St Neots & Mid Cambridgeshire

[bsjmcr]

As I did the original South Cambridgeshire, I will do this one when I have time (as I need to research the St Neot’s bit) . Just ‘reserving’ it on here as it is one of the ‘brand new’ seats! 

[nyx]

The new constituency of St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire is formed out of the following 2010-24 constituencies: 38.3% of Huntingdon, 32.3% of South Cambridgeshire, and 15.8% of South East Cambridgeshire.

[weld]

This will impact this seat as well as South Cambs. This area is shifting against the Tories long term and a lot of the people who voted for John Major in Huntingdon in the 80s and 90s are probably dying off now Watch this space

[nyx]

Jul 9, 2023 10:21:15 GMT weld said:

This will impact this seat as well as South Cambs. This area is shifting against the Tories long term and a lot of the people who voted for John Major in Huntingdon in the 80s and 90s are probably dying off now Watch this space 

Even aside from a major expansion in development like that tweet suggests, it occurs to me that St Neots & Mid Cambs already contains most of the major housing developments in Cambridgeshire that are currently only just starting to be built. Northstowe, Cambourne West, eastern St Neots, Girton area just outside of the Cambridge city boundary. I think this is probably the top contender for the most oversized seat at the next review and will likely have to lose a considerable amount of territory then, even if the next review ends up revisiting the concept of reducing the number of seats to 600.

[bsjmcr]

Making its first appearance on the national constituency map is St Neots, and though it isn't a particularly well-known town outside Cambridgeshire, it is the largest town in Cambridgeshire (Peterborough and Cambridge are technically cities) and on some counts the third largest settlement (after the two cities) larger than Huntingdon, whose district it is part of, by and large the county's fastest-growing, it has certainly earned its right to be on the map and looks like it will be here to stay. Most readers will associate any mention of Huntingdon with John Major, a highly popular figure locally, but strictly speaking he only represented the town of St Neots for two terms, and in a nice circular fashion, his first (1979-1983) and his last (1997-2001), thanks to boundary changes which had it in the now-extinct South West Cambridgeshire for the intervening period. As the name suggests this is a seat of two components, and the Mid Cambridgeshire part is actually a large north-western strip of villages from the South Cambridgeshire district. Most of these were in the South Cambridgeshire constituency (which continues to exist, it just needed carving due to all this growth) with two wards from South East Cambridgeshire. This area is also booming in population and innovation, thanks to a certain university nearby, and it stretches right to the border with Cambridge itself.

Now St Neots is the fastest-growing town in Cambridgeshire, it may provoke images of new build identikit estates, and whilst this is the case for much of the new housing, it is actually a historic riverside market town named for a ninth-century Cornish monk whose remains were brought all the way to a monastery in the Eynesbury area, attracting a lot of attention and the town grew from there. Radical boundary changes are nothing new to this town, half of which was in Bedfordshire right up to 1965 when areas known as Eaton Ford and Eaton Socon, to the west of the River Great Ouse, which previously formed the county boundary, were moved into Huntingdonshire (part of the short-lived Huntingdon and Peterborough county), then of course Cambridgeshire in 1974. This somewhat proud and independent history, as well as its position in the far southwestern corner of the new constituency is probably why 'Mid Cambridgeshire' alone would not have cut it amongst locals. Being formerly part of Bedfordshire, the town sits roughly equidistant between Bedford and Cambridge and its growth could be owed to a growing commuter element to both places and possibly Huntingdon, plus its train station has direct services to London (though ironically not Cambridge itself). Yet, although boundaries are mostly artificial constructs, on recent census data, the town differs socio-economically to its neighbouring South Cambridgeshire area. The 'intellectual' orbit of Cambridge so far doesn't seem to have quite reached this area, though time will tell. Look at a choropleth map showing qualification levels, and as soon as you cross the Huntingdon border into the town, it comes up much paler, with the proportion of graduates at below-average levels, particularly in the Eaton Socon and Eynesbury parts. Even in the rest of the town its MSOAs peak at around a third, in line with the national average. In the South Cambridgeshire parts, most areas are made up of over 50% graduates. Similar patterns emerge when looking at occupations and levels of professionals. 

