Local party wins council by-election, securing 27 times as many votes as Reform

Martin Shipton

A local political party formed two years ago has won a stunning by-election victory in a village right on the English border, securing its seventh seat on Flintshire County Council.

Flintshire People’s Voice candidate Josh Swash won the Higher Kinnerton by-election with 566 votes (91.3%), leaving the Conservative and Reform UK candidates trailing far behind in joint second place with just 21 votes (3.4%) each.

The Heritage Party candidate received 10 votes and an independent candidate received two.

The turnout was a respectable 42.79%.

Higher Kinnerton is a picturesque and relatively prosperous village around six miles west of Chester and a five-minute drive from Broughton, where the Airbus factory is located. Its twin village Lower Kinnerton is across the border in Cheshire.

Cllr Swash, who lives in the village, succeeds the previous Independent councillor who was re-elected unopposed at the last election in 2022. His term of office lasts until the next county council election next May.

Flintshire People’s Voice is barely known outside the county. A statement on the party’s website says: “Flintshire People’s Voice was formed in May 2024, when five Labour Councillors left the Labour group after a Labour cabinet member misled councillors over the council’s disastrous handling of its fleet contract for waste vehicles. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, coming as it did after other examples of the Council leadership’s lack of standards in public life, as well as their mismanagement of the Council which has seen the authority lurch from one crisis to another.

“We believe that Flintshire deserves better than managed decline. We believe in doing the basics right, but also in restoring some ambition to local politics. A brighter Flintshire is possible, and it is possible without continued hikes in your council tax bills.”

Policy agenda

The party has published a wide-ranging policy agenda that could be described as representing a form of progressive populism. Examples include:

• Climate change – Tackling climate change is essential. We all have our own individual role to play, as does the council. Institutionally, we will work to make Flintshire Council genuinely net zero no later than 2035. While we have previously supported a 2030 deadline, the slow progress of the Labour administration, and the continued lack of a commitment and plan from the administration to reach net zero by then, mean that this earlier date seems certain to be missed. This failure will cost the residents of Flintshire dearly in the future.
• Education – We firmly oppose the introduction of the academy and free school model from England. Flintshire’s local schools are rooted in our communities, staffed by committed teachers, and their only aim is to serve the citizens of tomorrow. Our system in Flintshire is based on collaboration, sharing of best practice, and a fair approach across all schools. Switching to academies drives competition between schools – benefiting the parents with the sharpest elbows – reduces accountability to local communities, and leads to more central targets blocking an individual focus on the needs of individual pupils.
• Crime and public safety – We will focus relentlessly on preventing crime by tackling its root causes … Our commitment [is] to strengthening our communities, building our local economy, and providing opportunity for everyone. Doing so is the most effective way to reduce the number of victims of crime, because even with the best-funded police force, policing is and will always be reactive to crime once it has occurred, rather than proactive in preventing it.
• Housing – We support the expansion of good-quality social housing, primarily Flintshire-owned council housing. This should include new social housing on brownfield sites, expanding the council house buyback scheme to reacquire those sold under right to buy, and creating a ‘right to rent’. A right to rent would be a guarantee that, if you are an owner-occupier and want to sell up, the council will guarantee to buy your home if you ask, and rent it back to you on a secure tenancy, making you a council tenant. This would not only grow the council’s housing stock, but would prevent dozens of cases of homelessness caused by mortgage repossessions as interest rates remain higher than the ten-year average. It would also offer an alternative to predatory equity release companies for older people who wish to explore this option.

Interestingly, the party’s policy agenda doesn’t mention immigration, which is a UK Government responsibility.

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