Results
A win for the Green Party
Rob Yates (Green) 2068 ELECTED
Marc Rattigan (Reform) 1767
Joanne Bright (Labour) 557
Charlie Leys (Conservative) 811
Dr. Mo Shafaei (Lib Dem) 63
Lucy Gray (Ind) 68
Newly-elected KCC councillor Yates said: “To see the Cliftonville community come together in this election has been incredible.
“They have started to believe. The zebra crossing (installed at Hartsdown) was a small thing but lots of residents saw the fight against KCC to get it and if you provide results you can give hope. I think that’s what residents need and that’s what our campaign has been about.”
‘Residents want compassion in their politics’ says newly-elected Green Party county councillor
At the count
Verification has taken place. Counting is underway.
Candidates in attendance spotted so far include Rob Yates (Green), Marc Rattigan (Reform) Charlie Leys (Conservative) and Joanne Bright (Labour).
KCC leader Linden Kemkaran is also in attendance.
TDC chief exec Colin Carmichael has confirmed the turnout figure as 37.69% equalling 5334 votes. Total electorate is 14,152.
Independent candidate Lucy Gray has arrived.
We are nearing the final leg of the count now.
Polling results day
Today (April 10) the result will be announced for the hotly contested by-election for the Cliftonville division seat at Kent County Council.
The division covers district wards of Cliftonville West, Cliftonville East, Kingsgate and Beacon Road.
Reform UK’s Daniel Taylor won the seat in May last year as the party swept to victory at County Hall, taking 57 of the 81 seats.
However, Taylor was jailed earlier this year after pleading guilty to controlling behaviour towards his wife, sparking the poll.
The build up since last month has been one more akin to a General Election, with political heavyweights travelling to the isle to endorse their party candidates.
For Greens candidate Rob Yates, former Party leader Caroline Lucas and current leader Zack Polanski have both travelled to Thanet in a bid to boost the vote.
Reform UK candidate Marc Rattigan was joined on the canvassing trail by the party’s finance chief – and former Tory Cabinet minister- Robert Jenrick.
Veteran MP Sir Roger Gale and ‘Bionic Lord’ (Craig) Mackinlay threw their weight behind Conservative candidate Charlie Leys while Dame Emily Thornberry endorsed Labour candidate Joanne Bright.
Dr Mo Shafaei, Liberal Democrats, and Independent Lucy Gray have also put themselves forward for election.
Voters went to the polls yesterday (April 9) and the count takes place today at St George’s School sports hall.
Go, Lucy, Mo or Joanne… anyone but those three party-jumpers!
#loyalty
What about Larry, curly and mo! And when polanski visited Cliftonville have the wonderful women of Thanet now got bigger boobs!
Who will be the most popular, innefective self publicist? Exciting!
Congratulations Rob. No doubt helped by having Polanski there for support. Well done.
that is kinda like polanski’s job to do that
Congratulations Rob! Is this the beginning of the end of Reform…let’s hope so
Actually, Reform did quite well; more votes than Labour and Tory put together.
This is a incredible result, labour vote halved while greens have increased their vote fourfold. This is the biggest defeat ever for reform and will have repercussions nationwide
Jenrick, Kruger, Tice never helped the cause for Reform.
Failed Conservatives are not the answer.
I live in the area and we were inundated by canvassers. However, I didn’t mind as it gave me opportunities to give them a Gospel booklet explaining how they can know God personally through faith in Christ as their Lord and Saviour.
Could it be folks are waking up to the grift of Farage? Maybe a less generic Robert would’ve helped matters… Roll on the GE when we can vote for completely rebranded Tory/Labour parties with fresh new colour schemes.
Have you seen his latest one? Paying the energy bills of a house & then the whole street from a prize draw? Turns out the couple are big Reform members in Wigan, living in a leafy suburb & are his pals-pictured hanging out with him, Widdecombe & Bull at a Brexit Party rally in 2019.
A huge victory for the “can’t be bothered” party
Reform didn’t win.
Really great news, well deserved by the Greens.
Well, democracy has spoken. I doubt that I would have voted for him, but I’d much rather Green than Reform… and to be fair, Rob Yates has a far better reputation for hard work than Marc Rattigan!
