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Post by yellowperil on Apr 6, 2020 9:24:45 GMT
The Isle of Thanet, separated from the English mainland by the Wantsum channel in the west and by the estuary of the Great Stour to the south, was originally a genuine island before the Wantsum silted up, in the seventeenth century-the last ship to navigate the Wantsum did so in 1672. The South Thanet constituency , created in 1983 however is not confined to the southern half of the Isle, but crosses the Stour to include an area of mainland Kent to the south, now forming two wards of Dover district, the town and Cinque Port of Sandwich , and the large rural ward to the west of Sandwich including the two sizeable villages of Ash and Wingham, and known as Little Stour and Ashstone. Of the part genuinely within South Thanet the two main towns are Ramsgate and Broadstairs, but it also includes the Cliftonville area of Margate, so the the North Foreland is apparently within South Thanet. To sum up, then, South Thanet is neither confined to Thanet nor to the South of the isle, facts which will come as no surprise to students here of the names given to constituencies.
According to those ever reliable sources of British history, Sellar and Yeatman, Thanet is where all successful invasions of these islands began, and we now can be sure Julius Caesar did indeed land at Pegwell Bay in 55 BC, Claudius at Richborough on the mainland side of the Wantsum in 43AD. Rather more dubiously Hengist and Horsa may have begun the Jutish conquest of Kent at Ebbsfleet some time in the fifth century, while St Augustine also made landfall at Ebbsfleet in 597AD. Perhaps we need these days to say Ebbsfleet on Thanet specifically to distinguish it from the other Ebbsfleet at the other end of Kent which is the one with the International Railway Station and the National League football team! There is also the replica Viking ship Hugin beached up at Pegwell Bay. Anyway, to this day the good folk of South Thanet look nervously across the channel ready to repel further continental invaders.
NB updated in a later post
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2020 9:51:50 GMT
The Isle of Thanet, separated from the English mainland by the Wantsum channel in the west and by the estuary of the Great Stour to the south, was originally a genuine island before the Wantsum silted up, in the seventeenth century-the last ship to navigate the Wantsum did so in 1672. The South Thanet constituency , created in 1983 however is not confined to the southern half of the Isle, but crosses the Stour to include an area of mainland Kent to the south, now forming two wards of Dover district, the town and Cinque Port of Sandwich , and the large rural ward to the west of Sandwich including the two sizeable villages of Ash and Wingham, and known as Little Stour and Ashstone. Of the part genuinely within South Thanet the two main towns are Ramsgate and Broadstairs, but it also includes the Cliftonville area of Margate, so the the North Foreland is apparently within South Thanet. To sum up, then, South Thanet is neither confined to Thanet nor to the South of the isle, facts which will come as no surprise to students here of the names given to constituencies. tbc Thanet was linked in the Historia Brittonum to the legendary coming of Hengist and Horsa. However, recent archaeological discoveries have established that Pegwell Bay was probably the landing point for Caesar's 54BC expedition, which assures its place in history.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 6, 2020 12:41:31 GMT
The Isle of Thanet, separated from the English mainland by the Wantsum channel in the west and by the estuary of the Great Stour to the south, was originally a genuine island before the Wantsum silted up, in the seventeenth century-the last ship to navigate the Wantsum did so in 1672. The South Thanet constituency , created in 1983 however is not confined to the southern half of the Isle, but crosses the Stour to include an area of mainland Kent to the south, now forming two wards of Dover district, the town and Cinque Port of Sandwich , and the large rural ward to the west of Sandwich including the two sizeable villages of Ash and Wingham, and known as Little Stour and Ashstone. Of the part genuinely within South Thanet the two main towns are Ramsgate and Broadstairs, but it also includes the Cliftonville area of Margate, so the the North Foreland is apparently within South Thanet. To sum up, then, South Thanet is neither confined to Thanet nor to the South of the isle, facts which will come as no surprise to students here of the names given to constituencies. tbc Thanet was linked in the Historia Brittonum to the legendary coming of Hengist and Horsa. However, recent archaeological discoveries have established that Pegwell Bay was probably the landing point for Caesar's 54BC expedition, which assures its place in history. Yup. "Like all other successful invaders of these islands" (WC Sellar & RJ Yeatman) he landed on Thanet. Of course the more significant landing was 43AD and the Claudian invasion- a proper invasion not just a short term expedition, and commemorated by a vast memorial on the site at Richborough (Eileen and I spent years leading archaeology students around Richborough) . However Richborough was on the mainland side of the Wantsum, though it is in the South Thanet constituency!
