Andy Burnham may have been talking buses down the road in Bath this week, but South Gloucestershire’s Conservatives arrived at a very familiar destination last night in Longwell Green’s by-election: victory.
Newly elected Graham Hardwell secured 951 votes (37.3%), ahead of Reform UK on 698 (27.4%), the Liberal Democrats on 511 (20%), Labour on 246 (9.7%) and the Greens on 143 (5.6%). On a 34% turnout, the Conservative majority was 253.
Reform arrives, but the Conservatives hold
This was always going to be a result defined by the arrival of Reform UK in a ward they had never previously fought. The omens were positive: credible performances in parliamentary contests covering the area and a strong West of England mayoral election result where the party topped the poll across South Gloucestershire.
On their first attempt, 27.4% is a significant result. But Reform fell nearly ten points short of the Conservatives and the contrasting campaigns may provide part of the explanation.
The Conservative candidate, already a parish councillor, fought heavily on local issues, including reinstatement of the number 37 bus and protection of a local playground from development. Reform’s literature leaned more heavily into wider national and council-wide themes, including the remuneration of South Gloucestershire Council’s chief executive.
It is impossible to know how much that mattered, but the result is a reminder of an easily forgotten maxim in these febrile political times: all politics is local.
Why the arithmetic matters
With around eight months until South Gloucestershire’s election machine gets motoring again, the result also raises an interesting question about Reform’s impact even where it does not win seats itself.
There are recent examples elsewhere in the South West, including Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, where Reform secured a significant share of the vote and won some seats, but the wider consequence was an erosion of Conservative support which allowed the Lib Dems to glide through the middle and emerge as the largest party.
That didn’t happen in Longwell Green. The Conservative starting point was strong enough and, crucially, the Lib Dem vote did not remain steady.
The numbers nevertheless provide an important qualification to the Conservative victory. Allowing for the difficulties of comparing previous two-member elections, the Conservative share of the competitive Longwell Green vote has historically been around 50% or considerably higher. This time it was 37.3%.
Yet combine Conservative and Reform and they secured 64.7%. That suggests Longwell Green has not undergone some dramatic political transformation. Rather, its traditionally right-of-centre electorate is increasingly divided between two parties.
For the Lib Dems, success depended on their vote remaining steady, while hoping that Reform’s arrival chipped away at Conservative support just enough to allow them to win. It wasn’t to be. Their 20% was well below the roughly 30% single-seat-equivalent achieved in 2023, leaving them third.
The implications for South Gloucestershire in 2027
But that equation becomes much more interesting elsewhere in South Gloucestershire.
Reform securing 27.4% in somewhere as traditionally Conservative as Longwell Green suggests it could become a significant factor in the more marginal Conservative-Lib Dem contests next year. Reform would not necessarily need to win those wards. If the Conservative vote falls while Lib Dem support remains relatively steady, the consequences could be felt in the carve-up of seats even where Reform itself finishes second or third.
For those with an interest in planning and development, that matters because even small shifts in ward arithmetic can alter the balance of power, committee membership and the political appetite for growth.
The head-scratcher for the Lib Dems remains how to break out of the Thornbury and Yate parliamentary constituency, where 17 of their 19 council seats are held, if they are to stand a chance of outright control. Reform’s emergence may provide opportunities to do so – but Longwell Green also demonstrates that those opportunities only exist if the Lib Dems can hold up their own vote.
The Labour-Green vote was never likely to shape the result and so it proved, securing 15.3% between them.
In 2023, the Conservatives avoided the scale of meltdown suffered by their party elsewhere and emerged as the largest group on South Gloucestershire Council. A near ten-point victory in Longwell Green is therefore a solid hold in one of their safest wards.
But the significance for 2027 may lie elsewhere. If Reform can secure anything approaching 27% in more marginal parts of South Gloucestershire, it does not necessarily need to win large numbers of seats to have a major influence on the result.
The Conservatives arrived at a familiar destination in Longwell Green. In more historically marginal wards next year, the same electoral arithmetic could put South Gloucestershire on a very different route.