Post by iang on Jun 2, 2020 21:36:53 GMT
Dudley North is a striking seat in many ways – it contains Dudley city centre, and therefore the visually impressive heart of Dudley, with the castle rising up over the town centre (and housing the zoo also). A little further around the corner is the deservedly famous Black Country Living Museum, founded in 1978, as a living memorial to Black Country sweat and toil. The BCLM covers the other Black Country boroughs also – the entrance is in fact the old Rolfe Street baths, from Smethwick in Warley constituency – but Dudley’s mines and foundries are the heart of the museum’s exhibits.
Dudley North is not dissimilar to Walsall North. It has a very similar ethnic make-up, a similar level of social housing (26% of the population rent social housing, compared to over 30% in its Walsall counterpart), and fairly similar levels of low professional and managerial employment, and high levels of employment in skilled trades (14% here compared to 15 ½% in Walsall North), a nod perhaps to those Black Country manufacturing traditions. And like its neighbour, Dudley North was overwhelmingly pro-Brexit – over 71% voted Leave, the eleventh highest leave vote in the country and the second highest in the West Midlands behind Walsall North. And despite their historic Labour representation, both now have a Conservative MP who is a former Walsall Tory councillor, sitting on a remarkably big majority of over 30%, and who sent their children to the same Walsall school (here I must declare an interest).
Dudley North is a relatively new constituency. Before 1997, the main Dudley town constituencies were split East and West, leaving them Labour leaning and Conservative leaning respectively. More of East went into North, although further boundary changes in 2010 weakened the historic link. Now only the three “town centre” wards of Castle & Priory, St James and St Thomas carry the link from the old East to the relatively new North. These three wards are generally Labour, and Labour has always won them since 2010. Gornal and Sedgley are on the western edge of the constituency bordering Staffordshire and have generally been Conservative, Upper Gornal and Woodsetton (all one ward) is in between, both geographically and in part politically too. Between 1997 and 2010, the constituency included Coseley East, which was generally reliably Labour. In 2010, this became a border-crossing part of Wolverhampton South East, making the Labour defence of Dudley North that bit trickier.
This is a mainly white, mainly working-class, pro-Brexit seat, similar in many ways to Walsall North, as noted above. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that the Conservatives took it in 2019, though the scale of their victory comes as some surprise. It is 86% white (in line with national and above regional average), 9% Asian and 3% black. However, parts of the seat are much more diverse. The wards on the western fringe are heavily white, over 95%, but in the town centre wards, significantly less so, with St James just under 80% white and St Thomas a little over 60% white, and a quarter of the ward Asian. These central wards are also significantly deprived, St Thomas ranking in the 10% most deprived wards in the country, and Castle and Priory, containing the Priory estate, home of footballer and Munich air crash victim Duncan Edwards, only just outside. None of the wards are especially affluent – Sedgley, the best off, ranks only ninth in Dudley’s twenty-four wards, behind most of the Kingswinford and Stourbridge wards. It has the highest proportion of managerial and professional occupants at 25.7% in the seat, and the highest level of qualifications, 24% having a degree or equivalent. St Thomas has the lowest high qualification rate (16.7%), and the lowest rate of managerial and professional occupations (19%), though in both cases, it is only just below Upper Gornal. Besides Sedgley, only St James exceeds 20% on both figures.
Overall then, this is far from being a middle-class seat. It is 77th on the list of seats in England and Wales for socially rented housing (26% as stated above). With 17% in total having a degree level qualification, it is way down in 521st on that particular list but 36th in the rank of constituencies without qualifications (almost 33%). The highest sector of the working population comes in the skilled trades, and plant and machine operatives also rank highly. In the circumstances of the 2019 election, this was exactly the sort of seat in which a pro-Brexit Conservative message would resonate.
