Post by Robert Waller on Oct 3, 2023 19:42:28 GMT
Credit to Pete Whitehead for the paragraph on boundary changes.
Grimsby and Cleethorpes have much in common, and it may come as a surprise that they have not been included in the same parliamentary constituency since before the 1950 general election. Looking at a map, the two towns form a single conurbation in north east Lincolnshire as the south bank of the Humber estuary veers round towards the North Sea. On the ground, it is very hard to tell where the one stops and the other starts. Grimsby Town FC, restored to the Football League since winning the National League playoff in 2022, actually play at Blundell Park in Cleethorpes. Both the –by and the –thorpe(s) suffixes are among the most common indicators of eastern England’s period of Scandinavian rule. Now after over 70 tears there is again to be a seat that unites the two towns.
Proposed boundary changes add the whole of the town of Cleethorpes (25,000 voters) and remove the Grimsby ward of Scartho. Cleethorpes itself is the least strongly Conservative part of the constituency bearing its name, though the Conservatives would clearly have won it easily in 2019. Scartho is the most middle class and Conservative ward in Grimsby. Therefore the boundary changes do not alter the political balance all that much even while increasing the notional majority to five figures
There would have been a time when the arrival of around 25,000 voters in Cleethorpes might have tipped the political balance. Cleethorpes was in a safe Conservative constituency, Louth, from 1950 to 1983, then in Brigg & Cleethorpes which was easily won by Tory MP Michael Brown from 1983 through 1992. In 1997 it was awarded a seat of its own name which was won by Labour in the three ‘Blair’ elections; but a lot of unlikely places were won by New Labour, when it was new. In 2010 the Conservatives gained Cleethorpes by over 4,000, and the majority increased at each of the three subsequent general elections to be over 21,000 in December 2019. To be sure, Cleethorpes town has been the least Tory part of its constituency. But while Labour never lost Grimsby from 1945 to 2019, not even in a byelection in their very difficult year of 1977, the margins had been narrow several times: less than 1,000 not only in 1977 but also in 1983 and 2010. So Cleethorpes could have made the difference in those relatively weak Labour years.
However the political landscape dramatically changed in the sub-region south of the Humber in 2019. Not only did the Conservative majority in the Cleethorpes seat more than double, but Great Grimsby also fell after 21 successive Labour victories. It was not close. Great Grimsby was estimated to vote over 71% to leave the EU in 2016. It was no surprise therefore that in the ‘get Brexit done’ election of December 2019, there was a 14.7% swing against the Labour MP Melanie Onn, and Grimsby joined other gritty northern working class towns in returning a Conservative with a startlingly large majority.
During the 1997 general election campaign I was invited to give some talks based on psephology and opinion polling by a friend who was standing for Parliament there. (As it happens I also knew the sitting member, but he did not ask …). In the Conservative party headquarters I was shown a map of the constituency, and happened to notice a large scrawl which covered a significant part of what the Americans would call downtown Grimsby, just inland from the docks. It appeared to read S.H.I.T. I could not judge and was too polite to enquire whether this was referring to the standard of the housing there, or to Tory chances of electoral joy – or quite possibly both. In any case, Labour held the seat that year by a very comfortable margin of over 16,000 votes. However, even though in some respects Grimsby still lives up to its name, the situation had massively changed by 2019. The reason for this transformation demands explanation.
Situated on the southern bank of the broad estuary of the River Humber, Grimsby could claim to be the port for the world’s largest fishing industry as recently as the mid 1950s, but only a handful of actual trawlers remain compared with over 400 in its heyday. It is still a centre of fish processing (for example Findus UK) but most of the raw material arrives overland down the M180 or in containers from Iceland. The destruction of fishing is blamed by many Grimbarians on the EU Common Fisheries Policy, and this constituency has always been a hotbed of Euroscepticism. In the 2015 general election the UKIP, in the form of 2010 Conservative candidate Victoria Ayling, polled 25% and over 8,000 votes - nearly finishing in second place. The background was already in place for the 2016 referendum result and for Labour’s eventual defeat when that had still not been translated into a clear and definite plan for actual departure from the EU well over three years later
Some of the Great Grimsby part of the new constituency is, well, grim. The central wards of East Marsh and West Marsh are the most deprived, a mixture of a grid of industrial and ex-industrial areas, terraced streets, semi-cleared residential land, and tower blocks. The traditional shopping area around Freeman Street has for many years suffered from urban blight. However, while South ward is basically a 1950s council estate, there is also in Park ward a very good, if small, established residential area round the People’s Park. Scartho is a long established Conservative inclined peripheral owner occupied area. In the May 2021 NE Lincolnshire unitary elections, though, as well as winning Scartho and Park, the Tories took the north western working class ward of Freshney (based on Great Coates), as they had in 2018, and Yarborough too (named after a local aristocrat, the Earl of Yarborough, but essentially comprising the Little Coates neighbourhood). In 2023 the Conservatives still held Scartho and Park, while Independents, not Labour, had gained Freshney and Yarborough. With the Liberal Democrats easily retaining the inner East Marsh, where they have had a very successful ‘community politics’ operation for some years, Labour have been reduced to holding a minority of the wards even in the Great Grimsby parts of the North East Lincolnshire authority – in fact in May 2023 only South, Heneage (the Old Clee / Weelsby neighbourhoods) and the central West Marsh.
