Post by Robert Waller on Aug 7, 2023 17:49:30 GMT
This constituency is far from new, but rather is essentially the long-established Saffron Walden; indeed the name change only occurred at a very late stage, in the Boundary Commission’s final report of June 2023, in which otherwise the proposals for a slightly revised Saffron Walden were confirmed. The argument employed was that the seat contains far more than that town, though this view had not prevailed in the previous 138 years of its existence, since 1885. Some will like this change as prosaically descriptive, internally fair, and clearer to outsiders. Others will regret this unromantic and purely functional loss of the only constituency to be named after a spice - a name associated with much parliamentary history - as an unnecessary and soulless development
The former Guardian deputy editor and subsequently travel writer David McKie has long argued that Essex should in fact constitute two counties rather than one. For example, as he declared in Great British Bus Journeys (2006, a book heartily to be recommended to certain members of this forum), “my brief immersion in Saffron Walden and the dishy villages around it has brought me back to an existential question that had troubled me for two decades. There is still only one county of Essex although it has long been plain that there ought to be two: the Essex of genteel country towns and thatch and Thaxted and windmills and clapboard and sleepy villages clustered around gorgeous greens; and the Essex of arterial roads and roadhouses and spectacular hairdos and vertiginous cleavages and Basildon and Southend.” Essentially the divide would lie along the SW / NE axis of the A12 from Romford towards Colchester, with certain exceptions like the area around Maldon and, perhaps, the town of Braintree.
This formerly Saffron Walden seat is definitely in McKie’s more favoured section, covering the most rural and pleasant scenery in Essex, its north-western quadrant. Its eponymous town was originally known as Magna Walden or Chipping Walden, but the wide commercial growth of the saffron crocus led to a new name by the 1540s. Saffron is, apparently used for medicines, as a condiment, in perfume, as an expensive yellow dye, and as an aphrodisiac. Less exotically, saffron was mainly replaced by malt and barley production here by the end of the 18th century. NW Essex is the largest seat in area in the county and the only one which still reaches the list of the country’s 130 most agricultural seats. It includes the small towns of Saffron Walden (population 16,613 in the 2021 census), Great Dunmow (10,396) and Thaxted (3,116) and over a hundred villages some with splendid names such as Stansted Mountfitchet, Wendens Ambo, Ugley, Leaden Roding, Wimbish Green, Wicken Bonhunt and Molehill Green. The peace is disturbed by the presence of Stansted Airport. In general, however, the ambience is far gentler than that in the rest of busy, bustling, hard-driving Essex; and so is the politics.
Not only has Saffron Walden been a safe Conservative seat that has not been won by any other party since Cecil Beck retained it as a Lloyd George coalition Liberal in 1918, but there was a long tradition of moderate or liberal Toryism, as typified by R.A.Butler, the MP here from 1929 to 1965, then Peter Kirk (1965-77) and Alan Haselhurst (1977-2017). When Haselhurst retired two weeks short of his 80th birthday, there had been just three Saffron Walden MPs in 88 years. His successor is a rather different figure, Kemi Badenoch, one of the contenders for the party leadership and position of Prime Minister in 2022 and again for the leadership of the much truncated party in 2024, but she inherited calm prospects in the seat and secured a majority of 27,594 in December 2019, the 11th largest of the 365 seats they won - and this even after a small swing to the Liberal Democrats, probably accounted for by the fact that (unlike many other parts of Essex) this seat only voted Leave by around 51-49 in 2016.
The reasons for the Conservative hegemony in parliamentary contests are not hard to find. This seat was over 93% white in 2021, very high for a seat in the South East region. It is in the top quartile of owner occupiers, has more than twice as many in the professional and managerial socio-economic groups as working class routine and semi-routine, and a number of indictors illustrate its affluence. In 2011 it was in the top three out of 650 seats for multiple car ownership (over three per household). It is in the top fifth for those educated to at least degree level and the bottom fifth of those with no educational qualifications In figures derived from other sources than the census, the Saffron Walden constituency was in the lowest thirty seats for financial hardship or premature mortality. Finally, Essex (like the Eastern region as a whole) is a part of the land with a strong Conservative tradition, and that applies to both of our hypothetical halves of the county.
There is of course some dissent from the Tory consensus at local level. Most of the constituency is situated in the district of Uttlesford, which bucked the national trend in the most recent local elections in May 2023 to make seven net gains while the previously dominant Residents/Independent majority, now branded with unwonted trendiness as R4U, lost four and the Liberal Democrats went down three, and the Greens lost their three as well (all defectors from the Residents). The Conservative gains included two from the LDs in Stansted South & Birchanger and four from R4U in the great Dunmow wards. Saffron Walden town remained a Residents stronghold, though, and they narrowly retained an overall majority on Uttlesford council.
