Sefton Central

[froome]

The Red Wall referred to traditional Labour seats, which this never was, so isn't relevant to this constituency.

Sefton Central is an awful name for the seat. Nobody outside of Sefton met has any idea where it is, and Sefton itself has no centre.

[jamie]

Apr 4, 2020 16:28:16 GMT froome said:

The Red Wall referred to traditional Labour seats, which this never was, so isn't relevant to this constituency.

The ‘Red Wall’ was always a poorly defined area and was often simply used by the media to refer to the large number of northern Labour seats regardless of their actual political history. 

[Deleted]

Apr 4, 2020 16:28:16 GMT froome said:

The Red Wall referred to traditional Labour seats, which this never was, so isn't relevant to this constituency.

Sefton Central is an awful name for the seat. Nobody outside of Sefton met has any idea where it is, and Sefton itself has no centre.

I don't know which name I detest more: Red Wall or Sefton.
It's also worth pointing out that the parts of this seat that joined from Knowsley North and Sefton East in 2010 were historically in safe Labour seats.

[Deleted]

Apr 4, 2020 17:16:36 GMT jamie said:

Apr 4, 2020 16:28:16 GMT froome said:

The Red Wall referred to traditional Labour seats, which this never was, so isn't relevant to this constituency.

The ‘Red Wall’ was always a poorly defined area and was often simply used by the media to refer to the large number of northern Labour seats regardless of their actual political history. 

I don't like it.

But then again we also had New Labour here following New Democrat in the USA.

We are complicit in these Americanisms taking hold.

[greenhert]

Apr 4, 2020 16:28:16 GMT froome said:

The Red Wall referred to traditional Labour seats, which this never was, so isn't relevant to this constituency.

Sefton Central is an awful name for the seat. Nobody outside of Sefton met has any idea where it is, and Sefton itself has no centre.

Furthermore Crosby is still in this constituency's boundaries.

[jamie]

Apr 4, 2020 16:28:16 GMT froome said:

Sefton Central is an awful name for the seat. Nobody outside of Sefton met has any idea where it is, and Sefton itself has no centre.

Formby and Maghull, while still a bit anonymous, seems like the sensible choice and an improvement at least. 

[Merseymike]

Apr 4, 2020 18:17:44 GMT greenhert said:

Apr 4, 2020 16:28:16 GMT froome said:

The Red Wall referred to traditional Labour seats, which this never was, so isn't relevant to this constituency.

Sefton Central is an awful name for the seat. Nobody outside of Sefton met has any idea where it is, and Sefton itself has no centre.

Furthermore Crosby is still in this constituency's boundaries.

Only half of it! The Thornton and Blundellsands areas but not most of Crosby itself nor Waterloo

[Merseymike]

Also, while the Conservatives stayed strong in Formby, and held Blundellsands, the Maghull area was entirely held by the Liberal Democrats when Labour held no councillors.

The Tories now hold only two seats in a ward they lost to an independent last year, and the Liberal Democrats hold none at all

[Deleted]

No discussion of this seat would be complete without a mention of Anthony Gormley's Another Place on Crosby beach.

[Merseymike]

I'm still intending to do my summary.....and yes, half of Gormleys figures are in this seat

[finsobruce]

Apr 5, 2020 8:34:14 GMT @barnabymarder said:

Apr 4, 2020 18:25:11 GMT Merseymike said:

Only half of it! The Thornton and Blundellsands areas but not most of Crosby itself nor Waterloo

the constituency was called Waterloo until 1950. That was a particularly uninformative name as the unsuspecting could have thought the seat was either in inner London or near Portsmouth. Or even in Belgium   

We discussed Waterloo a while back - the place was effectively named after a local hotel , re-named for the battle. IIRC.

