Post by Robert Waller on Aug 19, 2023 9:41:29 GMT
The Basingstoke division of Hampshire has existed since 1885 and in only one election (1923, in the shape of the Liberal Reginald Fletcher) has it been won by anyone other than a Conservative (or Unionist when the party preferred to be so labelled). Labour has finished second more often than not since 1945 but have only come really close to victory twice, in 1997 (2,397 votes behind) and 2001 (just 880). This last contest suggests a deviation into how the Almanac of British Politics first came to be written, in case it is of any interest.
(I first came across the Almanac of American Politics in Rhodes House Library in Oxford around 1980, immediately thinking that if no one had done something similar for the UK, I’d have a go. For years I thought that the creator of the American version, Michael Barone, might resent my plagiarism, but when I finally met him for the first time in Washington DC sometime in the 1990s he was nothing but pleased. Indeed there are some curious parallels. The American Almanac started 11 years before the British version, and we were both 27 years of age when the first one was published. We both annoyed our families at a very early age by insisting in being quizzed on Census populations. We used each other’s book as a guide when touring the other’s country. We stayed in touch and when in 2001 he visited this side of the pond for the general election, we decided to go on a drive on election day through some interesting seats. I chose these and we ended up in Basingstoke, where we found a polling station in Chineham, then a marginal ward in a marginal constituency, where Michael unsuccessfully tried to find out which party folk were voting for; “they’d have told me in the States”).
Only in 2001 would Basingstoke have been a reasonable destination for a psephological tour. It might be argued that New Labour suited the constituency enough to make it competitive. Before and since the Blair era the Conservatives have held the seat easily enough. It needs to be pointed out that Basingstoke has gone through more than one incarnation. Before the 1960s it was essentially a market town with a rural hinterland north east of the geographical centre of Hampshire. This was the Basingstoke its renowned son John Arlott, the doyen of cricket commentators, would have recognized. The population of the former municipal borough of Basingstoke was 17,000 in 1951 and 26,000 in 1961. Then it took off, as Basingstoke was designated not as an official New Town but as a designated expansion for example for London overspill. As well as social housing estates there has been a continuous development of private housing as the urban area has spread in most directions into the Hampshire countryside, somewhat reminiscent of Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire. A view of the towers of the central zone can be seen from the M3. By 2019, the start date of the latest Boundary Commission’s work, the population of the Basingstoke and Deane borough (created in 1974) was estimated at 176,000 and still rising, and it again has to be split between three constituencies, this one and NE and NW Hampshire.
Currently the Basingstoke seat itself is drawn quite tightly to the urban core of the town itself, with 15 compact wards within the contiguous built up area, plus Basing, which stretches beyond Old Basing itself to beyond Mapledurwell and the intriguingly named Nately Scures, which sounds like somebody out of Catch-22. The wards which still have a substantial amount of social housing stock tend to be strongly Labour in council elections, such as those covering Popley, South Ham, Buckskin, Norden and Rooksdown, all in the centre and north of the town, and Brighton Hill on its southern edge. On the other hand, the strongly owner-occupied housing - whether older (Kempshott) or newer (Chineham) - has usually been heavily Conservative. There are also a scattering of Liberal Democrat wards like Eastrop and Grove. However, adding up local election votes does not match the recent general election results in Basingstoke very closely. In 2019 Maria Miller increased her majority to 14,198 or 26%. This suggests that there is a substantial vote that switched from Labour at local level to Conservative nationally.
The reason for this was probably partly to do with the 54% Leave share in the 2016 referendum, and also the seat’s nature: 2nd in the list of all seats for proportion ‘economically active’ and 7th for ’in employment’, but 635th for those working ‘in education’. Though there is a fair amount of potential Labour support here – for example it still has above the average of social housing - it would not appear to be the type that found Corbyn’s brand appealing; as we have seen, Blair’s apparently much more so. Will it respond to Starmer’s partial revivification of ‘Blairism’?
In all out and re-warded elections.in Basingstoke and Deane borough in May 2021, before the dramatic and sustained slump in Conservative opinion poll ratings and local government contests, the Tories lost no seats at all here, indeed it was Labour who fell (even further) back, losing half their councillors. Since then, Labour’s revival has scarcely been much to write home about, making no gains in May 2022 ad only one in May 2023. The Tories have indeed been reduced, losing four net in 2022 and a further four in 2023, which meant they then lost control of Basingstoke & Deane. But their defeats have come at the hands of the Liberal Democrats and the B & D Independents. So Labour’s hopes at the next general election will be based on national opinion polls rather than local evidence.
