Wigan council's Ashton by-election recorded a shocking 5.34 per cent turnout after being hit by postal strikes and sub-zero temperatures.
Coun Andrew Bullen took 294 of the 469 votes cast (62.8 per cent) - which meant Labour held the seat left vacant following the death of Coun Anthony Sykes. Poll aggregator Britain Elects feared it could be ‘the lowest council by-election turnout in post-war history’, but that is unconfirmed.
Newly-elected Coun Bullen wasn’t too phased by the voter turnout though as he claimed ‘it was the quickest count I have been to’ before voicing his victory speech.
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“I would like to thank the Labour party members, my agent and other Labour councillors who came and helped [with the campaign],” he declared. “A big thanks, of course, to all the voters, the residents of Ashton who have supported me.
"From knocking on doors, I got the impression that they were very much in favour of a Wigan Labour council. The council has done a heck of a lot to protect the community and services from the damage that 12 years of Tory cuts have actually done.
"It’s levelling down, they've not levelling up. Cuts in wages and cuts benefits in the last 12 years have made this crisis a lot worse.
“So hopefully there will be a general election as soon as possible so we can turn this country to what it ought to be and what it was in the past [under a Labour government].”
He also thanked all those who worked on the election from the council. Coun Bullen gave a shoutout to the polling officers who were ‘out at 6am in temperatures of -9C’.
Nathan Burns, a former councillor in Lancaster, took to Twitter to express his delight to ‘finally no longer be the winner of Britain’s lowest turnout council by-election’. He won his Lancaster seat for the Labour and Co-operative Party after a turnout of 7.1 per cent back in December 2016.
The Conservatives, who fielded candidate Paul Martin, were ‘reasonably happy’ with their result in the election (146 votes) as it was higher than they had expected. The Liberal Democrats’ Geoffrey Matthews was ‘not surprised’ by the result either.
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