Cllr Iain Lindley's Diary

Over the last week or two I’ve spent a couple of evenings and an afternoon with my Conservative colleagues in Wigan – following the sad death of a Labour Councillor a by-election was held yesterday in the Wigan West ward. Labour held on to the seat with a significantly reduced majority, and the Conservative candidate Jonathan Cartwright finished in a strong and clear second place.

So, a promising result for the Conservatives in a Labour stronghold – but that doesn’t tell the whole story. This by-election shows just how far the Conservative Party has progressed over the last few years in what used to be Labour’s heartland areas.

The Wigan West ward centres around an area called Beech Hill, and until 2004 the predecessor ward to Wigan West was called Beech Hill Ward. In a 1997 by-election for the old Beech Hill ward, the Conservative candidate polled a pitiful 39 votes – just 2.3% of the total votes cast. Yesterday over 500 people in the same area voted for Jonathan Cartwright and the Conservatives.

Labour actually narrowly lost that Beech Hill by-election to the Liberal Democrats. Yesterday their candidate – the same one who won that by-election all those years ago – came a poor third. So much for Nick Clegg’s arrant nonsense that only the Liberal Democrats are fighting Labour in the north.

Incidentally, David Ottewell thinks that the result was a good one for Labour. One unlikely by-election loss aside, this is some of the safest Labour territory in Greater Manchester. It shows how far they have fallen that polling 38% of the vote in one of their safest wards is considered a “good result”!