Callton Young, Croydon’s newest councillor, speaking to residents before yesterday’s vote. Photo: Lee Townsend

The local Tories failed to amass even 1,000 votes in a ward which, two years ago, they forgot about altogether and left off their advertising for the local elections. So any claims of improving their vote share by 2 per cent since 2014 probably isn’t much of a boast.

Young, a former senior civil servant who is active in local community events, including the Thornton Heath Arts Festival, replaces The Hon Emily Benn, who stood down from her council seat in order to pursue her banking career in New York.

There was an unusually high, 44 per cent, turn-out for a council ward by-election, which was held at the same time as the London elections. That high turn-out and strong Labour performance will probably translate to good support in the north of Croydon for Marina Ahmad and Sadiq Khan, Labour’s London Assembly and London Mayoral candidates.

Unfortunately, the prediction by our election correspondent, Walter Cronxite, about the likely voting for the three “Take Us Back to 1956” candidates – UKIP’s Ace Nnorom, Peter Morgan (Independence from Europe) and Winston “Chump” McKenzie – was wildly inaccurate. Until little more than a year ago, all three were members of UKIP.

Two days ago, Cronxite wrote that the trio would fail to get 500 votes, between them.

In fact, they couldn’t even muster 300 votes between them.

The final vote tallies, with vote share:

Callton Young, Labour – 3,136 (64.7%)
Scott Roche, Conservative – 989 (20.4%)
David Beall, Green Party – 289 (6%)
Ace Nnorom, UKIP – 145 (3%)
Geoff Morley, Liberal Democrat – 140 (2.9%)
Peter Morgan, Independence from Europe – 77 (1.6%)
Winston McKenzie, English Democrats – 70 (1.4%)

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