Post by andrewteale on Apr 11, 2020 13:44:55 GMT
Right, let's start with the name. This is not the southern half of the town of Bury; in fact very little of Bury proper is in this constituency. Instead, this is the southern half of the Metropolitan Borough of Bury.
The seat was created in 1983 and has been little changed since. The main predecessor seat was Middleton and Prestwich, and the 1983 redistribution removed the name of Prestwich from the list of constituencies after 98 years of use. Prestwich was one of the ancient parishes of Salfordshire, with a fine and large sandstone church dedicated to St Mary whose parish once contained some upstart industrial town called Oldham. Perhaps in memory of this, the 1885-1918 Prestwich parliamentary constituency sprawled over the industrial towns north-east of Manchester as far as Mossley.
Since Victorian days Prestwich has been a desirable upmarket suburb of Manchester, which is only a few miles downhill; although it never quite attained the middle-class heights of Didsbury its houses are still sought-after by urban professionals. The other main town in the seat, Radcliffe, is quite the contrast; this is one of the classic industrial milltowns, and until relatively recent times the East Lancs Paper Mill dominated the prospect looking south from the town centre.
In between, and running seamlessly into both (or it would do if someone hadn't built a motorway to the north of Prestwich) is Whitefield, a town of two halves. The eastern half of Whitefield, beyond Bury New Road, is downmarket housing estates, much of which which built as Manchester overspill; this forms Besses ward, whose name recalls the local and still very good Besses o' th' Barn Brass Band.. The western half, along Ringley Road is Millionaire's Row, with seven-figure houses among shady trees.
This is Pilkington Park ward, and it's one of several wards in this seat which are strongly Jewish. Although it doesn't contain the epicentre of Judaism in north Manchester (that's Higher Broughton, just outside the boundary in the Blackley and Broughton seat), Bury South is the most Jewish constituency in the north of England.
When the seat was created in 1983 it was an open seat, and was picked up in the Thatcher landslide by the Conservatives' David Sumberg, a lawyer and former Manchester city councillor. Sumberg never had a safe seat, and his third and final term in 1992 came with a lead of just 788 votes over a promising young Labour candidate called Hazel Blears.
That put Bury South almost at the top of the Labour target list for the 1997 general election, and in the landslide of that year it wasn't a contest. Sumberg was trounced by the new Labour candidate Ivan Lewis, Prestwich born and bred and a Bury councillor working in the voluntary sector; Lewis started his parliamentary career with a majority of 12,381 and looked to have a bright future.
It took until the 2010 general election for Ivan Lewis to be seriously challenged, as he held on by 3.292 votes against an 8-point Conservative swing. That election saw the Labour party out of government, and after a series of junior ministerial roles Lewis entered the Shadow Cabinet as shadow culture secretary. Ed Miliband subsequently moved him to International Development, and finally to shadow the Northern Ireland portfolio. Lewis increased his majority in 2015 and took the Bury South seat out of immediate danger.
The Corbyn leadership of the Labour party was wrecked by antisemitism, and Jeremy started as he meant to go on. Ivan Lewis, who is Jewish, was the very first MP Corbyn sacked from the shadow cabinet upon taking office.
Warning signs should have flashed when in the 2016 local elections the Conservatives gained the strongly-Jewish Sedgley ward in Prestwich, for the first time since 1992. Instead the 2017 general election result papered over the cracks, although not for long. Lewis was suspended by the Labour Party in late 2017 following allegations of sexual harassment, and resigned from the party a year later with the disciplinary process still unresolved. In the 2019 general election he sought re-election as an independent, but shortly before polling day Lewis changed his mind and endorsed the Conservative candidate, Christian Wakeford.
Wakeford, previously leader of the Conservative group on Pendle council in Lancashire, is now the second Tory MP for Bury South. He gained the seat on a swing of 6% with a majority of just 402 votes over Labour, 43.8 to 43.0 in percentage terms, with none of the other six candidates saving their deposit.
Christian Wakeford will have a fight on his hands to hold a seat which, as in 1997, is very near the top of the Labour target list. Under the right conditions all of the constituency's nine wards can return Labour councillors to Bury council; affluent Pilkington Park is the only reliable Tory ward, while Radcliffe North is a socially-divided marginal and - after a couple of strong Labour holds in 2018 and 2019 - the Tory win in Sedgley in 2016 is looking rather flukish. The urban professional vote in Prestwich tends to go Liberal Democrat rather than Tory at council level, and the Lib Dems normally have a lock on Prestwich's Holyrood ward despite being nowhere once general election time rolls around. If Wakeford's seat survives the forthcoming boundary changes intact (pretty much any boundary change would wipe out his majority), this will be one to watch in 2024.
