Post by jacoblamsden on Mar 29, 2020 22:57:57 GMT
Beckenham has had its own constituency since 1950, having previously been a part of the Bromley division. Traditionally, the Beckenham seat was very much a constituency of two halves, with the prosperous suburban town of Beckenham and the exclusive residential district of Shortlands joined by the working-class railway suburbs of Penge and Anerley. But while such a fusion looked like a classic marginal on paper, Beckenham never got close to leaving Conservative hands, at least until 1997. This was because Beckenham is very much an outer London constituency, with even the Penge half of the seat with its SE20 postcode far enough out to escape the urban decline that ravaged many of London’s inner suburbs between the 1960s and 90s. Instead, Penge and Anerley remained classic ‘white van man suburbs’ and were therefore fertile breeding grounds for working-class Conservatism, particularly in the Thatcher era. The leafy and suburban element of the constituency was boosted by the addition of West Wickham in 1997, a much-needed boundary change since Piers Merchant hung on with a reduced majority of 4,953, much of which would have come from West Wickham itself. Despite surviving the Tory bloodbath of 1997, the Conservative monopoly on Beckenham appeared in grave danger only a few months later after a by-election was called in the least auspicious circumstances. Merchant resigned after an affair with his secretary went public, at a time when Labour under ‘Teflon Tony’ were touching 60% in the opinion polls. But despite a seemingly toxic combination of yet more Tory sleaze and a Labour government attracting almost North Korean levels of support, Jacqui Lait, fresh from losing Hastings and Rye in the general election, held on by 1,227 votes. Without West Wickham, Beckenham would have surely gone Labour this time. Lait built up her majority to 8,401 by 2005 – a very respectable result considering the northern part of the constituency was beginning to undergo significant demographic change, Penge becoming particularly popular with Afro-Caribbean families moving from inner south London.
But since 2010, Beckenham has morphed from a seat where the Conservatives probably overperformed into one in which on balance, they have underperformed. The impact of the boundary changes in 2010 cannot be understated since the seat lost all of Labour’s strongest areas in Penge and gained two very safe Conservative wards, Bromley Common and Keston and Hayes and Coney Hall. Keston and Hayes in particular have the feel of rural Kentish villages, a far cry from the three wards lost to the new Lewisham West and Penge. Yet, the predictions that the new Beckenham constituency would be the safest Conservative seat in the country in 2010 were unfounded and from 2015, it was not even the safest seat in the London Borough of Bromley, an accolade going to the once Liberal-held Orpington. In 2019, with the other Bromley seats all swinging significantly to the Conservatives, Beckenham swung by 0.5% to Labour. Not that this placed the incumbent in any danger of course, with Colonel Bob Stewart of Bosnia fame still picking up 54% of the vote and a majority of over 14,000. As a result, Beckenham is still archetypal true-blue suburbia, but not quite as much as its once was. The constituency is experiencing many of the trends which have contributed to Labour’s advance across much of London – an increasing ethnic minority population, a reduction in owner occupation and an influx of younger voters – but to nowhere enough of an extent to make a difference to the seat’s political affiliation. With a general consensus that the Conservatives hit rock-bottom in Greater London in 2017, Beckenham’s unbroken Conservative record shows no sign of abating – unless, of course, the seat reverts to its pre-2010 boundaries. Unlike in the 2000s, a Beckenham and Penge seat minus Hayes and Keston would be on a knife-edge between Conservative and Labour, with the Lib Dems a strong third.
2019 General Election
Con 27,282 54.0%
Lab 13,024 25.8%
LD 8,194 16.2%
Grn 2,055 4.1%
Maj 14,258 28.2%
2017 General Election
Con 30,632 59.3%
Lab 15,545 30.1%
LD 4,073 7.9%
Grn 1,380 2.7%
Maj 15,087 29.2%
2015 General Election
Con 27,955 57.3%
Lab 9,484 19.4%
UKIP 6,108 12.5%
LD 3,378 13.7%
Grn 1,878 3.8%
Maj 18,741 37.8%
2016 EU referendum
Remain 51.6%
Leave 48.4%
