Most disparate constituencies

[bsjmcr]

Was struggling to find a title for this thread, most 'divided' seemed well, divisive, and most diverse could mean many things (economically, ethnically, etc - Blackley and Broughton would be one of the most diverse, but united in its relative deprivation and Labour support) , but I was thinking which constituencies are the ultimate shotgun marriage seats, the sorts of places where there is a significant area that is likely not to have voted for the elected MP (but he/she will have to still represent!), for example places with an urban, deprived core not big enough so with a rural fringe, or a significant council estate in an otherwise prosperous blue area. 

I was thinking Oldham East and Saddleworth, and Wythenshawe and Sale East, for starters. I think Oldham East and Saddleworth has it all. Deprived town centre, including diverse wards, some where White British are a minority, and some WWC estates, then rural countryside comprising not only of farmers, retirees, seven-figure houses, but also trendy young professionals moving out of the city for Pennine views, a sort of Didsbury-in-the-Hills. This is typified in that Oldham contains the ward with the highest Life Expectancy in Greater Manchester at over 80 (Saddleworth South IIRC) and one of the lowest (Alexandra I think) at around 10 years less. 

[batman]

Kensington deserves a mention. So many wards with completely implacable Tory support, and yet some very big Labour strongholds. There are many other very polarised constituencies.

[andrewp]

Meriden is always worth an entry for this. Some of the wealthiest areas in the country in Meriden and the tower blocks of Chelmsley Wood in the same constituency.

[bsjmcr]

Jan 2, 2022 18:27:31 GMT batman said:

Kensington deserves a mention. So many wards with completely implacable Tory support, and yet some very big Labour strongholds. There are many other very polarised constituencies.

What has led to it switching to Labour in 2017 (and remaining ultra-marginal in 2019)? Increased turnout in the Labour strongholds (which I assume may usually have a low turnout) or the wealthy areas, being 'London Metropolitan' as they say, switching to Labour, or both?

[bsjmcr]

Jan 2, 2022 18:27:38 GMT andrewp said:

Meriden is always worth an entry for this. Some of the wealthiest areas in the country in Meriden and the tower blocks of Chelmsley Wood in the same constituency.

Fascinating. The 1997 result reflects this (500 majority) but it's now over 20,000. Did the Conservatives and Caroline Spelman work the tower block area hard, or did they become attracted by Brexit, or not turn out? I guess comparing LE results to GE usually exposes any split voting/personal vote factor of the incumbent/local vs national issues. 

[mondialito]

Jan 2, 2022 18:32:52 GMT bsjmcr said:

Jan 2, 2022 18:27:31 GMT batman said:

Kensington deserves a mention. So many wards with completely implacable Tory support, and yet some very big Labour strongholds. There are many other very polarised constituencies.

What has led to it switching to Labour in 2017 (and remaining ultra-marginal in 2019)? Increased turnout in the Labour strongholds (which I assume may usually have a low turnout) or the wealthy areas, being 'London Metropolitan' as they say, switching to Labour, or both?

I would say a combination of Brexit turning wealthy remainers off the Tories and Corbyn boosting turnout among poorer BAME voters in the north of the constituency, in line with much of London.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Eton and Slough used to have a claim but unfortunately the odd couple got split up by the Boundary Commission in 1983.

Rochford and Southend East goes from the centre of a City (newly created) to a large rural area, and also includes the very wierd rural island of Foulness which is cut off from everywhere else by the large MoD site at Shoeburyness.

[Clark]

If Bearsden ever got coupled with Drumchapel that would take some beating. I realise it won't as one is East Dumbartonshire and one is Glasgow but they're very close.

[bjornhattan]

There are a few in the North East. The two South East Northumberland seats are perhaps the clearest examples - Cramlington and Morpeth are both relatively middle class commuter towns (the former has moved upmarket in recent years and still has pockets of deprivation, the latter is more of a traditional market town). They are respectively paired with Blyth and Ashington - two of the most deprived towns in the country - forming the constituencies of Blyth Valley and Wansbeck.