[Merseymike]

Apr 5, 2020 8:38:12 GMT finsobruce said:

Apr 5, 2020 8:34:14 GMT @barnabymarder said:

the constituency was called Waterloo until 1950. That was a particularly uninformative name as the unsuspecting could have thought the seat was either in inner London or near Portsmouth. Or even in Belgium   

We discussed Waterloo a while back - the place was effectively named after a local hotel , re-named for the battle. IIRC.

It is where I live, and is essentially the southern end of Crosby. Indeed, Crosby Fire, Ambulance and police are all based in Waterloo

[finsobruce]

Apr 11, 2020 15:12:37 GMT Merseymike said:

Apr 5, 2020 8:38:12 GMT finsobruce said:

We discussed Waterloo a while back - the place was effectively named after a local hotel , re-named for the battle. IIRC.

It is where I live, and is essentially the southern end of Crosby. Indeed, Crosby Fire, Ambulance and police are all based in Waterloo

Waterloo.

Could you escape if you wanted to?

[Merseymike]

Sefton Central is exactly where it says it is, although its not a 'place' that anyone who lives here would recognise. It is essentially the middle part of the coastal strip borough of Sefton, and under the current boundaries consists of part of Crosby (the Blundellsands and Manor wards, with the latter stretching up to the commuter village of Hightown), the two Formby wards of Harington and Ravenmeols, and the three Maghull wards of Park, Sudell, and Molyneux, which also includes part of Aintree including the racecourse. The two remaining Crosby wards went into Bootle at the last reshuffle and as that included the two main shopping areas and most of the local Crosby landmarks, it was decided that using the name Crosby no longer made sense. Hence Sefton Central.

Is this the most unlikely safe Labour seat in the country? Take a trip to Freshfields in Formby, or the Hall Road district of Blundellsands home of a number of high-profile professional footballers - by no means all Tory - and the idea that you are in a seat with a Labour vote of 57.5% and a majority of over 15.000 even in 2019 appears risible. The old Crosby seat was won for the first time by Claire Curtis-Thomas in 1997, and it has previously been best known for being the site of the victory of Shirley Williams in the 1981 by-election. However, much of her majority came from the Church ward which is no longer in the seat (it has done something of a political hokey-cokey between Crosby and Bootle) and between 1983 and 1997 it appeared to be safely back in the Conservative camp. After Labour's shock win in 1997 - it was in fact the first Labour gain of the night, but there were no TV or radio representatives to hand as the likelihood of it becoming a Labour seat were considered non-existent - the seat then appeared to be stronger for Labour than had been imagined, with the majority in 2005 still over 5000 votes.

By 2010 things were looking less hopeful, with boundary changes having established Sefton Central, removing Labour's strongest wards of Church, and, nationally at least, Victoria, and with the Maghull area being brought back into the seat from Sefton east and Knowsley North which had a Conservative history, the odd Labour win, but by 2010 a full slate of Liberal Democrat councillors. Indeed, Labour did not have a single councillor left in the constituency by the time of the 2010 election, and Claire Curtis-Thomas announced that she did not wish to seek the Labour nomination. An outside candidate, Medway councillor Bill Esterson, was selected to fight the seat for Labour, and with local radio and TV personality Debi Jones having a second try for the Conservatives, the local discussion appeared more to be whether Labour could hold on to second place. Yet Labour held the seat with a 3862 majority, and it now appears as safe as any.

This is a middle class seat. It includes the renowned private day school , Merchant Taylors, as well as Formby, and it is overwhelmingly owner-occupied. All the local schools are regarded as at least acceptable, and this has increased house prices. There is evidence of some faded grandeur in parts of the Blundellsands ward, but it is still remarkable that this now appears to be safely in the Labour camp, with both of the Formby wards at least competitive for Labour too. Locally, there has been some evidence of local independents gaining ground, first in Maghull, although Labour won comfortably in all three wards in 2019, and now in Formby. Planning issues are at the heart of those concerns, but it was noticeable how in both Formby wards it was the Tories not Labour who lost ground. Maghull's former Liberal Democrat strength appears to have disappeared completely. This is a seat with a lot of professionals, it attracts young middle class families because of the schools, and if from Liverpool with an established pattern of Labour voting. Indeed, local Conservatives have been known to remark that the old Tory Crosby vote is literally dying, year by year, and their replacements in the solid Victorian family homes are not voting Conservative.

