Goodwill Strikes Back – 2025 STC election rundown
- A
- Apr 9
- 7 min read
Goodwill returns, Labour struggles to find candidates and the local, fair-weather far-right infiltrate Reform
Its official, the Statement of Persons Nominated have been published and the race to elect Scarborough’s first ever Town Council has begun. A grand total of 49 candidates have put themselves forward between the 5 wards and 15 vacancies and there’s a few surprises mixed in amongst them.
Let’s reward ambition and go through the parties in order of how many candidates they’re standing, starting with the Conservatives who are the only party capable of winning every seat with their 15 candidates.
Whilst there are a few of the usual names – like Heather Philips in Woodlands – the stand out star of the Tory’s roster has to be the constituency’s ex-MP Sir Robert Goodwill, who it appears has qualified to stand by virtue of his spare flat on Albion Road. It’s fair to say that the political trajectory of MP to Town Council candidate is somewhat arse-about-face compared with the usual careerist politician. So, is this move by Sir Goodwill simply a humble attempt to rehabilitate his name or has he got other plans in mind for the role? Mayhap he’s been striving for the role of Scarborough Mayor, or is there some local project or investment he’s hoping to aid in development. It cannot – as of yet – be said. The question only remains, what will hinder his chances of election more, the address of his Castle Howard-neighbouring farm being printed on the ballot paper, or the 20 years he dedicated to pissing off residents as our Member of Parliament?
We’ve a nice surprise here in position number 2. With a total of 14 candidates, the Green party have clearly pushed the boat out for this election. How exactly have the greens pulled this off? They didn’t stand a candidate locally at the 2019 General Election, they didn’t win a single ward in Scarborough at the 2022 local elections and received a competent but scarcely inspiring vote share at last year's “Geny Lecy”. So, their ability to produce not just 14 local members but 14 - supposedly - dedicated local candidates has to be admired. Did the 4 parliamentary seats they won down south really create such political inspiration up on the Yorkshire coast? Maybe. Certainly, they’re well positioned to soak up left-leaning voters who are sick to death of Labour and could well end up with a plurality of councillors.
In at 3rd, it’s the common-sense-crew themselves: Reform. Riding high on the back of a supportive media landscape and massive donations from corporations and billionaires, Reform have turned out 11 individuals who want to try their hand at desperately tying a thematic link between immigration and the heavily limited powers of a parish-level council, whilst ignoring their party’s burning desire to sell the NHS to the Americans (Well to be fair, they’re in agreement with Labour and the Tories on that particular policy, so maybe they’re more moderate than we thought?). In amongst the bunch is a regular feature of Scarborough local elections, ex-councillor Norman Murphy who served as an independent for many years before switching to UKIP when they were briefly popular, then back to an independent and now to Reform. Who’s to say what party Norman will be representing by the time of the 2027 locals.
Indeed, local right-wingers (including the Tories) seem to have a habit of swapping political allegiances without consulting their electorates. Between the 2019 Scarborough Borough Council election and its dissolution, the 1 elected Ukipper ended up as an independent and four Tories decided to go indy (or “no political affiliation” whatever that means) despite zero by-elections being held. Even in Whitby, right-wing opportunism has plagued the ballot papers. Glen Goodberry – a Tory councillor on SBC and Sandra Turner – previously a Tory councillor – jumped ship to the new and novel “Whitby Area Independents” for the 2022 local elections. Strangely, another Tory SBC councillor, Alf Abbott, also jumped ship to the WAI only to not end up standing for them. If the rumours are true that Goodberry and Abbott’s brief re-alignment were a protest of sorts at not being selected by the local Conservative Party, its perhaps even sadder for Abbott that even this new local party didn’t want him. Needless to say, both councillors returned to the Conservatives group on SBC within a month of the election being held. It all suggests an incredible amount of excitement with near perpetual party swaps in store for this new Town Council, where party allegiance is significantly less important.
