Post by MacShimidh on Jul 13, 2020 21:09:36 GMT
Moray is a borderland. This makes it one of the most interesting and unique constituencies anywhere in the UK. Geographically, it straddles the line between Highland Scotland and Lowland Scotland. The southern half of the constituency is mountainous and sparsely populated, with a great deal of it being covered by the Cairngorms National Park. Indeed, Ben Macdui, Britain’s second-highest mountain, serves as part of Moray’s southern boundary. Contrariwise, the northern portion of the constituency is covered by a flat and fertile coastal plain known as the Laich of Moray. This makes the economic profile of Moray very varied, with agriculture, fishing and whisky distillation being traditional industries, and tourism, the public sector (notably the military) and even oil also playing an important role.
Politically too, this constituency has something of a dual identity. This is most obvious at the Brexit level, where there was an almost 50/50 split and only about 100 votes separating Remain from Leave. This made it the most marginal area anywhere in the UK. Additionally, Moray is simultaneously a bastion of Scottish Conservatism whilst also being a traditional heartland of the SNP. In 2014, although Moray was more “No” than the Scottish average, there was some variation within the constituency. The more affluent west of the constituency was staunchly unionist. However, the more fishing-oriented east was much more marginal, with the Buckie ward possibly even voting in favour of independence outright. All of this is to say that Moray is always an interesting place to watch in any election or referendum.
Moray’s boundaries have been unchanged since 1983. The current constituency is made up entirely of the Moray council area, which up until 1996 had been a district within Grampian Regional Council. Before 1983, about half of the current constituency had been represented by Moray and Nairn, the other half by Banffshire. Both constituencies were latterly SNP/Tory marginals – the SNP first wrested the seats away from decades of Tory control in February 1974, before losing them in 1979. The Tories won the current seat upon its formation, but it then fell to the SNP in 1987, beginning their 30-year hold over the constituency.
As mentioned, Moray’s southernmost ward is distinct from the rest of the constituency. It is the furthest inland, having no access to the Moray Firth and instead being defined by a Highland ruggedness. The name of this ward – Speyside Glenlivet – gives away the fact that this is malt whisky country, with the highest concentration of whisky distilleries anywhere in the world being located here. The fast-flowing River Spey is the key to the whisky industry and is one of Moray’s main geographical features. Aberlour and Tomintoul are perhaps the most significant settlements here, but one could list practically any Speyside whisky and it would have its namesake village in this ward. Historically, this was an area of strength for the SNP, and although they still come first here, in recent years it has become a lot more marginal. It strikes me as being very similar to Badenoch in the next constituency over, in the sense that it is a very pleasant, though not necessarily affluent, part of the Highlands.
Travelling north, we come to the Laich, where most of Moray’s population live. None of the settlements in this part of the constituency are more than 15km from the coastline, so we are now very much in Lowland Scotland. Linguistically, Gaelic has virtually no presence here, and the Doric dialect is widely spoken. Travelling from west to east, we begin our tour across the Laich in Forres, a small, pretty, affluent town that currently leans to the Tories. Forres is a bit unremarkable, but if we follow the river Findhorn north to the coast, we come to the village of Findhorn. This is a bit of an idiosyncratic place, a former fishing village which is also home to a large “eco-village”. This is thus an area of relative strength for the Greens as well as the Tories.
To the east, we come to Burghead and Hopeman, two more conventional harbour towns. The more significant settlement, though, is Lossiemouth. The town was once wholly dependent on fishing, but today is heavily reliant on the nearby RAF Lossiemouth, one of the busiest RAF bases in the UK. The military presence is estimated to provide around a fifth of all employment for Lossiemouth. It is therefore not surprising that the Tories do very well in this area, but even here things are marginal and they cannot take things for granted – the right SNP candidate is more than capable of winning this part of Moray.
Just to the south of Lossiemouth lies Elgin. This is the county town of Moray and by far its largest settlement. Located in the centre of the Laich, Elgin is a rapidly growing town with an interesting ecclesiastical history – Elgin Cathedral played an important role in medieval Scottish history and its ruins are well worth a visit. Politically, like the rest of the constituency, Elgin is now very marginal and although the SNP probably just edge out the Tories, it’s hard to say. During the Blair years, Labour had a strong presence in Elgin but it has melted away in recent years.
In that sense, Elgin has some similarities with Inverness to the west; but whereas Elgin used to be the more SNP of the two, now Inverness is decidedly more SNP.
Heading east out of Elgin, we pass through the oddly-named village of Lhanbryde, before crossing the Spey to reach Fochabers. This is another wealthy, pretty village, most famous for being the home of Baxters, the food company. To the north of here is the mouth of the Spey, along which lie the villages of Garmouth, Kingston and Spey Bay. Southeast down the A82 is Keith, a small town dominated by farming and whisky, with the Strathisla distillery being the headquarters of Chivas Brothers. Even in the Lowland parts of Moray, whisky is a critical part of the local economy.