Entering South Cambs, heading eastwards along the A428, the next biggest settlement here is Cambourne, not to be confused with the Cornish one (Camborne). Unlike St Neots, it didn’t exist 30 years ago - look on any old satellite image and all you will see is a field. Its population has now swelled to over 12,000, made up of the usual identikit noughties era houses, mostly detached, with more to come. It is more than just a housing estate however, but an established village now with supermarket, pub, hotel, primary school, church, and the headquarters of the district council - a rather large businesslike complex, not your typical town hall at all. The council was previously based in Cambridge proper, outside the district itself! Cambourne does suffer from its relative isolation from Cambridge, having relatively poor transport links - no train, either a car down the A428 or a normal bus service. The controversial Cambridge-St Ives guided busway, which cuts through the constituency and is the longest such busway in the world, goes nowhere near Cambourne. And for a city which cycles so much, there is no dedicated cycle lane either. The (Lib Dem) South Cambridgeshire District Council was also the first to trial a four-day working week, which is still ongoing, and is being extensively studied by the university. The government has tried and failed to stop the pioneering trial. 

Of course the image of Cambourne is nowhere near representative of the Mid Cambs component of the constituency, the rest of which is made of picturesque villages dotted about the fens, too many to list here. Typical are thatched cottages, parish councils, village halls, village greens and quaint names such as Papworth Everard, Bar Hill, Over and Willingham, and Great Paxton (taken from Huntingdon). Of those, Bar Hill is not only a bit of a misnomer (there are no hills round here) but also slightly incongruous and relatively less attractive than the others, being an isolated 1960s-planned village (pop. 4,000) with, given its era, decidedly drab architecture to boot. It has some light industry, and a massive Tesco. Demographically, it leans more to St Neots than the other South Cambs villages. Meanwhile, Madingley is home to the university’s ‘Institute for Continuing Education’ (not a college, but a department delivering short courses and certificates to people who can afford them) at the beautiful Madingley Hall, a former stately home complete with Capability Brown gardens and rented by Queen Victoria for her son Edward VII to live in while he was a student at Cambridge - rather nice student accommodation if you can get it!

Another village, Girton, is the one that contains the somewhat isolated eponymous Cambridge college; its distance from the city being the butt of all jokes amongst students. Opened in 1869 as the first women’s college, it was also the first to go mixed in 1976, and made of attractive redbrick, giving a sort of ‘boarding school’ look, set in swathes of fields and orchards. Just down the road is one of the major hubs of population growth on this side of the constituency, at Eddington, half of which is in this constituency and half in the city of Cambridge. Even on current Google Maps much of it is still a field. The futuristic development opened in 2017 and will house 3,000 residents - staff, students and recent graduates, is mostly made of apartments including an accommodation annexe of Girton College, and aims to be sustainable and a settlement in itself, having its own supermarket and primary school. It also has a unique underground waste collection system - you won’t find a single wheelie bin there. It is also known as North-West Cambridge, its original name before it was given the name Eddington after a local alumnus, mathematician and astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944).

Politics now, and while the description of the two named parts of this new seat may have made it sound a little chalk and cheese, these areas would have been united in Conservatism throughout most of history, whether it be across Huntingdon or the former South West/South Cambridgeshire constituencies, until Brexit at least. Deprivation in St Neots certainly isn't high by any stretch and not at the levels seen in, say parts of Peterborough or even Huntingdon, just slightly less affluent relative to the South Cambs parts. The South Cambridgeshire district and constituency however has rapidly swung away from the Conservatives to the Lib Dems, who won control of the council back in 2018, and gave the Tories a further trouncing in 2022, though note some of the few wards they managed to cling on do happen to be in this constituency, but this really is a low Bar (Hill) after such a derisory result. At the 2019 general election, the South Cambridgeshire seat had one of the biggest pro-Lib Dem swings reducing a conservative majority of nearly 16,000 to just under 3,000 on what was an otherwise disastrous night for them. This is largely due to South Cambs' 60% vote for Remain. The outspoken outgoing local MP from 2015 was Heidi Allen, who defected from the Conservatives over Brexit to Change UK 'the Independent Group' (remember them?) then the Lib Dems before standing down. Prior to this was Andrew Lansley, first safely elected in 1997 who would become Health Secretary prior to Jeremy Hunt. In South East Cambridgeshire, from which two SCDC wards (Histon and Impington, and Over and Willingham, both very safely LD now) join this one, where there was also a swing towards the Lib Dems though they remained a distant second behind Lucy Frazer, now Culture Secretary. 

