorway and the West Coastway railway line. Portchester railway station has regular trains to Southampton, Portsmouth and London.

We now come to the only local government unit in the UK which still has Aldermen, the City of London. There are 25 Aldermen of the City, one for each ward, who are the senior councillors from whose ranks the Lord Mayor of London is chosen. Russell is now seeking re-election for a third term of office as Alderman. This time he faces a bakeoff in Bread Street from Sarah Loveday, a chartered HR professional whose puntastic election slogan is “Knead for Change”. As normal, both candidates are Independent. The City’s electoral process started yesterday with the Wardmote, a public meeting-cum-hustings which has been adjourned for the poll, and which will reconvene tonight for the declaration of the result. The timeline means that it may be difficult for the Labour party to turn that lead into significant gains this time. The Labour party are defending over half of the seats up for election this year, and a large proportion of this set of elections is Greater London where Labour performed particularly well at the last local elections in 2018. Additionally, the big Conservative lead in the 2021 local elections turned into major gains in the rotational councils, and with those seats now in the bank for the Conservatives until 2024 the opposition parties will have to do just as well, in the other direction, to make significant headway. 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.The Heathfield and Mayfield county division is currently split between two safe-Conservative parliamentary seats. Heathfield is covered by the Bexhill and Battle constituency represented by Huw Merriman, Mayfield is part of Nus Ghani’s Wealden constituency. Merriman and Ghani are both currently junior ministers: Ghani holds the industry brief, while Merriman is responsible for the government’s railways and High Speed 2 policy. Boundary changes for the next general election will transfer Heathfield into the Wealden seat, which will take on the new name of “Sussex Weald”. In local elections Byker is a safe Labour ward of Newcastle upon Tyne city council, which has a Labour majority. The current ward boundaries date from 2018, when long-serving councillor George Allison was re-elected at the top of poll. Allison died of cancer in March 2020, on the day after he was awarded the freedom of the city by the council; because of the pandemic, his seat was vacant for more than a year before a by-election could be held as part of the 2021 local elections. This was won by Stephen Sheraton, who finished Allison’s term and was then re-elected in 2022 for a full term of his own. Last year Sheraton polled 65% of the vote, with the Conservatives’ 15% best of the rest. Our last council by-election today is to Sevenoaks council, in the west of the county. Fawkham and West Kingsdown ward is located in the North Downs, either side of the M20 motorway as it approaches the Great Wen. This is a ward associated with high speeds. Lizzy Yarnold, the most successful Olympic skeleton athlete of all time, grew up in West Kingsdown; also in West Kingsdown is the Brands Hatch racing circuit, which hosted the Formula 1 British Grand Prix in even years from 1964 to 1986. Tamworth council, Staffordshire; both caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Richard Ford.

The swing to Labour seen in the 2021 Senedd election in Monmouth was amplified in the 2022 Welsh local elections, where in Monmouthshire the Conservatives lost their majority and Labour finished as the largest party for the first time since 1995. Labour are now running the council as a minority with 22 out of 46 seats; a gain here will give their administration half of the council. How likely is that? Well, Labour contested Devauden ward this year for the first time this century, and finished in second place: Bob Greenland, who had been deputy leader of the Conservative group and of the council since 2008, was re-elected for a fifth term of office with a 49–31 lead. Greenland passed away in August 2022 from cancer; his last tweet was a criticism of the outgoing Prime Minster Boris Johnson. So, we have here a three-councillor ward whose representation is split between Labour and the Conservatives, and a single-member ward which has voted for both parties within the last two years. And Labour are defending both of these wards in by-elections, following the resignations of their councillors Sue Moffat and Steph Talbot. I have not been able to find any given reason for their resignations, but in the case of Moffat it is noticeable that she recently applied to be Labour’s next parliamentary candidate for Newcastle-under-Lyme and didn’t get the selection; while last December Talbot was ousted as the head of the Alice charity. Which perhaps explains why North West ward has had a full slate of Conservative councillors since the current boundaries were introduced in 2004. At the last Broadland elections in 2019 the Conservatives had a 56–29 lead over Labour. The Conservatives also hold the Woodside division of Norfolk county council, which covers this ward. The Parliamentary Boundary Commission have not been fooled by the fact that this ward is outside the Norwich city limits and they have sensibly placed the area within the Norwich North constituency; this has been held since a 2009 by-election by the Conservatives’ Chloe Smith, who joined the Cabinet last month as Work and Pensions secretary. Smith’s majority is only just over 10 percentage points, and Labour will have their eye on this seat at the next general election.

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 All these shenanigans have left Plymouth council hung again. A further defection earlier this week left Labour as the largest party on the council; the latest composition following a further defection earlier this week gives 24 Labour councillors, 23 Conservatives plus two vacancies, five councillors in the Independent Alliance group (four ex-Conservative, one ex-Labour), two Greens (one of whom was elected as Labour), and an ex-Conservative independent. It’s a very fine balance. Any Conservative losses in these by-elections will mean that Labour increase their lead on the council, although they will remain short of the 29 seats necessary for a majority. 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. Kelly has now formed an Independent Alliance group on the council which includes other defectors from both the Conservatives and Labour. As we shall now discuss, in November a further Conservative councillor was suspended and two more resigned altogether.

