Post by greenhert on Apr 28, 2020 19:46:30 GMT
St Austell and Newquay is the newest Cornish parliamentary constituency, created in 2010 from Truro & St Austell and the western edge of North Cornwall. It is almost coterminous with the now defunct district of Restormel (the town of Lostwithiel is still in South East Cornwall).
St Austell was once a key clay mining centre and even today plays a small part in the china clay industry, employing ~2000 people in that industry. It is increasingly reliant on tourism, with the nearby Eden Project being Cornwall's most famous tourist attraction in the 21st century. St Austell was also the site of a planned eco-town expansion but this has still not acquired the necessary planning permission, even though the project started in 2009. The former fishing port of Newquay has undergone significant development in the last few decades, and its expansion is partly the reason Cornwall's population grew large enough for it to be entitled to a sixth constituency at the Fifth Boundary Review. Newquay recently obtained a licence for development as a spaceport but completion is a long way off, to say the least. St Austell & Newquay, like many coastal constituencies in the West of England, has below average qualification levels (degree holders account for only 20.6% of the population, and level 2 qualifications are noticeably above average), and is almost entirely white (98.3%).
When created in 2010, St Austell & Newquay was notionally Liberal Democrat, like the rest of Cornwall, and Stephen Gilbert of the Liberal Democrats became its first MP despite a close run by the Conservatives. With a majority of just 1,312 and the Liberal Democrats sinking fast after entering into coalition with the Conservatives, his career was not going to last long, and the Conservatives' Steve Double ousted him in 2015 by 8,173 votes even though both UKIP and the Green Party absorbed much more of the ex-Liberal Democrat vote than the Conservatives did, a common theme across Cornwall and rural Devon. Mr Gilbert made an attempt to recapture his former seat in 2017, but he was pushed into third place by Labour, who absorbed a large amount of the ex-UKIP vote. In 2019, the Liberal Democrats fell back even further, losing more than half their 2017 vote and dropping to 10.5% (by contrast Labour's vote share dropped by only 2.6%), although that year Mebyon Kernow and the Greens stood having not done so in 2017, and it has now become a safe Conservative seat.
St Austell was once a key clay mining centre and even today plays a small part in the china clay industry, employing ~2000 people in that industry. It is increasingly reliant on tourism, with the nearby Eden Project being Cornwall's most famous tourist attraction in the 21st century. St Austell was also the site of a planned eco-town expansion but this has still not acquired the necessary planning permission, even though the project started in 2009. The former fishing port of Newquay has undergone significant development in the last few decades, and its expansion is partly the reason Cornwall's population grew large enough for it to be entitled to a sixth constituency at the Fifth Boundary Review. Newquay recently obtained a licence for development as a spaceport but completion is a long way off, to say the least. St Austell & Newquay, like many coastal constituencies in the West of England, has below average qualification levels (degree holders account for only 20.6% of the population, and level 2 qualifications are noticeably above average), and is almost entirely white (98.3%).
When created in 2010, St Austell & Newquay was notionally Liberal Democrat, like the rest of Cornwall, and Stephen Gilbert of the Liberal Democrats became its first MP despite a close run by the Conservatives. With a majority of just 1,312 and the Liberal Democrats sinking fast after entering into coalition with the Conservatives, his career was not going to last long, and the Conservatives' Steve Double ousted him in 2015 by 8,173 votes even though both UKIP and the Green Party absorbed much more of the ex-Liberal Democrat vote than the Conservatives did, a common theme across Cornwall and rural Devon. Mr Gilbert made an attempt to recapture his former seat in 2017, but he was pushed into third place by Labour, who absorbed a large amount of the ex-UKIP vote. In 2019, the Liberal Democrats fell back even further, losing more than half their 2017 vote and dropping to 10.5% (by contrast Labour's vote share dropped by only 2.6%), although that year Mebyon Kernow and the Greens stood having not done so in 2017, and it has now become a safe Conservative seat.