So, is this Labour's most middle-class seat? It is not unreasonable to think that if this seat was in Hertforshire it would be true-blue. But it isn't. This is essentially Liverpool suburbia, and its political preferences, like the bulk of the Liverpool city region, remain those of the Labour party.

[heslingtonian]

Quite a few middle class Labour seats:

Sheffield Hallam, Putney, Hampstead & Kilburn, Ealing Central & Acton, Canterbury, Cambridge, Hove all spring to mind as quite affluent seats.

[greenhert]

Apr 11, 2020 19:02:35 GMT heslingtonian said:

Quite a few middle class Labour seats:

Sheffield Hallam, Putney, Hampstead & Kilburn, Ealing Central & Acton, Canterbury, Cambridge, Hove all spring to mind as quite affluent seats.

They do, and all of these were or would have been in the case of Ealing Central & Acton (Hampstead & Kilburn would just have been a Labour seat had it existed in 1992), Conservative seats when I was born.

[Sibboleth]

Most of those are highly socially polarised in one way or another (sometimes in multiple ways). The thing about Sefton Central, is that if it were anywhere else not only would Labour not be winning at all, but they would have been blown out of the water in recent elections: Aldridge-Brownhills, though not a perfect analogue, is a broadly comparable constituency in certain respects, and, well...

[hengo]

Apr 11, 2020 15:42:42 GMT Merseymike said:

Sefton Central is exactly where it says it is, although its not a 'place' that anyone who lives here would recognise. It is essentially the middle part of the coastal strip borough of Sefton, and under the current boundaries consists of part of Crosby (the Blundellsands and Manor wards, with the latter stretching up to the commuter village of Hightown), the two Formby wards of Harington and Ravenmeols, and the three Maghull wards of Park, Sudell, and Molyneux, which also includes part of Aintree including the racecourse. The two remaining Crosby wards went into Bootle at the last reshuffle and as that included the two main shopping areas and most of the local Crosby landmarks, it was decided that using the name Crosby no longer made sense. Hence Sefton Central.

Is this the most unlikely safe Labour seat in the country? Take a trip to Freshfields in Formby, or the Hall Road district of Blundellsands home of a number of high-profile professional footballers - by no means all Tory - and the idea that you are in a seat with a Labour vote of 57.5% and a majority of over 15.000 even in 2019 appears risible. The old Crosby seat was won for the first time by Claire Curtis-Thomas in 1997, and it has previously been best known for being the site of the victory of Shirley Williams in the 1981 by-election. However, much of her majority came from the Church ward which is no longer in the seat (it has done something of a political hokey-cokey between Crosby and Bootle) and between 1983 and 1997 it appeared to be safely back in the Conservative camp. After Labour's shock win in 1997 - it was in fact the first Labour gain of the night, but there were no TV or radio representatives to hand as the likelihood of it becoming a Labour seat were considered non-existent - the seat then appeared to be stronger for Labour than had been imagined, with the majority in 2005 still over 5000 votes.

By 2010 things were looking less hopeful, with boundary changes having established Sefton Central, removing Labour's strongest wards of Church, and, nationally at least, Victoria, and with the Maghull area being brought back into the seat from Sefton east and Knowsley North which had a Conservative history, the odd Labour win, but by 2010 a full slate of Liberal Democrat councillors. Indeed, Labour did not have a single councillor left in the constituency by the time of the 2010 election, and Claire Curtis-Thomas announced that she did not wish to seek the Labour nomination. An outside candidate, Medway councillor Bill Esterson, was selected to fight the seat for Labour, and with local radio and TV personality Debi Jones having a second try for the Conservatives, the local discussion appeared more to be whether Labour could hold on to second place. Yet Labour held the seat with a 3862 majority, and it now appears as safe as any.