From May, you will need photo ID to vote in person at a parliamentary election in Great Britain or a local election in England. If you don’t have one of the accepted forms of photo ID, you can apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate or a postal vote from your local council elections office. Do it now and beat the rush. Poulton North used to be a closely-fought ward between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, but the Lib Dem vote here disappeared when the Coalition was formed and the ward has been safe Labour since. The most recent Warrington local elections were in 2021, with Labour winning all three seats against a rather fragmented opposition: 34% for Labour, 23% for the Conservatives, 21% for the Green Party and 16% for an independent candidate. The ward is part of the Warrington North parliamentary seat, which has been Labour since its creation in 1983 but was close between Labour and the Conservatives in December 2019; that seat’s first MP was Doug Hoyle, the father of the current Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle. Today’s Plymouth Labour by-election candidate Stefan Krizanac didn’t make much of an impact when he was the Lib Dem candidate for Warrington North in 2015 and 2017, losing his deposit on both occasions. 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. In the case of South Derbyshire, the Tory collapse on the district council had already started before 2021 with a damaging split in the party; the splinter group on the council voted out the Tory leader in 2020 and installed a Labour minority administration, which went on to win a majority in 2023. Roger Redfern lost his seat on the district council three months ago as Labour won Church Gresley ward by 60–40 in a straight fight with the Conservatives. Swadlincote South division also includes half of the Swadlincote district ward, which Labour won by 62–38 in May. There are a number of reasons for this. One is what appears to be poor vote distribution by the Conservatives and excellent targeting by Labour, which allows Labour to punch above their weight. In the 2021 Worthing elections the Conservatives polled 51% against Labour’s 41%, but the two parties won six wards each with the remaining ward going Lib Dem. One is fast-moving demographic change. Worthing is not your typical Sussex-by-the-Sea elephant’s graveyard: the town has diversified its economy to give itself a year-round economic base, and this has attracted people of working age to move here as the cost of living in Brighton has become unaffordable. And one is incompetence on the part of the Conservatives: as this column related last December, one of the Conservative councillors in Worthing was forced to resign last autumn after he was linked to a far-right group, and the resulting by-election in Marine ward (again) was lost to Labour.

ONS Travel to Work Area: Slough and Heathrow (Denham and Fulmer parishes), High Wycombe and Aylesbury (Gerrards Cross East parish ward of Gerrards Cross parish) The Tillingbourne valley used to be a major industrial area, with the river providing a reliable source of water power. This industry included the Chilworth gunpowder factory, which was established in 1625 and supplied explosives to the East India Company and other customers for nearly three centuries. Further up the valley is Shere, which has a lot of unspoilt Tudor architecture and is a favourite location for artists and film-makers. Shere is the centre of a large parish which includes Gomshall and some beautiful North Downs landscape. Finally, we have the last election to North Yorkshire county council, which returned a Conservative majority at its previous election in 2017: 55 Conservatives against 10 independents, 4 Labour and 3 Lib Dem councillors. There are new division boundaries this year with an increase from 72 councillors to 90. As a result of local government reorganisation the county council will become North Yorkshire’s unitary council in April 2023, with all the district councils underneath it disappearing then. The Tories were much weaker here in the 2019 district council elections: Scarborough council is run by a Labour-Independent coalition, Ryedale by a Lib Dem-independent arrangement, Richmondshire by an independent-led anti-Conservative coalition. The Conservatives do, however, have majorities in Selby, Hambleton and Harrogate districts and hold half of the seats in Craven. This section has been corrected — Littlemore became part of Oxford in 1991, not 1974 as originally stated. Rose Hill and Littlemore

The two previous results for Audley ward show those factors in action. In 2018 Audley’s three seats had split between an independent, Labour and the Liberal Democrats; in 2022 the Labour councillor Sue Moffat was re-elected, the former Lib Dem councillor Ian Wilkes was re-elected as a Conservative, and the Conservatives gained the seat left open by the retirement of the independent councillor. Shares of the vote were 49% for Labour and 38% for the Conservatives, but because the Labour figure was inflated by Moffat’s personal vote the seat count was 2–1 in the Conservatives’ favour. Conservative councillor Wilkes had previously gained the local county council seat of Audley and Chesterton from Labour in 2021. Let’s start the week on the wrong side of the Pennines, in a ward which this column has written about quite a bit in the last seven years. Batley is an industrial town in the Heavy Woollen District of Yorkshire, and the industry here was shoddy. By this I don’t mean that the manufacturing was poor quality, but that it involved shoddy — recycled woollen clothes and rags. Textiles are still important to the local economy — one of the local mills has been done up as The Mill, a factory outlet attracting people from all over West Yorkshire — but the largest single employer in the town is Fox’s Biscuits, whose head office and main factory is here. In days gone by the Batley Variety Club was a major draw to punters and artists from all over the world, with in its heyday such well-known American acts as Louis Armstrong, Roy Orbison and Neil Sedaka treading its boards; but live music is no longer played there, and the old Variety Club building was converted into a gym in 2017. That’s not a majority which bodes well for this by-election, which — like the last Batley East by-election — has come out of the Councillors Behaving Badly file. The Councillor Behaving Badly here is Fazila Loonat, who was first elected in 2016 (under her previous surname of Fadia) and re-elected in 2021. What did for Loonat was the same thing that did for the Labour MP Fiona Onasanya and the Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne — lying about a speeding offence.

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. This by-election is also crucial for control of East Sussex county council, where the Conservatives have a small majority with 27 out of 50 seats. Two of those Conservative seats are currently vacant, and if the Tories fail to hold both this by-election and another by-election next week in Eastbourne then the county council will fall into No Overall Control. There are some major changes to Merseyside’s local elections this year, as all the seats on St Helens council are up for election on new ward boundaries while the Liverpool council elections have been cancelled. Both of those councils are moving to whole elections every four years. Labour have secure majorities in St Helens, Knowsley and Sefton and the party run Wirral council (above) as a minority, with 28 Labour seats (one of which is vacant) against 23 Conservatives, 7 Green seats (one of which is vacant), 6 Lib Dems and 2 ex-Labour independents. If the 2021 results are repeated Labour will lose three seats: Bebington and Prenton wards to the Greens, and Pensby and Thingwall ward to the Conservatives.