Post by andrewp on Dec 19, 2023 16:19:20 GMT
This is based on the original profile by greenhert
South East Cornwall was a new name for a constituency in 1983 and was largely the former Bodmin constituency without the town of Bodmin itself. It’s a large rural constituency in the south east of the county and contains all of the former Cornish district of Caradon with the addition of the small town of Lostwithiel. The boundary commission remain, on the whole, satisfied with their work here as since 1983 there have only been relatively minor boundary changes here, the most significant of which removed the chic seaside town of Fowey in 2010. Once again in the review of the 2019-24 parliament, changes here are very minor, merely involving the removal of about 300 voters at the Western end of the constituency in a tidy up to match electoral division boundaries.
The largest towns here are firstly two towns in the very east of the constituency directly across the Tamar from the city of Plymouth, Saltash ( population 15400 and the largest town in the constituency) and Torpoint ( 7000). Up the Tamar to the North we find Callington ( population 5000) and Gunnislake (3500). Moving westwards across the constituency we find the geographically central Liskeard ( population 11000), the coastal resort of Looe (5300) and finally the aforementioned Lostwithiel (3000).
Saltash and Torpoint are well connected to Plymouth, via the Ferries ( although queues on the Torpoint ferry are a regular favourite for radio travel bulletins), road and railway bridges across the River Tamar (the crucial dividing line between Devon and Cornwall). Saltash today is a popular location as a commuter base for workers in Plymouth. Torpoint, which faces Plymouth across the tributary stream of the Hamoaze, is the site of the Royal Navy's main training facility, HMS Raleigh.
Up the Tamar and north west of Plymouth are the settlements of Calstock, Gunnislake and Callington. Callington is an old market town and the home of Ginsters pasties, probably the most famous of the Cornish pasty makers ( other, much superior, in this authors opinion, pasties are available). Calstock grew up around the copper mines there in the 19th century, and until recent years was a rare outpost of Labour support in this constituency. Labour were winning Calstock at a local level when getting less than 10% in South East Cornwall in the 1980s.
This other ( western) end of the constituency feels altogether more rural, and places like Looe feel quite ‘off the beaten track’ and probably more isolated than some other places further west in Cornwall, as the A30, the main trunk road into and out of Cornwall, is some way to the North.
Looe is a small fishing port, 20 miles west of the Tamar . The settlements of East and West Looe sit on either side of the mouth of the Looe River and is a popular holiday destination today, although it is rather more genteel and popular with older people and families when compared to say the stag and hen do central Newquay or the ‘new money’ of Padstow or St Mawes. It was once dubbed "the playground of Plymouth".
The only other town of significance is Liskeard, a historic market town in the centre of the consituency, important in ancient times but less so today, and the constituency also contains the old monastery of St Germans.
Demographically , South East Cornwall has an older population with 52.1% of people being aged over 50, and ranking low for the percentage of people aged under 16 ( 532nd in England and Wales) and 16-24 (556th). It is also not surprisingly the home of very low numbers of students (ranking 540th in England and Wales) . South East Cornwall is average in qualification levels but like the rest of Cornwall is almost exclusively white in ethnic make-up, having the lowest proportion of both black and people of Asian origin of any of the 575 constituencies in England and Wales.
Cornwall last elected councillors in 2021, and the divisions in this constituency voted for 7 Conservative councillors, 3 Liberal Democrats ( elected in Lostwithiel, one in Saltash and one in Looe). 2 Labour ( Calstock and eye catchingly the picturesque Rame Peninsula division ), 1 from the cornish Mebyon Kernow party and 1 Independent.