If we instead take the A98 northeast, we come to Buckie. This is the only town in Moray in which fishing is significant, although still much declined from its heyday. In fact, the offshore oil industry is probably the more significant industry nowadays. Buckie is still a very reliable area for the SNP, perhaps the best area in Moray for them. If we head east even further, we come to two final coastal villages before we reach the boundary with Banff and Buchan. These are Portknockie and Cullen, for my money the two most beautiful villages in the whole constituency, with some striking beaches and rock formations just off their coasts.
Whilst its inaugural representative was a fairly anonymous Tory, Moray has had some very high profile MPs since. Margaret Ewing held the seat for the SNP from 1987 to 2001, having previously represented East Dunbartonshire in the 70s. Her mother-in-law, Winnie, had previously represented Moray and Nairn from 1974-79. Although she has now been largely forgotten, Margaret Ewing was a major figure in the SNP for many years, being the group’s leader at Westminster and later running for the party’s leadership in 1990, losing heavily to Alex Salmond. She held the seat until 2001 when she resigned to focus on being the MSP for the equivalent Holyrood seat.
Ewing was succeeded by another Nationalist, Angus Robertson. Robertson has an interesting background, being born in London to a Scottish father and a German mother, and attending a posh school in Edinburgh. Within five years of entering the Commons, he became SNP Westminster leader. It would thus be easy to cast Robertson as a carpetbagger who used the constituency purely to work his way up the party hierarchy. In fact, he was an assiduous constituency MP who knew exactly how to work the seat. He made huge inroads with groups traditionally hostile to the SNP, such as military families in the Laich. His defeat in 2017 was down to groups like this finally having enough of the SNP and defecting back to the Tories en masse.
The loss of Robertson was a huge blow for the SNP, far more so than the loss of Salmond who by 2017 had become a liability for the party. Nonetheless, his loss was not a complete repudiation of the party in Moray, and they remain in a very healthy second place. Their candidate in 2019 was a virtual unknown, and yet they achieved their second-highest share of the vote in the seat's history. However, it was not enough to beat the newly entrenched Tory, Douglas Ross. Ross was a former list MSP for the Highlands and Islands before beating Robertson quite comfortably in 2017. He is one of the most impressive of the 2017 intake of Scottish Tories and was widely seen as a rising star before resigning as a minister over the Dominic Cummings debacle.
Labour and the Lib Dems are almost wholly irrelevant here (although Labour came a very strong second in 2001), so this looks set to be a highly polarised seat between the Tories and SNP for the foreseeable future. However, Ross’s personal popularity and undoubted ability can only take him so far. His political future, more than most MPs, will depend on how Brexit turns out. This is because his seat, with its whisky distilleries and its fishing industry, is perhaps more tied to the global economy than any other Scottish constituency. Moray, for all its regional ubiquity, cannot escape the fact that national politics have local effects, and a bad Brexit will gift this seat back to the SNP.
Politically too, this constituency has something of a dual identity. This is most obvious at the Brexit level, where there was an almost 50/50 split and only about 100 votes separating Remain from Leave. This made it the most marginal area anywhere in the UK. Additionally, Moray is simultaneously a bastion of Scottish Conservatism whilst also being a traditional heartland of the SNP. In 2014, although Moray was more “No” than the Scottish average, there was some variation within the constituency. The more affluent west of the constituency was staunchly unionist. However, the more fishing-oriented east was much more marginal, with the Buckie ward possibly even voting in favour of independence outright. All of this is to say that Moray is always an interesting place to watch in any election or referendum.
Moray’s boundaries have been unchanged since 1983. The current constituency is made up entirely of the Moray council area, which up until 1996 had been a district within Grampian Regional Council. Before 1983, about half of the current constituency had been represented by Moray and Nairn, the other half by Banffshire. Both constituencies were latterly SNP/Tory marginals – the SNP first wrested the seats away from decades of Tory control in February 1974, before losing them in 1979. The Tories won the current seat upon its formation, but it then fell to the SNP in 1987, beginning their 30-year hold over the constituency.
As mentioned, Moray’s southernmost ward is distinct from the rest of the constituency. It is the furthest inland, having no access to the Moray Firth and instead being defined by a Highland ruggedness. The name of this ward – Speyside Glenlivet – gives away the fact that this is malt whisky country, with the highest concentration of whisky distilleries anywhere in the world being located here. The fast-flowing River Spey is the key to the whisky industry and is one of Moray’s main geographical features. Aberlour and Tomintoul are perhaps the most significant settlements here, but one could list practically any Speyside whisky and it would have its namesake village in this ward. Historically, this was an area of strength for the SNP, and although they still come first here, in recent years it has become a lot more marginal. It strikes me as being very similar to Badenoch in the next constituency over, in the sense that it is a very pleasant, though not necessarily affluent, part of the Highlands.
