Manchester Withington

[greenhert]

Manchester Withington, the wealthiest of Manchester's constituencies, has existed since 1918.

Manchester Withington consists of the wards of Burnage, Chorlton, Chorlton Park, Didsbury East, Didsbury West, Old Moat, and Withington. It is mostly a well-educated middle-class constituency with Old Moat being the least affluent and Didsbury being the most affluent, and the area is popular with young professionals in particular. It is also ethnically diverse but not as diverse as either Manchester Central or Manchester Gorton.

In some ways Manchester Withington has become Greater Manchester's answer to Hornsey & Wood Green, both socioeconomically and politically. Apart from Liberal interruptions by Ernest Simon from 1923-24 and 1929-31, Manchester Withington was reliably Conservative until 1987, when Keith Bradley captured it; the Conservatives have not been competitive since. On the back of hostility to Labour due to the Iraq War and tuition fees, John Leech gained the seat for the Liberal Democrats on a 17.4% swing. He was defeated convincingly in 2015 by this seat's current Labour MP, Jeff Smith, on a 17% swing, and it has reverted to being a very safe Labour seat. At council level Conservative used to dominate, this then changed to Labour domination and then a majority of Liberal Democrat councillors in this constituency's wards, and then back to Labour after the Liberal Democrats suffered the worst local collapse in the UK during their years in Coalition with the Conservatives. In 2015 this was also one of only four English constituencies outside London where UKIP lost their deposit.

[bsjmcr]

Apr 3, 2020 20:15:01 GMT greenhert said:

Manchester Withington, the wealthiest of Manchester's constituencies, has existed since 1918.

Manchester Withington consists of the wards of Burnage, Chorlton, Chorlton Park, Didsbury East, Didsbury West, Old Moat, and Withington. It is mostly a well-educated middle-class constituency with Old Moat being the least affluent and Didsbury being the most affluent, and the area is popular with young professionals in particular. It is also ethnically diverse but not as diverse as either Manchester Central or Manchester Gorton.

In some ways Manchester Withington has become Greater Manchester's answer to Hornsey & Wood Green, both socioeconomically and politically. Apart from Liberal interruptions by Ernest Simon from 1923-24 and 1929-31, Manchester Withington was reliably Conservative until 1987, when Keith Bradley captured it; the Conservatives have not been competitive since. On the back of hostility to Labour due to the Iraq War and tuition fees, John Leech gained the seat for the Liberal Democrats on a 17.4% swing. He was defeated convincingly in 2015 by this seat's current Labour MP, Jeff Smith, on a 17% swing, and it has reverted to being a very safe Labour seat. At council level Conservative used to dominate, this then changed to Labour domination and then a majority of Liberal Democrat councillors in this constituency's wards, and then back to Labour after the Liberal Democrats suffered the worst local collapse in the UK during their years in Coalition with the Conservatives. In 2015 this was also one of only four English constituencies outside London where UKIP lost their deposit.

Good on you for not calling this 'the student seat' of Manchester, as it so often is called, when the university and most students would be in Central/Gorton! Of course in terms of housing the main thing to note is how the town houses and large detached houses of Didsbury have mostly become upmarket apartments, while Chorlton is made of tree-lined roads of some of the pricier houses in the city (excluding the city centre penthouses of course). A lot of quality green space here as well for a city seat, including Fletcher Moss and Chorlton Water Park as well as several golf courses. 

An incredible transition over 35 years from Conservative, safe Labour, marginal Lib Dem (and from 2005-2010 you could say a tripling of Leech's majority from 667 to 1850), and just two years after they lost, one of the safest Labour seats in the country. Jeff Smith has done something right here. In such a well-educated area this is not just a case of 'voting for a donkey with a red rosette' as seen in other inner-city areas of Manchester and Liverpool, people do care about candidates and issues here. Smith must be quite Remainy too in a 75% remain area, his vote only went down a hair in 2019 and ironically none of it to poor Leech who went further backwards.
Leech is still popular in Didsbury and was generally known for being an energetic campaigner during his time as MP but I recall some fallout over claims over the hospital closing? 

[Devil Wincarnate]

It should be remembered that when Leech got in, the Lib Dems were really riding the crest of a wave and were even winning seats in unlikely places like nearby Northenden.

[Devil Wincarnate]

Apr 14, 2020 22:12:40 GMT @barnabymarder said:

Northenden once upon a time regularly elected Tory councillors and was still a bit marginal not that many years ago. The Tories have however collapsed there now.

It's a long old time since the Tories were competitive there though ( I was the candidate one year!), and their vote had essentially collapsed by the early 2000s.  That period of Lib Dem supremacy seems like a long time ago now as well.  Then again, incredible to remember that the Lib Dems were once close in the Gorton wards.

[Pete Whitehead]

Well they were a bit more than 'close'..

[Devil Wincarnate]

Apr 15, 2020 11:03:29 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Well they were a bit more than 'close'..

Yes, poor choice of words on my part there.  

