Kingswinford & South Staffordshire
Jan 1, 2024 22:50:54 GMT
Robert Waller, mrtoad, and 3 more like this
Post by iainbhx on Jan 1, 2024 22:50:54 GMT
Kingswinford & South Staffordshire is a new seat, or is it? It is made up of 59% from South Staffordshire and 41% from Dudley South. The South Staffordshire portion is the Seisdon finger, a slim intrusion of Staffordshire that lies between Shropshire and the West Midlands. The Seisdon finger was once very rural but the growth of the railway suburbs of Codsall and Bilbrook and villages such as Perton and Wombourne have reduced that rurality. The Dudley South portion is made up of Kingswinford, Wordsley and Wall Heath areas that in the past had a certain amount of industry but these days are mainly residential suburbs. Whilst this is a new cross-county seat, there is some history in it, the old Kingswinford division of Staffordshire certainly covered all of this territory and then more and post 1950, the Brierley Hill seat was even more similar but also included Brierley Hill. Amblecote and Tettenhall. This is. of course, because of the complex history of the area with the local government boundary changes of 1966 and 1973. So whilst a new seat in this review, it has form and its historic form is that it was generally Tory. although a lot more marginal than this seat will be.
South Staffordshire and it’s predecessor South West Staffordshire were of course absolutely solid seats for the Conservatives, South West contained more former mining areas and so constrained Patrick Cormack to 49% in 1974, South which only really contained a Labour vote in Cheslyn Hay still returned him with 50% of the vote in 1997 and Cheslyn Hay has since moved considerably towards the right. Dudley West (and then Dudley South) were more marginal. but the three wards moved into the seat would generally have been amongst the most solid for the Conservatives at a General Election even when Kingswinford had its brief flirtation at the local level with the Liberal Democrats. I have little doubt that even in 1997, this seat would have been a solid Conservative hold.
The seat is best defined in some ways as being what it is not, it’s NOT WOLVERHAMPTON as the residents of Bilbrook, Codsall, Perton and Wombourne will proclaim very loudly, it’s is also NOT DUDLEY a battlecry of Wombourne, Himley, Kingswinford and Wordsley and it is NOT STOURBRIDGE which is what you’ll get from Wordsley and Kinver. This antipathy spreads into its politics and may well explain why there are difficulties with the Conservative selection.
The different areas don’t have a lot in common with each other, Wombourne and Perton are fairly working class and despite having the same accent as the city, supporting the football club and venerating the former MP for Wolverhampton South West and then South Down, they want nothing to do with it. Bilbrook and Codsall are more middle class and a lot longer established but still dislike Wolverhampton, the council is administered from Codsall, so there are some local jobs there as well.The more rural villages have become very expensive, there is still some agriculture in the area, mainly potato farms but it employs very few but the smaller villages are now full of well off commuters. The new parts are fairly suburban, some from the 1930’s and some from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Wall Heath does have the west end of the vast Pensnett Trading Estate and Kingswinford has a fairly decent high street and still has a large E.ON administration office, although the part that I started my IT career in 1986 has been converted into cheap flats, Wordsley has a bit of tourism from people wishing to visit the glass museum and the Red House Cone as well some NHS jobs at the Ridge Hill Centre, although not as many as when Wordsley had a hospital. Kinver with its country park, attractive canal side walk and rock houses in Kinver Edge has been a day trip destination for decades for the Black County and Enville gets some trippers as well especially since the Enville Brewery started. However, for the most part they are commuter/retirement settlements.
It isn’t very well connected together, the southern parts are connected by the A449 and A491 and regular bus services connect Wombourne and Kingswinford to Wolverhampton and Stourbridge, The other parts of the seat are connected mainly through roads connected to Wolverhampton although Perton in particular is deliberately planned to make access to Wolverhampton difficult except via Wrottesley Park Road. Kinver and Enville are connected to Stourbridge and to a lesser extent Bridgnorth via the A458. The Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal connects it up fairly well, but isnt much practical use although it does bring in tourist income especially to canal side pubs. Driving from Kinver to Codsall probably takes the best part of a hour and it probably takes all day on public transport.
The new seat divides reasonably into four areas:
The rural wards, generally well off, the oldest parts of the seat, generally very solid for the Conservatives and comparatively high turnout, Kinver is a bit of an outlier, it has some social housing, it has some working class people and it often splits its votes. In 2023 it went very LibDem which it has done before.
The railway suburbs - Codsall and Bilbrook. They are more middle class than Wombourne and Perton and more politically flexible, there are a larger number of public sector workers, both for the council and I suspect quite a few for the Featherstone prison complex. Again, they have some social housing and a bit more of a non-white population. but not that much, the seat is very white overall. Again, they are usually tory, Codsall often has unopposed elections, but Bilbrook has been Green in 2019 and 2023.
