Post by greenhert on May 6, 2020 13:52:18 GMT
Boston & Skegness was created in 1997 from the "Boston part" of Holland with Boston and the southern part of the East Lindsey constituency.
The town of Boston (not the one in Massachusetts, although that Boston was named after the original Boston in Lincolnshire) is an ancient market town which is home to the largest parish church in England, St Botolph's. In mediaeval times Boston became a significant enough port to join the Hanseatic League. It was a key site of religious nonconformism (Calvinism) during the 17th century and many dissenters from the Church of England emigrated to New England (along with Dutch compatriots; Boston has had strong links with the Netherlands, or what became the Netherlands, for centuries); their descendants still live in the eastern USA today. Recently Boston has achieved notoriety for having the highest Brexit vote in the EU membership referendum (75.6%) despite its significant Eastern European population (mainly Lithuanian) and also the highest obesity rate in the UK. Skegness, meanwhile, is a famous working-class seaside resort in Lincolnshire which was the site of the first Butlins camp; Skegness still retains much of this character and with its bingo halls, numerous fish and chip shops of all kinds, and penny arcades it still feels like it is stuck in the 1960s in many respects. Skegness and the nearby villages proved to be almost as pro-Brexit as Boston. Boston & Skegness is one of the poorest non-metropolitan constituencies in the UK and its demographics match this: 34.8% of the population has no qualifications and the proportion of degree holders is a miserable 14.4% (even level 3 qualification rates are low at 9.2%); almost 40% of the population are in routine/semi-routine occupations with the rate of higher managerial professions being less than half the UK average; the proportion of people aged over 65 (21.5%) is significantly higher than average; owner-occupation levels are also below average for a constituency nowhere near a metropolitan area.
Because of the constituency ticking almost every single box of a stereotypical Brexit constituency, Boston & Skegness is the second safest Conservative seat in the country behind only its neighbour, South Holland & The Deepings. Its predecessor constituency, Holland with Boston, actually elected a Labour MP, William Royce, upon its creation in 1918, due to the agricultural vote leaning towards Labour at the time, not to mention the port workers. Mr Royce died in 1924 and Labour lost the seat to the Conservatives at the subsequent by-election, never to regain it. The Conservative MP elected at said by-election, Arthur Dean, only served just under five years before he died in 1929; in the subsequent 1929 by-election it was the Liberals who were victorious even though they finished a poor third in the seat in the 1924 general election. The Liberal MP elected, James Blindell, joined Ernest Simon's National Liberals in 1931 along with many other Liberal MPs; his successor Herbert Butcher retained the National Liberal label right up until his retirement in 1966. Notable Eurosceptic (Sir) Richard Body held the seat then against a strong Labour challenge which failed only by 316 votes. Sir Richard was also a supporter of environmental causes within the Conservative Party, unsurprising given that Holland with Boston contained a large amount of vital fertile farmland, and strongly opposed the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in particular. When Holland with Boston was abolished in 1997, Sir Richard followed his Bostonian constituents into this seat and faced the first serious challenge from Labour for 31 years; Labour missed out by just 647 votes that year and it is clear Sir Richard's Euroscepticism paid off. He retired in 2001 and Labour failed to stop Mark Simmonds from succeeding him as Conservative MP, this time by the even narrower margin of 515 votes. UKIP then grew rapidly as a challenger to the Conservatives and Labour at local level; in 2005 they finished ahead of the Liberal Democrats with 9.6% and in 2010 achieved the highest UKIP vote in the country outside the Speaker's seat of Buckingham. Boston & Skegness met all the criteria of being a UKIP target seat in 2015 demographically and politically, but even with the additional factor of Mark Simmonds retiring (citing expenses not being enough to maintain a home in London as well as in the constituency), UKIP's Robin Hunter-Clarke (a Lincolnshire County Councillor) failed to defeat the new Conservative MP, Matt Warman, even though he achieved a better vote share than Nigel Farage did in South Thanet, and did better for UKIP than anywhere except Clacton. By May 2015, the large UKIP group on Lincolnshire County Council had already started to split, as elsewhere in the UK in areas strong for UKIP at the time, and in fact the UKIP candidate in Boston & Skegness in 2010, Christopher Pain, stood for the splinter "Independence from Europe" party. In 2017, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall stood here but with Article 50 having been triggered by then the UKIP vote collapsed, mainly to the Conservatives' benefit as the Conservative vote share rocketed to 63.6%. With no non-Conservative Brexit candidate in 2019, Mr Warman boosted the Conservative vote share even further, to 76.6%, which also gave him a tremendous majority of 25,621, or 61.5%, over Labour. Locally, in 2007, the Boston Bypass Independents won a clear majority on Boston Borough Council on the back of a bypass proposal for Boston which was never in fact constructed; they were almost wiped out in 2011 and they subsequently became the Boston District Independents. In 2015, UKIP gained enough seats to equal those of the Conservatives on Boston Borough Council (13 apiece), but unsurprisingly that group fell apart as well. This should have given the Conservatives a nailed-on gain of overall control of Boston for May 2019, but in fact enough Independents were elected to prevent the Conservatives gaining overall control initially; they do so on a casting vote from the Mayor. The "Skegness part" of the constituency elected five UKIP councillors in 2015; subsequently the localist Skegness Urban District Society won five of the six Skegness seats on East Lindsey District Council (the Conservatives held the other) and an Independent won the UKIP seat in Friskney; it votes strongly Conservative at parliamentary level however as Boston does. As you would expect it retains a strong Labour minority locally but it is largely irrelevant overall; there are only 2 Labour councillors representing wards in this constituency.