[owainsutton]

Apr 14, 2020 22:12:40 GMT @barnabymarder said:

Northenden once upon a time regularly elected Tory councillors and was still a bit marginal not that many years ago. The Tories have however collapsed there now.

I've had a hunch for some time that they've been looking at Baguely as their best chance of getting back onto the council? 

[Robert Waller]

2011 Census

Age 65+ 9.9% 614/650
Owner-occupied 47.0% 593/650
Private rented 32.2% 22/650
Social rented 19.0% 247/650
White 76.6% 544/650
Black 3.4% 130/650
Asian 12.4% 94/650
Born in Ireland 2.2% 16/650
Managerial & professional 38.8%
Professional occupations 32.7% 4/650
Routine & Semi-routine 15.1%
Degree level 45.1% 26/650
No qualifications 14.7% 610/650
Students 20.1% 33/650


2021 Census

Owner occupied 49.4% 500/573
Private rented 32.1% 51/573
Social rented 18.5% 199/573
White 70.5%
Black 3.9%
Asian 15.4%
Managerial & professional 41.0% 94/573
Routine & Semi-routine 14.4% 538/573
Degree level 51.6% 30/573
No qualifications 12.3% 534/573
Students 16.7% 33/573





General Election 2019: Manchester Withington

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Labour Jeff Smith 35,902 67.8 -3.9
Liberal Democrats John Leech 7,997 15.1 -0.8
Conservative Shengke Zhi 5,820 11.0 +0.7
Green Lucy Bannister 1,968 3.7 +2.1
Brexit Party Stephen Ward 1,308 2.5 New

Lab Majority 27,905 52.7 -3.1

Turnout 53,176 69.5 -2.4

Labour hold

Swing 1.6 Lab to C

[batman]

MANCHESTER WITHINGTON

Although this constituency has existed since 1918, it has changed considerably first in the area it has covered, and then in its electoral politics. For some decades, it was the only entirely reliably Conservative seat in the city of Manchester (and in fact the only one at all out of the many which then existed in 1945, and from the 1974 elections until this seat fell to Labour in 1987). This was logical enough, as it has pretty much always been the most prosperous of the city's constituencies, even though it is not the one furthest from the city centre; but from the Conservative loss to Labour's Keith Bradley in 1987 to the present day, it has not returned to the Tories, and it would be a brave person who now predicted a return of Conservative tenure in the constituency. It has changed politically beyond all recognition in the intervening few decades.

Currently, as well as Withington itself, the seat takes in the areas of Burnage (although that is to depart the constituency in boundary changes), Chorlton-cum-Hardy (Manchester actually has another Chorlton, Chorlton-on-Medlock, further in towards the city centre, but it has largely been subsumed by university campuses), Barlow Moor, Didsbury and Old Moat as well as more minor sub-districts. It remains mostly a well-educated middle-class constituency popular with professionals, but does also contain some quite large council estates, almost entirely low-rise and mostly interwar. It also has a substantial student population, although not as large as that in Central or Gorton constituencies. Once upon a time, however, the constituency was more tightly drawn around Withington, and for some years contained only 2 council wards, Withington and Levenshulme (nowadays a very safe Labour ward, but once a largely artisan area which was able to elect Conservative councillors with reasonable regularity) - Levenshulme nowadays is in Manchester Gorton, and in fact was the very last Manchester ward to elect a Labour councillor, which seems rather counter-intuitive looking at results, especially since the Liberal Democrats' post-coalition collapse after 2010. Didsbury, which today tends to be regarded as the fulcrum of the constituency, was not included until 1974, having been in Manchester Wythenshawe before that; this helps to some extent to explain the Tories' initial series of victories in that constituency, which came to an end with Alf Morris's gain for Labour in 1964, since when the Tories have mostly been nowhere near there or in its successor seat of Wythenshawe & Sale East. Chorlton-cum-Hardy was included until 1950, but for a long time after that was rather surprisingly in the Moss Side constituency, abolished in 1983, where it was the main basis for the once strong Conservative vote that used to exist there too. It seems logical that Withington, Didsbury and Chorlton are now united in a single constituency, because as well as being not too far apart geographically they have quite a lot in common demographically too; they are all what some might think to some extent "trendy" areas, younger in age profile than average, well-educated, and essentially having the character of long-established, but perhaps very slightly scruffy, suburbs. These areas have long since ceased to be favoured by wealthy professionals working in Manchester's financial sector, who nowadays prefer to live slightly further out of town for the most part, as do the perhaps even wealthier Premiership footballers who play for Manchester's two famous teams. Instead, the professionals who live here are much likelier to work in what might at least loosely be described as the public sector, for example in universities and the NHS. These voters have become less and less likely to vote Conservative as the years have passed by and, since 1987, it has been Labour who have for the most part managed to unite their traditional support in more working class Burnage and Old Moat, plus the council estates elsewhere, with more public sector professional support predominantly in the constituency's other districts. However, their dominance has suffered an interruption, even though that now seems to be at an end, too.