Ironically, the boundary changes that create Great Grimsby & Cleethorpes hardly further hurt Labour, as in 2023 they did manage to win not only Sidney Sussex*, the innermost and most working class Cleethorpes ward, but to gain Croft Baker as well, only retaining Haverstoe of the three wards transferred. Cleethorpes town is far from glamorous or affluent. Indeed the new Great Grimsby & Cleethorpes actually has an even higher proportion of private rented housing than the former Great Grimsby did. This is not only because 49.6% of housing in Sidney Park MSOA was in the private rented sector n the 2021 census, but because the 12% privately rented (and over 80% owner occupied) Scartho is removed and placed in the new Brigg & Immingham division. Despite the arrival of Cleethorpes the new seat will still be no.1 out of the 575 in England and Wales for routine and semi-routine jobs at 38% across the whole seat – it reaches nearly 50% in the central Grimsby MSOAS of West Marsh and East Marsh & Port.
It is possible that Grimsby’s long Labour loyalty might re-emerge after the Brexit issue has settled down, but it is also possible that it may be involved in a powerful secular trend away from them. In any case, as with other seats like Mansfield, Bassetlaw and Cannock, the Conservatives are now so far ahead that it is not certain that any recovery could recapture it in a single election, even in the circumstance of 2024 when a Labour overall victory looks likely. Given that by some measures this can be defined as the most working class seat in England and Wales, that Labour may not start as favourites in this corner of the land in North East Lincolnshire is strong testimony indeed that the cleavages that divide politics in England have significantly shifted
*"In the late nineteenth century, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge's finances received a further boost from the development of the resort of Cleethorpes on college land on the Lincolnshire coast. This land had been purchased in 1616, following a bequest for the benefit of scholars and fellows by Peter Blundell, a merchant from Tiverton, Devon. (Wikipedia - the original internet link from the Friends of Cleethorpes - to explain the connection between a rather lovely Cambridge college and what is now a decidedly unlovely neighbourhood - is now broken.)
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 18.8% 305/575
Owner occupied 57.3% 435/575
Private rented 27.3% 87/575
Social rented 15.4% 274/575
White 96.1% 123/575
Black 0.6% 424/575
Asian 1.5% 449/575
Managerial & professional 19.4% 561/575
Routine & Semi-routine 38.0% 1/575
Degree level 19.5% 568/575
No qualifications 26.2% 31/575
Students 5.6% 293/575
General election 2019: Great Grimsby
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Lia Nici 18,150 54.9 +12.7
Labour Melanie Onn 10,819 32.7 −16.7
Brexit Party Christopher Barker 2,378 7.2 N/A
Liberal Democrats Ian Barfield 1,070 3.2 +0.5
Green Loyd Emmerson 514 1.6 N/A
Independent Nigel Winn 156 0.5 N/A
C Majority 7,331 22.2 N/A
2019 electorate 61,409
Turnout 33,087 57.7 −3.7
Conservative gain from Labour Swing +14.7
Boundary Changes
Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes consists of
85.3% of Great Grimsby
34.1% of Cleethorpes
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/yorkshire-and-the-humber/Yorkshire%20and%20the%20Humber%20Region_505_Great%20Grimsby%20and%20Cleethorpes_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional results on new boundaries - Rallings & Thrasher
Grimsby and Cleethorpes have much in common, and it may come as a surprise that they have not been included in the same parliamentary constituency since before the 1950 general election. Looking at a map, the two towns form a single conurbation in north east Lincolnshire as the south bank of the Humber estuary veers round towards the North Sea. On the ground, it is very hard to tell where the one stops and the other starts. Grimsby Town FC, restored to the Football League since winning the National League playoff in 2022, actually play at Blundell Park in Cleethorpes. Both the –by and the –thorpe(s) suffixes are among the most common indicators of eastern England’s period of Scandinavian rule. Now after over 70 tears there is again to be a seat that unites the two towns.
