Labour's best result in ward by-election
It is not often that we report the result of local council by-elections on this blog but the Humbleyard County Council result in Norfolk deserves a mention.
The seat on the outskirts of Norwich (named after the old Norfolk Hundred - the deanery of Humbleyard) has always been safe Conservative territory, and it still is, but look beneath the vote and there's an interesting story.
Labour's Marian Chapman (left) with Conservative victor Judith Virgo
The seat was held by Daniel Cox, the former Conservative leader of . He oversaw the £10m of emergency cuts to this year's budget and set in train the £155m of cuts which the council will start to announce next month and then decided to resign to pursue a lifelong ambition to carry out charity work in India.
With the by-election taking place just weeks before the council confirms cuts to services and hundreds of job losses, Labour saw an opportunity.
The party has always done badly in Humbleyard. In fact, in the last two elections it came fourth, well behind the Greens. So the party wrote to every household in the ward saying the by-election was a referendum on the forthcoming cuts.
And Labour got its best ever result in Humbleyard.
Its candidate Marian Chapman polled 19% of the vote - more than double the 8% she got last time. She almost came second, just 14 votes behind the Liberal Democrats whose vote was quite sharply down.
"This is exactly what we wanted to do," says Ms Chapman. "I knew I could never win but I wanted people to show how strongly they felt about the forthcoming cuts and they have."
The Conservatives held the seat very comfortably with 46% of the vote, down from 52% last time.
"Yes, some people felt strongly about the cuts and they voted accordingly but not in sufficient numbers," says their new councillor Judith Virgo.
"This result is an endorsement of the Norfolk County Council Conservative policies. This is something people agree with and felt very strongly about."
As ever with a by-election it's possible to read all sorts of different things into the result. But this is the second time in four months that we have reported a good result for Labour in by-elections where they could have done badly.
Is this the start of a trend?
Full Result:
Judith Virgo - Conservative 1015
Jacky Sutton - Lib Dem 438
Marian Chapman - Labour 434
Jan Kitchener - Green 170
Richard Coke - UKIP 133
Turnout 26%
Welcome to the political blog for the East. I'm Deborah McGurran, the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Political Editor for the region. From Lowestoft to Luton, this is the place for politics with an eastern twist.
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