Post by Robert Waller on Jul 30, 2023 16:32:51 GMT
Tucked into a geographical corner and around the correct electorate quota, the constituency will still include the whole of the borough of Gosport plus two the wards, Hill Head and Stubbington, from neighbouring Fareham, and thus be one of eight constituencies in the Berkshire/Hampshire/Surrey sub-region to remain entirely unchanged in the Boundary Commission for England’s ‘2023 review’.
In early print editions of The Almanac of British Politics, I made the point that Gosport was consistently one of the less strongly middle-class constituencies to rank as a safe Conservative seat. The evidence was that it had one of the lowest percentages of professional and managerial workers of any Tory division – only 25% at the time of the 1991 Census, for example. This figure was a good indicator of the predominant class tone of a seat, and usually, in the era of ‘class voting’ of its political preferences. Yet it withstood the tidal advance of New Labour between 1997 and 2005, a high water mark for the party, and the town has never had a Labour MP, including in 1966 as part of Gosport & Fareham and in 1945 as part of Fareham.
Nowadays in the age when everyone seems to know about the collapse of Labour’s so-called Red Wall, and the electoral transformation in recent general elections which has seen the Conservatives take constituencies such as Mansfield and Bolsover, Bishop Auckland and Rother Valley, and all the seats in gritty Stoke-on-Trent, Gosport is no longer any kind of dramatic outlier, even though it still ranks well into the top half of those employed in routine and semi-routine occupations, and below half way on higher managerial, administrative and professional employment. However what still does suggest that an explanation of the strength of its preference for Conservatives is still needed is that it now has the 21st safest of all the 380 Tory majorities recorded in December 2019, which might surprise those taking a tour of this south Hampshire seat.
How is this electoral history explained? One main clue lies in Gosport’s high ‘armed services’ vote, for the town is but a mile across the water from Portsmouth, and Royal Navy bases abound. In the most recent census the Gosport seat was placed at no.3 in the order of employment in ‘public administration and defence’, behind only the ‘Salisbury Plain’ army constituency of Devizes and Richmond (Yorkshire) which includes Catterick Camp. The services, like the defence and arms industries, have traditionally offered solid support to the Conservatives regardless of social class, seeing that party as by far the most likely to respect their role and guarantee their jobs. The constituency of Gosport is also over 96% white and is below average for the proportion of university graduates and full time students, and voted around 62% to 38% to leave the EU. It may not be upper class; it is not left-wing.
Parts of Gosport still look unlikely settings for such strong Conservatism, for example the town centre just across the narrow sea channel from Portsmouth’s Spinnaker tower and naval docks, and parts of Rowner, despite the demolition of its notorious estate of brutalist tower blocks by 2015
As well as Rowner, Forton, Grange and the two Bridgemary wards also still have a sizeable promotion of socially rented houses. There are, however, a variety of neighbourhoods within the Gosport constituency, including seaside wards such as Alverstoke, Anglesey and the coastal part Lee-on-Solent, all of which have over 25% of residents (and even more voters) over 65 years of age, while inland Elson and Hardway are heavily (over 70%) owner occupied.
The Labour party makes very little impact in Gosport local elections, as well as parliamentary contests; in fact in the May 2021 Hampshire county council elections Labour won no wards at all, and only polled 13% across the 17 wards in the borough (it might be noted that Wikipedia’ summary of 22% is incorrect), whereas previously they had at least taken the central Town ward. However, municipally Gosport is not a one-party state. In the most recent borough council elections, all out on new boundaries in May 2022, the Liberal Democrats took overall control, returning 16 councillors to the Conservatives’ 10. The LDs won both seats in Bridgemary, Brockhurst & Privett, Elson, Forton, Hardway, Leesland & Newton and Rowner & Holbrook, and one of the two in Lee East and Peel Common (in both of which they only put up a single candidate). The only wards where the Tories held both were Alverstoke, Anglesey, Grange & Alver Valley and Lee West – notable none in the town of Gosport itself, where Labour actually got back onto the council by taking the two seats available in the central Harbourside & Town. The two Fareham borough wards included in this constituency, Hill Head and Stubbington they behaved differently in May 2022 from those in Gosport, with the Conservatives winning both and even gaining Stubbington (compared with 2018) from the LDs with a 12% swing.