Traditionally Cramlington and Morpeth would have been politically mixed, while Blyth and Ashington would have been monolithically Labour. But now the Conservatives will be comfortably ahead in the former two, and at least winning a decent minority in the latter two - which is why both seats in the area are now marginals.

One question is how large the various components have to be for a seat to be considered disparate - do they have to be similar sized, or does a constituency with most wards fairly similar but one or two massive exceptions qualify? For example, North East Fife is mostly reasonably affluent small towns which are quite unionist (and at the moment, Lib Dems). However, a small minority of the seat is Leven which is very working class and strongly SNP voting. Is Leven large enough to make that a disparate constituency?

[bsjmcr]

Jan 2, 2022 18:45:14 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Eton and Slough used to have a claim but unfortunately the odd couple got split up by the Boundary Commission in 1983.

Yes feel free to nominate historic (and proposed!) ones too. Prestwich and Middleton (abolished 1983 and was proposed in the now abandoned boundary review) is aptly described on Wikipedia:
"It was an unusual constituency, because Middleton and Prestwich were physically separated by Heaton Park, a large green area bequeathed to Manchester City Council, and had nothing whatsoever in common. Prestwich was a well established middle class suburb with a large Jewish minority, and during the inter-war years boasted several millionaires. Middleton, on the other hand, was greatly expanded by a large Manchester overspill council estate, and at one point during the 1950s, Prestwich had no Labour councillors, while Middleton had no Conservatives"
Of course the difference is somewhat less disparate now, though the shape of the constituency would be no nicer, Heaton Park still exists, but Prestwich is now made of Labour/LD councillors, and Alkrington wouldn't look out of place in Prestwich while the small estate in Prestwich on the boundary with Salford (Kersal), and much of the Besses ward of Whitefield, wouldn't look out of place in Langley. 

Marple and Hyde (which has a great name, like a detective book) was also suggested in the previous boundary review. 

[bsjmcr]

Jan 2, 2022 18:57:08 GMT bjornhattan said:

There are a few in the North East. The two South East Northumberland seats are perhaps the clearest examples - Cramlington and Morpeth are both relatively middle class commuter towns (the former has moved upmarket in recent years and still has pockets of deprivation, the latter is more of a traditional market town). They are respectively paired with Blyth and Ashington - two of the most deprived towns in the country - forming the constituencies of Blyth Valley and Wansbeck.

Traditionally Cramlington and Morpeth would have been politically mixed, while Blyth and Ashington would have been monolithically Labour. But now the Conservatives will be comfortably ahead in the former two, and at least winning a decent minority in the latter two - which is why both seats in the area are now marginals.

One question is how large the various components have to be for a seat to be considered disparate - do they have to be similar sized, or does a constituency with most wards fairly similar but one or two massive exceptions qualify? For example, North East Fife is mostly reasonably affluent small towns which are quite unionist (and at the moment, Lib Dems). However, a small minority of the seat is Leven which is very working class and strongly SNP voting. Is Leven large enough to make that a disparate constituency?

On the first part - this is why I find this quite interesting. The symbolic nature of the Blyth Valley gain in the media means that the whole place gets shoehorned in with the 'Red Wall' label when it appears below the surface there were already fertile areas for the Conservatives.

There's no hard and fast criteria, it's not a competition! It would be interesting to see if there were any with an area large enough to change a result - but in NE Fife one street could do that... or which area could be as close to 50:50 where it would be a straight battle between the two halves (old Prestwich and Middleton comes to mind). I wouldn't be considering small isolated estates particularly where an incumbent could get away with not touching them or one sparse rural ward in a safe Labour seat. The idea of Osborne or McVey canvassing an isolated estate in Tatton is an amusing but unlikely one. 

[Richard Allen]

Wolverhampton South West certainly deserves a mention. It contains the city centre, some really grim inner city areas, a nice middle class inner city area, student areas, council estates, run of the mill suburbs, well too do Asian heavy suburbs and true blue Tory heartlands outside of the city proper.

