Local by-election preview 1.9.11

Have been doing local by-election previews on the US Election Atlas forum for a while, think this deserves a wider audience.

One by-election on 1st September:

KESWICK, Allerdale, Cumbria; caused by the resignation of an Independent councillor due to ill-health. Keswick (the W is silent) is a market town at the centre of the Lake District National Park, which was once a centre for pencil manufacturing (the world's first graphite pencils were made here) and now, this being the Lakes, gets most of its money from tourism. The ward also includes the rural Vale of St John to the east, which climbs between Wainwright's Central and Eastern Fells past the lake of Thirlmere (source of Manchester's water) to the pass of Dunmail Raise. Politically, this area is definitely not typical of Allerdale district, whose tone is set by the working-class and Labour-voting town of Workington, 21 miles to the west. Labour currently hold half the seats on the council and will have overall control if they win the by-election. Allerdale district has a lot of unopposed elections, and the last contested election in this ward was all the way back in 2003, at which the three main parties each won one seat, the Lib Dem candidate topping the poll. The Tory and Labour winners from that by-election are still there, while the Lib Dem councillor stood down in 2007 (she is now the county councillor for the area) and was replaced by a new Lib Dem councillor who was re-elected in 2011 as an independent. Interestingly the Tories are not contesting the by-election; the candidates nominated are Lib Dem, Labour and Green Party.