Wombourne and Perton, Wombourne is a village which has grown slowly into being a small town, mainly through White Flight from Wolverhampton. It’s become more middle class recently, it was previously a destination for well paid skilled working class people. Again, the Tories are often unopposed here, quite a few contests were Con vs UKIP and they did have the Freedom Party. Perton is the planned version of Wombourne, it has even less social housing, it has a lot of White Van Men although it has been getting more middle class over the last decade, the main opposition here at the local level is Indos, but there is a bit of a Labour vote here, maybe 20-25%.
The Dudley wards - it’s unfair to say they are much of a muchness because they aren’t. They are all established suburbs around smaller older settlements (Wordsley, Kingswinford, Wall Heath). KIngswinford South is the most middle class and prosperous of them, the area off Lawnswood Avenue is fairly desirable and it only ever voted Labour between 1994 and 1996. Kingswinford North and Wall Heath is less reliable for the Tories but the new builds off Stallings Lane have probably tipped it for them, Wall Heath used to be quite poor and had a fair amount of social housing around Blaze Park (which is where my maternal Grandparents lived from 1950 to 1975), it has come up in the world since. Wordsley used to be marginal, and was mostly Labour in the 1980’s and 1990-’s but saw a strong UKIP vote and hasn’t been Labour since 2004, but was surprisingly close in 2023. They will vote Tory in a General, but they also may well provide the bulk of the Labour vote in the new seat.
The new seat tends towards being older just over a quarter of the residents are over 65, it’s fairly white despite the addition of areas from Dudley - 94.2%, 96.9% of residents were born in the UK, it identifies fairly strongly as Christian (59.5%). 78.4% of households are owner occupied and 47.0% of households are owned outright and therefore unaffected by mortgage rate changes, only 11% are in social housing and in some parts of the new seat there is very little social housing indeed. More people are in managerial & professional jobs (39.6%) than in routine and semi-routine jobs (21.5%), 30.3% are graduates, but people with no qualifications are only 18.6%. Even with the current polling slump, these are generally good demographics for the Tories.
This seat will be an absolute safe haven for the Conservatives come what may, it may be a more marginal than the old South Staffordshire was on paper, but in actuality even in the worst of years, the finger will out vote the three urban wards and they are not exactly Labour inclined. Even in the fairly awful 2023 local elections, the Tories still got 48% across the new seat with no clear challenger (and lots of Indo votes which will go Tory in a General Election). The one possible spoiler on the next MP getting a monstrous majority here would be the Reform party, UKIP have done well in the Dudley wards in the past, winning Wordsley in 2014 and 2016 and able to get over 20% in both Kingswinford wards, both Wombourne or Perton would also be very capable of producing a decent Reform vote, but probably still nowhere near enough to threaten the Conservatives in this seat.
South Staffordshire and it’s predecessor South West Staffordshire were of course absolutely solid seats for the Conservatives, South West contained more former mining areas and so constrained Patrick Cormack to 49% in 1974, South which only really contained a Labour vote in Cheslyn Hay still returned him with 50% of the vote in 1997 and Cheslyn Hay has since moved considerably towards the right. Dudley West (and then Dudley South) were more marginal. but the three wards moved into the seat would generally have been amongst the most solid for the Conservatives at a General Election even when Kingswinford had its brief flirtation at the local level with the Liberal Democrats. I have little doubt that even in 1997, this seat would have been a solid Conservative hold.
The seat is best defined in some ways as being what it is not, it’s NOT WOLVERHAMPTON as the residents of Bilbrook, Codsall, Perton and Wombourne will proclaim very loudly, it’s is also NOT DUDLEY a battlecry of Wombourne, Himley, Kingswinford and Wordsley and it is NOT STOURBRIDGE which is what you’ll get from Wordsley and Kinver. This antipathy spreads into its politics and may well explain why there are difficulties with the Conservative selection.
The different areas don’t have a lot in common with each other, Wombourne and Perton are fairly working class and despite having the same accent as the city, supporting the football club and venerating the former MP for Wolverhampton South West and then South Down, they want nothing to do with it. Bilbrook and Codsall are more middle class and a lot longer established but still dislike Wolverhampton, the council is administered from Codsall, so there are some local jobs there as well.The more rural villages have become very expensive, there is still some agriculture in the area, mainly potato farms but it employs very few but the smaller villages are now full of well off commuters. The new parts are fairly suburban, some from the 1930’s and some from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Wall Heath does have the west end of the vast Pensnett Trading Estate and Kingswinford has a fairly decent high street and still has a large E.ON administration office, although the part that I started my IT career in 1986 has been converted into cheap flats, Wordsley has a bit of tourism from people wishing to visit the glass museum and the Red House Cone as well some NHS jobs at the Ridge Hill Centre, although not as many as when Wordsley had a hospital. Kinver with its country park, attractive canal side walk and rock houses in Kinver Edge has been a day trip destination for decades for the Black County and Enville gets some trippers as well especially since the Enville Brewery started. However, for the most part they are commuter/retirement settlements.
