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Post by Merseymike on Sept 27, 2019 22:29:33 GMT
Nearby Whiteefield ward in Pendle has similar demographics but a wildly erratic voting pattern 2014 Asjad Mahmood Lab 997 77.9% Imran Waheed Lib Dem 194 15.2% Margaret Beckett Con 89 7.0% 2016 Nadeem Ahmed Lib Dem 1237 81.0% Adrian Barrett Lab 245 16.0% Jess McNamara Con 45 3.0% 2018 Asjad Mahmood Lab 1103 55.3% Matloob Ahmed Con 893 44.7% Looks like some biraderi influence there. Dewsbury South in Kirklees has had similar patterns in the past. |
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Post by Delighted Of Tunbridge Wells on Sept 27, 2019 22:31:11 GMT
True, and a point I have often made. I'd add the proviso, though, that "Asian" without qualification is not the most useful description. South Asian Muslims tend to be pretty solid Labour voters, but Hindus and Sikhs somewhat less so. Depends. Sikhs in Slough and Hindus in Leicester and Southall are quite solidly Labour Exactly. Look at the Hindu community in some parts of Harrow and how the local Tory MP Bob Blackman has somewhat successfully courted them. I personally know a few Asian people my age or younger who are clearly economically right wing (I suppose they all go to grammar school though.) |
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Post by andrew111 on Sept 27, 2019 22:32:13 GMT
Perhaps after the Euro elections Labour should be thinking how to appeal to working class voters as well? You did seem to very much focus on the middle class vote in 2017... Abolition of tuition fees and renationalisation of the rail system were our most prominent policies. They help everybody regardless of class,as would a 2nd referendum(which gives people a chance to abolish Brexit  ). Last time I looked at my students they were pretty middle class! It was also noticeable that there were no tax increases for backbench MPs and anyone with lower incomes, which basically includes almost all the public sector middle class. The taxation policy was not traditional Labour at all, but did benefit the target audience, which was the many middle income people and not the few really poor people (and it worked) |
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Post by Merseymike on Sept 27, 2019 22:34:00 GMT
I've lived in Whittlefield with Ightenhill for over 20 years, previously in Briercliffe, my wife grew up in Rosegrove and Lowerhouse, and her mother still lives there ... I have a friend just moved into Rose Hill. Labour voter. |
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Post by Delighted Of Tunbridge Wells on Sept 27, 2019 23:02:09 GMT
Abolition of tuition fees and renationalisation of the rail system were our most prominent policies. They help everybody regardless of class,as would a 2nd referendum(which gives people a chance to abolish Brexit ). Last time I looked at my students they were pretty middle class! It was also noticeable that there were no tax increases for backbench MPs and anyone with lower incomes, which basically includes almost all the public sector middle class. The taxation policy was not traditional Labour at all, but did benefit the target audience, which was the many middle income people and not the few really poor people (and it worked) The majority of current uni students are middle class-I'll give you that,but abolishing student fees may enable more working class people to consider university if they don't have to worry about debt hanging over the heads for the rest of their lives and this might change the demographic. Yes, you don't have to pay them off immediately but,if you get a higher salary e.g a doctor,there is significant amounts of money going out from your salary after tax that you could spend on supporting your family or putting a deposit down.Maintenance I feel is easier to deal with because you choose how much you can spend and if you work and save like I have done since I was 13 from various jobs,you can perhaps pay for at least the 1st year's accommodation and then work at uni to pay for other costs and future years' maintenance.It's a factor in which universities I'm applying for to do a medicine degree through UCAS this year,I've always identified as middle-class(but want to be self-sufficient as much as possible) and I'm not the only one considering that factor when selecting unis. In terms of the tax increase plans, I'm not sure about 2017 but there was definitely something about a switch to land value taxes from council taxes in one manifesto or policy announcement which would make poor and very poor people's life much easier and tax the rich(er) in big(ger) houses much more heavily e.g what you'd call "traditional Labour". Yes, I agree this is not what you'd call "traditional Labour" but it was part of an even-handed approach that benefits both the rich and the poor, and we need to appeal to both to win. |