In Essex county elections, however, there is more major party success. In May 2021, for example, the Conservatives narrowly beat the Residents in Dunmow and Stansted divisions, but were themselves edged out in Thaxted and more clearly in Saffron Walden town. This seat does also currently contain some territory outside Uttlesford in the shape of the Writtle and Broomfield section of the city of Chelmsford authority, and this division produced a massive Tory victory in 2021, by over four to one against the Liberal Democrats in a distant second place. In May 2023 the four Chelmsford City Council wards within the seat elected seven Tories and one Liberal Democrat
As the Boundary Commission started its work, Saffron Walden had an electorate well above quota at over 86,000. Also, although Essex itself did not qualify for an extra seat of its own, when paired with its neighbour to the north, Suffolk, originally it was suggested a new seat could and should be created: Haverhill and Halstead which was to take substantial sections from Braintree (Essex) and West Suffolk. Therefore other major boundary change also had to be proposed. Saffron Walden was recommended to lose the four City of Chelmsford wards of Writtle, Chelmsford Rural West, Broomfield & The Walthams, and Boreham & The Leighs, to be included in the Braintree constituency. In exchange, it would gain from the existing Brentwood and Ongar constituency the two wards of Moreton & Fyfield, and High Ongar, Willingale & The Rodings within Epping Forest district council. As a result the name of Ongar would disappear from a seat title, unless added to Saffron Walden after the Inquiry process.
Then in November 2022 all changed again as in the Boundary Commission's revised proposals for the Eastern region the idea of crossing the Essex/Suffolk border was scrapped in favour of a Norfolk/Suffolk pairing along the Waveney valley. This meant that far less change was needed in the boundaries of Saffron Walden. The four 'Chelmsford' wards would now be retained, and the two wards from Bentwood & Ongar would no longer ne needed. This means that Ongar could keep its place in that constituency name. Saffron Walden did still need to lose some voters, though, and the revised proposals recommended that these should be in the shape of the Uttlesford district wards of Broad Oak & The Hallingburys and Hatfield Heath, transferred to Harlow, and The Sampfords, and Felsted & Stebbing wards would be included in an alternatively configured Braintree constituency - these changes both meaning the loss of around 5,000 electors to the other two seats. Then in the Final Report came the name change.
The new NW Essex was thus ten thousand electors smaller than the previous Saffron Walden, but theoretically just as safe Conservative – and just as firmly belonging to the characteristics of David McKie’s ‘North Essex’. It is true that there was at one time a renowned ‘Red Vicar’ of Thaxted, Conrad Noel, admirer of Trotsky and founder of both the British Socialist Party and Catholic Crusade, presented to the living in 1910 by Daisy Countess of Warwick (another socialist) and notorious for hanging the Red Flag and the banner of Sinn Fein in St John’s Church Thaxted. But his very untypicality is the cause of that notoriety. It would be fanciful to see any progression from the Red Vicar through the ‘pink Toryism’ and consensus views of the three long serving MPs to the more trenchant Conservatism of the pro-Brexit current member, but there can be little doubt that her constituency, whatever its name, would present few barriers to any further ambitions Kemi Badenoch may harbour. In July 2024 the Conservative majority was nearly decimated, from a notional 23,000 to a ere 2,600 - but the key for Kemi was that she did not join the cull of leading Tories on that night of infamy in her party's history.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 19.8% 256/575
Owner occupied 72.1% 120/575
Private rented 13.9% 484/575
Social rented 14.0% 342/575
White 93.2% 234/575
Black 1.2% 306/575
Asian 2.6% 354/575
Managerial & professional 42.7% 79/575
Routine & Semi-routine 17.0% 482/575
Degree level 36.3% 179/575
No qualifications 14.1% 466/575
Students 5.2% 359/575
General Election 2024: North West Essex
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Kemi Badenoch 19,360 35.6 –26.1
Labour Issy Waite 16,750 30.8 +17.0
Reform UK Grant StClair-Armstrong 7,668 14.1 N/A
Liberal Democrats Smita Rajesh 6,055 11.1 –8.6
Green Edward Gildea 2,846 5.2 +0.4
Independent Andrew Green 852 1.6 N/A
Independent Erik Bonino 699 1.3 N/A
Independent Niko Omilana 156 0.3 N/A
C Majority 2,610 4.8 –37.2
Turnout 54,386 68.5 –4.0
Registered electors 79,824
Conservative hold
Swing 21.6 C to Lab
General Election 2019: Saffron Walden
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Kemi Badenoch 39,714 63.0 +1.2
Liberal Democrats Mike Hibbs 12,120 19.2 +5.2
Labour Thomas Van De Bilt 8,305 13.2 -7.6
Green Coby Wing 2,947 4.7 New
C Majority 27,594 43.7 +2.8
2019 Electorate 87,017
Turnout 63,086 72.5 -0.6
Conservative hold
Swing 2.0 C to LD
Boundary Changes
The new North West Essex seat consists of
88.1% of Saffron Walden
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_085_North%20West%20Essex_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Result
Notional result 2019 on the proposed new boundaries
The former Guardian deputy editor and subsequently travel writer David McKie has long argued that Essex should in fact constitute two counties rather than one. For example, as he declared in Great British Bus Journeys (2006, a book heartily to be recommended to certain members of this forum), “my brief immersion in Saffron Walden and the dishy villages around it has brought me back to an existential question that had troubled me for two decades. There is still only one county of Essex although it has long been plain that there ought to be two: the Essex of genteel country towns and thatch and Thaxted and windmills and clapboard and sleepy villages clustered around gorgeous greens; and the Essex of arterial roads and roadhouses and spectacular hairdos and vertiginous cleavages and Basildon and Southend.” Essentially the divide would lie along the SW / NE axis of the A12 from Romford towards Colchester, with certain exceptions like the area around Maldon and, perhaps, the town of Braintree.
