Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2020 16:45:38 GMT
Got bored and thought I'd start us off in Leicestershire as well, so every county now has at least one entry. Although as a Bedford and Wasps (rugby) fan, looking at Leicester for too long makes me feel ill, so I need to go and lie down 
Leicester East
Leicester East covers the eastern portion of the city of Leicester, taking in the neighbourhoods of Evington to the south east, Humberstone to the east, Rushey Mead to the north and Belgrave towards the city centre.
Leicester goes back to at least the Iron Age, making it one of the UK’s oldest settlements. It has survived through time as a roman town and tribal capital; a Bishopric under the Saxons; a major regional town throughout the middle ages, Tudor period and the civil war; a major industrial centre from the industrial revolution to the 1980s; and finally as a city and a major regional centre to the present day. Its biggest explosion in size took place during and after the industrial revolution, as canals and railways connected the city to both the Leicestershire coalfields and the cities of London and Birmingham. Numerous mills and factories sprang up, at first involved in hosiery, textiles and shoe manufacture but later involved in engineering, as well as a steelworks. In 1936, the League of Nation’s Bureau of Statistics identified Leicester as the second richest city in Europe.
Leicester’s politics also has a radical history, and the city was a stronghold of radicalism in the mid-nineteenth century. Leading Chartist Thomas Cooper had a shop in the town and the Chartists started two riots within six years in the 1840s. In 1936, Leicester would play host the Jarrow March on its way to London. Furthermore, the Leicester Secular Society was founded in 1851, making it the world’s oldest such society. Since the end of the second world war, mass house building of both council and privately-owned housing estates, and large-scale immigration have had their impact on Leicester, and especially on its politics, as will be seen later on.
Leicester East is the 134th most deprived constituency in England, and the third most deprived in Leicestershire. It is, however, the least deprived of Leicester’s three constituencies. The seat is especially bad for income deprivation affecting older people, ranking 21st in England on this measure; income deprivation and access to deprivation are other measures where it underperforms. Deprivation is fairly uniform across the seat, although the suburb of Evington is better off, as are some areas on the city’s north eastern edge. Even so, most neighbourhoods rank in the poorest 30% in England, and none are in the richest 20%. It has a distinctly working-class labour market profile, with the proportion of the workforce employed in managerial or professional rules under 30% compared to a national average of 48%. Routine and elementary occupations, however, employ 38.7% of the seat’s workforce, more than double the national average. Leicester’s industry is still alive and well, at least in this seat, with 21.6% of jobs being in manufacturing (mostly engineering related) – compared to just 8.1% nationally. Human Health and Social Work is also above average, suggesting a large number of public sector workers. Incomes are also low in this seat, with a weekly average of just £433.60 – an eye-watering £152.90 lower than the national average. The final useful economic indicator is that a lower than average proportion of households are owner-occupied – just 58.2% compared 63.5% nationally, while social and private renting are both above average. Using the ward boundaries on which the seat was created, the lowest proportion is Charnwood ward on the northern edge – now largely replaced by Troon and North Evington wards – at 37.9% owner-occupied, and the highest figure is Rushey Mead in the north western corner at 77%. Social renting ranges from 5% of households in Rushey Mead to 37.2% in Charnwood; private renting goes from 7.6% in Thurncourt on the eastern edge to 23.3% in Coleman in the centre of the seat, now split between Troon and North Evington.
This seat’s defining demographic feature, however, is its ethnic make-up. It is one of the UK’s very few Asian majority constituencies, at 58.07%. On the current ward-boundaries, British Asians are a plurality of the population in 5 of the seven wards and a majority in four. Just 57% of the population were born in the UK, a full 30% behind the national average. 31.8% of the population identify as Hindu, 24.2% as Christian and 20% as Muslim. Finally, educational attainment in the constituency is not high. The figures are skewed by the high proportion of people with “other” qualifications – standard for an area with such a large immigrant population – but a massive 22.1% of the population have no qualifications, almost three times the national average. By contrast, just 26.8% of people in the seat are educated to level 4 or above, compared to 40.3% nationally.