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 7, 2020 13:19:51 GMT
The Isle of Thanet, separated from the English mainland by the Wantsum channel in the west and by the estuary of the Great Stour to the south, was originally a genuine island before the Wantsum silted up, in the seventeenth century-the last ship to navigate the Wantsum did so in 1672. The South Thanet constituency , created in 1983 however is not confined to the southern half of the Isle, but crosses the Stour to include an area of mainland Kent to the south, now forming two wards of Dover district, the town and Cinque Port of Sandwich , and the large rural ward to the west of Sandwich including the two sizeable villages of Ash and Wingham, and known as Little Stour and Ashstone. Of the part genuinely within South Thanet the two main towns are Ramsgate and Broadstairs, but it also includes the Cliftonville area of Margate, so the the North Foreland is apparently within South Thanet. To sum up, then, South Thanet is neither confined to Thanet nor to the South of the isle, facts which will come as no surprise to students here of the names given to constituencies. According to those ever reliable sources of British history, Sellar and Yeatman, Thanet is where all successful invasions of these islands began, and we now can be sure Julius Caesar did indeed land at Pegwell Bay in 55 BC, Claudius at Richborough on the mainland side of the Wantsum in 43AD. Rather more dubiously Hengist and Horsa may have begun the Jutish conquest of Kent at Ebbsfleet some time in the fifth century, while St Augustine also made landfall at Ebbsfleet in 597AD. Perhaps we need these days to say Ebbsfleet on Thanet specifically to distinguish it from the other Ebbsfleet at the other end of Kent which is the one with the International Railway Station and the National League football team! There is also the replica Viking ship Hugin beached up at Pegwell Bay. Anyway, to this day the good folk of South Thanet look nervously across the channel ready to repel further continental invaders. To turn to more recent Thanet history- between the creation of this constituency in 1983 and the present day there have been four MPs, three of them Conservative (Jonathan Aitken,1983-97), Laura Sandys(2010-15) and the present incumbent, Craig McKinlay(from 2015), and one Labour , Steven Ladyman (1997-2010). Whether that makes this constituency a bellwether, as some have claimed, might be a matter of interpretation. It has also had some fairly high profile unsuccesful candidates, notably Nigel Farage (and not to mention Al Murray) in 2015. Given that there have only have been 4 MPs it might seem that having two of them fall seriously foul of the law is a rather high strike rate. Aitken was of course to fall foul of the perjury laws, finding out the hard way that the so called sword of truth was indeed the sword of Damocles, and finishing up behind bars. I believe all these years later he is back in prison but now because he is now ordained and back as a prison chaplain. McKinlay's run in with the law over election expenses over the 2015 election has only relatively recently been resolved in his favour, which has enabled him to be back as the current MP, but with his minders taking the rap. I do not intend to say anything more about these unsavoury episodes. Given that this a constituency which has been genuinely highly contested and having changed hands twice, it is quite interesting to see where the respective party strengths lie. Remembering there are the two wards of DoverDC which are strongly Conservative, we need to look at the wards of Thanet DC which lie in the South Thanet constituency, and those form basically those on the eastern half of the island, from Pegwell Bay round to Cliftonville. Broadly , before the rise of UKIP, Ramsgate was broadly Labour, and so was Margate within in Thanet North, and the Labour strength in Margate tended to spill over into Cliftonville West particularly, and some neighbouring wards, within Thanet South. The rest of the Thanet south constituency, mainly Broadstairs, and the more rural parts, was pretty solidly Tory, though if you go back to 2003 Bradstowe ward, basically central Broadstairs, did have a single Lib Dem topping the poll. By 2011 the councillor divide within the South Thanet constituency was 19-15 in favour of Labour on the island part of the constituency, and the 6 Conservative Dover distrct councillors will just bring it up to a marginal Tory lead, 21-19. Then we come to the great UKIP tsunami. By the time of the 2015 local elections the map looks very different The biggest shift is Labour to UKIP, with the Tory wards changing rather less completely. Overall, within the