One woman's stand against five political parties

Independent councillor Julia Ewart said she spoke to 3,000 people to win her seat, and it had been in the planning for two years.

Ewart was elected to the Suffolk County Council division of Saxmundham and District with 1,108 votes on a turnout of 51% for the division on May 7.

Reform UK and the Green Party came in second and third with 906 and 903, respectively. The Conservatives previously held the seat.

These local elections in Suffolk were characterised as a two-horse race between the Greens and Reform, but Ewart's efforts bucked that trend.

So what did it take?

Ewart was already an Independent councillor for the Kelsale and Yoxford ward at East Suffolk Council. She was originally voted on as a Liberal Democrat but resigned from the party over planning issues.

She has also twice been the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats for the Suffolk Coastal constituency at the general elections in 2019 and 2024.

This experience, she said, helped her.

"I'd had a plan for a very long time, and it's fair to say probably for two years I worked upon that, and I've learnt how to campaign - I've done two general elections. I'm in a good position with the public," she said,

The key, though, she admitted, was "about working out who is likely to vote for you and to go and find them and go and speak to them, and that's exactly what I did".

On how she took on the Reform and the Greens, she said: "They are both brands, and their message was not particularly local or specific, and neither of those parties delivered in a really personal way."

She added: "So I put my policy and a manifesto out from the outset and did not pay any attention to the others."

It was also about being visible, Ewart said. She spoke to 3,000 people and wrote to all 1,240 people who wanted to vote by post.

Ewart said finding out she had won at the count on May 8 was "wonderful" and the "feeling of success was amazing".

Since then, she said the support has continued, adding: "It is fair to say, particularly from the amount of posts that I've received in the last week, that so many people felt that they had been involved in this initiative and they had voted for me."

She continued: "They didn't vote for a brand, they voted for Mrs Ewart. And therefore, they actually cast their vote, and they got the positive response that they needed."

Suffolk County Council will vote in a new Reform administration at its Annual General Meeting next week. It had previously been run by the Conservatives for 20 years.

Ewart and John Michael Nunn, who won the Melford division by just 16 votes, were the only two Independent councillors out of 70.

Ewart said she will not be joining any other political party group yet, although some Independents do align themselves with a larger group to have more of a voice.

She added: "I'm happy to stand on my own because I have my own integrity. I work in such a way that I'm very principled about the decisions that I make, and I am making them on behalf of the public."

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