Indeed, it might have easily gone down before 2019. The Labour majority was comfortable enough in the Blair years, but in 2010, Ian Austin’s majority sank to 649, and he would perhaps have lost in 2015 but for controversy that surrounded the Conservative’s original candidate, Afzal Amin, which perhaps contributed to the Conservative vote dropping by 6% and giving Ian Austin a relatively comfortable four thousand majority, whilst UKIP candidate and MEP Bill Etheridge was in touching distance in third with 24% of the vote. Come 2017 and UKIP no longer being a credible threat (though they still held their deposit), and Mr Austin’s majority sank to a mere 22, the fourth most marginal seat in the country. Come 2019, and surely not helped by Mr Austin’s very public rejection of the Labour Party and endorsement of the Conservatives, the Labour vote collapsed and Conservative Marco Longhi won with almost exactly double his Labour opponent’s votes and a majority of over 30%.
This generally has been a competitive area at local level. In the 2004 all ups, when the wards were slightly different, Labour led in three, the Conservatives two, and the Lib Dems won St James. The Lib Dem challenge was fading though, and they were never to win again. In 2010, it was three all, the town centre wards for Labour, the northern / western wards for the Conservatives. The early Coalition years saw Labour gain ground and the Conservatives reduced to Sedgley, although since 2015, they have regularly won Gornal again, and can take Upper Gornal in a good year. All this rather disguises the real story, which is the significant and lasting presence of votes for fringe right candidates within the constituency. The troubled Castle & Priory ward, plagued with crime and anti-social behaviour, elected a BNP councillor in 2002, although he narrowly lost in the 2004 all ups. St James elected a UKIP councillor as early as 2008. Indeed, in 2007, the combined UKIP / BNP vote was over 20% in every ward in the constituency. In the UKIP surge of 2014, UKIP won three of the six wards and missed St James by less than 40 votes. They carried the constituency as a whole, “winning” by 637 votes over Labour, the Tories trailing in third. The UKIP victor in Sedgley, Bill Etheridge, was their parliamentary candidate and future MEP, as mentioned above. In the borough as a whole, the Kippers won seven wards, and were within 5% of winning six more. Since then, of course, the UKIP challenge has faded in a whirlwind of leaders, recriminations and fisticuffs – and perhaps, the Conservatives successfully shooting their fox. But it left a fairly significant number of voters perhaps already displaced from Labour support, and willing to lend their votes to the Conservatives to “get Brexit done”. Like in many other seats across the region, the challenge for newly elected Conservative MPs will be to consolidate that vote. But Marco Longhi is an experienced political operator sitting on the biggest majority any Dudley North MP has ever had – removing him at one stroke will be very challenging indeed.
Dudley North is not dissimilar to Walsall North. It has a very similar ethnic make-up, a similar level of social housing (26% of the population rent social housing, compared to over 30% in its Walsall counterpart), and fairly similar levels of low professional and managerial employment, and high levels of employment in skilled trades (14% here compared to 15 ½% in Walsall North), a nod perhaps to those Black Country manufacturing traditions. And like its neighbour, Dudley North was overwhelmingly pro-Brexit – over 71% voted Leave, the eleventh highest leave vote in the country and the second highest in the West Midlands behind Walsall North. And despite their historic Labour representation, both now have a Conservative MP who is a former Walsall Tory councillor, sitting on a remarkably big majority of over 30%, and who sent their children to the same Walsall school (here I must declare an interest).
Dudley North is a relatively new constituency. Before 1997, the main Dudley town constituencies were split East and West, leaving them Labour leaning and Conservative leaning respectively. More of East went into North, although further boundary changes in 2010 weakened the historic link. Now only the three “town centre” wards of Castle & Priory, St James and St Thomas carry the link from the old East to the relatively new North. These three wards are generally Labour, and Labour has always won them since 2010. Gornal and Sedgley are on the western edge of the constituency bordering Staffordshire and have generally been Conservative, Upper Gornal and Woodsetton (all one ward) is in between, both geographically and in part politically too. Between 1997 and 2010, the constituency included Coseley East, which was generally reliably Labour. In 2010, this became a border-crossing part of Wolverhampton South East, making the Labour defence of Dudley North that bit trickier.