As might be expected from a deprived, working-class seat with a high immigrant and a high ethnic minority population, this seat has been Labour for most of its history. The only brief exception was when the Conservatives won in their 1983 landslide, helped by the incumbent MP running for the SDP and splitting the vote. The seat has changed beyond all recognition since then, and trended seemingly inexorably towards Labour over the next 30 years. In 2017, Keith Vaz stood down after representing the area since 1987 and I don’t think it would be too controversial to say that the selection of his successor, Claudia Webbe, was a PR disaster for the party. Not only was she a councillor in Islington in Central London, but she is not of Indian descent and was associated with Labour’s resolution on Kashmir which was deeply unpopular with lots of British Indians. This storm undoubtedly contributed to the 15.3% swing from Labour to Conservative, which cut Labour’s majority to just 6,019 votes or 12.2%. Whether this is a one-off shock or the start of a long-term trend remains to be seen.
At local elections, the Labour Party has won every council seat in the constituency since 2011. At general elections, it is almost certain that they carried every ward in 2015 and 2017, and quite likely that they have done so at every election since 1997. The comparatively wealthy area of Evington and the majority-white ward of Thurncoat have been areas of relative strength for the Conservatives, and they have also won council seats in Humberston & Hamilton as recently as 2007. At the 2011 census, two wards (Latimer and Belgrave, the former now subsumed into Belgrave and Rushey Mead) were majority Hindu; Latimer was 70.9% Hindu, the highest proportion in England and Wales. Rushey Mead had the third largest proportion at 43.11%. These areas, clustered in the seat’s north western corner, will have swung hard to the Conservatives in 2019, although it’s doubtful that they will have swung hard enough to be carried by the Tories. The other majority Asian areas tend to be Muslim rather than Hindu, and will have had a much smaller swing.
Overall, this is a deprived, urban, ethnic minority constituency that should be a safe Labour seat, and has been for much of its history. The party’s recent troubles have seen their majority drastically reduced, however, and only time will tell if normal service will be resumed, or if Leicester East might have another Tory MP at some point in the near future.
Leicester East
Leicester East covers the eastern portion of the city of Leicester, taking in the neighbourhoods of Evington to the south east, Humberstone to the east, Rushey Mead to the north and Belgrave towards the city centre.
Leicester goes back to at least the Iron Age, making it one of the UK’s oldest settlements. It has survived through time as a roman town and tribal capital; a Bishopric under the Saxons; a major regional town throughout the middle ages, Tudor period and the civil war; a major industrial centre from the industrial revolution to the 1980s; and finally as a city and a major regional centre to the present day. Its biggest explosion in size took place during and after the industrial revolution, as canals and railways connected the city to both the Leicestershire coalfields and the cities of London and Birmingham. Numerous mills and factories sprang up, at first involved in hosiery, textiles and shoe manufacture but later involved in engineering, as well as a steelworks. In 1936, the League of Nation’s Bureau of Statistics identified Leicester as the second richest city in Europe.
Leicester’s politics also has a radical history, and the city was a stronghold of radicalism in the mid-nineteenth century. Leading Chartist Thomas Cooper had a shop in the town and the Chartists started two riots within six years in the 1840s. In 1936, Leicester would play host the Jarrow March on its way to London. Furthermore, the Leicester Secular Society was founded in 1851, making it the world’s oldest such society. Since the end of the second world war, mass house building of both council and privately-owned housing estates, and large-scale immigration have had their impact on Leicester, and especially on its politics, as will be seen later on.