The electorate was over 82,000 in 2019 and thus Basingstoke constituency has had to be pared down in the 2023 Boundary Commission report. In general more rural areas have been removed. The whole of Tadley & Pamber ward ( a Lib Dem gain in 2023), and Sherborne St John & Rooksdown will be included in NW Hampshire. Basing & Upton Grey is shifted to NE Hampshire. On the other hand, there is an exchange the other way. The Oakley & The Candovers ward, presently in NW Hampshire, will now actually be divided between Basingstoke and East Hampshire, partly along the line of the M3 motorway, with the Oakley part, which is quite large in acreage but small in population, in the former. Therefore the geographical centre of gravity of Basingstoke slides south westwards. These changes were not without controversy. In particular Rooksdown is really part of the Basingstoke built up area. The ward it is in voted 47% Tory to 39% Labour in 2023, and overall the Conservative notional majority in December 2019 is probably reduced only by around 1,500, and will still be over 12,000.
Therefore, Basingstoke has to be regarded as it was back in 1997 and at the time of the Almanac authors’ visit in 2001 – as an outside chance of a Labour gain, in reach if the earth were to move in Britain and in Hampshire and there were to be another (electoral) landslide.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 15.6% 427/575
Owner occupied 62.5% 364/575
Private rented 16.8% 341/575
Social rented 20.7 % 131/575
White 85.6% 354/575
Black 2.4% 214/575
Asian 7.7% 202/575
Managerial & professional 36.9% 176/575
Routine & Semi-routine 24.1% 274/575
Degree level 32.3% 281/575
No qualifications 15.6% 399/575
Students 4.7% 460/575
General Election 2019: Basingstoke
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Maria Miller 29,593 54.1 +1.4
Labour Kerena Marchant 15,395 28.1 -7.7
Liberal Democrats Sashi Mylvaganam 6,841 12.5 +6.4
Green Jonnie Jenkin 2,138 3.9 +1.9
Independent Alan Stone 746 1.4 +1.4
C Majority 14,198 26.0 +9.1
2019 electorate 82,926
Turnout 54,713 66.0 -2.4
Conservative hold
Swing 4.5 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
The new Basingstoke will consist of
86.1% of Basingstoke
7.1% of NW Hampshire
(The rest of the current Basingstoke is split between NE Hampshire, 8.2%, and NW Hampshire, 5.8%)
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_289_Basingstoke_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
(I first came across the Almanac of American Politics in Rhodes House Library in Oxford around 1980, immediately thinking that if no one had done something similar for the UK, I’d have a go. For years I thought that the creator of the American version, Michael Barone, might resent my plagiarism, but when I finally met him for the first time in Washington DC sometime in the 1990s he was nothing but pleased. Indeed there are some curious parallels. The American Almanac started 11 years before the British version, and we were both 27 years of age when the first one was published. We both annoyed our families at a very early age by insisting in being quizzed on Census populations. We used each other’s book as a guide when touring the other’s country. We stayed in touch and when in 2001 he visited this side of the pond for the general election, we decided to go on a drive on election day through some interesting seats. I chose these and we ended up in Basingstoke, where we found a polling station in Chineham, then a marginal ward in a marginal constituency, where Michael unsuccessfully tried to find out which party folk were voting for; “they’d have told me in the States”).
Only in 2001 would Basingstoke have been a reasonable destination for a psephological tour. It might be argued that New Labour suited the constituency enough to make it competitive. Before and since the Blair era the Conservatives have held the seat easily enough. It needs to be pointed out that Basingstoke has gone through more than one incarnation. Before the 1960s it was essentially a market town with a rural hinterland north east of the geographical centre of Hampshire. This was the Basingstoke its renowned son John Arlott, the doyen of cricket commentators, would have recognized. The population of the former municipal borough of Basingstoke was 17,000 in 1951 and 26,000 in 1961. Then it took off, as Basingstoke was designated not as an official New Town but as a designated expansion for example for London overspill. As well as social housing estates there has been a continuous development of private housing as the urban area has spread in most directions into the Hampshire countryside, somewhat reminiscent of Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire. A view of the towers of the central zone can be seen from the M3. By 2019, the start date of the latest Boundary Commission’s work, the population of the Basingstoke and Deane borough (created in 1974) was estimated at 176,000 and still rising, and it again has to be split between three constituencies, this one and NE and NW Hampshire.
