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Bromley Tories increase their vote share in Hayes by-election

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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


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