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Post by lancastrian on Sept 27, 2019 23:37:09 GMT
Last time I looked at my students they were pretty middle class! It was also noticeable that there were no tax increases for backbench MPs and anyone with lower incomes, which basically includes almost all the public sector middle class. The taxation policy was not traditional Labour at all, but did benefit the target audience, which was the many middle income people and not the few really poor people (and it worked) The majority of current uni students are middle class-I'll give you that,but abolishing student fees may enable more working class people to consider university if they don't have to worry about debt hanging over the heads for the rest of their lives and this might change the demographic. Yes, you don't have to pay them off immediately but,if you get a higher salary e.g a doctor,there is significant amounts of money going out from your salary after tax that you could spend on supporting your family or putting a deposit down.Maintenance I feel is easier to deal with because you choose how much you can spend and if you work and save like I have done since I was 13 from various jobs,you can perhaps pay for at least the 1st year's accommodation and then work at uni to pay for other costs and future years' maintenance.It's a factor in which universities I'm applying for to do a medicine degree through UCAS this year,I've always identified as middle-class(but want to be self-sufficient as much as possible) and I'm not the only one considering that factor when selecting unis. In terms of the tax increase plans, I'm not sure about 2017 but there was definitely something about a switch to land value taxes from council taxes in one manifesto or policy announcement which would make poor and very poor people's life much easier and tax the rich(er) in big(ger) houses much more heavily e.g what you'd call "traditional Labour". Yes, I agree this is not what you'd call "traditional Labour" but it was part of an even-handed approach that benefits both the rich and the poor, and we need to appeal to both to win. Scrapping tuition fees is a handout to the future middle class, and because of the demographics of university applicants, and then those who will go on to well paid jobs, predominantly benefits the existing middle class. As someone from a working class background, if you go on to pay back a scary amount of tuition fees you'll have earned, even after fees, substantially more than your parents did, so if they're properly advised students from less affluent backgrounds shouldn't be disproportionately put off by the fees. We've apparently just reached Blair's ambition of 50% going to university, so there is no shortage of graduates. |
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Post by Delighted Of Tunbridge Wells on Sept 27, 2019 23:49:12 GMT
The majority of current uni students are middle class-I'll give you that,but abolishing student fees may enable more working class people to consider university if they don't have to worry about debt hanging over the heads for the rest of their lives and this might change the demographic. Yes, you don't have to pay them off immediately but,if you get a higher salary e.g a doctor,there is significant amounts of money going out from your salary after tax that you could spend on supporting your family or putting a deposit down.Maintenance I feel is easier to deal with because you choose how much you can spend and if you work and save like I have done since I was 13 from various jobs,you can perhaps pay for at least the 1st year's accommodation and then work at uni to pay for other costs and future years' maintenance.It's a factor in which universities I'm applying for to do a medicine degree through UCAS this year,I've always identified as middle-class(but want to be self-sufficient as much as possible) and I'm not the only one considering that factor when selecting unis. In terms of the tax increase plans, I'm not sure about 2017 but there was definitely something about a switch to land value taxes from council taxes in one manifesto or policy announcement which would make poor and very poor people's life much easier and tax the rich(er) in big(ger) houses much more heavily e.g what you'd call "traditional Labour". Yes, I agree this is not what you'd call "traditional Labour" but it was part of an even-handed approach that benefits both the rich and the poor, and we need to appeal to both to win. Scrapping tuition fees is a handout to the future middle class, and because of the demographics of university applicants, and then those who will go on to well paid jobs, predominantly benefits the existing middle class. As someone from a working class background, if you go on to pay