South East Cornwall and its predecessor, Bodmin, switched hands between the Liberals and Conservatives many times although it is the most Conservative (big and small c) constituency in all of Cornwall. Its most notable former MPs are the Liberals' Isaac Foot (MP from 1922-24 and again from 1929-35), father of the Foot political dynasty which included Labour leader Michael Foot (one of his other sons, John Foot, unsuccessfully tried to win back his father's old seat of Bodmin in 1945 and 1950), and Peter Bessell, a key prosecution witness in the trial of former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe. Paul Tyler (Liberal Democrat MP for North Cornwall from 1992-2005 and now Baron Tyler) won Bodmin by 9 votes from Robert Hicks in February 1974 after five recounts, but Mr Hicks won the seat back in October by the nevertheless narrow margin of 665, and he increased his majority to 10,029 in 1979. He served as MP for this seat until he retired in 1997 and the Liberal Democrats Colin Breed,who had twice been Mayor of Saltash, gained the seat. Mr Breed held the seat with relative ease for the next 13 years until he retired in 2010 when the Conservatives' Sheryll Murray won the seat of a 9.1% swing partly because the Liberal Democrats' candidate, Karen Gillard, had no connection with Cornwall, in contrast to Mrs Murray. The Liberal Democrats fell back heavily just as they did in most of Cornwall in 2015 but retained second place. In 2017, for the first time ever, Labour finished second in South East Cornwall even though the Liberal Democrats' vote recovered somewhat. In 2019, the Liberal Democrats actually suffered a greater loss of vote share than Labour (3.3% as opposed to 2.4%), leaving Labour still in 2nd place but giving Mrs Murray an unprecedented Conservative majority of 20,971. The strong Labour candidate in 2017 and 2019 was Gareth Derrick, a former Royal Navy commodore, who also ran the Conservatives close in the 2016 Devon and Cornwall police and crime commissioner election, and then was initially selected as Labour candidate for Plymouth Moor View for the election of 2024 before withdrawing due to health issues.
The increasing numbers of Plymouth commuters settling in Saltash and Torpoint is contributing to a growing Labour vote here and appears to have eroded the Liberal Democrat clear status as the opposition to the Conservatives. The core of the Liberal Democrat vote in their wins from 1997-2005 would have come from those two towns.
Sheryll Murray has increased the Conservative share at each of the 4 elections that she has contested here, and whilst she would be doing well to achieve that for a 5th election running, she is an incumbent with a strong local pedigree. She was born and bred here. Her second husband was a local fisherman who was tragically killed in a fishing accident in 2011. She has the safest of the 6 Conservative seats in Cornwall, and the type of majority that looks impregnable even in the current circumstances, particularly as it is not 100% clear which of Labour or the Liberal Democrat’s represent the best option to remove her.
South East Cornwall was a new name for a constituency in 1983 and was largely the former Bodmin constituency without the town of Bodmin itself. It’s a large rural constituency in the south east of the county and contains all of the former Cornish district of Caradon with the addition of the small town of Lostwithiel. The boundary commission remain, on the whole, satisfied with their work here as since 1983 there have only been relatively minor boundary changes here, the most significant of which removed the chic seaside town of Fowey in 2010. Once again in the review of the 2019-24 parliament, changes here are very minor, merely involving the removal of about 300 voters at the Western end of the constituency in a tidy up to match electoral division boundaries.
The largest towns here are firstly two towns in the very east of the constituency directly across the Tamar from the city of Plymouth, Saltash ( population 15400 and the largest town in the constituency) and Torpoint ( 7000). Up the Tamar to the North we find Callington ( population 5000) and Gunnislake (3500). Moving westwards across the constituency we find the geographically central Liskeard ( population 11000), the coastal resort of Looe (5300) and finally the aforementioned Lostwithiel (3000).
Saltash and Torpoint are well connected to Plymouth, via the Ferries ( although queues on the Torpoint ferry are a regular favourite for radio travel bulletins), road and railway bridges across the River Tamar (the crucial dividing line between Devon and Cornwall). Saltash today is a popular location as a commuter base for workers in Plymouth. Torpoint, which faces Plymouth across the tributary stream of the Hamoaze, is the site of the Royal Navy's main training facility, HMS Raleigh.
Up the Tamar and north west of Plymouth are the settlements of Calstock, Gunnislake and Callington. Callington is an old market town and the home of Ginsters pasties, probably the most famous of the Cornish pasty makers ( other, much superior, in this authors opinion, pasties are available). Calstock grew up around the copper mines there in the 19th century, and until recent years was a rare outpost of Labour support in this constituency. Labour were winning Calstock at a local level when getting less than 10% in South East Cornwall in the 1980s.
This other ( western) end of the constituency feels altogether more rural, and places like Looe feel quite ‘off the beaten track’ and probably more isolated than some other places further west in Cornwall, as the A30, the main trunk road into and out of Cornwall, is some way to the North.