island part of South Thanet constituency, Conservatives fell back from 15 to11 councillors, but Labour crashed from 19 to 3, and UKIP finished up with 20. The Tories were still comfortably ahead in the Dover district wards, so that meant the councillor count was actually 21 Con, UKIP 20, Lab 3, but the momentum was clearly with UKIP. How much was this surge coming here anyway, which is why Farage chose it as his 2015 general election battleground., and how much was the big swing occasioned by the fact of a high profile general election battle going on simultaneously with the locals, it's difficult to say, but the general election result pretty well matched those local results. And after the Tsunami? The seat distribution on the South Thanet bit of Thanet district 2019, put Labour back in the lead, just: Lab15, Con 13, Thanet Independents 3, Greens2, Independent 1. Then add in now just 4 seats for the Dover district wards and the Tories are snuck in front, 17-15. Sound familiar? Anyway, although a lot of the journalistic attention on this constituency has focused on the MPs' behaviour and the visiting celebs and all that circus, it is worth remembering that there are a lot of bread and butter issues which may be of more concern to the locals. Certainly Ramsgate and Cliftonville share many of the characteristics of many south coast resorts which have seen far better days and are now struggling to reverse age and decay. Ramsgate has the added problem of a ferry port which doesn't quite manage the necessary infrastructure to survive in the twenty-first century. There is the perennial problem of what to do with Manston airport, with its huge runway and hardly any traffic. It almost mirrors the problem of Ramsgate harbour - there somehow feels as though there ought to be potential there, but the infrastructure to make it work just isn't there and without massive infrastructure works both port and airport were just in the wrong place. Then there was the area's biggest employer involving some very sophisticated advanced science - that's Pfizers, of course- announced it would close their Sandwich plant. On the whole there have been some valiant attempts to ride these major storms, but unemployment rates are stubbornly high by the standards of South East England.
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Post by heslingtonian on Apr 7, 2020 13:39:39 GMT
Suspect Labour are probably going to need to win here to get a majority again.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 7, 2020 14:53:53 GMT
Suspect Labour are probably going to need to win here to get a majority again. Yes hence the suggestion that this constituency might be regarded as a bellwether. I'm still working up the detail on this, but you might observe that Labour is amost back there in terms of local government strength- nearly back to where it was in 2011, at least, but there will be still quite a mountain to climb before it is ready to make a serious challenge for the parliamentary seat- which probably does reflect where they are nationally too.
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European Lefty
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Post by European Lefty on Apr 7, 2020 15:11:07 GMT
Suspect Labour are probably going to need to win here to get a majority again. But probably not to form a government.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 8, 2020 9:08:50 GMT
Now I have completed my introductory comments on South Thanet ftm (however tempted I am to open up in detail on a number of things only briefly touched on!) , I will turn to giving the general election figures for the last decade. I just wish there weren't quite so many candidates in 2015 especially, which did get a bit silly!
2019 General Election
27,084 56.1% Con (C. Mackinlay) 16,497 34.2% Lab (R. Gordon-Nesbitt) 2,727 5.7% LD (M. Pennington) 1,949 4.0 % GP (R. Wing)
2017 General Election
25,262 50.8% Con (C. Mackinlay) 18,875 37.9% Lab (R.Ara) 2,997 6.0% UKIP (S.Piper) 1,514 3.0% LD (J.Williams) 809 1.6% GP (T.Roper) 181 0.4% Ind (T. Garbutt) 115 0.2 % CPA (F. Fisher)
2015 General Election
18,838 38.1% Con (C.Mackinlay) 16.026 32.4 % UKIP (N.Farage) 11, 740 23.8% Lab (W.Scobie) 1,076 3.2% GP (I. Driver) 932 1.9% LD (R.Timpson) 318 0.6% FUKP (A. Murray) 191 0.4 % MAI ((R. Bailey) 126 0.3% WATRP (N. Askew) 63 0.1% PUT (G.Birchall) 61 0.1 % Ind (D.McCastree) 30 0.05% AZNO (Z.Abu-Obadiah)
2010 General Election
22.043 48.0 % Con (L. Sandys) 14,426 31.4% Lab (S. Ladyman) 6,935 15.1% LD (P. Bucklitsch) 2,529 5.5 UKIP (T.Shank)
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 8, 2020 11:11:42 GMT