back a scary amount of tuition fees you'll have earned, even after fees, substantially more than your parents did, so if they're properly advised students from less affluent backgrounds shouldn't be disproportionately put off by the fees. We've apparently just reached Blair's ambition of 50% going to university, so there is no shortage of graduates. Yes, you will have earned more in the future,but some jobs,you could just start earning now and start your life now. I have to go to uni to do what I want but,for a lot of people,even aspiring chemical engineers, there are well-paying apprenticeship that end in a job/degree or whatever is required to get a good job in that field. I have several friends who have taken that decision and they are definitely from a working class background. Lots of people may go to uni nowadays,but a lot of the degrees people are coming out(and which are offered) with aren't particularly useful in a changing job market and people will take notice of that. |
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Post by lancastrian on Sept 28, 2019 0:10:17 GMT
Scrapping tuition fees is a handout to the future middle class, and because of the demographics of university applicants, and then those who will go on to well paid jobs, predominantly benefits the existing middle class. As someone from a working class background, if you go on to pay back a scary amount of tuition fees you'll have earned, even after fees, substantially more than your parents did, so if they're properly advised students from less affluent backgrounds shouldn't be disproportionately put off by the fees. We've apparently just reached Blair's ambition of 50% going to university, so there is no shortage of graduates. Yes, you will have earned more in the future,but some jobs,you could just start earning now and start your life now. I have to go to uni to do what I want but,for a lot of people,even aspiring chemical engineers, there are well-paying apprenticeship that end in a job/degree or whatever is required to get a good job in that field. I have several friends who have taken that decision and they are definitely from a working class background. Lots of people may go to uni nowadays,but a lot of the degrees people are coming out(and which are offered) with aren't particularly useful in a changing job market and people will take notice of that. So if the university system is churning out lots of people with degrees not useful to them or the economy at great cost to taxpayers (I don't disagree on that), and a good apprenticeship is a better option, why would we then change the fees so as to encourage even greater numbers to go to university? It would be a very controversial move for Labour to abolish fees and reinstate the old caps on students now, probably sending some institutions to the wall. |
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Post by Delighted Of Tunbridge Wells on Sept 28, 2019 0:23:29 GMT
Yes, you will have earned more in the future,but some jobs,you could just start earning now and start your life now. I have to go to uni to do what I want but,for a lot of people,even aspiring chemical engineers, there are well-paying apprenticeship that end in a job/degree or whatever is required to get a good job in that field. I have several friends who have taken that decision and they are definitely from a working class background. Lots of people may go to uni nowadays,but a lot of the degrees people are coming out(and which are offered) with aren't particularly useful in a changing job market and people will take notice of that. So if the university system is churning out lots of people with degrees not useful to them or the economy at great cost to taxpayers (I don't disagree on that), and a good apprenticeship is a better option, why would we then change the fees so as to encourage even greater numbers to go to university? It would be a very controversial move for Labour to abolish fees and reinstate the old caps on students now, probably sending some institutions to the wall. Abolish the fees under condition that nearly every institution does at the minimum offer places for courses that lead to profession the government considers we have a shortage of i.e medicine,policing,engineering,nursing,teaching etc. |
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Post by andrew111 on Sept 28, 2019 6:07:27 GMT
Well, i don't want to get into a discussion of the merits of fees on a local elections thread. I don't like them either.
But in 2017 Labour said they would abolish fees from Sept 2017, and replace them with a blank piece of paper. And then Corbyn said he would "deal with graduate debt" and then rowed back on that after the election. It was such a blatantly impossible policy stance, completely cynical, and aimed mainly at the middle class while claiming not to.
