Brigg and Goole

[The Bishop]

I await this one with interest - is it actually the seat that has moved most against Labour (outside Scotland, at any rate) since the 2005 GE?

It certainly can't be far off.

[Robert Waller]

The electoral history of constituencies with Brigg in their title is long, varied and interesting. There was a time when this small market town, which in the far north of Lincolnshire, as its inhabitants will be quick to tell you, had a seat name to itself – one of the shortest, at five letters. Indeed it was rather a long time, from 1885 to February 1974. However for the second half of that period the electoral outcome was in fact decided by what became a much larger town, unrecognized in the title. The gritty, unglamorous steel metropolis with a notably unlovely name, Scunthorpe, steadily grew at the rate of around 10,000 extra population per decade from 11,000 in 1901 to 45,000 in 1941 and 67,000 in 1961. As a direct consequence, the Brigg division’s first Labour MP Albert Quibell was elected in 1929, and then that party held the representation from 1935 right through to 1974.

At that point Scunthorpe was finally recognised in the name of a parliamentary seat, the logical Brigg and Scunthorpe (the authority based on Brigg created in the 1970s reforms, Glanford, entirely surrounded Scunthorpe like a doughnut). John Ellis retained the renamed seat in the two 1974 elections, but then lost to a colourful young Conservative, Michael Brown, in the Thatcher gain of 1979. However that seat only existed for nine years. In 1983, Brigg and Scunthorpe were finally separated. The new Glanford & Scunthorpe was rather oddly named, as it only included nine of Glanford borough’s 22 wards and Scunthorpe was far more populous. Meanwhile Brigg itself was paired for the first time with the seaside town of Cleethorpes.

Brigg and Cleethorpes also lasted for only three elections, all won by Michael Brown. Then in 1997 Cleethorpes got a seat of its won and, as in a rustic dance ritual, Brigg yet again had a new partner – for the first time venturing into north Humberside (otherwise known as Yorkshire) to pair with the port of Goole on the river Ouse. For some years it looked as if this rather ill-matched marriage had created a classic marginal, swinging with the political tide. It could be characterised as a Labour-inclined section based on Goole, versus a Tory Brigg and other terrain south of the Humber. In the three Blair elections, Ian Cawsey won Brigg and Goole for Labour, then in 2010, when the Conservatives took the most seats nationally, their candidate Andrew Percy won here. However, since then, this seat has become dramatically more Conservative. In 2015, Percy’s majority more than doubled from 5,000 to 11,000. Then between 2017 and 2019 there was a further swing of 11.6% that increased the Tory lead to nearly 22,000. Their share was now over 71%, Labour’s in second place a paltry 20%. Not only was Brigg & Goole by no stretch of the imagination marginal; it was the 12th safest of the 380 they won in 2019. This is one of the most numerically dramatic transformations in the nation.

What happened was that Labour collapsed in their traditional working class section of the seat, Goole. Though administratively placed in Humberside from 1974 and then the East Riding since 1996, the gritty river port was historically in the West Riding. This is a part of the country that is similar in character to other parts of Yorkshire that swung very heavily such as Rother Valley and Don Valley, and for the same reasons – principally Labour’s apparent unwillingness to accept the 2016 referendum result, in which over 66% of the voters this constituency voted to leave. In the May 2019 local elections in the East Riding Labour lost all their seats in the two Goole wards as well as it its lengthily named rural ward: Snaith, Airmyn, Rawcliffe and Marshland.

Labour had never done well south of the Humber. Brigg is an ancient market town known for its traditional horse fair, and associated folk song, Brigg Fair – and less traditionally, for its outstanding Chinese restaurant, Harry Kar, which was to be found in the unlikely location of the town municipal car park. Also in the North Lincolnshire section are Burringham, Gunness and Burton upon Stather on the banks of the Trent as it flows towards the Humber; the large villages of Winterton and Broughton; and, to break the general flat monotony of the scenery in this seat, a small section of the Lincolnshire Wolds. It also includes the Isle of Axholme, one of England’s inland isles like Ely and Oxney, squeezed between the Trent, the Don and the Idle. Axholme is probably less well known than it deserves – there is a feeling of remoteness and being bypassed here, but in the 18th century it was the home of John and Charles Wesley, who were born in its main community of Epworth. Despite the historic connection of Methodism with Liberalism, all these areas have been strongly Conservative throughout living memory, with the partial exception of Gunness/Burringham, last won by Labour in 2015.

They also tend to be proudly of Lincolnshire. This Brigg & Goole seat is the clearest example of a Humberside creation. This notion was unpopular from its origin in 1974, but the justification for this ‘odd couple’ seat is even odder given that Humberside was abolished as an administrative unit as long ago as 1996 and its replacement by a number of unitary authorities with names reflecting the historic and ceremonial counties, such as North Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, and East Riding of Yorkshire. With the characterization of ‘Yellowbellies and Yorkies’, many Lincolnshire and Yorkshire folk saw the wide river as a source of division not unity – and still do, despite the massive and unexpected convergence of the political preferences of the two sections in 2019 behind the Conservative party.

However, resolution may be in sight. Like most of the other ‘Humberside’ seats, including Great Grimsby, Scunthorpe and the three in Hull, Brigg and Goole is substantially undersized and hence overrepresented – its electorate in December 2019 was 64,365, at least 10,000 too few. The Boundary Commission’s next report will undoubtedly recommend major changes in this part of England. If Brigg survives yet again as a named participant in the ‘excuse me’ dance of rotating constituencies, we shall have to wait and see if it has yet another partner, and whether any vestige of Humberside remains. Wherever it finds itself, though, is highly unlikely to be marginal again for a very long time to come.

2011 Census

Age 65+ 19.1% 172/650
Owner-occupied 72.8% 133/650
Private rented 13.6% 360/650
Social rented 11.9% 499/650
White 98.3% 75/650
Black 0.1% 618/650
Asian 0.8% 565/650
Managerial & professional 26.6%
Routine & Semi Routine 32.4%
Degree level 20.6% 486/650
No qualifications 26.1% 263/650
Students 5.4% 598/650


2021 Census

Owner occupied 70.7% /573
Private rented 17.8% /573
Social rented 11.5% /573
White 97.7%
Black 0.2%
Asian 0.9%
Managerial & professional 27.7% 416/573
Routine & Semi-routine 31.2% 59/573
Degree level 24.7% 494/573
No qualifications 21.2% 150/573







General Election 2019: Brigg and Goole

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Conservative Andrew Percy 30,941 71.3 +10.9
Labour Majid Khan 9,000 20.7 -12.2
Liberal Democrats David Dobbie 2,180 5.0 +3.2
Green Jo Baker 1,281 3.0 +1.7

C Majority 21,941 50.6 +23.2

Turnout 43,402 65.8 -2.4

Conservative hold
Swing to C from Labour +11.6