This is a middle class seat. It includes the renowned private day school , Merchant Taylors, as well as Formby, and it is overwhelmingly owner-occupied. All the local schools are regarded as at least acceptable, and this has increased house prices. There is evidence of some faded grandeur in parts of the Blundellsands ward, but it is still remarkable that this now appears to be safely in the Labour camp, with both of the Formby wards at least competitive for Labour too. Locally, there has been some evidence of local independents gaining ground, first in Maghull, although Labour won comfortably in all three wards in 2019, and now in Formby. Planning issues are at the heart of those concerns, but it was noticeable how in both Formby wards it was the Tories not Labour who lost ground. Maghull's former Liberal Democrat strength appears to have disappeared completely. This is a seat with a lot of professionals, it attracts young middle class families because of the schools, and if from Liverpool with an established pattern of Labour voting. Indeed, local Conservatives have been known to remark that the old Tory Crosby vote is literally dying, year by year, and their replacements in the solid Victorian family homes are not voting Conservative.

So, is this Labour's most middle-class seat? It is not unreasonable to think that if this seat was in Hertforshire it would be true-blue. But it isn't. This is essentially Liverpool suburbia, and its political preferences, like the bulk of the Liverpool city region, remain those of the Labour party.

Is it the case, that there is, perhaps, a particularly large number of middle class public sector employees, including many working in Liverpool? There are perhaps fewer choices of leafy residential areas within easy commuting range than in some other cities, so parts of Sefton, and Deeside on the Wirral, which look like natural Conservative country , and indeed were , up to the Blair landslide, now elect Labour MPs. 

[gwynthegriff]

Apr 11, 2020 15:42:42 GMT Merseymike said:

The old Crosby seat was won for the first time by Claire Curtis-Thomas in 1997, and it has previously been best known for being the site of the victory of Shirley Williams in the 1981 by-election. However, much of her majority came from the Church ward which is no longer in the seat (it has done something of a political hokey-cokey between Crosby and Bootle) and between 1983 and 1997 it appeared to be safely back in the Conservative camp. After Labour's shock win in 1997 - it was in fact the first Labour gain of the night, but there were no TV or radio representatives to hand as the likelihood of it becoming a Labour seat were considered non-existent - the seat then appeared to be stronger for Labour than had been imagined, with the majority in 2005 still over 5000 votes.

By 2010 things were looking less hopeful, with boundary changes having established Sefton Central, removing Labour's strongest wards of Church, and, nationally at least, Victoria, and with the Maghull area being brought back into the seat from Sefton east and Knowsley North which had a Conservative history, the odd Labour win, but by 2010 a full slate of Liberal Democrat councillors. Indeed, Labour did not have a single councillor left in the constituency by the time of the 2010 election, and Claire Curtis-Thomas announced that she did not wish to seek the Labour nomination. An outside candidate, Medway councillor Bill Esterson, was selected to fight the seat for Labour, and with local radio and TV personality Debi Jones having a second try for the Conservatives, the local discussion appeared more to be whether Labour could hold on to second place. Yet Labour held the seat with a 3862 majority, and it now appears as safe as any.

In which case I should have placed a bet. I thought it was a fair prospect for a Labour gain for two reasons:

1. Residual "Alliance" unwind.
2. Claire - a formidable campaigner. (She was a Crewe & Nantwich councillor, who had gained her seat - unexpectedly - from the Conservatives)

[jamie]

Apr 11, 2020 19:02:35 GMT heslingtonian said:

Quite a few middle class Labour seats:

Sheffield Hallam, Putney, Hampstead & Kilburn, Ealing Central & Acton, Canterbury, Cambridge, Hove all spring to mind as quite affluent seats.

All but Sheffield Hallam have quite a bit more poverty than Sefton Central, and Sheffield Hallam is marginal. Sefton Central is notable for how even the decidedly posh permanent residential areas are competitive for Labour.