Tories hold Sitwell

There was only one by-election this week and it produced little in the way of surprise. The Sitwell Ward on the Rotherham MBC was vacant following the death of Conservative Cllr. Michael Clarke. Clarke had easily won the seat in 2008, but his party were run a lot closer this May by Labour. Given Labour's good run of Council results in July they would have been hopeful of picking up an extra seat in Rotherham, although given their massive majority on the Council it wasn't needed. As it was the newly elected Conservative Cllr. Christopher Middleton comfortably won, managing a swing towards his party from May.

The party with the most to worry about from last night's election is the Liberal Democrats, who only managed 98 votes in a ward they came second in two years ago. Their dismal showing has been picked up by Labour and Tory activists, eager to kick the yellows whilst they're down. But although the Lib Dems have been consistently between 12 and 15% in the polls their recent by-election performances have been pretty good. They don't currently hold any seats in Rotherham, and they didn't stand here in May, so the lack of party activity locally can partially explain this result. It'll be if, and when, they start to struggle in regions they should be competitive in that the Lib Dems themselves will start to worry.

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council
CON		LAB		IND			BNP
10	-	49	-	3	-		1	-
Candidate				Votes		Vote %		+/-%
Christopher Middleton				1213		45.5%		+4
Judy Dalton				864		32.4%		-2.2
David Ridgeway				252		9.4%		-2.2
John Wilkinson				241		9.0%		-3.3
Abdul Razaq				98		3.7%		+3.7

* % change is from the 2010 result