Wilmington: 27 January by-election preview

This week's featured by-election is the Wilmington ward on Kent County Council. To be frank, the choices available this week were not great as far as competitive by-elections go with just two other possibles, both District wards within the Wilmington County Council division.

Wilmington sits between Dartford and Swanley on the north west border of Kent and the most notable fact associated with it is that Mick Jagger grew up here. The ward was last contested at the May 2021 local elections and resulted in a convincing win for the Tories in a three-runner contest: 72% Cons, 20% Lab, 8% Greens.

The by-election has been triggered by the death of the previous councillor, Ann Allen. Once upon a time, Labour held this seat until Allen gained it in 1997 and she had held it ever since with increased majorities at every election.

2021 election promo.

So, one can assume she had a pretty substantial personal vote and maybe this won't be as straightforward a hold as the numbers might suggest. Still, this is going to require a huge 26% swing for Labour to gain the seat which isn't going to be made any easier by the fact that the Liberal Democrats are standing this time (they didn't put up a candidate last year). Stranger things have happened though - the Lib Dems got a 34% swing to win the North Shropshire parliamentary by-election last month.

The opening prices from Smarkets imply around a 90% chance of a Tory hold. Their candidate Av Sandhu probably would have preferred this not to be happening in the middle of the current crisis for Boris Johnson and the Conservatives generally.

Conservative candidate Av Sandhu & Labour candidate Darren Povey