Overall in 2022, even in Gosport borough the Conservative still received slightly more votes than the Liberal Democrats, 42.8% to their 40.9%, with Labour back on 12%. However this was because the LDs did not put up a full slate of candidates in four wards, including none in Lee West, clearly targeting their efforts. Their success came in varied areas, from 77% owner occupied Elson to Bridgemary with its ex-council housing, though more inland than on the coast. Their consistent record of local government achievement is based on the hard grind of local activity and campaigning– and it cannot necessarily be translated into parliamentary terms.
In general elections they haven’t even reached second place since 2010, and in 2019 managed a poor third with 11%, only around a third of the Liberal share here back in 1987. The Liberal Democrats could perhaps build on their local efforts to regain second place, but it is very hard to see Gosport as anything other than a Conservative stronghold for the foreseeable future. With a full two thirds of the share of the vote in the 2019 general election, a huge negative swing would be needed even to drop below a 50% plus overall majority, and even then the opposition would be significantly divided. Gosport will remain as a somewhat unlikely looking Conservative stronghold, off the beaten track geographically, and probably highly untypical in the 2024 general election results as a whole.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 18.6% 197/650
Owner-occupied 68.0% 282/650
Private rented 15.2% 266/650
Social rented 14.9% 357/650
White 96.7% 257/650
Black 0.6% 326/650
Asian 1.2% 465/650
Managerial & professional 31.6%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.6%
Employed in public administration and defence 15.0% 3/650
Degree level 23.0% 398/650
No qualifications 21.2% 400/650
Students 6.2% 450/650
2021 Census
Age 65+ 23.0% 131/575
Owner occupied 67.4% 244/575
Private rented 17.8% 305/575
Social rented 14.8% 296/575
White 95.6% 163/575
Black 1.1% 314/575
Asian 1.4% 461/575
Managerial & professional 32.8% 280/575
Routine & Semi-routine 26.3% 197/575
Degree level 26.4% 445/575
No qualifications 16.9% 337/575
Students 4.6% 457/575
General Election 2019: Gosport
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Caroline Dinenage 32,226 66.5 +4.6
Labour Tom Chatwin 8,948 18.5 -8.7
Liberal Democrats Martin Pepper 5,473 11.3 +6.6
Green Zoe Aspinall 1,806 3.7 +1.6
C Majority 23,278 48.0 +13.3
Turnout 49,481 65.9 -0.8
Conservative hold
Swing 6.6 Lab to C
Boundary Changes and 2019 Notional Results
N/A Unchanged seat
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_323_Gosport_Landscape.pdf
In early print editions of The Almanac of British Politics, I made the point that Gosport was consistently one of the less strongly middle-class constituencies to rank as a safe Conservative seat. The evidence was that it had one of the lowest percentages of professional and managerial workers of any Tory division – only 25% at the time of the 1991 Census, for example. This figure was a good indicator of the predominant class tone of a seat, and usually, in the era of ‘class voting’ of its political preferences. Yet it withstood the tidal advance of New Labour between 1997 and 2005, a high water mark for the party, and the town has never had a Labour MP, including in 1966 as part of Gosport & Fareham and in 1945 as part of Fareham.
Nowadays in the age when everyone seems to know about the collapse of Labour’s so-called Red Wall, and the electoral transformation in recent general elections which has seen the Conservatives take constituencies such as Mansfield and Bolsover, Bishop Auckland and Rother Valley, and all the seats in gritty Stoke-on-Trent, Gosport is no longer any kind of dramatic outlier, even though it still ranks well into the top half of those employed in routine and semi-routine occupations, and below half way on higher managerial, administrative and professional employment. However what still does suggest that an explanation of the strength of its preference for Conservatives is still needed is that it now has the 21st safest of all the 380 Tory majorities recorded in December 2019, which might surprise those taking a tour of this south Hampshire seat.
How is this electoral history explained? One main clue lies in Gosport’s high ‘armed services’ vote, for the town is but a mile across the water from Portsmouth, and Royal Navy bases abound. In the most recent census the Gosport seat was placed at no.3 in the order of employment in ‘public administration and defence’, behind only the ‘Salisbury Plain’ army constituency of Devizes and Richmond (Yorkshire) which includes Catterick Camp. The services, like the defence and arms industries, have traditionally offered solid support to the Conservatives regardless of social class, seeing that party as by far the most likely to respect their role and guarantee their jobs. The constituency of Gosport is also over 96% white and is below average for the proportion of university graduates and full time students, and voted around 62% to 38% to leave the EU. It may not be upper class; it is not left-wing.
