By The By

A couple of hours ago, my friend Joanne Carr, the mother of two of my oldest friends, made a welcome return to local government, winning the by-election at Dipton and Burnopfield.

On a recount, the result was:

Labour 656

Independent 655

Conservative 86

Green 63

That's right. One vote. On a recount.

The Independents in these parts, who had previously held the seat quite comfortably, have been using purple as their colour for as long as I can remember. Most of their Councillors and the great majority of their voters will have voted UKIP at the European Elections.

Such phenomena are very much a feature of the North of England, and especially of its countryside. But none of them, please note, has joined UKIP. Most of them will still vote Conservative at next year's General Election.

Then there are those 86 True Blue Tories. "If they had voted for us, then we would have won," is not something that the Independents would ever say. They would leave that to the Home Counties interlopers from UKIP, who have no idea how the North works.

These 86 are people who will only ever vote for the Conservative Party candidate for anything. It is a matter of supreme indifference to them that that might hand victory to Labour. Any non-Conservative candidate is as unacceptable to them as any other non-Conservative candidate.

It would be no less ridiculous an observation than the above to remark that, "If they had voted Labour, then there would have been no need of a recount."

The Conservatives may have dropped from first to third place at the European Elections both in the North West and in Yorkshire and the Humber, as also in the West Midlands and in Wales. But they still managed to return MEPs from all four.

They still took 17.7 per cent of the vote, cast by more than one hundred thousand people, in the North East. They easily out-polled UKIP in Scotland. They out-polled Labour in the East Midlands; only just, but they did. Their Ulster Unionist allies retained a European seat in Northern Ireland.

Anyone who grew up in any of those places, or who has spent any length of time in any of them, will know exactly who these people are. The True Blueness can sometimes dim a little towards considering UKIP for European Elections, or Independents for the council. But not always.

And the bedrock of those who would never consider voting any way but Tory for the House of Commons is really quite large. The bedrock of those who would never consider voting any way but Tory for anything is far from negligible.

Meanwhile, what of that Green vote? It would once, not long ago, have been Lib Dem, if the Lib Dems had contested the seat, and certainly for Parliament. Labour took the seat, so it has not come from there. 

Labour's position in the North, including in rural areas such as this ward, much of which is also quite affluent even if much of it certainly is not, is growing even stronger than it already was. Local by-elections confirm that on a weekly basis.

The Greens are now the Official Opposition to Labour on Liverpool City Council, which the Lib Dems ran until 2010, but on which they now have only as many seats as the continuing Liberal Party.

A few hours ago, Question Time came from Liverpool. There was no Green on the panel. But there was someone from UKIP. The audience was a lot more impressed by Alex Salmond.