Proposed boundary changes add the whole of the town of Cleethorpes (25,000 voters) and remove the Grimsby ward of Scartho. Cleethorpes itself is the least strongly Conservative part of the constituency bearing its name, though the Conservatives would clearly have won it easily in 2019. Scartho is the most middle class and Conservative ward in Grimsby. Therefore the boundary changes do not alter the political balance all that much even while increasing the notional majority to five figures
There would have been a time when the arrival of around 25,000 voters in Cleethorpes might have tipped the political balance. Cleethorpes was in a safe Conservative constituency, Louth, from 1950 to 1983, then in Brigg & Cleethorpes which was easily won by Tory MP Michael Brown from 1983 through 1992. In 1997 it was awarded a seat of its own name which was won by Labour in the three ‘Blair’ elections; but a lot of unlikely places were won by New Labour, when it was new. In 2010 the Conservatives gained Cleethorpes by over 4,000, and the majority increased at each of the three subsequent general elections to be over 21,000 in December 2019. To be sure, Cleethorpes town has been the least Tory part of its constituency. But while Labour never lost Grimsby from 1945 to 2019, not even in a byelection in their very difficult year of 1977, the margins had been narrow several times: less than 1,000 not only in 1977 but also in 1983 and 2010. So Cleethorpes could have made the difference in those relatively weak Labour years.
However the political landscape dramatically changed in the sub-region south of the Humber in 2019. Not only did the Conservative majority in the Cleethorpes seat more than double, but Great Grimsby also fell after 21 successive Labour victories. It was not close. Great Grimsby was estimated to vote over 71% to leave the EU in 2016. It was no surprise therefore that in the ‘get Brexit done’ election of December 2019, there was a 14.7% swing against the Labour MP Melanie Onn, and Grimsby joined other gritty northern working class towns in returning a Conservative with a startlingly large majority.
During the 1997 general election campaign I was invited to give some talks based on psephology and opinion polling by a friend who was standing for Parliament there. (As it happens I also knew the sitting member, but he did not ask …). In the Conservative party headquarters I was shown a map of the constituency, and happened to notice a large scrawl which covered a significant part of what the Americans would call downtown Grimsby, just inland from the docks. It appeared to read S.H.I.T. I could not judge and was too polite to enquire whether this was referring to the standard of the housing there, or to Tory chances of electoral joy – or quite possibly both. In any case, Labour held the seat that year by a very comfortable margin of over 16,000 votes. However, even though in some respects Grimsby still lives up to its name, the situation had massively changed by 2019. The reason for this transformation demands explanation.
Situated on the southern bank of the broad estuary of the River Humber, Grimsby could claim to be the port for the world’s largest fishing industry as recently as the mid 1950s, but only a handful of actual trawlers remain compared with over 400 in its heyday. It is still a centre of fish processing (for example Findus UK) but most of the raw material arrives overland down the M180 or in containers from Iceland. The destruction of fishing is blamed by many Grimbarians on the EU Common Fisheries Policy, and this constituency has always been a hotbed of Euroscepticism. In the 2015 general election the UKIP, in the form of 2010 Conservative candidate Victoria Ayling, polled 25% and over 8,000 votes - nearly finishing in second place. The background was already in place for the 2016 referendum result and for Labour’s eventual defeat when that had still not been translated into a clear and definite plan for actual departure from the EU well over three years later
Some of the Great Grimsby part of the new constituency is, well, grim. The central wards of East Marsh and West Marsh are the most deprived, a mixture of a grid of industrial and ex-industrial areas, terraced streets, semi-cleared residential land, and tower blocks. The traditional shopping area around Freeman Street has for many years suffered from urban blight. However, while South ward is basically a 1950s council estate, there is also in Park ward a very good, if small, established residential area round the People’s Park. Scartho is a long established Conservative inclined peripheral owner occupied area. In the May 2021 NE Lincolnshire unitary elections, though, as well as winning Scartho and Park, the Tories took the north western working class ward of Freshney (based on Great Coates), as they had in 2018, and Yarborough too (named after a local aristocrat, the Earl of Yarborough, but essentially comprising the Little Coates neighbourhood). In 2023 the Conservatives still held Scartho and Park, while Independents, not Labour, had gained Freshney and Yarborough. With the Liberal Democrats easily retaining the inner East Marsh, where they have had a very successful ‘community politics’ operation for some years, Labour have been reduced to holding a minority of the wards even in the Great Grimsby parts of the North East Lincolnshire authority – in fact in May 2023 only South, Heneage (the Old Clee / Weelsby neighbourhoods) and the central West Marsh.