On the other hand, in Huntingdon, the Lib Dems have fared less well, unsurprisingly for a district that voted 54% to Leave. At general elections, it is Labour that have been distant runners-up since 2015, behind Jonathan Djanogly, who is less well-known than his Major predecessor. It is hard to tell though purely from local election results how St Neots would vote at a general election as in recent years it has been won by an eclectic mix of independents, Conservatives, Greens and on one occasion Labour, by Nik Johnson who would later go on to be Mayor of Cambridgeshire 'and Peterborough'. There is clearly some discontent with the Tories on a local level at least, because the St Neots independent group candidates have been defeating Conservatives (Labour don't even contest some wards). In 2023, the Lib Dems did manage to make a gain in the Eatons division at a County Council by-election. Whether this be a by-election blip that they are good at, or a sign of them making inroads that could benefit them at a general election remains to be seen.

It is this potential confusion between who is best placed to oust the Conservatives across this area which may have led to the decision of the incumbent South Cambs MP, Anthony Browne, to take advantage of this, and contest this seat rather than what's left of South Cambs where the Lib Dems on current trends would be in pole position. This will turn out to be a re-match, for his narrowly defeated opponent last time, Ian Sollom, has also been selected as the Lib Dem candidate here.

Various polling predictions have either predicted the Conservative to cling on thanks to a split opposition or a narrow Labour gain but with a substantial Lib Dem showing. Yet this seat was also identified as a 'non-battleground' seat for the Labour Party according to an internal list. In all, this is an area that is moving away from the Conservatives in all directions, yet has the potential to deliver what could be one of the most remarkable, nail-biting results at the next election, and could be the one they hold by the skin of their teeth. From the Nobel Prize winning professor in one of the South Cambridgeshire villages, to skilled workers in their new homes in St Neots, voters wishing to show their discontent with the government across this brand new constituency will have to be decisive and make their minds up. 

[nyx]

Thrasher and Rallings notional:

Con 25,670 (51.3%)
LD 13,420 (26.8%)
Labour 9,414 (18.8%)
Green 853 (1.7%)
Other 686 (1.4%)
Con majority of 12,250 (24.5%)

Nb: of the predecessor constituencies only Huntingdon had a Green candidate, which explains the low Green performance in the notional.

Seems to be one of the top Lib Dem target seats so my instinct is to predict a Lib Dem gain here with Labour being squeezed, though having seen the weird Labour gains from third place to first in 1997, who knows?

[YL]

I'm slightly surprised to see "quaint" and "Bar Hill" in the same sentence, though to be fair it was the name you said was quaint. Odd place, and a bit different demographically from the rest of the South Cambs component of this constituency. This appears on the map I made of professional employment in Cambridgeshire, as does the fading out of the Cambridge demographic effect towards St Neots:


This does feel like a constituency where any of a Lib Dem win, a Labour win or a Conservative win on a split opposition vote would be quite possible on current polling, with Labour not quite as out of it as in South Cambs or Ely & East. However the Lib Dem win in a county council by-election in St Neots in February 2023 might be quite a promising sign for their organisation in that part of the constituency.

[Robert Waller]

2021 Census New Boundaries (ranks England and Wales)

Age 65+ 17.4% 357/575
Owner occupied 70.8% 160/575
Private rented 15.3% 424/575
Social rented 13.9% 345/575
White 89.6% 296/575
Black 1.4% 280/575
Asian 5.1% 264/575
Managerial & professional 43.5% 58/575
Routine & Semi-routine 18.7% 450/575
Degree level 42.2% 89/575
No qualifications 12.6% 522/575
Students 5.6% 295/575

Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_100_St%20Neots%20and%20Mid%20Cambridgeshire_Landscape.pdf

[bigfatron]

Jan 24, 2024 8:49:31 GMT YL said:

I'm slightly surprised to see "quaint" and "Bar Hill" in the same sentence, though to be fair it was the name you said was quaint. Odd place, and a bit different demographically from the rest of the South Cambs component of this constituency. This appears on the map I made of professional employment in Cambridgeshire, as does the fading out of the Cambridge demographic effect towards St Neots:


This does feel like a constituency where any of a Lib Dem win, a Labour win or a Conservative win on a split opposition vote would be quite possible on current polling, with Labour not quite as out of it as in South Cambs or Ely & East. However the Lib Dem win in a county council by-election in St Neots in February 2023 might be quite a promising sign for their organisation in that part of the constituency.

Two of my children moved to St Neots (to be precise, Eaton Ford) a couple of years ago and we spend a lot of time there as a result - in fact I am typing from there as I cat-sit for one of my daughters' moggies...
St Neots is a really pleasant town that is expanding extremely rapidly - the population was 20,000 a while back, is around 40,000 now, and expected to be around 60,000 once the in-progress developments are complete.

