INSIDE SUTTON: Reform makes in-roads in Carshalton South and Clockhouse by-election, but not enough to overtake Tories for second place, reports BERTIE WORCESTER-PARK
Clockhouse winner: Lisa Webster (centre) was last night named as Sutton’s newest councillor
Sutton’s Liberal Democrats last night maintained their record of always winning by-elections in council wards where they have been the incumbents, as Lisa Webster was declared the winner of Thursday’s Carshalton South and Clockhouse poll.
Webster got 1,674 votes – 52.2% of those who bothered to turn out – as the Conservative vote collapsed in the face of political newcomers from the rabid right, Reform.
Local Tories had feared the worst, yet somehow their candidate, Chris De Cruz, clung on to second place with 23.9% of the vote to Reform’s Arlene Dearlove on 17.9%.
Labour – the party of national government no less – barely registered at all, with fewer than 100 votes for former councillor John Keys.
Yet while Sutton Tories avoided the embarrassment of finishing third or worse, the 18% swing against them is a huge concern 12 months out from borough-wide local elections, where similar voting would wipe the Conservatives off the council altogether, leaving three independents as the only opposition to the LibDems.
“They just can’t knock Mattey out,” a gloomy Tory predicted to Inside Sutton after the election count, referring to maverick councillor and anti-incinerator campaigner Nick Mattey and his councillor colleagues in Beddington.
Looking ahead 12 months, they said: “The irony of that outcome is that the LibDems won’t have to do anything,” such is the impact that Reform is having on their polling.
The result in Carshalton South and Clockhouse is particularly troubling for the Conservatives, because they hold two of the ward’s three council seats. Carshalton South and Clockhouse has been a Tory-LibDem split ward in the last four local elections. The test for Sutton Tories now will be to extend that to a fifth Town Hall election in 2026.
This was the second council by-election held in Sutton in little more than a month, both caused because of absentee LibDem councillors either being disqualified or bowing to the inevitable and resigning. Such LibDem fickleness around their public duties did not put off 1,600 voters.
Given the rise of the rabid right elsewhere in the country at the May 1 local elections, Reform’s third place in this litmus test in south-west London might suggest that Farridge’s grifters will struggle to make an impact in Sutton, or Croydon, in 2026. This despite the latest national opinion polls putting Reform on 30% to Labour’s 22% and Conservatives 21%.
Out on the doorsteps in leafy, generally wealthy, suburbia yesterday, Conservative activists feared the worst, saying that it would “probably be a very difficult day for us”.
As the Liberal Democrats were squeezing Labour and Green votes, Reform was taking chunks out of the Tory vote.
“Over the last 14 days since the local elections around the rest of the country, the number of people who are saying they are voting Reform has increased a lot,” a Tory source said. “Maybe before, they were just ‘shy’ Reformers?” they said, almost as if to console themselves.
“What has been surprising is that people voting Reform seem to be across all age groups and races – including the quite large south Asian diaspora in Carshalton South and Clockhouse.”
This by-election was triggered by the resignation of Liberal Democrat councillor Amy Haldane, who after failing to turn up for a single meeting of full council since May 2024 (a period which included a spell of maternity leave), she decided that she wanted to spend more time with her family.
Her replacement, Lisa Webster, 46, is a former teacher who is a member of the Good Shepherd church. She has been a trustee and director of the Refugee and Migrant Network Sutton, where she describes herself as an accountant, rather than a teacher. She was company secretary at Carshalton estate agent Silverman Black from 2012 until 2019.
Webster’s win gives Sutton’s Liberal Democrats, led by Barry “Basher” Lewis, a little breathing space between now and the 2026 local elections, holding 29 of the 55 council seats, with the Tories stuck on 21 as the largest opposition group. For now, at least.
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“Rabid Right”? What price quality journalism from Bertie Mitcham-Eastfields?