some analysis of why the constituency has voted the way it has would be good. Agreed, it would! I did stop in part because it was already getting pretty long, but I'll have a go at answering the question. In part it is because its a pretty tightly balanced constituency where fairly deprived urban areas in parts of Ramsgate and Cliftonville, which are generally Labour-leaning, can generally be out-voted by the more prosperous bits of Thanet like Broadstairs when added to the Tory leaning bits of the north end of Dover district like Sandwich and Wingham. There were just enough floating voters in the middle that in the Blair years when the whole country was more Labour-leaning a moderate Labour candidate like Dr Ladyman was able to get his nose in front., and the fact that the Lib Dems were pretty weak in this area even when they were strong nationally probably helped, tbh- I believe quite a lot of potential Lib Dem voters voted for Ladyman, to my knowledge. One other factor is the European issue which was (is?) a very important consideration here- it's very much an east coast seaside town in that respect. It is no accident that Farage chose it to centre his campaign here. It is fairly evident that UKIP at its height was taking twice as many votes from Labour as from the Tories, so in the end that was just making the Tories safer. The Europe issue is as lethal for Labour here as in many of their (former) heartland northern towns. One other factor may be the local employment issues I have alluded to- the Ramsgate harbour, Manston airport, Pfizer, etc. Opinions were all over the place on these issues, and the council, whatever its colour , hasn't covered itself with glory in trying to deal with the issues involved. The biggest success story was probably the offshore wind turbine array. In general though it doesn't help your electoral chances to have been running the council, not least when you were UKIP.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 8, 2020 13:19:38 GMT
Thanks yellowperil that's pretty good. You mention moderate Labour. Normally I tend to frown at this sort of label in this sort of context but as it happens the CLP in this constituency is probably my least favourite in the entire country, at least on the grounds of antisemitism (though there are others which are far, far too right-wing for me such as Mitcham and Morden, although I get on well with Martin Whelton, of this parish) and I suspect Merseymike's favourite. Although Jackie Walker has been expelled from the Labour Party, she lives here and seems to have local Labour members spellbound. I cannot understand why she exercises such magnetism on people. It is not unlikely that the CLP may be suspended in its entirety and subsequently reformed and depending on the speed with which that occurs it could have an impact either positive or negative on Labour's chances. Yes, I would not venture a view on the internal politics of the Labour party in any constituency, not even Ashford! My comment was confined to Ladyman in particular.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 23, 2020 15:55:58 GMT
Some extra statistics going here: Census 2011 Ethnicity White 95.6% (SE 90.7, UK 87.2) Asian 1.8% (SE 5.2, UK 6.9) Mixed 1.6% ( SE 1.9, UK 2.0) Black 0.7% (SE 1.6, UK 3.0) Other 0.3%(SE 0.6, UK 0.9)
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Post by Robert Waller on Jul 3, 2021 21:01:31 GMT
2011 Census
Age 65+ 21.0% 92/650 Owner-occupied 63.3% 418/650 Private rented 23.4% 83/650 Social rented 11.6% 519/650 White 95.6% 306/650 Black 0.7% 321/650 Asian 1.8% 375/650 Managerial & professional 27.5% Routine & Semi-routine 27.9% Degree level 21.9% 439/650 No qualifications 27.0% 175/650 Students 7.3% 266/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 63.1% 347/573 Private rented 25.6% 98/573 Social rented 11.3% 459/573 White 93.2% Black 1.0% Asian 2.3% Managerial & professional 29.9% 345/573 Routine & Semi-routine 25.3% 232/573 Degree level 28.2% 385/573 No qualifications 20.7% 167/573
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2022 7:26:09 GMT
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Post by where2travel on Mar 1, 2022 9:44:33 GMT
"It's easy to see why Margate is so popular with Londoners when you look at commute times. Imagine being able to live by the sea and yet reach the city in less than two hours!" With Brighton (and probably Southend-on-Sea) being obvious exceptions, I know a lot of typical seaside towns don't have the best railway links into London. Most people would be surprised it takes that long from Margate though, rather than it being a big plus-point you can live there and be within two hours from London. It's become much less of an issue now though if people are expecting to be in the office much less than before.