It isn’t very well connected together, the southern parts are connected by the A449 and A491 and regular bus services connect Wombourne and Kingswinford to Wolverhampton and Stourbridge, The other parts of the seat are connected mainly through roads connected to Wolverhampton although Perton in particular is deliberately planned to make access to Wolverhampton difficult except via Wrottesley Park Road. Kinver and Enville are connected to Stourbridge and to a lesser extent Bridgnorth via the A458. The Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal connects it up fairly well, but isnt much practical use although it does bring in tourist income especially to canal side pubs. Driving from Kinver to Codsall probably takes the best part of a hour and it probably takes all day on public transport.
The new seat divides reasonably into four areas:
The rural wards, generally well off, the oldest parts of the seat, generally very solid for the Conservatives and comparatively high turnout, Kinver is a bit of an outlier, it has some social housing, it has some working class people and it often splits its votes. In 2023 it went very LibDem which it has done before.
The railway suburbs - Codsall and Bilbrook. They are more middle class than Wombourne and Perton and more politically flexible, there are a larger number of public sector workers, both for the council and I suspect quite a few for the Featherstone prison complex. Again, they have some social housing and a bit more of a non-white population. but not that much, the seat is very white overall. Again, they are usually tory, Codsall often has unopposed elections, but Bilbrook has been Green in 2019 and 2023.
Wombourne and Perton, Wombourne is a village which has grown slowly into being a small town, mainly through White Flight from Wolverhampton. It’s become more middle class recently, it was previously a destination for well paid skilled working class people. Again, the Tories are often unopposed here, quite a few contests were Con vs UKIP and they did have the Freedom Party. Perton is the planned version of Wombourne, it has even less social housing, it has a lot of White Van Men although it has been getting more middle class over the last decade, the main opposition here at the local level is Indos, but there is a bit of a Labour vote here, maybe 20-25%.
The Dudley wards - it’s unfair to say they are much of a muchness because they aren’t. They are all established suburbs around smaller older settlements (Wordsley, Kingswinford, Wall Heath). KIngswinford South is the most middle class and prosperous of them, the area off Lawnswood Avenue is fairly desirable and it only ever voted Labour between 1994 and 1996. Kingswinford North and Wall Heath is less reliable for the Tories but the new builds off Stallings Lane have probably tipped it for them, Wall Heath used to be quite poor and had a fair amount of social housing around Blaze Park (which is where my maternal Grandparents lived from 1950 to 1975), it has come up in the world since. Wordsley used to be marginal, and was mostly Labour in the 1980’s and 1990-’s but saw a strong UKIP vote and hasn’t been Labour since 2004, but was surprisingly close in 2023. They will vote Tory in a General, but they also may well provide the bulk of the Labour vote in the new seat.
The new seat tends towards being older just over a quarter of the residents are over 65, it’s fairly white despite the addition of areas from Dudley - 94.2%, 96.9% of residents were born in the UK, it identifies fairly strongly as Christian (59.5%). 78.4% of households are owner occupied and 47.0% of households are owned outright and therefore unaffected by mortgage rate changes, only 11% are in social housing and in some parts of the new seat there is very little social housing indeed. More people are in managerial & professional jobs (39.6%) than in routine and semi-routine jobs (21.5%), 30.3% are graduates, but people with no qualifications are only 18.6%. Even with the current polling slump, these are generally good demographics for the Tories.
This seat will be an absolute safe haven for the Conservatives come what may, it may be a more marginal than the old South Staffordshire was on paper, but in actuality even in the worst of years, the finger will out vote the three urban wards and they are not exactly Labour inclined. Even in the fairly awful 2023 local elections, the Tories still got 48% across the new seat with no clear challenger (and lots of Indo votes which will go Tory in a General Election). The one possible spoiler on the next MP getting a monstrous majority here would be the Reform party, UKIP have done well in the Dudley wards in the past, winning Wordsley in 2014 and 2016 and able to get over 20% in both Kingswinford wards, both Wombourne or Perton would also be very capable of producing a decent Reform vote, but probably still nowhere near enough to threaten the Conservatives in this seat.