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Post by Adam in Stroud on Sept 28, 2019 6:49:31 GMT
Well, i don't want to get into a discussion of the merits of fees on a local elections thread. I don't like them either. But in 2017 Labour said they would abolish fees from Sept 2017, and replace them with a blank piece of paper. And then Corbyn said he would "deal with graduate debt" and then rowed back on that after the election. It was such a blatantly impossible policy stance, completely cynical, and aimed mainly at the middle class while claiming not to. Interestingly, this policy was cited to me during the week as an example of how people with no deep interest in politics may vote on the basis of a single story or news headline. My friend comes from a working class background and has a daughter just starting at university. She said her mother had voted Labour in 2017 for the future benefit of her grand-daughter (then doing A levels) purely on the basis of hearing that Labour would abolish fees. With so many people now attending university, the influence of fees and loans on working class parents and grandparents is perhaps unexplored and,I think, complex. I've heard anecdotes from working class students who thought loans were great because until then it had never occurred to them that any state help might be available to go to uni, it seemed like free money. |
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Post by bjornhattan on Sept 28, 2019 7:00:42 GMT
Well, i don't want to get into a discussion of the merits of fees on a local elections thread. I don't like them either. But in 2017 Labour said they would abolish fees from Sept 2017, and replace them with a blank piece of paper. And then Corbyn said he would "deal with graduate debt" and then rowed back on that after the election. It was such a blatantly impossible policy stance, completely cynical, and aimed mainly at the middle class while claiming not to. Interestingly, this policy was cited to me during the week as an example of how people with no deep interest in politics may vote on the basis of a single story or news headline. My friend comes from a working class background and has a daughter just starting at university. She said her mother had voted Labour in 2017 for the future benefit of her grand-daughter (then doing A levels) purely on the basis of hearing that Labour would abolish fees. With so many people now attending university, the influence of fees and loans on working class parents and grandparents is perhaps unexplored and,I think, complex. I've heard anecdotes from working class students who thought loans were great because until then it had never occurred to them that any state help might be available to go to uni, it seemed like free money. For students who have a properly low income, the system is generally very good, and some universities have very generous bursaries and things. At least at a place like Oxford, the worst off students actually tend to be those of middle income (relative to the country, they're much lower than the average for the university) - due to a smaller maintenance loan and lower (if any) bursary, but also parents who aren't well-off enough to give them a significant amount of money. |
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Sept 28, 2019 9:12:00 GMT
The same Labour candidate only lost by five votes in May though, so it wasn't a problem then. Does anyone know what happened in Tilgate to change it from a safe Labour ward until about 2003 into a marginal currently being won by the Conservatives in less than ideal national circumstances? It's not an ideal explanation, but could Tilgate just be a place that responds very well to populist politics? That would explain the general trend, and I think things like Brexit might explain this by election. The demographics (things like % with English identity, % without a passport, % with different qualification levels) all indicate the sort of place where Leave would have prevailed by a huge margin. Only Ifield seems to be more Leave-inclined, and given the overall result in Crawley, I'd expect Tilgate to be mid to high 60s for Leave vote. As I alluded to earlier, there is likely also a degree of white flight from (mainly South) London. There may be a degree of anger at some of the ideas proposed in the Labour conference (this maybe wouldn't have shown itself in Alexandra or Icknield wards for demographic reasons), as well as more general anger at things like prorogation. Being so soon after these events, many voters will have it fresh on their minds and may seek to "punish" Labour. Why might they not have done it in May? Perhaps just apathy - it's easier to whip up a frenzy at a by-election when every day is just more chaos in the political system. But the other Crawley contest, in a different part of town with different demographics, saw a very similar result. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2019 10:02:52 GMT
True, and a point I have often made. I'd add the proviso, though, that "Asian" without qualification is not the most useful description. South Asian Muslims tend to be pretty solid Labour voters, but Hindus and Sikhs somewhat less so. Depends. Sikhs in Slough and Hindus in Leicester and Southall are quite solidly Labour Indeed. There are local and class factors in play, but I think the general point holds true. I'm sure you'd agree that "minorities" are not a homogenous mass. |
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Post by jacoblamsden on Sept 28, 2019 16:51:52 GMT
