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At the latest local elections in Leeds, one result stood out above all the rest as a major political upset.

The Green Party defeated the Conservatives in Wetherby, not just by a slither, but by a formidable margin of 1,121 votes. In doing so, Green candidate Penny Stables became the first non-Tory ever to represent the scenic market town on Leeds City Council.

With due respect to the Greens’ growing profile and the Conservatives’ dire national polling figures, the history and even recent election results in Wetherby mean her win feels a lot like an FA Cup third round giant-killing. So how did she do it?

“I think there are a number of things,” 58 year-old Coun Stables reflects, a month on from her victory. “I think we were helped by everything that’s going on in Parliament at the moment and a lot of people who’ve voted Conservative not recognising the party they’ve voted for all those years. But we were also trying to challenge people to think about what they were voting for.

Green candidate Penny Stables became the first non-Conservative councillor to be elected in Wetherby when she won a seat in the May 2023 elections. Picture: Local Democracy Reporting Service

With every conversation and leaflet we put through the door, we were saying, ‘What do you believe in? Why are you voting the way you do?’ I had people in their 80s saying, ‘I’ve voted Conservative all my life, but I’m going to vote for you this time’. And I’d say to them ‘thank you very much, because I know how big a deal this is for you’. They were breaking the habit of a lifetime.”

Ever since Wetherby became part of Leeds in 1973, the ward’s three seats on the city council have never been any colour other than blue. Even when Britpop and New Labour fever was sweeping the nation in the mid-90s and the Tories were reduced to holding just eight of the 99 city council seats, they could always rely on a trusty trio in Wetherby. None of those seats ever came close to turning red at that point, when just about everywhere else around did.

For the Greens, however, there have been signs of a steady change in voting habits in Wetherby since the pandemic. A shift from 22 per cent of the vote in 2021 to 34 per cent last year sowed the seeds of this year’s success. Coun Stables recalls conversations with postal voters in the town last year who had already voted Conservative before polling day, but who were impressed enough with her pitch that they committed to backing her this time around.

Leeds politics: Meet Wetherby’s new Green councillor who convinced Tory voters to break ‘the habit of a lifetime’