Leaving the medal positions, we make a large drop to our 4th place party Labour, who are standing just 5 candidates (one per ward). Word on the street – quite literally in this case – is that the local CLP (Constituency Labour Party) hasn’t exactly been the most active or upbeat of spaces despite their victory in last year’s election. So, it doesn’t seem beyond reasonable doubt that they’ve struggled to find candidates. That being said, there may be method in Labour’s sadness. In our case, each ward gets to elect 3 candidates and it has been noted in the past that standing 3 candidates – especially in areas where you’re not confident of your political strength – can cause vote splitting. Whereas, standing just one candidate, despite 3 vacancies, can often focus your vote share and deliver victory for your candidate. I’ve no doubt this bizarre quirk of multi-member wards is more so a happy fluke for Labour than part of a nuanced electoral strategy. But credit where credit’s due, they have at least avoided the pit-fall of whipping their North Yorkshire Councillors into standing at the parish level. They have at least sought out some “enthusiastic” fresh meat for the electoral grinder and good on them for it. It will no doubt be a challenging election for them. Despite knocking the Tories out of Scarborough in 2019 and winning all but 1 seat in 2022, Labour are facing a serious backlash this year and rightfully so. Despite standing as the party of “Change”, Labour have reintroduced austerity, increased tuition fees, punished pensioners, taken food out of children’s mouths, supported Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians and – most recently – taken to disingenuously repeating Reform’s anti-refugee rhetoric on social media (just like Ed Miliband did before he lost in 2015, I might add). I’m sure that none of these 5 Labour candidates actually agree with any of these awful policies – they’re good people, just misguided – but they will suffer the consequences of them anyway at the ballot box.
Next on the list is the Social Justice Party, who have managed to find 1 candidate – Eric Barnes – who is standing in Northstead. Perhaps in contradiction to the far-right’s tendency to stand literally anyone they can find; our local socialist party have such high standards that they've only been able to find one person who is able to make the commitment to representing their community for the next 2 years. It isn’t enough of course; every voter should have the chance to put their support behind a socialist candidate. I guess at this election, for those outside of Northstead and Weaponness & Ramshill (we’ll come to that), the Greens are your best bet.
Finally, we come to the independents, and for me, this might be the biggest surprise of the election. Yes, Robert Goodwill standing is obviously very funny, but independent candidates have a long history of success in Scarborough. Aside from the 2015 SBC elections, which being held at the same time as the General Election saw the independents basically disappear, indy councillors have dominated the scene. At most SBC elections, the indys have generally come second place after the conservatives in terms of most councillors (although they’ve had a tendency to split off into multiple, tiny groupings afterwards). So, for only 3 independents to be standing is a massive shock. The foremost of these independents in Rich Maw who is currently the NYC Councillor for Weaponness and Ramshill. He was elected for the Labour Party in 2022, but left after being blocked from standing as their Parliamentary candidate. Being an overt socialist, it is unclear why Rich has chosen to go with the “Independent” styling instead of joining with his local comrades in the SJP, but as a very popular local councillor there is no doubt Rich will be lending his skills and competence to this new council. Another NYC Councillor standing as an indy is Jannet Jefferson who has represented Castle Ward on both SBC and NYCC, for over 2 decades. A controversial but also neither-here-nor-there candidate, it is again likely she will become a Town Councillor, but this election will serve as a test of her local popularity after so much time in office.
On reflection, it is surprising that not a single candidate has taken advantage of the slightly looser rules around the ballot paper descriptions that Parish-level elections offer. That being up to 6 words that couldn’t be confused with a party name. At other elections you can either have a party description, the word “independent” or nothing at all (how boring). I am still very impressed by the description that Whitby Town Councillor Joe Redfern adopted when he was elected unopposed 3 years ago: “Young Person and Fishing Community Candidate”. Now THAT’s bold. Clearly no one is Scarborough is so imaginative…
A quick honourable mention for those parties not competing for votes in Scarborough this May. Both the Liberal Democrats and the Yorkshire Party have been minor features of recent local elections in our area. Yet they have both failed to produce anyone interested in representing the town at the grassroots level. This might not be much of a surprise as both parties have stood the same candidate for the last 3 and 2 General elections respectively, suggesting a certain level of staleness amongst their ranks.
Town Council elections are a curious thing. There’s hardly any power on offer and likely an awful amount of nonsense for the victors to have to deal with following their victories. Yet, the prevalence of so many party candidates both here and in Harrogate – unusual for parish-level elections – suggests that this election is seen as more of a chance for the political forces-that-be to flex their muscles and begin to build support following an incredibly predictable General Election.