YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,843
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Post by YL on May 13, 2024 17:16:27 GMT
Surprised there weren't more Tory losses and more labour gains. Don't know what this means for the general in Rother valley. Not much I expect I think you can make a pretty good argument that the Rother Valley area were the Tories best results in the country. To hold onto 13 councillors in 2024, which is more than they had in Rotherham at any point between 1973 and 2021 is a very good result for them. Obviously the area has moved a lot towards the Tories, and this is accentuated by the issues with the council. I think it means that Labour will still comfortably win Rother Valley at the GE, as some people won’t vote for that council but will vote for a Lab government, but it has clearly moved to the right in comparison to the country as a whole- 2019 was the first time it ever voted to the right of the nation, and 2024 may well be the second time - I suspect that the swing here will be less than the national average, and I’d be surprised it if went back to being anything like a safe Labour seat in the foreseeable future. Yes, this was a strong Tory performance given the national context. I thought they were likely to hold on to a fair number of seats, given the Dinnington by-election result, but I still have something of a "does not compute" reaction to Maltby East having a Tory councillor (Labour did take one of the seats there, but still). It was a considerably better Tory result than Penistone & Stocksbridge, where for the second year in a row they lost Penistone East to Labour and so didn't win a single ward. I think that if you look at the demographics of the Rother Valley constituency as a whole it is not that surprising that it now seems to lean Tory. Outside of a few of the cores of the mining settlements (most obviously Maltby East, though there are other areas too) it isn't that deprived, and its population is quite old and not very diverse, with high home ownership (and especially owned outright) but quite low levels of university level qualifications. (Now note how they did in Rother Vale ward, which thanks to the Waverley development is nothing like that, and which they successfully persuaded the BCE to exclude from Rother Valley constituency.) I agree that they will lose it (barring a considerable recovery) but that it won't revert to safe Labour status.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on May 14, 2024 11:49:56 GMT
One interesting thing given the clear unpopularity of the council is the independents holding on in Wales ward, despite the defection being an indirect consequence of the need to deal with the council's crapness. Shows that negative reactions to councils are at a certain point legacy issues, which aren't any longer directly connected to the original issue.
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jamie
Top Poster
Posts: 7,019
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Post by jamie on May 14, 2024 16:35:58 GMT
It’s notable how Labour did very well in both absolute and relative terms in the north/west of the borough roughly but not exactly corresponding to the Wentworth end of Wentworth and Dearne. They did very well in the safe wards but also taking a couple of seats thanks to big swings off the Conservatives, one in a ward that understandably split in 2021 (Hoober) and another which in 2021 had a Maltby East style cold sick result (which I had to check was Rawmarsh West as the 2024 result gives no indication it was split in 2021).
FWIW, it seems difficult to me to argue demographic change explains the result even within Rotherham council. It can’t explain how the Conservatives are splitting Maltby East while Labour is gaining seats more influenced by Sheffield. And even if you turn it around and argue the Conservatives are now the party of the left behind, it’s rather hard to square that with the results in Rawmarsh or Swinton. It all just looks very localist to me.
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Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 15,745
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Post by Sibboleth on May 14, 2024 16:37:27 GMT
Again, you get this sort of thing in South Wales sometimes.
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,843
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Post by YL on May 14, 2024 17:40:48 GMT
One interesting thing given the clear unpopularity of the council is the independents holding on in Wales ward, despite the defection being an indirect consequence of the need to deal with the council's crapness. Shows that negative reactions to councils are at a certain point legacy issues, which aren't any longer directly connected to the original issue. I suspect there's a bit of "the Council isn't looking after our area" going on, and Independents may be able to take advantage of that even if they were recently part of the ruling group. As jamie said, it's interesting how well Labour did do in one part of the borough (the "Wentworth" north), relatively to both 2021 and the rest of the borough this year.
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