[greenhert]

Jan 2, 2022 18:27:31 GMT batman said:

Kensington deserves a mention. So many wards with completely implacable Tory support, and yet some very big Labour strongholds. There are many other very polarised constituencies.

Definitely Kensington, although Westminster North deserves an honourable (or dishonourable) mention as well.

[Pete Whitehead]

Jan 2, 2022 18:40:40 GMT mondialito said:

Jan 2, 2022 18:32:52 GMT bsjmcr said:

What has led to it switching to Labour in 2017 (and remaining ultra-marginal in 2019)? Increased turnout in the Labour strongholds (which I assume may usually have a low turnout) or the wealthy areas, being 'London Metropolitan' as they say, switching to Labour, or both?

I would say a combination of Brexit turning wealthy remainers off the Tories and Corbyn boosting turnout among poorer BAME voters in the north of the constituency, in line with much of London.

The other issue there (and in Westminster North which bears some similarities - also to an extent in the Cities), is that the wealthier properties are increasingly owned and occupied (or not) by the kind of foreign nationals who do not have votes (US and EU citizens, Russians, Chinese etc)

[andrewp]

Jan 2, 2022 18:37:53 GMT bsjmcr said:

Jan 2, 2022 18:27:38 GMT andrewp said:

Meriden is always worth an entry for this. Some of the wealthiest areas in the country in Meriden and the tower blocks of Chelmsley Wood in the same constituency.

Fascinating. The 1997 result reflects this (500 majority) but it's now over 20,000. Did the Conservatives and Caroline Spelman work the tower block area hard, or did they become attracted by Brexit, or not turn out? I guess comparing LE results to GE usually exposes any split voting/personal vote factor of the incumbent/local vs national issues. 

I suspect a bit of all of those. Turnout will be lower in Chelmsley Wood than in Meriden and Knowle. Also there will have been new housing built in the Meriden part since 1997 and less new housing in Chelmsley Wood I assume, and  the types of houses that have been built will also have tipped the balance to the Conservatives a bit. Also, as has been commented on many times in the past on here, the Greens now win huge victories in local elections in Chelmsley wood, and whilst that doesn’t translate ( yet) into Green general election votes, the activism of the Greens in the area has probably loosened the habit of voting Labour there. In a 1997 style Labour landslide now, I would certainly expect the Conservative majority here to be comfortably more than 500 

[John Chanin]

While not disparate politically, my home constituency of Birmingham Hall Green is hugely disparate socially, including some of the most well educated and richest people in Birmingham, alongside the most deprived ward in the city, on top of a 50-50 Muslim non-Muslim split.

[islington]

I'd also nominate my home seat of Islington South, which contains some areas of really severe deprivation cheek by jowl with 2 or 3 million pound townhouses inhabited by media types, high-flying lawyers and the like.

This disparity is not reflected in the seat's politics, because both groups of voters tend to vote Labour (although for entirely different reasons).

The social mix is reflected in other ways, for instance you can find a cheap-as-chips (and everything with chips) greasy spoon cafe, and a few doors along some top-end restaurant of the type that doesn't put prices on its menu on the grounds that if you have to worry about the price, you can't afford it. 

 

[iain]

Hendon would be a good shout I think.

[Clark]

I think most seats will have big variations within them. My own seat of Aberdeen South has some poor areas south of the River Dee in the ex council estates such as Torry but it also takes in some very wealthy areas such as the exclusive Dalmunzie Road in Bieldside in the 'Lower Deeside' ward.

Some of the Edinburgh seats will be like this too

[batman]

Jan 2, 2022 18:27:38 GMT andrewp said:

Meriden is always worth an entry for this. Some of the wealthiest areas in the country in Meriden and the tower blocks of Chelmsley Wood in the same constituency.

during the 1997-2005 period, Meriden was the only Conservative seat in the top 50 (I think it was) most deprived constituencies, because, as you say, of Chelmsley Wood. Of course it was very close to going Labour in 1997