Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2020 22:44:15 GMT
"Preston North" will bring back memories for political activists and observers of a certain age. In the period from 1950 to 1979, the seat of that name could be as unpredictable and knife-edge as any you could muster. Those days have long gone, as has the prospect of Preston having a "north" without additional bits tacked on from neighbouring, largely rural, areas.
We find ourselves in the ancient Hundred of Amounderness, with the mysterious and photogenic Bowland Forest to the north-east and the flat lands of the Fylde to the west. Somewhere in the middle of this is Fulwood, broadly rural across the plains, and broadly management-level suburbia as it chugs along the A6 corridor into Preston. At one time, until local government regeneration in the 1970s, Fulwood's council was separate from its southern neighbour. It is said that you can still see the join, where the vast houses and broad avenues make way for terraces and mutli-occupancy shares approximately at the point where Garstang Road crosses Lytham Road. From this point north is Fulwood "proper" and for decades it has been, at council and parliamentary level, solidly Conservative. This is the territory of vast private estates and golf courses, of St Pius X Prep School, of tree-lined avenues heading out towards the Ribble Valley. Additionally this has been very poor for Labour, even with the changing demographics of the area around Preston College and the Royal Preston Hospital, where the first signs of council candidates from the red team eating into the mammoth majorities of Conservative incumbents.
At Parliamentary level, northern Preston has largely been added to rural neighbours as a matter of course. In recent years this has usually meant Fylde, or Ribble Valley. At the most recent (completed) boundary revision, the east-or-west pattern was broken, with Fulwood going north, following the A6 into farmland, countryside, market towns and ultimately the Blackpool border town of Poulton-le-Fylde. This vast seat, the additional one for Lancashire during that review, could have been designed by Conservative Central Office: it is made for going blue.
Wyre Council a broadly Conservative one, although at their national peak UKIP did have some wins here and in the troubled fishing town of Fleetwood, which falls outside this constituency. The typical-for-farming-areas success of independent candidates are unlikely to be left-wingers, there is little sign of Labour Party uplift even in good years elsewhere. In the Preston section, the Labour Party has made inroads into the commuting class areas and this will set them in good stead if boundary changes expands Preston northwards. It's also noticable how the Liberal Democrats have pushed into Fulwood from their traditional base of Ingol and Tanterton, with 2019 being a breakthrough year for Fulwoodian LDs. In each election since its creation, WaPN has been handsomely Tory and even with the nibbling away at the edges from their opponents, only the pencil of a Boundary Commissioner could change the fate of sitting MP Ben Wallace.
We find ourselves in the ancient Hundred of Amounderness, with the mysterious and photogenic Bowland Forest to the north-east and the flat lands of the Fylde to the west. Somewhere in the middle of this is Fulwood, broadly rural across the plains, and broadly management-level suburbia as it chugs along the A6 corridor into Preston. At one time, until local government regeneration in the 1970s, Fulwood's council was separate from its southern neighbour. It is said that you can still see the join, where the vast houses and broad avenues make way for terraces and mutli-occupancy shares approximately at the point where Garstang Road crosses Lytham Road. From this point north is Fulwood "proper" and for decades it has been, at council and parliamentary level, solidly Conservative. This is the territory of vast private estates and golf courses, of St Pius X Prep School, of tree-lined avenues heading out towards the Ribble Valley. Additionally this has been very poor for Labour, even with the changing demographics of the area around Preston College and the Royal Preston Hospital, where the first signs of council candidates from the red team eating into the mammoth majorities of Conservative incumbents.
At Parliamentary level, northern Preston has largely been added to rural neighbours as a matter of course. In recent years this has usually meant Fylde, or Ribble Valley. At the most recent (completed) boundary revision, the east-or-west pattern was broken, with Fulwood going north, following the A6 into farmland, countryside, market towns and ultimately the Blackpool border town of Poulton-le-Fylde. This vast seat, the additional one for Lancashire during that review, could have been designed by Conservative Central Office: it is made for going blue.
Wyre Council a broadly Conservative one, although at their national peak UKIP did have some wins here and in the troubled fishing town of Fleetwood, which falls outside this constituency. The typical-for-farming-areas success of independent candidates are unlikely to be left-wingers, there is little sign of Labour Party uplift even in good years elsewhere. In the Preston section, the Labour Party has made inroads into the commuting class areas and this will set them in good stead if boundary changes expands Preston northwards. It's also noticable how the Liberal Democrats have pushed into Fulwood from their traditional base of Ingol and Tanterton, with 2019 being a breakthrough year for Fulwoodian LDs. In each election since its creation, WaPN has been handsomely Tory and even with the nibbling away at the edges from their opponents, only the pencil of a Boundary Commissioner could change the fate of sitting MP Ben Wallace.
