Tunbridge Wells doubles down on the Lib Dems

Tunbridge Wells doubles down on the Lib Dems

Tunbridge Wells has strengthened its Liberal Democrat council while shutting Reform out entirely, in one of the country’s quieter but more revealing election results.

The Liberal Democrats gained three seats on Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, taking them to 25 councillors and tightening their control of a borough that was once among the safest Conservative territories in Kent.

Reform stood in every ward up for election. It won none of them.

That was not entirely unexpected. Tunbridge Wells had already resisted the Reform surge during last year’s county elections, when the party swept much of Kent but failed to break through in the borough. Even so, this was a striking result on a day when Reform had candidates on every ballot paper and had visibly pushed for gains in places like Sherwood.

The result landed on a day when Reform was making major gains elsewhere in England, taking control of councils including Essex, Havering and Sunderland, while Labour and the Conservatives both suffered heavy losses. The wider picture was not only a Reform surge, though. The Greens also made gains in parts of the country, while the Lib Dems advanced in some of their own target areas.  

Tunbridge Wells aligned with some of that national picture and rejected another part of it.

Labour’s vote was squeezed hard. The Conservatives remain far from their old dominance. The Greens failed to break through. But unlike much of the country, Reform’s presence on the ballot paper did not translate into power.

The count at Tunbridge Wells Assembly Hall was the only election count in Kent yesterday, with one third of the borough council up for election alongside two by-elections.

There were 15 seats in play, although the Lib Dems only needed to win five of them to retain control. That point passed quickly enough. By the end of the day, the story was not whether they would keep the council, but how far ahead of everyone else they had moved.

Their gains came in Rusthall and Speldhurst, where Ian Standing took the seat from Labour, and in Sherwood, where the party won both available seats from the Conservatives and Labour.

Rusthall and Speldhurst was the first change of the day and one of the clearest examples of Labour’s difficulties. The party went from holding the seat to finishing fifth.

Sherwood was the more symbolic result. Reform had put visible effort into the ward, where two seats were up for grabs, and Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran posted from the area in the closing stages of polling day, urging voters to back the party’s candidates.

It did not work. Lib Dem candidates Courtney Souper and Andrew Wallace topped the poll with 847 and 787 votes, while Reform’s Chris Hoare and Oliver Kinkade finished nearly 300 votes behind. The Conservatives and Labour were also left trailing.

Martin Brice, Lib Dem county councillor for Tunbridge Wells South and borough councillor for Culverden, said Reform’s failure to win any seats showed the party had misread the borough.

“Today’s result is a complete wipeout for Reform,” he said. “They haven’t won anything at all. And they’ve put a lot of time and effort in.”

“Linden Kemkaran, the leader of Kent County Council, turned up in Sherwood about an hour before dark on election day. That’s not how you win elections. They’re inept at winning elections, and they’re inept at running Kent County Council.”

Asked why a late intervention was not enough, Brice said elections were not won in the final hours of polling day.

“Almost half of votes cast in local elections are postal votes, and they are cast well before election day,” he said.

“You don’t really win an election during the campaign. What you do during a campaign is you get your voters to turn out and actually vote for you. You win an election in the year before, showing that you are competent, sensible and doing what people want you to do.”

Reform’s vote was not absent. The party came second in Paddock Wood, where Begnat Robichaud took 882 votes to the Lib Dems’ 1,195. It also placed a distanct second in Park, St James’ and St John’s.

But the pattern was consistent. Reform was present, sometimes substantial, and nowhere close enough to take power.

In the more rural parts of the borough, the Conservatives held on. Alexander Ellison retained Cranbrook, Sissinghurst and Frittenden with 1,227 votes, comfortably ahead of Reform’s Matthew Beattie on 674. In Rural Tunbridge Wells, Conservative David Knight held the seat with 1,474 votes, ahead of Lib Dem Susan Hindle Barone on 1,131 and Reform’s Dennis Deane on 987.

