By-election results from around the country

Congratulations to John Herd who gained the Camborne Pendarves division of Cornwall Council in a by-election yesterday (20 August 2015) following the resignation of UKIP Cllr Harry Blakeley due to ill health.

Councillor Herd narrowly pipped the Lib/Dem candidate Nathan Billings to take the seat with Labour third and UKIP in fourth place.

Full result here.

Congratulations also to Carol Reynolds who regained the Witney North ward of West Oxfordshire District Council for the Conservatives in yesterday's second by-election following the resignation of a councillor who had been elected as a Conservative, gone Independent, and then resigned from the council: full result here.

The MP for Witney has been writing a lot of letters of congratulations to successful Conservative council candidates this year, so I suspect there may well be two more letters from Number 10 Downing Street on their way to Councillors Herd and Reynolds in the near future and that David Cameron will not be displeased to have another Conservative councillor in his own patch.

People who have been writing premature obituaries for the Lib/Dems might like to note that they were a close and a respectable second respectively in both those seats.

I am a great believer in Benjamin Disraeli's principle of how democracy should work that

"No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition."

If Labour self-destructs following their present leadership election the Lib/Dems might return to prominence sooner than most people might have assumed from the hammering they took in May.

The other by-election yesterday was for the Shotton and South Hetton ward of Durham Council following the sad death of Labour Councillor Robin Todd who had served as a councillor for the area since 1963 - fifty-two years! Labour retained the seat: the result is given in full here.

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