Fantastic result, I am very happy. I really hope we see the befits in Thanet soon! Well done the Greens!
A shame that Reform UK couldn’t hold the seat but, along with all recent council by election results the vote share is holding comfortably at between 30% and 40%, around 10% and more ahead of some of the polls which seem to continually understate the Reform support
A great result. Showing how a positive, principled campaign can engage people and give them hope. Hope wins over hate.
Tony Auden – really?
Apathy wins again.
Time for compulsory voting.
In fact the ward turnout was higher this time than the 2025 KCC election. It’s still not good but it’s better.
I didn’t vote.
I suspect that I was in the real majority. A far greater number than all of the candidate’s votes combined.
Which, surely means that the seat should remain vacant? 😜
Only a fool doesn’t use their vote in a democracy. The right to vote for people like you and me was earned in blood and is a precious thing indeed. Not to do it is one thing, to be proud of not having done it…it’s taking for granted something of which so many people around the world are envious. A free vote in free elections. You’ll miss it, if it ever goes.
Voters who choose not to vote or submit a spoiled paper have the integrity to not vote for the least worse party. Our democracy is an illusion. Perhaps proportional representation would help. The electorate has been disenfranchised, not, by not-voting but through utter disregard by the establishment and power brokers who have enslaved us all.
Cliftonville really is cool. Well done Greens!
A wasted vote for a classic TDC waster. Yates is less than useless, has always been useless and, no doubt, will continue to be a waster.
He epitomises everything that is wrong with Thanet.
Yeah bring back Sandy Ezekiel. He knew how to get things done! Admittedly some of those were criminal but at least he tried…
The Shagpile Party.
Yes, spending years to get the council to put in a school crossing on a known dodge road was a real waste.
Taking Southern Water to court for their sewage dumping on our coasts, another sheer waste.
And if Yates is this bad at KCC it will be very odd because things will be better!
Can you cite examples of Yates’ being a waster? I have no idea but don’t think asserting he is useless counts for fact, just angry red-faced hot air,
Surely he is better than the jailed Reform lowlife Taylor?
Be interested in your evidence for this explosion of invective.
And perhaps you could add some details of your own contributions to civic and community life.
Can we PLEASE retire the ‘bionic Lord’ nonsense.
Mackinlay was a terrible MP and a horrible man – let’s move on eh.
The man who attacked the disabled & voted to make them poorer & their lives harder at every chance-then ended up disabled himself. Of course he had a fortune to spend on the best prosthetics & care, unlike those him & his party put into total poverty & whose lives ended because of them. Not sure why anybody was sorry for him, he wasn’t for everything him & his party did to them.
An interesting result. Let’s hope that Rob Yates actually sticks with the Party he stood for this time rather than switching allegiance midway through an election cycle. The Greens did well in mobilising people to get out and vote.
Reform paid the price for Farage’s national antics and taking the vote for granted. They thought they had it in the bag and were complacent.
But what can you say about Labour ? I predicted on here that they would get beaten into 4th place by the Tories and would be lucky to get anywhere near 1000 votes. The actual result was far, far worse. Votes in the 500s is a disaster, no matter how they try and dress it up. It’s a complete and utter rejection of the Party and what they stand for. I have absolutely nothing against Mrs Bright but there isn’t any Labour Candidate who could have pulled a result here given what they are doing to the country and to Thanet overall.
If I were a local Labour Councillor I would make the most of the next 12 months as they will get absolutely nowhere near being elected to the new Unitary Authority in 2027. It’ll be a total wipeout.
Labour really are cooked-the reason he jumped to the Greens.
My take on it is that Labour left him, rather than him leaving Labour. They’ve left a lot of the members behind, as the Greens’ membership shows. You’ll see a whole load more Labour bods leaving, now the writing is on the wall.
Well the reality is that he was elected as a Labour Councillor and then joined the Greens. It doesn’t matter whether the Labour ideology stopped chiming with his own. He was elected as a Labour Councillor for an election cycle and should have stayed the course as anything else is an insult to those who originally voted for him.
Ex-Tories who jump to Reform make similar claims.
Congratulations to Rob Yates and to Tricia Austin, Mike Garner and the entire Green Party campaign team!
This win marks the beginning of the end for Reform! A triumph of Hope over Hate!