Travelling north, we come to the Laich, where most of Moray’s population live. None of the settlements in this part of the constituency are more than 15km from the coastline, so we are now very much in Lowland Scotland. Linguistically, Gaelic has virtually no presence here, and the Doric dialect is widely spoken. Travelling from west to east, we begin our tour across the Laich in Forres, a small, pretty, affluent town that currently leans to the Tories. Forres is a bit unremarkable, but if we follow the river Findhorn north to the coast, we come to the village of Findhorn. This is a bit of an idiosyncratic place, a former fishing village which is also home to a large “eco-village”. This is thus an area of relative strength for the Greens as well as the Tories.
To the east, we come to Burghead and Hopeman, two more conventional harbour towns. The more significant settlement, though, is Lossiemouth. The town was once wholly dependent on fishing, but today is heavily reliant on the nearby RAF Lossiemouth, one of the busiest RAF bases in the UK. The military presence is estimated to provide around a fifth of all employment for Lossiemouth. It is therefore not surprising that the Tories do very well in this area, but even here things are marginal and they cannot take things for granted – the right SNP candidate is more than capable of winning this part of Moray.
Just to the south of Lossiemouth lies Elgin. This is the county town of Moray and by far its largest settlement. Located in the centre of the Laich, Elgin is a rapidly growing town with an interesting ecclesiastical history – Elgin Cathedral played an important role in medieval Scottish history and its ruins are well worth a visit. Politically, like the rest of the constituency, Elgin is now very marginal and although the SNP probably just edge out the Tories, it’s hard to say. During the Blair years, Labour had a strong presence in Elgin but it has melted away in recent years.
In that sense, Elgin has some similarities with Inverness to the west; but whereas Elgin used to be the more SNP of the two, now Inverness is decidedly more SNP.
Heading east out of Elgin, we pass through the oddly-named village of Lhanbryde, before crossing the Spey to reach Fochabers. This is another wealthy, pretty village, most famous for being the home of Baxters, the food company. To the north of here is the mouth of the Spey, along which lie the villages of Garmouth, Kingston and Spey Bay. Southeast down the A82 is Keith, a small town dominated by farming and whisky, with the Strathisla distillery being the headquarters of Chivas Brothers. Even in the Lowland parts of Moray, whisky is a critical part of the local economy.
If we instead take the A98 northeast, we come to Buckie. This is the only town in Moray in which fishing is significant, although still much declined from its heyday. In fact, the offshore oil industry is probably the more significant industry nowadays. Buckie is still a very reliable area for the SNP, perhaps the best area in Moray for them. If we head east even further, we come to two final coastal villages before we reach the boundary with Banff and Buchan. These are Portknockie and Cullen, for my money the two most beautiful villages in the whole constituency, with some striking beaches and rock formations just off their coasts.
Whilst its inaugural representative was a fairly anonymous Tory, Moray has had some very high profile MPs since. Margaret Ewing held the seat for the SNP from 1987 to 2001, having previously represented East Dunbartonshire in the 70s. Her mother-in-law, Winnie, had previously represented Moray and Nairn from 1974-79. Although she has now been largely forgotten, Margaret Ewing was a major figure in the SNP for many years, being the group’s leader at Westminster and later running for the party’s leadership in 1990, losing heavily to Alex Salmond. She held the seat until 2001 when she resigned to focus on being the MSP for the equivalent Holyrood seat.
Ewing was succeeded by another Nationalist, Angus Robertson. Robertson has an interesting background, being born in London to a Scottish father and a German mother, and attending a posh school in Edinburgh. Within five years of entering the Commons, he became SNP Westminster leader. It would thus be easy to cast Robertson as a carpetbagger who used the constituency purely to work his way up the party hierarchy. In fact, he was an assiduous constituency MP who knew exactly how to work the seat. He made huge inroads with groups traditionally hostile to the SNP, such as military families in the Laich. His defeat in 2017 was down to groups like this finally having enough of the SNP and defecting back to the Tories en masse.
The loss of Robertson was a huge blow for the SNP, far more so than the loss of Salmond who by 2017 had become a liability for the party. Nonetheless, his loss was not a complete repudiation of the party in Moray, and they remain in a very healthy second place. Their candidate in 2019 was a virtual unknown, and yet they achieved their second-highest share of the vote in the seat's history. However, it was not enough to beat the newly entrenched Tory, Douglas Ross. Ross was a former list MSP for the Highlands and Islands before beating Robertson quite comfortably in 2017. He is one of the most impressive of the 2017 intake of Scottish Tories and was widely seen as a rising star before resigning as a minister over the Dominic Cummings debacle.
Labour and the Lib Dems are almost wholly irrelevant here (although Labour came a very strong second in 2001), so this looks set to be a highly polarised seat between the Tories and SNP for the foreseeable future. However, Ross’s personal popularity and undoubted ability can only take him so far. His political future, more than most MPs, will depend on how Brexit turns out. This is because his seat, with its whisky distilleries and its fishing industry, is perhaps more tied to the global economy than any other Scottish constituency. Moray, for all its regional ubiquity, cannot escape the fact that national politics have local effects, and a bad Brexit will gift this seat back to the SNP.