This formerly Saffron Walden seat is definitely in McKie’s more favoured section, covering the most rural and pleasant scenery in Essex, its north-western quadrant. Its eponymous town was originally known as Magna Walden or Chipping Walden, but the wide commercial growth of the saffron crocus led to a new name by the 1540s. Saffron is, apparently used for medicines, as a condiment, in perfume, as an expensive yellow dye, and as an aphrodisiac. Less exotically, saffron was mainly replaced by malt and barley production here by the end of the 18th century. NW Essex is the largest seat in area in the county and the only one which still reaches the list of the country’s 130 most agricultural seats. It includes the small towns of Saffron Walden (population 16,613 in the 2021 census), Great Dunmow (10,396) and Thaxted (3,116) and over a hundred villages some with splendid names such as Stansted Mountfitchet, Wendens Ambo, Ugley, Leaden Roding, Wimbish Green, Wicken Bonhunt and Molehill Green. The peace is disturbed by the presence of Stansted Airport. In general, however, the ambience is far gentler than that in the rest of busy, bustling, hard-driving Essex; and so is the politics.
Not only has Saffron Walden been a safe Conservative seat that has not been won by any other party since Cecil Beck retained it as a Lloyd George coalition Liberal in 1918, but there was a long tradition of moderate or liberal Toryism, as typified by R.A.Butler, the MP here from 1929 to 1965, then Peter Kirk (1965-77) and Alan Haselhurst (1977-2017). When Haselhurst retired two weeks short of his 80th birthday, there had been just three Saffron Walden MPs in 88 years. His successor is a rather different figure, Kemi Badenoch, one of the contenders for the party leadership and position of Prime Minister in 2022 and again for the leadership of the much truncated party in 2024, but she inherited calm prospects in the seat and secured a majority of 27,594 in December 2019, the 11th largest of the 365 seats they won - and this even after a small swing to the Liberal Democrats, probably accounted for by the fact that (unlike many other parts of Essex) this seat only voted Leave by around 51-49 in 2016.
The reasons for the Conservative hegemony in parliamentary contests are not hard to find. This seat was over 93% white in 2021, very high for a seat in the South East region. It is in the top quartile of owner occupiers, has more than twice as many in the professional and managerial socio-economic groups as working class routine and semi-routine, and a number of indictors illustrate its affluence. In 2011 it was in the top three out of 650 seats for multiple car ownership (over three per household). It is in the top fifth for those educated to at least degree level and the bottom fifth of those with no educational qualifications In figures derived from other sources than the census, the Saffron Walden constituency was in the lowest thirty seats for financial hardship or premature mortality. Finally, Essex (like the Eastern region as a whole) is a part of the land with a strong Conservative tradition, and that applies to both of our hypothetical halves of the county.
There is of course some dissent from the Tory consensus at local level. Most of the constituency is situated in the district of Uttlesford, which bucked the national trend in the most recent local elections in May 2023 to make seven net gains while the previously dominant Residents/Independent majority, now branded with unwonted trendiness as R4U, lost four and the Liberal Democrats went down three, and the Greens lost their three as well (all defectors from the Residents). The Conservative gains included two from the LDs in Stansted South & Birchanger and four from R4U in the great Dunmow wards. Saffron Walden town remained a Residents stronghold, though, and they narrowly retained an overall majority on Uttlesford council.