The town of Boston (not the one in Massachusetts, although that Boston was named after the original Boston in Lincolnshire) is an ancient market town which is home to the largest parish church in England, St Botolph's. In mediaeval times Boston became a significant enough port to join the Hanseatic League. It was a key site of religious nonconformism (Calvinism) during the 17th century and many dissenters from the Church of England emigrated to New England (along with Dutch compatriots; Boston has had strong links with the Netherlands, or what became the Netherlands, for centuries); their descendants still live in the eastern USA today. Recently Boston has achieved notoriety for having the highest Brexit vote in the EU membership referendum (75.6%) despite its significant Eastern European population (mainly Lithuanian) and also the highest obesity rate in the UK. Skegness, meanwhile, is a famous working-class seaside resort in Lincolnshire which was the site of the first Butlins camp; Skegness still retains much of this character and with its bingo halls, numerous fish and chip shops of all kinds, and penny arcades it still feels like it is stuck in the 1960s in many respects. Skegness and the nearby villages proved to be almost as pro-Brexit as Boston. Boston & Skegness is one of the poorest non-metropolitan constituencies in the UK and its demographics match this: 34.8% of the population has no qualifications and the proportion of degree holders is a miserable 14.4% (even level 3 qualification rates are low at 9.2%); almost 40% of the population are in routine/semi-routine occupations with the rate of higher managerial professions being less than half the UK average; the proportion of people aged over 65 (21.5%) is significantly higher than average; owner-occupation levels are also below average for a constituency nowhere near a metropolitan area.
Because of the constituency ticking almost every single box of a stereotypical Brexit constituency, Boston & Skegness is the second safest Conservative seat in the country behind only its neighbour, South Holland & The Deepings. Its predecessor constituency, Holland with Boston, actually elected a Labour MP, William Royce, upon its creation in 1918, due to the agricultural vote leaning towards Labour at the time, not to mention the port workers. Mr Royce died in 1924 and Labour lost the seat to the Conservatives at the subsequent by-election, never to regain it. The Conservative MP elected at said by-election, Arthur Dean, only served just under five years before he died in 1929; in the subsequent 1929 by-election it was the Liberals who were victorious even though they finished a poor third in the seat in the 1924 general election. The Liberal MP elected, James Blindell, joined Ernest Simon's National Liberals in 1931 along with many other Liberal MPs; his successor Herbert Butcher retained the National Liberal label right up until his retirement in 1966. Notable Eurosceptic (Sir) Richard Body held the seat then against a strong Labour challenge which failed only by 316 votes. Sir Richard was also a supporter of environmental causes within the Conservative Party, unsurprising given that Holland with Boston contained a large amount of vital fertile farmland, and strongly opposed the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in particular. When Holland with Boston was abolished in 1997, Sir Richard followed his Bostonian constituents into this seat and faced the first serious challenge from Labour for 31 years; Labour missed out by just 647 votes that year and it is clear Sir Richard's Euroscepticism paid off. He retired in 2001 and Labour failed to stop Mark Simmonds from succeeding him as Conservative MP, this time by the even narrower margin of 515 votes. UKIP then grew rapidly as a challenger to the Conservatives and Labour at local level; in 2005 they finished ahead of the Liberal Democrats with 9.6% and in 2010 achieved the highest UKIP vote in the country outside the Speaker's seat of Buckingham. Boston & Skegness met all the criteria of being a UKIP target seat in 2015 demographically and politically, but even with the additional factor of Mark Simmonds retiring (citing expenses not being enough to maintain a home in London as well as in the constituency), UKIP's Robin Hunter-Clarke (a Lincolnshire County Councillor) failed to defeat the new Conservative MP, Matt Warman, even though he achieved a better vote share than Nigel Farage did in South Thanet, and did better for UKIP than anywhere except Clacton. By May 2015, the large UKIP group on Lincolnshire County Council had already started to split, as elsewhere in the UK in areas strong for UKIP at the time, and in fact the UKIP candidate in Boston & Skegness in 2010, Christopher Pain, stood for the splinter "Independence from Europe" party. In 2017, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall stood here but with Article 50 having been triggered by then the UKIP vote collapsed, mainly to the Conservatives' benefit as the Conservative vote share rocketed to 63.6%. With no non-Conservative Brexit candidate in 2019, Mr Warman boosted the Conservative vote share even further, to 76.6%, which also gave him a tremendous majority of 25,621, or 61.5%, over Labour. Locally, in 2007, the Boston Bypass Independents won a clear majority on Boston Borough Council on the back of a bypass proposal for Boston which was never in fact constructed; they were almost wiped out in 2011 and they subsequently became the Boston District Independents. In 2015, UKIP gained enough seats to equal those of the Conservatives on Boston Borough Council (13 apiece), but unsurprisingly that group fell apart as well. This should have given the Conservatives a nailed-on gain of overall control of Boston for May 2019, but in fact enough Independents were elected to prevent the Conservatives gaining overall control initially; they do so on a casting vote from the Mayor. The "Skegness part" of the constituency elected five UKIP councillors in 2015; subsequently the localist Skegness Urban District Society won five of the six Skegness seats on East Lindsey District Council (the Conservatives held the other) and an Independent won the UKIP seat in Friskney; it votes strongly Conservative at parliamentary level however as Boston does. As you would expect it retains a strong Labour minority locally but it is largely irrelevant overall; there are only 2 Labour councillors representing wards in this constituency.