The impression I have formed is that the localists were the only real opposition to the Tories in St Neots town until very recently, but both the Greens and Lib Dems have taken up the mantle in the last two years to some good effect.
As in some many places, concerns lie around the cost of living, the closure of many high street shops and hollowing out of the town as a shopping centre, and healthcare - the GPs are all super busy, the local hospital (Hinchingbrook in Huntingdon) has major problems, and there is no chance of seeing an NHS dentist!

I agree that this feels like a rare,  real three-way marginal; one open question is where do Labour and the Lib Dems put their efforts in this area? Cambridge is solid for Labour now, South Cambs is clearly the Lib Dems first target, but both St Neots and Ely & East Cambs are candidates for second choice. Labour have a plethora of targets in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Northants, all of which are pretty close by. This looks like the only seat in the county where they may just trip over each other...

[batman]

The very first real ale I ever tried was Paine's EG (this stood both for Eynesbury Giant & Extra Gravity) which was brewed in St Neots. It was fantastic stuff & for a number of years my then friend & I went to considerable lengths to get some of it; he was in Bedford & I was in Cambridge, so we would sometimes meet in St Neots where Paines had a few pubs. (This was before we owned cars, we had to get the bus there.) They were a small brewery and didn't own any in either Bedford or Cambridge, the nearest being a village called Bolnhurst not many miles from Bedford. Sadly they were swallowed up by Tolly Cobbold before they too were swallowed up & the beer is no more. I never saw their beer on sale anywhere in Cambridge. In the many years that followed their closure I have been to St Neots just once. John Major still had Paines pubs in his constituency when he was first elected.

[finsobruce]

Jan 24, 2024 19:03:03 GMT batman said:

The very first real ale I ever tried was Paine's EG (this stood both for Eynesbury Giant & Extra Gravity) which was brewed in St Neots. It was fantastic stuff & for a number of years my then friend & I went to considerable lengths to get some of it; he was in Bedford & I was in Cambridge, so we would sometimes meet in St Neots where Paines had a few pubs. They were a small brewery and didn't own any in either Bedford or Cambridge, the nearest being a village called Bolnhurst not many miles from Bedford. Sadly they were swallowed up by Tolly Cobbold before they too were swallowed up & the beer is no more. I never saw their beer on sale anywhere in Cambridge. In the many years that followed their closure I have been to St Neots just once. John Major still had Paines pubs in his constituency when he was first elected.

www.stneotsmuseum.org.uk/collections/paines-brewery-history-brewing-st-neots/

[bsjmcr]

Jan 24, 2024 16:15:10 GMT Robert Waller said:

2021 Census New Boundaries (ranks England and Wales)

Age 65+ 17.4% 357/575
Owner occupied 70.8% 160/575
Private rented 15.3% 424/575
Social rented 13.9% 345/575
White 89.6% 296/575
Black 1.4% 280/575
Asian 5.1% 264/575
Managerial & professional 43.5% 58/575
Routine & Semi-routine 18.7% 450/575
Degree level 42.2% 89/575
No qualifications 12.6% 522/575
Students 5.6% 295/575

Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_100_St%20Neots%20and%20Mid%20Cambridgeshire_Landscape.pdf

Thanks for this and apologies it took so long, I really had to do my homework on St Neots, and hope I did it justice (I am probably not selling it very well, it isn't really a place that Cambridge day-trippers think of going to! As I say there is no direct train to Cambridge for starters). 

I'm probably not selling it even further with the below observation but I am surprised by how much its addition has brought down some of the percentages and rankings compared to the existing South Cambridgeshire. Perhaps St Neots is more fitting in Mid Bedfordshire than Mid Cambridgeshire. I remember the descriptions of all the villages at the by-election and they seemed similar, affluent, fast-growing new estates, true blue (until now, and with a handful of independents), but not exceptionally high in graduates either, and they went for Labour rather than the LDs (despite some of the huffing and puffing by the latter at the beginning). 

2021 Census - Old South Cambridgeshire

Owner occupied 71.2% 146/573
Private rented 13.8% 487/573
Social rented 14.9% 302/573
White 87.4%
Black 1.4%
Asian 6.9%
Managerial & professional 47.5% 18/573
Routine & Semi-routine 15.0% 526/573
Degree level 49.1% 39/573
No qualifications 11.2% 553/573