Leicester East is the 134th most deprived constituency in England, and the third most deprived in Leicestershire. It is, however, the least deprived of Leicester’s three constituencies. The seat is especially bad for income deprivation affecting older people, ranking 21st in England on this measure; income deprivation and access to deprivation are other measures where it underperforms. Deprivation is fairly uniform across the seat, although the suburb of Evington is better off, as are some areas on the city’s north eastern edge. Even so, most neighbourhoods rank in the poorest 30% in England, and none are in the richest 20%. It has a distinctly working-class labour market profile, with the proportion of the workforce employed in managerial or professional rules under 30% compared to a national average of 48%. Routine and elementary occupations, however, employ 38.7% of the seat’s workforce, more than double the national average. Leicester’s industry is still alive and well, at least in this seat, with 21.6% of jobs being in manufacturing (mostly engineering related) – compared to just 8.1% nationally. Human Health and Social Work is also above average, suggesting a large number of public sector workers. Incomes are also low in this seat, with a weekly average of just £433.60 – an eye-watering £152.90 lower than the national average. The final useful economic indicator is that a lower than average proportion of households are owner-occupied – just 58.2% compared 63.5% nationally, while social and private renting are both above average. Using the ward boundaries on which the seat was created, the lowest proportion is Charnwood ward on the northern edge – now largely replaced by Troon and North Evington wards – at 37.9% owner-occupied, and the highest figure is Rushey Mead in the north western corner at 77%. Social renting ranges from 5% of households in Rushey Mead to 37.2% in Charnwood; private renting goes from 7.6% in Thurncourt on the eastern edge to 23.3% in Coleman in the centre of the seat, now split between Troon and North Evington.
This seat’s defining demographic feature, however, is its ethnic make-up. It is one of the UK’s very few Asian majority constituencies, at 58.07%. On the current ward-boundaries, British Asians are a plurality of the population in 5 of the seven wards and a majority in four. Just 57% of the population were born in the UK, a full 30% behind the national average. 31.8% of the population identify as Hindu, 24.2% as Christian and 20% as Muslim. Finally, educational attainment in the constituency is not high. The figures are skewed by the high proportion of people with “other” qualifications – standard for an area with such a large immigrant population – but a massive 22.1% of the population have no qualifications, almost three times the national average. By contrast, just 26.8% of people in the seat are educated to level 4 or above, compared to 40.3% nationally.
As might be expected from a deprived, working-class seat with a high immigrant and a high ethnic minority population, this seat has been Labour for most of its history. The only brief exception was when the Conservatives won in their 1983 landslide, helped by the incumbent MP running for the SDP and splitting the vote. The seat has changed beyond all recognition since then, and trended seemingly inexorably towards Labour over the next 30 years. In 2017, Keith Vaz stood down after representing the area since 1987 and I don’t think it would be too controversial to say that the selection of his successor, Claudia Webbe, was a PR disaster for the party. Not only was she a councillor in Islington in Central London, but she is not of Indian descent and was associated with Labour’s resolution on Kashmir which was deeply unpopular with lots of British Indians. This storm undoubtedly contributed to the 15.3% swing from Labour to Conservative, which cut Labour’s majority to just 6,019 votes or 12.2%. Whether this is a one-off shock or the start of a long-term trend remains to be seen.
At local elections, the Labour Party has won every council seat in the constituency since 2011. At general elections, it is almost certain that they carried every ward in 2015 and 2017, and quite likely that they have done so at every election since 1997. The comparatively wealthy area of Evington and the majority-white ward of Thurncoat have been areas of relative strength for the Conservatives, and they have also won council seats in Humberston & Hamilton as recently as 2007. At the 2011 census, two wards (Latimer and Belgrave, the former now subsumed into Belgrave and Rushey Mead) were majority Hindu; Latimer was 70.9% Hindu, the highest proportion in England and Wales. Rushey Mead had the third largest proportion at 43.11%. These areas, clustered in the seat’s north western corner, will have swung hard to the Conservatives in 2019, although it’s doubtful that they will have swung hard enough to be carried by the Tories. The other majority Asian areas tend to be Muslim rather than Hindu, and will have had a much smaller swing.
Overall, this is a deprived, urban, ethnic minority constituency that should be a safe Labour seat, and has been for much of its history. The party’s recent troubles have seen their majority drastically reduced, however, and only time will tell if normal service will be resumed, or if Leicester East might have another Tory MP at some point in the near future.