Not really-Greens & Reform look like they are going to sweep the board going forward. Tories & Labour (no difference) both done for-the two grifter leaders Polanski & Farage reaping their incompetence & corruption.
Veteran MP Sir Roger Gale and ‘Bionic Lord’ (Craig) Mackinlay threw their weight behind Conservative candidate Charlie Ley.
Well, even Gale only just squeaked home, in one of the safest seats in the land he has held for over 40 years last time round-yes I know the boundary was changed last time. Nobody cares about the Bionic Birdbrain-other than keeping grifter Farage out, he did nothing but make people in a deprived area even worse off by attacking them via his words & via his voting power & dehumanising them-especially the disabled, until instant karma finally struck him.
They’re gonna need to eat more cakes, their weight didn’t account for many votes.
Haha deform lost, no surprise there. I hope more criminals like Daniel Taylor are unearthed & get the same result.
Reform vote slipping everywhere. In Scotland it has fallen to 15%, way behind SNP & LABOUR. In Wales, where they were almost leading at one point they are now 15 points behind Plaid Cymru. With the London elections coming up they will get a good pasting there! Thanet has just led the way – nice really!
Old Steve Bull-very apt name is panicking, telling us all the ‘wonderful’ things Reform councils have done & not to believe lies-in which case him, Nigel, 30p Lee, Jenrick & all their other Pinocchio’s really are done for.
What makes people think the Greens are any better than anybody else.I reported a broken dog poo bin with probably 60 to 70 poo bags on the railings overlooking Ramsgate beach 5 weeks ago and again last week.Nothing has been done while bags fall into the sea.I walked the seafront along Ramsgate the other evening and every litter bin was overflowing with industrials levels of food everywhere.Tourists having dinner outside in Perico Lounge must havr been apalled.My wife and I along with others were wading through the litter.I then walked back to my house from Pugins steps to George Park and every single road gulley was silted up covered in weeds.So much for catching rainfall water.This is a Green ward and quite easily the most neglected seafront I have ever seen.The Greens are just as useless as Labour,Conservatives and Reform.No wonder people dont vote its pointless.
All compostable-it goes back to nature.
But, Thanet District Council is a Labour-controlled council, with a Labour cabinet in charge of all the decision-making and spending, despite who might represent individual wards – you do understand how cabinet-led local councils operate? Pretty much same structure as national government- minority parties’ ward councillors can press and campaign for change at the council meetings but ultimately Labour controls TDC spending.
Only two of the many things I could say in reply:
1. Your walk took you through East Cliff ward and Sir Moses Montefiore ward both of which are Labour held
2. To be fair to the Labour people individual councillors have no powers or resources to deploy in the wards they represent. That’s not how our democracy works.
I stood for the Greens in East Cliff at the last set of local elections so I really do know what I’m talking about on that point. But even if I had won I would not have been able to get the streets cleaned and would remain as frustrated as you are and (to be fair to them again) as I suspect the current councillors are.
Yes I heard Zac Polanski live on TV on the eve of the election say the Greens are the only party that care about people and the Planet.Come to your Green Wards in Ramsgate and see how hypocritical you sound.
Ok…dog poo, that’s on those who insist on having these pooing machines. Take more responsibility- don’t leave it on the street, hang it on fences and if the bin is full, take it home. Litter bugs- take it home, not difficult. Fly tippers, you are scum. Councils are broke- thank Cameron onwards for that. TDC can’t everything, we all need to be responsible for our actions. Take home your rubbish, and if you must have dogs and the bins are full take it with you. Grow up.
David, the area you describe doesn’t sound like a Green ward – but Ramsgate Green Cllrs will be happy to look into it for you if you email us. We know the Waste team have no replacement bins available at present, but they’ll add this to their list for attention when they can if you send us the details. Thanks.
Everything fell apart when TDC was formed, the towns were far cleaner, the parks and gardens better cared for , seafront shelters looked after and cleaned, weeds along the pavements didn’t grow,people took pride in how their own property looked. Now the councilors don’t even bother to walk the streets to see the rubbish on the pavement, the filth that gets left laying around for weeks , and home owners let the bushes in their front gardens overhang pavements so people have to step into the road to walk past. Let’s face it a large part of Thanet is just a dump.