Currently the Basingstoke seat itself is drawn quite tightly to the urban core of the town itself, with 15 compact wards within the contiguous built up area, plus Basing, which stretches beyond Old Basing itself to beyond Mapledurwell and the intriguingly named Nately Scures, which sounds like somebody out of Catch-22. The wards which still have a substantial amount of social housing stock tend to be strongly Labour in council elections, such as those covering Popley, South Ham, Buckskin, Norden and Rooksdown, all in the centre and north of the town, and Brighton Hill on its southern edge. On the other hand, the strongly owner-occupied housing - whether older (Kempshott) or newer (Chineham) - has usually been heavily Conservative. There are also a scattering of Liberal Democrat wards like Eastrop and Grove. However, adding up local election votes does not match the recent general election results in Basingstoke very closely. In 2019 Maria Miller increased her majority to 14,198 or 26%. This suggests that there is a substantial vote that switched from Labour at local level to Conservative nationally.
The reason for this was probably partly to do with the 54% Leave share in the 2016 referendum, and also the seat’s nature: 2nd in the list of all seats for proportion ‘economically active’ and 7th for ’in employment’, but 635th for those working ‘in education’. Though there is a fair amount of potential Labour support here – for example it still has above the average of social housing - it would not appear to be the type that found Corbyn’s brand appealing; as we have seen, Blair’s apparently much more so. Will it respond to Starmer’s partial revivification of ‘Blairism’?
In all out and re-warded elections.in Basingstoke and Deane borough in May 2021, before the dramatic and sustained slump in Conservative opinion poll ratings and local government contests, the Tories lost no seats at all here, indeed it was Labour who fell (even further) back, losing half their councillors. Since then, Labour’s revival has scarcely been much to write home about, making no gains in May 2022 ad only one in May 2023. The Tories have indeed been reduced, losing four net in 2022 and a further four in 2023, which meant they then lost control of Basingstoke & Deane. But their defeats have come at the hands of the Liberal Democrats and the B & D Independents. So Labour’s hopes at the next general election will be based on national opinion polls rather than local evidence.
The electorate was over 82,000 in 2019 and thus Basingstoke constituency has had to be pared down in the 2023 Boundary Commission report. In general more rural areas have been removed. The whole of Tadley & Pamber ward ( a Lib Dem gain in 2023), and Sherborne St John & Rooksdown will be included in NW Hampshire. Basing & Upton Grey is shifted to NE Hampshire. On the other hand, there is an exchange the other way. The Oakley & The Candovers ward, presently in NW Hampshire, will now actually be divided between Basingstoke and East Hampshire, partly along the line of the M3 motorway, with the Oakley part, which is quite large in acreage but small in population, in the former. Therefore the geographical centre of gravity of Basingstoke slides south westwards. These changes were not without controversy. In particular Rooksdown is really part of the Basingstoke built up area. The ward it is in voted 47% Tory to 39% Labour in 2023, and overall the Conservative notional majority in December 2019 is probably reduced only by around 1,500, and will still be over 12,000.
Therefore, Basingstoke has to be regarded as it was back in 1997 and at the time of the Almanac authors’ visit in 2001 – as an outside chance of a Labour gain, in reach if the earth were to move in Britain and in Hampshire and there were to be another (electoral) landslide.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 15.6% 427/575
Owner occupied 62.5% 364/575
Private rented 16.8% 341/575
Social rented 20.7 % 131/575
White 85.6% 354/575
Black 2.4% 214/575
Asian 7.7% 202/575
Managerial & professional 36.9% 176/575
Routine & Semi-routine 24.1% 274/575
Degree level 32.3% 281/575
No qualifications 15.6% 399/575
Students 4.7% 460/575
General Election 2019: Basingstoke
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Maria Miller 29,593 54.1 +1.4
Labour Kerena Marchant 15,395 28.1 -7.7
Liberal Democrats Sashi Mylvaganam 6,841 12.5 +6.4
Green Jonnie Jenkin 2,138 3.9 +1.9
Independent Alan Stone 746 1.4 +1.4
C Majority 14,198 26.0 +9.1
2019 electorate 82,926
Turnout 54,713 66.0 -2.4
Conservative hold
Swing 4.5 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
The new Basingstoke will consist of
86.1% of Basingstoke
7.1% of NW Hampshire
(The rest of the current Basingstoke is split between NE Hampshire, 8.2%, and NW Hampshire, 5.8%)
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_289_Basingstoke_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
| Con | 26966 | 52.7% |
| Lab | 14665 | 28.7% |
| LD | 6797 | 13.3% |
| Green | 2007 | 3.9% |
| Oth | 746 | 1.5% |
| | ||
| Majority | 12301 | 24.0% |