Depends. Sikhs in Slough and Hindus in Leicester and Southall are quite solidly Labour Exactly. Look at the Hindu community in some parts of Harrow and how the local Tory MP Bob Blackman has somewhat successfully courted them. I personally know a few Asian people my age or younger who are clearly economically right wing (I suppose they all go to grammar school though.) But isn't Harrow a much more affluent area than almost all of Slough/Leicester? The fact that a decent part of Blackman's seat are areas such as Stanmore, Canons Park and Harrow Weald, all very middle-class owner-occupied suburban areas suggest to me that if anything, the Conservatives underperform here - especially since there is also a large Jewish community in the constituency which is monothically Tory at the moment. Isn't it actually quite likely that Hindus in Harrow East voted quite solidly Labour in the 2017 GE? Also see the result in Harrow West last time around. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Sept 28, 2019 18:03:48 GMT
Exactly. Look at the Hindu community in some parts of Harrow and how the local Tory MP Bob Blackman has somewhat successfully courted them. I personally know a few Asian people my age or younger who are clearly economically right wing (I suppose they all go to grammar school though.) But isn't Harrow a much more affluent area than almost all of Slough/Leicester? The fact that a decent part of Blackman's seat are areas such as Stanmore, Canons Park and Harrow Weald, all very middle-class owner-occupied suburban areas suggest to me that if anything, the Conservatives underperform here - especially since there is also a large Jewish community in the constituency which is monothically Tory at the moment. Isn't it actually quite likely that Hindus in Harrow East voted quite solidly Labour in the 2017 GE? Also see the result in Harrow West last time around. The 2011 census figures for Harrow East showed the following percentages for the major religious groups: Christian 33.7% Hindu 28.2% Muslim 13.0% Jewish 7.3% In other words there were almost twice as many muslims as Jews and these will have been as monolithically Labour as Jewish voters were Conservative. These figures will have shifted since almost certainly, with the Muslim proprtion having grown and the Jewish proportion fallen. The Christian proportion will include significant numbers of groups such as Poles who do not vote and there is a non-negligible Irish Catholic population (notably in Wealdstone) which was long the main stay of Labour support in the area. SO I don't think the Hindu community can have voted 'solidly' Labour - at the most they may have done so by a small plurality. Local (and GLA) election results in the most heavily Hindu wards around Kenton and Queensbury have also shown some movement to the Conservatives (these areas were more solidly Labour half a century ago when they were almost all white) and of course Stanmore itself is not short of Hindu voters.. |
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Post by owainsutton on Sept 28, 2019 18:26:29 GMT
Ta  No shortage of different parties to have encountered, then! From memory .... Con, Lab, L/D, UKIP, Green, BNP, Burnley & Padiham Independents, TUSC and several Independents .... So very different from here, where AFAIK our two seats in 2018 was the first time in the history of the council anyone had been elected other than for Con, Lab or Lib/LD. |
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Post by mike on Sept 28, 2019 18:48:44 GMT
It's not an ideal explanation, but could Tilgate just be a place that responds very well to populist politics? That would explain the general trend, and I think things like Brexit might explain this by election. The demographics (things like % with English identity, % without a passport, % with different qualification levels) all indicate the sort of place where Leave would have prevailed by a huge margin. Only Ifield seems to be more Leave-inclined, and given the overall result in Crawley, I'd expect Tilgate to be mid to high 60s for Leave vote. As I alluded to earlier, there is likely also a degree of white flight from (mainly South) London. There may be a degree of anger at some of the ideas proposed in the Labour conference (this maybe wouldn't have shown itself in Alexandra or Icknield wards for demographic reasons), as well as more general anger at things like prorogation. Being so soon after these events, many voters will have it fresh on their minds and may seek to "punish" Labour. Why might they not have done it in May? Perhaps just apathy - it's easier to whip up a frenzy at a by-election when every day is just more chaos in the political system. But the other Crawley contest, in a different part of town with different demographics, saw a very similar result. Crawley is representative of England as a whole demographicly, although politically the LibDems are weak. Its parliamentary seat always goes the same way as the general election winner. When you look at when these big swings are from, you see that 2017 and 2019 were already very good results for the Conservatives. This bodes very badly for Labour in Con/Lab marginals everywhere. |
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Sept 28, 2019 18:52:20 GMT
I think it may be just about distantly possible that some of you are massively over-analysing these things.
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Post by tonygreaves on Sept 28, 2019 20:38:47 GMT
If I was a Pakistani/Kashmiri/Bangladeshi Labour voter reading this thread, I think i'd be starting to get a bit pissed off with the ingratitude of Labour activists constantly seeking to deny our contribution to their electoral success i was only confused by the taxi driver comment. I did not mean owt by it There are lots of places where the taxi services are mainly or significantly provided by owners drivers from the local Asian community. There are some where they supply vehicles and drivers for a particular candidate/party at an election. |
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No shortage of different parties to have encountered, then!