Looe is a small fishing port, 20 miles west of the Tamar . The settlements of East and West Looe sit on either side of the mouth of the Looe River and is a popular holiday destination today, although it is rather more genteel and popular with older people and families when compared to say the stag and hen do central Newquay or the ‘new money’ of Padstow or St Mawes. It was once dubbed "the playground of Plymouth".
The only other town of significance is Liskeard, a historic market town in the centre of the consituency, important in ancient times but less so today, and the constituency also contains the old monastery of St Germans.
Demographically , South East Cornwall has an older population with 52.1% of people being aged over 50, and ranking low for the percentage of people aged under 16 ( 532nd in England and Wales) and 16-24 (556th). It is also not surprisingly the home of very low numbers of students (ranking 540th in England and Wales) . South East Cornwall is average in qualification levels but like the rest of Cornwall is almost exclusively white in ethnic make-up, having the lowest proportion of both black and people of Asian origin of any of the 575 constituencies in England and Wales.
Cornwall last elected councillors in 2021, and the divisions in this constituency voted for 7 Conservative councillors, 3 Liberal Democrats ( elected in Lostwithiel, one in Saltash and one in Looe). 2 Labour ( Calstock and eye catchingly the picturesque Rame Peninsula division ), 1 from the cornish Mebyon Kernow party and 1 Independent.
South East Cornwall and its predecessor, Bodmin, switched hands between the Liberals and Conservatives many times although it is the most Conservative (big and small c) constituency in all of Cornwall. Its most notable former MPs are the Liberals' Isaac Foot (MP from 1922-24 and again from 1929-35), father of the Foot political dynasty which included Labour leader Michael Foot (one of his other sons, John Foot, unsuccessfully tried to win back his father's old seat of Bodmin in 1945 and 1950), and Peter Bessell, a key prosecution witness in the trial of former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe. Paul Tyler (Liberal Democrat MP for North Cornwall from 1992-2005 and now Baron Tyler) won Bodmin by 9 votes from Robert Hicks in February 1974 after five recounts, but Mr Hicks won the seat back in October by the nevertheless narrow margin of 665, and he increased his majority to 10,029 in 1979. He served as MP for this seat until he retired in 1997 and the Liberal Democrats Colin Breed,who had twice been Mayor of Saltash, gained the seat. Mr Breed held the seat with relative ease for the next 13 years until he retired in 2010 when the Conservatives' Sheryll Murray won the seat of a 9.1% swing partly because the Liberal Democrats' candidate, Karen Gillard, had no connection with Cornwall, in contrast to Mrs Murray. The Liberal Democrats fell back heavily just as they did in most of Cornwall in 2015 but retained second place. In 2017, for the first time ever, Labour finished second in South East Cornwall even though the Liberal Democrats' vote recovered somewhat. In 2019, the Liberal Democrats actually suffered a greater loss of vote share than Labour (3.3% as opposed to 2.4%), leaving Labour still in 2nd place but giving Mrs Murray an unprecedented Conservative majority of 20,971. The strong Labour candidate in 2017 and 2019 was Gareth Derrick, a former Royal Navy commodore, who also ran the Conservatives close in the 2016 Devon and Cornwall police and crime commissioner election, and then was initially selected as Labour candidate for Plymouth Moor View for the election of 2024 before withdrawing due to health issues.
The increasing numbers of Plymouth commuters settling in Saltash and Torpoint is contributing to a growing Labour vote here and appears to have eroded the Liberal Democrat clear status as the opposition to the Conservatives. The core of the Liberal Democrat vote in their wins from 1997-2005 would have come from those two towns.
Sheryll Murray has increased the Conservative share at each of the 4 elections that she has contested here, and whilst she would be doing well to achieve that for a 5th election running, she is an incumbent with a strong local pedigree. She was born and bred here. Her second husband was a local fisherman who was tragically killed in a fishing accident in 2011. She has the safest of the 6 Conservative seats in Cornwall, and the type of majority that looks impregnable even in the current circumstances, particularly as it is not 100% clear which of Labour or the Liberal Democrat’s represent the best option to remove her.