In Essex county elections, however, there is more major party success. In May 2021, for example, the Conservatives narrowly beat the Residents in Dunmow and Stansted divisions, but were themselves edged out in Thaxted and more clearly in Saffron Walden town. This seat does also currently contain some territory outside Uttlesford in the shape of the Writtle and Broomfield section of the city of Chelmsford authority, and this division produced a massive Tory victory in 2021, by over four to one against the Liberal Democrats in a distant second place. In May 2023 the four Chelmsford City Council wards within the seat elected seven Tories and one Liberal Democrat
As the Boundary Commission started its work, Saffron Walden had an electorate well above quota at over 86,000. Also, although Essex itself did not qualify for an extra seat of its own, when paired with its neighbour to the north, Suffolk, originally it was suggested a new seat could and should be created: Haverhill and Halstead which was to take substantial sections from Braintree (Essex) and West Suffolk. Therefore other major boundary change also had to be proposed. Saffron Walden was recommended to lose the four City of Chelmsford wards of Writtle, Chelmsford Rural West, Broomfield & The Walthams, and Boreham & The Leighs, to be included in the Braintree constituency. In exchange, it would gain from the existing Brentwood and Ongar constituency the two wards of Moreton & Fyfield, and High Ongar, Willingale & The Rodings within Epping Forest district council. As a result the name of Ongar would disappear from a seat title, unless added to Saffron Walden after the Inquiry process.
Then in November 2022 all changed again as in the Boundary Commission's revised proposals for the Eastern region the idea of crossing the Essex/Suffolk border was scrapped in favour of a Norfolk/Suffolk pairing along the Waveney valley. This meant that far less change was needed in the boundaries of Saffron Walden. The four 'Chelmsford' wards would now be retained, and the two wards from Bentwood & Ongar would no longer ne needed. This means that Ongar could keep its place in that constituency name. Saffron Walden did still need to lose some voters, though, and the revised proposals recommended that these should be in the shape of the Uttlesford district wards of Broad Oak & The Hallingburys and Hatfield Heath, transferred to Harlow, and The Sampfords, and Felsted & Stebbing wards would be included in an alternatively configured Braintree constituency - these changes both meaning the loss of around 5,000 electors to the other two seats. Then in the Final Report came the name change.
The new NW Essex was thus ten thousand electors smaller than the previous Saffron Walden, but theoretically just as safe Conservative – and just as firmly belonging to the characteristics of David McKie’s ‘North Essex’. It is true that there was at one time a renowned ‘Red Vicar’ of Thaxted, Conrad Noel, admirer of Trotsky and founder of both the British Socialist Party and Catholic Crusade, presented to the living in 1910 by Daisy Countess of Warwick (another socialist) and notorious for hanging the Red Flag and the banner of Sinn Fein in St John’s Church Thaxted. But his very untypicality is the cause of that notoriety. It would be fanciful to see any progression from the Red Vicar through the ‘pink Toryism’ and consensus views of the three long serving MPs to the more trenchant Conservatism of the pro-Brexit current member, but there can be little doubt that her constituency, whatever its name, would present few barriers to any further ambitions Kemi Badenoch may harbour. In July 2024 the Conservative majority was nearly decimated, from a notional 23,000 to a ere 2,600 - but the key for Kemi was that she did not join the cull of leading Tories on that night of infamy in her party's history.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 19.8% 256/575
Owner occupied 72.1% 120/575
Private rented 13.9% 484/575
Social rented 14.0% 342/575
White 93.2% 234/575
Black 1.2% 306/575
Asian 2.6% 354/575
Managerial & professional 42.7% 79/575
Routine & Semi-routine 17.0% 482/575
Degree level 36.3% 179/575
No qualifications 14.1% 466/575
Students 5.2% 359/575
General Election 2024: North West Essex
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Kemi Badenoch 19,360 35.6 –26.1
Labour Issy Waite 16,750 30.8 +17.0
Reform UK Grant StClair-Armstrong 7,668 14.1 N/A
Liberal Democrats Smita Rajesh 6,055 11.1 –8.6
Green Edward Gildea 2,846 5.2 +0.4
Independent Andrew Green 852 1.6 N/A
Independent Erik Bonino 699 1.3 N/A
Independent Niko Omilana 156 0.3 N/A
C Majority 2,610 4.8 –37.2
Turnout 54,386 68.5 –4.0
Registered electors 79,824
Conservative hold
Swing 21.6 C to Lab
General Election 2019: Saffron Walden
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Kemi Badenoch 39,714 63.0 +1.2
Liberal Democrats Mike Hibbs 12,120 19.2 +5.2
Labour Thomas Van De Bilt 8,305 13.2 -7.6
Green Coby Wing 2,947 4.7 New
C Majority 27,594 43.7 +2.8
2019 Electorate 87,017
Turnout 63,086 72.5 -0.6
Conservative hold
Swing 2.0 C to LD
Boundary Changes
The new North West Essex seat consists of
88.1% of Saffron Walden
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_085_North%20West%20Essex_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Result
| Con | 34088 | 61.8% |
| LD | 11011 | 20.0% |
| Lab | 7428 | 13.5% |
| Grn | 2587 | 4.7% |
| Majority | 23077 | 41.9% |