Parts of Gosport still look unlikely settings for such strong Conservatism, for example the town centre just across the narrow sea channel from Portsmouth’s Spinnaker tower and naval docks, and parts of Rowner, despite the demolition of its notorious estate of brutalist tower blocks by 2015
As well as Rowner, Forton, Grange and the two Bridgemary wards also still have a sizeable promotion of socially rented houses. There are, however, a variety of neighbourhoods within the Gosport constituency, including seaside wards such as Alverstoke, Anglesey and the coastal part Lee-on-Solent, all of which have over 25% of residents (and even more voters) over 65 years of age, while inland Elson and Hardway are heavily (over 70%) owner occupied.
The Labour party makes very little impact in Gosport local elections, as well as parliamentary contests; in fact in the May 2021 Hampshire county council elections Labour won no wards at all, and only polled 13% across the 17 wards in the borough (it might be noted that Wikipedia’ summary of 22% is incorrect), whereas previously they had at least taken the central Town ward. However, municipally Gosport is not a one-party state. In the most recent borough council elections, all out on new boundaries in May 2022, the Liberal Democrats took overall control, returning 16 councillors to the Conservatives’ 10. The LDs won both seats in Bridgemary, Brockhurst & Privett, Elson, Forton, Hardway, Leesland & Newton and Rowner & Holbrook, and one of the two in Lee East and Peel Common (in both of which they only put up a single candidate). The only wards where the Tories held both were Alverstoke, Anglesey, Grange & Alver Valley and Lee West – notable none in the town of Gosport itself, where Labour actually got back onto the council by taking the two seats available in the central Harbourside & Town. The two Fareham borough wards included in this constituency, Hill Head and Stubbington they behaved differently in May 2022 from those in Gosport, with the Conservatives winning both and even gaining Stubbington (compared with 2018) from the LDs with a 12% swing.
Overall in 2022, even in Gosport borough the Conservative still received slightly more votes than the Liberal Democrats, 42.8% to their 40.9%, with Labour back on 12%. However this was because the LDs did not put up a full slate of candidates in four wards, including none in Lee West, clearly targeting their efforts. Their success came in varied areas, from 77% owner occupied Elson to Bridgemary with its ex-council housing, though more inland than on the coast. Their consistent record of local government achievement is based on the hard grind of local activity and campaigning– and it cannot necessarily be translated into parliamentary terms.
In general elections they haven’t even reached second place since 2010, and in 2019 managed a poor third with 11%, only around a third of the Liberal share here back in 1987. The Liberal Democrats could perhaps build on their local efforts to regain second place, but it is very hard to see Gosport as anything other than a Conservative stronghold for the foreseeable future. With a full two thirds of the share of the vote in the 2019 general election, a huge negative swing would be needed even to drop below a 50% plus overall majority, and even then the opposition would be significantly divided. Gosport will remain as a somewhat unlikely looking Conservative stronghold, off the beaten track geographically, and probably highly untypical in the 2024 general election results as a whole.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 18.6% 197/650
Owner-occupied 68.0% 282/650
Private rented 15.2% 266/650
Social rented 14.9% 357/650
White 96.7% 257/650
Black 0.6% 326/650
Asian 1.2% 465/650
Managerial & professional 31.6%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.6%
Employed in public administration and defence 15.0% 3/650
Degree level 23.0% 398/650
No qualifications 21.2% 400/650
Students 6.2% 450/650
2021 Census
Age 65+ 23.0% 131/575
Owner occupied 67.4% 244/575
Private rented 17.8% 305/575
Social rented 14.8% 296/575
White 95.6% 163/575
Black 1.1% 314/575
Asian 1.4% 461/575
Managerial & professional 32.8% 280/575
Routine & Semi-routine 26.3% 197/575
Degree level 26.4% 445/575
No qualifications 16.9% 337/575
Students 4.6% 457/575
General Election 2019: Gosport
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Caroline Dinenage 32,226 66.5 +4.6
Labour Tom Chatwin 8,948 18.5 -8.7
Liberal Democrats Martin Pepper 5,473 11.3 +6.6
Green Zoe Aspinall 1,806 3.7 +1.6
C Majority 23,278 48.0 +13.3
Turnout 49,481 65.9 -0.8
Conservative hold
Swing 6.6 Lab to C
Boundary Changes and 2019 Notional Results
N/A Unchanged seat
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_323_Gosport_Landscape.pdf