Tony Randerson "absolutely thrilled" to be re-elected in Scarborough's Eastfield by-election

Following his resignation from North Yorkshire Council and the Labour Party in April, Tony Randerson has been re-elected as the councillor for the Eastfield division as a politically unaffiliated candidate.

Cllr Randerson received 499 votes, Liberal Democrat Erica Willett came in second with 281 votes, while the Labour Party’s David Thompson received 169 votes in a seat that no longer has a Labour representative for the first time in more than a decade.

The total turnout for the by-election was 22.09 per cent, from an electorate of almost 5,000.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Cllr Randerson said: “I’m absolutely thrilled!

“It was a long, hard campaign but we got there in the end and we fought a demanding but positive campaign and a clean campaign, with no smears and we kept to that all the way to the end.”

On the ballot paper, he was listed as politically unaffiliated but had backing from the Social Justice Party, which has said it is in the process of registering with the Electoral Commission.

Cllr Randerson said he stood by his decision to resign from the Labour Party and North Yorkshire Council based on Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership of Labour.

He said: “My principles wouldn’t allow me to stay in the Labour Party come what may, it’s just gone beyond the pale and we have a one-party political system.”

Asked whether he would vote for Labour at the next general election, he said: “Irrespective of the next general election, if a socialist candidate is standing, I will be supporting the socialist candidate.”

On the eve of last week’s by-election, allegations of “candidate intimidation” were made by the Scarborough and Whitby Conservative Association although it said that “this is not the Conservative candidate”.

North Yorkshire Police also confirmed that it had received a report and that its “enquiries are ongoing”.

Commenting on the allegations of candidate intimidation, Cllr Randerson told the LDRS: “I've said on a number of occasions now, we took the appropriate action.

“As a candidate, my party, my agent, we notified the monitoring officer as soon as we were made aware of these allegations and we were told by the monitoring officer that we’d taken exactly the correct action.”

Cllr Randerson added that his departure from the Labour Party had led people to believe it would “make a massive difference” but said it would not.

He added: “I’ve been a socialist all my working life, nothing changes.”

Visit https://www.northyorks.gov.uk/your-council/elections-and-voting/elections for full details.