The Tunbridge Wells Alliance also held Hawkhurst, Sandhurst and Benenden, with Ellen Neville taking 943 votes. Reform finished third there, behind both the Alliance and the Conservatives.

The result leaves the Conservatives as the second-largest group on the council, but only just. They now have seven councillors, down from eight, and remain a long way behind the Lib Dems.

Labour’s position is weaker still, mirroring the party’s wider difficulties across the country. The party began the election with five seats in Tunbridge Wells and ended it with three, after losing in Rusthall and Speldhurst and Sherwood. In several contests, its vote was squeezed heavily. In several wards, it scored less than 100 votes.

Mike Martin, the Lib Dem MP for Tunbridge Wells, told the Kent Current that voters had rewarded the party’s councillors for their record since taking control of the borough council in 2024.

“I actually think we’ve got a really good councillor team,” he said. “They got elected in 2024, they took control of the borough, they made lots of promises about sorting out the town centre, fighting for residents, fighting for infrastructure in places like Paddock Wood, and they’ve delivered on that.”

“I’m really delighted for them. They’ve worked very hard, and I think they’ve been rewarded at the ballot box.”

Asked why Reform had failed to win a seat in Tunbridge Wells despite the party’s wider strength across Kent, Martin said the borough had made a clear choice.

“Tunbridge Wells has decisively rejected Reform,” he said.

“The choice they had on the ballot paper, really, it was a fight between Lib Dems or Reform, competent council delivering for residents or chaos.”

“Of course, we have Reform in Kent, running Kent County Council. They’re an absolute disaster. Residents in Tunbridge Wells looked at that choice and thought, it’s obvious, we’re going to vote for the Lib Dems.”

The election also followed an early-voting experiment in the borough, with voters able to cast ballots at central voting hubs in three main towns the weekend before polling day.

Turnout rose to 45.3%, significantly above the 37% recorded in 2024, but it is not yet clear how much of that increase was driven by the pilot.

There were smaller stories in the count hall too.

The Greens, who made progress in parts of the country, again failed to make a breakthrough in Tunbridge Wells. Their strongest showing came in Sherwood, where Eben Lenton took 445 votes, but the party was still well short of taking a seat.

The English Democrats’ only candidate in the borough, Aaron Brand, took 62 votes in Southborough and Bidborough. The figure was greeted with audible laughter when the result was read out at the count.

Brand later turned his fire on Reform, writing on X that the party in Tunbridge Wells was “a complete clown show” and claiming he had advised them last year on which seats to target.

“It really is no wonder they didn’t win anything in the election yesterday,” he wrote.

It was not, in the end, an especially dramatic election. Tunbridge Wells was Lib Dem-controlled before voters went to the polls. It remains Lib Dem-controlled now.

But the result did clarify the borough’s direction.

The Lib Dems have moved from control to dominance. The Conservatives are still alive in parts of the rural belt, but diminished. Labour had a miserable day. The Greens remain on the outside. Reform had candidates everywhere, momentum elsewhere, and a county council leader trying to push the party over the line in Sherwood.

They were still left with nothing.

The rest of the week's politics...

• Alan Cecil, the Reform Kent county councillor who decided he'd like to run for a seat in London as well, has been unsuccessful in his mission. Cecil came sixth out of the ten candidates standing in Woolwich Common for Greenwich Borough Council, meaning he'll have to make do with only be a councillor in Kent for now.
• Former Rochester and Strood MP Mark Reckless has failed in his efforts to return to the Welsh Senedd as a Reform candidate. Reckless was second on the list vote within the Caerdydd Penarth constituency, but despite his campaigning efforts in an untaxed van, he missed out in the final count.
• Canterbury City Council's Labour-Lib Dem coalition has collapsed in dramatic fashion. The Lib Dems walked away from the arrangement after Cllr Alan Baldock, the Labour leader of the council, asked his coalition allies not to vote against important planning applications via WhatsApp.
• The Reform administration at Kent County Council voted to cut the time opposition councillors are allowed to scrutinise decisions during full council meetings, while also introducing prayers and a singalong of the national anthem at those meetings.

Footnotes

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