The seat was created in 1983 and has been little changed since. The main predecessor seat was Middleton and Prestwich, and the 1983 redistribution removed the name of Prestwich from the list of constituencies after 98 years of use. Prestwich was one of the ancient parishes of Salfordshire, with a fine and large sandstone church dedicated to St Mary whose parish once contained some upstart industrial town called Oldham. Perhaps in memory of this, the 1885-1918 Prestwich parliamentary constituency sprawled over the industrial towns north-east of Manchester as far as Mossley.
Since Victorian days Prestwich has been a desirable upmarket suburb of Manchester, which is only a few miles downhill; although it never quite attained the middle-class heights of Didsbury its houses are still sought-after by urban professionals. The other main town in the seat, Radcliffe, is quite the contrast; this is one of the classic industrial milltowns, and until relatively recent times the East Lancs Paper Mill dominated the prospect looking south from the town centre.
In between, and running seamlessly into both (or it would do if someone hadn't built a motorway to the north of Prestwich) is Whitefield, a town of two halves. The eastern half of Whitefield, beyond Bury New Road, is downmarket housing estates, much of which which built as Manchester overspill; this forms Besses ward, whose name recalls the local and still very good Besses o' th' Barn Brass Band.. The western half, along Ringley Road is Millionaire's Row, with seven-figure houses among shady trees.
This is Pilkington Park ward, and it's one of several wards in this seat which are strongly Jewish. Although it doesn't contain the epicentre of Judaism in north Manchester (that's Higher Broughton, just outside the boundary in the Blackley and Broughton seat), Bury South is the most Jewish constituency in the north of England.
When the seat was created in 1983 it was an open seat, and was picked up in the Thatcher landslide by the Conservatives' David Sumberg, a lawyer and former Manchester city councillor. Sumberg never had a safe seat, and his third and final term in 1992 came with a lead of just 788 votes over a promising young Labour candidate called Hazel Blears.
That put Bury South almost at the top of the Labour target list for the 1997 general election, and in the landslide of that year it wasn't a contest. Sumberg was trounced by the new Labour candidate Ivan Lewis, Prestwich born and bred and a Bury councillor working in the voluntary sector; Lewis started his parliamentary career with a majority of 12,381 and looked to have a bright future.
It took until the 2010 general election for Ivan Lewis to be seriously challenged, as he held on by 3.292 votes against an 8-point Conservative swing. That election saw the Labour party out of government, and after a series of junior ministerial roles Lewis entered the Shadow Cabinet as shadow culture secretary. Ed Miliband subsequently moved him to International Development, and finally to shadow the Northern Ireland portfolio. Lewis increased his majority in 2015 and took the Bury South seat out of immediate danger.
The Corbyn leadership of the Labour party was wrecked by antisemitism, and Jeremy started as he meant to go on. Ivan Lewis, who is Jewish, was the very first MP Corbyn sacked from the shadow cabinet upon taking office.
Warning signs should have flashed when in the 2016 local elections the Conservatives gained the strongly-Jewish Sedgley ward in Prestwich, for the first time since 1992. Instead the 2017 general election result papered over the cracks, although not for long. Lewis was suspended by the Labour Party in late 2017 following allegations of sexual harassment, and resigned from the party a year later with the disciplinary process still unresolved. In the 2019 general election he sought re-election as an independent, but shortly before polling day Lewis changed his mind and endorsed the Conservative candidate, Christian Wakeford.
Wakeford, previously leader of the Conservative group on Pendle council in Lancashire, is now the second Tory MP for Bury South. He gained the seat on a swing of 6% with a majority of just 402 votes over Labour, 43.8 to 43.0 in percentage terms, with none of the other six candidates saving their deposit.
Christian Wakeford will have a fight on his hands to hold a seat which, as in 1997, is very near the top of the Labour target list. Under the right conditions all of the constituency's nine wards can return Labour councillors to Bury council; affluent Pilkington Park is the only reliable Tory ward, while Radcliffe North is a socially-divided marginal and - after a couple of strong Labour holds in 2018 and 2019 - the Tory win in Sedgley in 2016 is looking rather flukish. The urban professional vote in Prestwich tends to go Liberal Democrat rather than Tory at council level, and the Lib Dems normally have a lock on Prestwich's Holyrood ward despite being nowhere once general election time rolls around. If Wakeford's seat survives the forthcoming boundary changes intact (pretty much any boundary change would wipe out his majority), this will be one to watch in 2024.