This is a mainly white, mainly working-class, pro-Brexit seat, similar in many ways to Walsall North, as noted above. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that the Conservatives took it in 2019, though the scale of their victory comes as some surprise. It is 86% white (in line with national and above regional average), 9% Asian and 3% black. However, parts of the seat are much more diverse. The wards on the western fringe are heavily white, over 95%, but in the town centre wards, significantly less so, with St James just under 80% white and St Thomas a little over 60% white, and a quarter of the ward Asian. These central wards are also significantly deprived, St Thomas ranking in the 10% most deprived wards in the country, and Castle and Priory, containing the Priory estate, home of footballer and Munich air crash victim Duncan Edwards, only just outside. None of the wards are especially affluent – Sedgley, the best off, ranks only ninth in Dudley’s twenty-four wards, behind most of the Kingswinford and Stourbridge wards. It has the highest proportion of managerial and professional occupants at 25.7% in the seat, and the highest level of qualifications, 24% having a degree or equivalent. St Thomas has the lowest high qualification rate (16.7%), and the lowest rate of managerial and professional occupations (19%), though in both cases, it is only just below Upper Gornal. Besides Sedgley, only St James exceeds 20% on both figures.
Overall then, this is far from being a middle-class seat. It is 77th on the list of seats in England and Wales for socially rented housing (26% as stated above). With 17% in total having a degree level qualification, it is way down in 521st on that particular list but 36th in the rank of constituencies without qualifications (almost 33%). The highest sector of the working population comes in the skilled trades, and plant and machine operatives also rank highly. In the circumstances of the 2019 election, this was exactly the sort of seat in which a pro-Brexit Conservative message would resonate.
Indeed, it might have easily gone down before 2019. The Labour majority was comfortable enough in the Blair years, but in 2010, Ian Austin’s majority sank to 649, and he would perhaps have lost in 2015 but for controversy that surrounded the Conservative’s original candidate, Afzal Amin, which perhaps contributed to the Conservative vote dropping by 6% and giving Ian Austin a relatively comfortable four thousand majority, whilst UKIP candidate and MEP Bill Etheridge was in touching distance in third with 24% of the vote. Come 2017 and UKIP no longer being a credible threat (though they still held their deposit), and Mr Austin’s majority sank to a mere 22, the fourth most marginal seat in the country. Come 2019, and surely not helped by Mr Austin’s very public rejection of the Labour Party and endorsement of the Conservatives, the Labour vote collapsed and Conservative Marco Longhi won with almost exactly double his Labour opponent’s votes and a majority of over 30%.
This generally has been a competitive area at local level. In the 2004 all ups, when the wards were slightly different, Labour led in three, the Conservatives two, and the Lib Dems won St James. The Lib Dem challenge was fading though, and they were never to win again. In 2010, it was three all, the town centre wards for Labour, the northern / western wards for the Conservatives. The early Coalition years saw Labour gain ground and the Conservatives reduced to Sedgley, although since 2015, they have regularly won Gornal again, and can take Upper Gornal in a good year. All this rather disguises the real story, which is the significant and lasting presence of votes for fringe right candidates within the constituency. The troubled Castle & Priory ward, plagued with crime and anti-social behaviour, elected a BNP councillor in 2002, although he narrowly lost in the 2004 all ups. St James elected a UKIP councillor as early as 2008. Indeed, in 2007, the combined UKIP / BNP vote was over 20% in every ward in the constituency. In the UKIP surge of 2014, UKIP won three of the six wards and missed St James by less than 40 votes. They carried the constituency as a whole, “winning” by 637 votes over Labour, the Tories trailing in third. The UKIP victor in Sedgley, Bill Etheridge, was their parliamentary candidate and future MEP, as mentioned above. In the borough as a whole, the Kippers won seven wards, and were within 5% of winning six more. Since then, of course, the UKIP challenge has faded in a whirlwind of leaders, recriminations and fisticuffs – and perhaps, the Conservatives successfully shooting their fox. But it left a fairly significant number of voters perhaps already displaced from Labour support, and willing to lend their votes to the Conservatives to “get Brexit done”. Like in many other seats across the region, the challenge for newly elected Conservative MPs will be to consolidate that vote. But Marco Longhi is an experienced political operator sitting on the biggest majority any Dudley North MP has ever had – removing him at one stroke will be very challenging indeed.
