Even with the Tory Government suffering meltdown at Westminster, Labour still can’t manage to win local council by-elections in this part of south London, as our Political Editor, WALTER CRONXITE, reports
Blue day: Bromley’s newest councillor, Josh Coldspring-White
Has the curse of Croydon Labour struck again?
Croydon Conservatives will be taking some encouragement from their Tory colleagues just across the borough border with Bromley after yesterday’s Hayes and Coney Hall council ward by-election.
The by-election was held after the death in October of Conservative councillor Andrew Lee. He will now be replaced on Bromley Council by “local Conservative” Josh Coldspring-White, who on a 27% turnout for yesterday’s by-election got 48% of the votes.
The Conservatives, therefore, continue to control Bromley with 34 of that council’s 58 seats.
Labour, who given the psychodrama being endured by the Tory Government must have thought they might have had a sniff of winning in Hayes and Coney Hall with their candidate Susan Moore, weren’t even close, losing by more than 500 votes.
By-election result: how the votes played out yesterday in Hayes and Coney Hall
The result shows that local trends can buck dire national political standings.
But there was some minor solace for Labour, too, despite them needing to do a lot better than this to match their huge national poll leads.
This ward in Bromley, just along the A232 from Addington, and right next to New Addington and Selsdon and Addington Village ward, has the second highest owner-occupation in Greater London, with some similar demographics to parts of Croydon’s Shirley South ward, where the Tories’ parliamentary Croydon East candidate Jason Cummings is a councillor, and where he will hope to draw much support in the parliamentary contest with his yet-to-be-chosen Labour opponent.
Despite all the troubles for the infighting Conservatives up at Westminster and Labour’s massive lead in national opinion polls, the Tory vote share in Hayes and Coney Hall went up!
It was up by 3.3% to 47.9%, from 44.6% versus the average shares for party candidates in May 2022.
Boundary ward: Hayes and Coney Hall borders Croydon
Maybe the Hayes voters were scared off when they got visits on the doorsteps from Labour Party canvassers from Croydon?
Bromley Conservatives found that although their council is held in good regard, their party’s troubles up at Westminster did make it very hard to get their usual supporters out to vote. It was, in the circumstances, an impressively good win.
Turnout collapsed from 40% in May 2022. But then it was a cold and wet December winter’s day and night. Stay-at-home Tory voters will be a concern when the General Election time comes around, with many expecting Rishi Sunak’s Government to finally throw in the towel by May.
The other biggest change in the election was the collapse in the Green vote share, down 13% to just 5.7%, aiding the three other parties. The Liberal Democrats moved into third place, up 3.6% to 16.4%. Labour’s vote share was up, but not by enough, by 6.2% to 30%.
Unlike in Croydon, the Greens in Bromley won no council seats in 2022 but the other two losing parties have decent-sized groups on Bromley Council.
A similar swing, if repeated in Croydon council elections, would see Labour move up to 37 of the borough’s 70 seats, taking a seat off the Tories in Waddon (potentially embarrassing for their Croydon West parliamentary candidate Simon Fox) and sweeping aside the Greens and removing the sole Liberal Democrat, just. The borough-wide Mayoralty would also go to Labour, albeit by a narrow margin.
With Croydon politics being so impacted by Labour’s continuing homegrown problems, the Conservatives in Croydon will take some encouragement from the outperformance of their party colleagues just a short bus ride away.
Read more: Labour cancels Croydon selection after voting fraud claims
Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
Read more: The fix is in: Labour excludes members from Croydon selection
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
- Inside Croydon – as seen on TV! – has been delivering local community news since 2010. 3million page views per year in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
- If you want real journalism, actually based in the borough, you should consider paying for it. Please sign up today. Click here for more details
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SIXTH successive year in 2022 in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Perhaps that was a vote against Mayor Khan’s expansion of ULEZ?
I can’t square the quoted figures from 2022 with the figures on Wikipedia. Conservative candidates are listed there as taking shares of 52%, 47.3% and 44.9% in 2022. That would make an average of 48.3% rather than 44.6% and make 2023 would consistent with that rather than representing any increase?
Could be my maths is wrong or you’re using different source figures. If the former mea culpa but if the latter and the Wikipedia numbers are out then please correct them with yours because they don’t agree with the average share for the other parties either (obviously they are consistent in terms of the overall conclusion for those but it does change the narrative for the Tories and change the headline of the piece).
ULEZ cameras are targeted with explosives, paint etc in this part of south London
My analysis of the figures is that the results aren’t that bad for Labour nor that good for the Tories.
In May 2022, the Conservatives’ three candidates received nearly 51% of the total votes cast in Hayes and Coney Hall, while Labour got just over 27%. That was on a turnout of 40%.
Yesterday the one Tory got 48%, while the nearest rival, Labour, got 30%. That was on a turnout of 27%. In fact Coldspring-White got 1541 votes, which is less than the Labour candidate got 18 months ago, and well down on the 2184 his predecessor scored. And nearly three-quarters of the electorate weren’t sufficiently arsed about the issues he and others campaigned on to even bother to vote.
Coldspring-White’s main ploy in reaching out to the local Tory bigots – whoops – electorate was that he wasn’t Sadiq Khan’s Labour and he’d fight to reverse ULEZ (i.e. give into vandals and terrorists) and not let the fictitious bogeyman, “Project Detroit”, stop his loyal subjects from driving their polluting motors wherever they like as fast as they can.
He wants a career in politics, that much is obvious. The only real job he’s ever had was being a checkout assistant at Sainsbury’s. Now he’s a Media Monitoring Officer for the Conservatives. That must be fun at the moment, watching his party being ripped to shreds – by its own leadership
I live in this ward, the Tories would win here if Rishi started shooting puppies on live TV. The area is almost entirely white, car-owning over 45’s. It’s quite backwards over here and I can’t wait to move back to Croydon.