Ironically, the boundary changes that create Great Grimsby & Cleethorpes hardly further hurt Labour, as in 2023 they did manage to win not only Sidney Sussex*, the innermost and most working class Cleethorpes ward, but to gain Croft Baker as well, only retaining Haverstoe of the three wards transferred. Cleethorpes town is far from glamorous or affluent. Indeed the new Great Grimsby & Cleethorpes actually has an even higher proportion of private rented housing than the former Great Grimsby did. This is not only because 49.6% of housing in Sidney Park MSOA was in the private rented sector n the 2021 census, but because the 12% privately rented (and over 80% owner occupied) Scartho is removed and placed in the new Brigg & Immingham division. Despite the arrival of Cleethorpes the new seat will still be no.1 out of the 575 in England and Wales for routine and semi-routine jobs at 38% across the whole seat – it reaches nearly 50% in the central Grimsby MSOAS of West Marsh and East Marsh & Port.
It is possible that Grimsby’s long Labour loyalty might re-emerge after the Brexit issue has settled down, but it is also possible that it may be involved in a powerful secular trend away from them. In any case, as with other seats like Mansfield, Bassetlaw and Cannock, the Conservatives are now so far ahead that it is not certain that any recovery could recapture it in a single election, even in the circumstance of 2024 when a Labour overall victory looks likely. Given that by some measures this can be defined as the most working class seat in England and Wales, that Labour may not start as favourites in this corner of the land in North East Lincolnshire is strong testimony indeed that the cleavages that divide politics in England have significantly shifted
*"In the late nineteenth century, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge's finances received a further boost from the development of the resort of Cleethorpes on college land on the Lincolnshire coast. This land had been purchased in 1616, following a bequest for the benefit of scholars and fellows by Peter Blundell, a merchant from Tiverton, Devon. (Wikipedia - the original internet link from the Friends of Cleethorpes - to explain the connection between a rather lovely Cambridge college and what is now a decidedly unlovely neighbourhood - is now broken.)
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 18.8% 305/575
Owner occupied 57.3% 435/575
Private rented 27.3% 87/575
Social rented 15.4% 274/575
White 96.1% 123/575
Black 0.6% 424/575
Asian 1.5% 449/575
Managerial & professional 19.4% 561/575
Routine & Semi-routine 38.0% 1/575
Degree level 19.5% 568/575
No qualifications 26.2% 31/575
Students 5.6% 293/575
General election 2019: Great Grimsby
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Lia Nici 18,150 54.9 +12.7
Labour Melanie Onn 10,819 32.7 −16.7
Brexit Party Christopher Barker 2,378 7.2 N/A
Liberal Democrats Ian Barfield 1,070 3.2 +0.5
Green Loyd Emmerson 514 1.6 N/A
Independent Nigel Winn 156 0.5 N/A
C Majority 7,331 22.2 N/A
2019 electorate 61,409
Turnout 33,087 57.7 −3.7
Conservative gain from Labour Swing +14.7
Boundary Changes
Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes consists of
85.3% of Great Grimsby
34.1% of Cleethorpes
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/yorkshire-and-the-humber/Yorkshire%20and%20the%20Humber%20Region_505_Great%20Grimsby%20and%20Cleethorpes_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional results on new boundaries - Rallings & Thrasher
| Con | 23718 | 55.6% |
| Lab | 13419 | 32.2% |
| LD | 2052 | 4.9% |
| Brexit | 2049 | 4.9% |
| Green | 821 | 2.0% |
| Oth | 156 | 0.4% |
| Con Majority | 9759 | 23.4% |