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sirbenjamin
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Post by sirbenjamin on Apr 20, 2022 13:39:49 GMT
2011 CensusWhite 95.6% 306/650
This is an interesting stat - 95.6% *feels* very high, but 306/650 is a very middling position. I'd expect South Thanet to be whiter than 306/650, but less white than 95.6%, if that makes sense.
So what is the reality behind this? Is the country as a whole quite a lot whiter than one would expect?
Is the statistical 'middle' bulgy, and position 306 barely different from 206 or 406?
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edgbaston
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Post by edgbaston on Apr 20, 2022 13:58:20 GMT
2011 CensusWhite 95.6% 306/650
This is an interesting stat - 95.6% *feels* very high, but 306/650 is a very middling position. I'd expect South Thanet to be whiter than 306/650, but less white than 95.6%, if that makes sense.
So what is the reality behind this? Is the country as a whole quite a lot whiter than one would expect?
Is the statistical 'middle' bulgy, and position 306 barely different from 206 or 406?
It is often the case in American polling that people overestimate the size of ethnic minority populations and underestimate the size of the white population. Similarly, I’ve heard people reckon with huge confidence that Birmingham is 70 or 80 per-cent Muslim, even though the figure is probably (awaiting census figures) barely 25%. Historically the Jewish population was also overestimated in size and power by those who found it convenient to their purposes. In whose interests is it that the average Brit believes their country to be much less white than it actually is?
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YL
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Post by YL on Apr 20, 2022 19:56:20 GMT
2011 CensusWhite 95.6% 306/650 This is an interesting stat - 95.6% *feels* very high, but 306/650 is a very middling position. I'd expect South Thanet to be whiter than 306/650, but less white than 95.6%, if that makes sense.
So what is the reality behind this? Is the country as a whole quite a lot whiter than one would expect?
Is the statistical 'middle' bulgy, and position 306 barely different from 206 or 406?
I think it's partly that the distribution is quite negatively skewed, with a relatively small number of constituencies having very low figures. So the mean, which will approximate the countrywide figure (approximate because constituency sizes vary), will be quite a bit lower than the median. Hence South Thanet can be only just above the median, but well above the countrywide figure (which is 87.2%).
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Apr 20, 2022 19:58:16 GMT
This is an interesting stat - 95.6% *feels* very high, but 306/650 is a very middling position. I'd expect South Thanet to be whiter than 306/650, but less white than 95.6%, if that makes sense.
So what is the reality behind this? Is the country as a whole quite a lot whiter than one would expect?
Is the statistical 'middle' bulgy, and position 306 barely different from 206 or 406?
It is often the case in American polling that people overestimate the size of ethnic minority populations and underestimate the size of the white population. Similarly, I’ve heard people reckon with huge confidence that Birmingham is 70 or 80 per-cent Muslim, even though the figure is probably (awaiting census figures) barely 25%. Historically the Jewish population was also overestimated in size and power by those who found it convenient to their purposes. In whose interests is it that the average Brit believes their country to be much less white than it actually is? This sounds like you are putting a rhetorical question. So what's the answer?
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Dec 12, 2022 17:29:30 GMT
Althoguh both Thanet seats as currently drawn are within quota, the need for North Thanet to absorb some excess voters from Canterbury (which pushed it over quota) has led to a complete reconfiguration of the boundaries in this area. This constituency loses the Dover district wards of Little Stour & Ashstone and Sandwich (some 11,000 voters) and gains over 12,000 in Central Margate, Dane Valley and Salmestone wards from North Thanet. This is the (even) grottier end of Margate and effectively this swaps out the most Conservative part of South Thanet for the most Labour part of North Thanet. The seat is renamed 'East Thanet', reviving a name used from 1974-83 (though that only included Broadstairs and Ramsgate, not any of Margate). This does clearly make the seat more vulnerable to Labour. There's also a decent chance that Nigel Farage would have won here in 2015 had the seat been fought on these boundaries. 2019 Notional result - East Thanet Con | 26341 | 55.3% | Lab | 17229 | 36.2% | LD | 2124 | 4.5% | Grn | 1908 | 4.0% | | | | Majority | 9112 | 19.1% |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Oct 29, 2023 21:45:56 GMT
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