Keith Bradley's initial Labour win in 1987 (it was the one and only gain Labour managed anywhere in the North-West in that election, even Wallasey proving, if only temporarily, elusive) appeared to have an air of finality about it when the party handily increased its majority in 1992, then crushingly defeated the Tories by a margin, astonishing as it seemed at the time, of more than 4 to 1 in 1997. However, this proved rather illusory, as after gaining a rather distant second place in 2001 the Liberal Democrats took advantage of the Labour Government's growing unpopularity particularly among younger voters, to a large degree because of British military action in Iraq, and local campaigner John Leech was able to gain the seat with a spectacular swing, seen also elsewhere in rather similar seats in other parts of Britain such as Hornsey & Wood Green and Cambridge. At this point the Liberal Democrats were regularly winning most of the council wards in the constituency, too. After Leech somewhat increased his majority in the 2010 election, in which his party polled strongly for much of the campaign, it all unwound following the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. Leech was consigned to an enormous defeat in 2015, and Labour's successful candidate then, Jeff Smith, now enjoys a very healthy majority. Leech has since managed to regain a seat on the council, in Didsbury West ward, but while the Liberal Democrats retain a reasonable presence in Didsbury East and Withington wards (especially the latter - Withington in fact has a long Liberal tradition in Manchester local government, and Labour were often third there behind the Liberals and the Tories up to the 1980s), they were crushingly defeated in all of the other wards in the constituency in the 2022 local elections, the most recent at the time of writing this profile. The rather youthful and alternative nature of the population in some areas (Chorlton has a particularly strong reputation as an area of craft beers and indeed craft beards) means that Labour probably cannot afford to relax too much, as younger voters tend to be rather more volatile, and also less likely to vote, than older voters, but at the moment they are sitting pretty here, just as they are in all of the parliamentary seats in the city of Manchester.

[owainsutton]

Perhaps a better description of Chorlton-on-Medlock is "Which has been mostly replaced, both in loss of resident population and in identity, by the twin campuses of Manchester University and MMU."

[batman]

I've worked that in, thanks.

[The Bishop]

Levenshulme was the last ward in Manchester to vote Labour (in 2011) because it had been a Liberal/LibDem stronghold for three decades until the coalition.

[john07]

May 28, 2022 7:27:24 GMT owainsutton said:

Perhaps a better description of Chorlton-on-Medlock is "Which has been mostly replaced, both in loss of resident population and in identity, by the twin campuses of Manchester University and MMU."

Back in the day there were three campuses: Manchester Polytechnic (formerly the College of Commerce), University of Manchester Institute for Science and Technology (UMIST), and the (original) Victoria University of Manchester that was usually called Owens College. UMIST was always a bit confusing as it was initially both an independent University and the Faculty of Technology of Owens. Then they separated completely only for a full merger to take place a few years later.

I think that much of the campus area was in Hulme Ward (initially Manchester Exchange and from 1974, Moss Side) although next to no-one lived there. It had been extensively cleared and the residents relocated. Much of the University development that was the pretext for clearance never actually happened. Instead a number of the new built departments - including the Maths Tower - have been demolished.

While many of the halls of residents for the Universities will be in Gorton Constituency, there were always a significant number of students residing in Withington Ward. I stayed briefly there myself as a postgraduate.

Back to Withington Constituency. It was a rock solid Conservative back in the 1970s. The Wards involved included Didsbury, Barlow Moor, Old Moat, Withington and Burnage. Chorlton was originally in Moss Side before subsequently coming into Withington. All those Wards were solidly Conservative in local elections into the 1970s.

Over the years the 'blue wall' crumbled with Old Moat, Barlow Moor, and Burnage moving to the Labour-Conservative marginal column. Withington drifted to Liberal-SDP by 1982. Didsbury returned Labour councillors by 1994 and Withington by 1995. Subsequent boundary changes resulted in the creation of Didsbury East and Didsbury West to replace Barlow Moor and Didsbury. Parts of Burnage are outside of the Constituency.

The Constituency had elected a Labour MP by 1987. From that point, the contest was between Labour and the Liberal-Democrats as the Conservatives were marginalized. The Lib Dems made a comeback winning the Constituency in 2005 and 2010 and also taking several Wards. This did not last although former Lib Dem MP John Leech broke the Labour stranglehold on the City Council by winning Didsbury West in 2016.

[owainsutton]

Very good point about UMIST campus. Especially as the Medlock itself was culverted under the 1960s buildings south of the railway and the Mancunian Way. Previously, it meandered through the area, looping under the railway viaduct near where the Vimto statue now is.

[Pete Whitehead]

Other than realignment with new ward boundaries, the only change proposed here is the removal of Burnage

2019 Notional result

Lab	30474	65.9%
LD	7604	16.5%
Con	5264	11.4%
Grn	1769	3.8%
BxP	1103	2.4%
Majority	22870	49.5%