Winnersh by-election: what lessons to learn

The Lib Dems have held Winnersh in the recent by-election, with the smallest vote share in that ward for 10 years.  Standing on a platform of rejecting the Hall Farm housing scheme, the Conservatives lost but boosted their vote share in Winnersh to its highest point since 2012.

                It was no real surprise that the Lib Dems held on to Winnersh. They will have benefited from a sympathy vote that would naturally be extended to the candidate replacing the deceased Paul Fishwick. Also, the size of their majorities in previous ward elections made the task facing Nick Kilby, the Conservative candidate, a daunting one.

Main interest

The main interest in the outcome was probably to see how far the Lib Dems’ majority would change. Compared with the average of the years since 2018, which was around 900, it was cut by nearly 2/3. Though on a somewhat reduced turn-out, this has to be seen as a significant achievement. For one thing, it places most Lib Dem wards in the borough in danger of capture by Conservative candidates capable of mounting equally effective campaigns next time.

In recent elections, only their majorities in Evendons and Emmbrook have been comparable in size with the Lib Dems’ previous high standing in Winnersh.

Key question

The key question for anti-Hall Farm development campaigners was how far the Conservative share of the vote would be boosted by Nick Kilby’s support for our campaign. He made public statements on the subject in leaflet material and in a public meeting, and spoke to residents on the doorstep about the threat to their parish, from overdevelopment down the road beyond Sindlesham. Although we never know for sure why people at an election vote the way they do, it's safe to say that many Winnersh residents only became aware of the Hall Farm housing issue thanks to Nick’s efforts. The level of awareness in Winnersh of that issue before the election was apparently quite low. So what happened to the Conservative vote share, and the Lib Dem vote share?

Vote share

I wanted to answer that question by calculating the Conservative and Lib Dem candidates’ percentage of the votes over the last ten borough council elections. I excluded the 2015

borough elections -they were held on the same day as the general election, which produced a much higher turnout and may have affected the result. I also excluded the low voting figures for the more marginal parties (Green Party, UKIP, Freedom Alliance, etc.). This gives us a like-

for-like picture of borough elections contests between the three main parties over the last decade or so. For 2024, when each party put up three candidates, I took the average figure of the three candidate results for each party. There were ‘fallow’ years in 2013 and 2017, when no borough elections were held, and in 2020 the government cancelled elections on public health grounds. Altogether, that gave ten years’ worth of borough council elections going back to 2012. The next graph shows how the Tories and the Lib Dems fared in terms of vote share:

Candidate share of three-party votes, Winnersh ward, 2012-2025

The Lib Dem vote in the ward has been in decline since a high point in 2019, and again in 2022, when they took over the Borough Council. This year saw a further drop, and a big increase in the Conservative vote share, from 26.3% to 39.1% of the votes going to the main parties.

            This comes at a time when the Conservative party nationally has fallen to third place in the most recent YouGov opinion poll, and their leader at Westminster is failing to enjoy the boost in popularity that a national party leader usually receives. So Nick Kilby has clearly bucked the trend when it comes to winning support for the Conservatives. Since the Hall Farm scheme was such a central plank in his election platform, there’s no doubt it made a difference to the outcome.

            How much difference?

            What I see from the voting figures is that a couple of hundred more Winnersh people opted for him this time than voted for Conservative candidates in most recent years. That's not a huge slice of the local electorate, of course, but figures of that size will suffice in many wards to decide the outcome of a council election vote. In future, therefore, overdevelopment risks being a serious vote-loser for the Lib Dem Executive currently in power.

What lessons?

What lessons to draw? For the political parties locally:- the Conservatives will see that taking a stand against overdevelopment is a popular issue which will get the votes. The Lib Dems will no doubt continue in damage control mode, seeking to shore up their positions in vulnerable wards.

            For us campaigners against the Hall Farm calamity, threatening the whole south of the borough, the key takeaway is surely this:

Use online social media by all means, it's a great source of information.

BUT:

Engage with the public directly, go door-to-door and talk to them. That is the way to reach people and make them aware. That’s what was done in Winnersh. We need more of it.

Pat Phillipps