Post by Robert Waller on Aug 30, 2023 17:40:20 GMT
By tradition the three main ‘Medway’ towns of Kent are Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham. But whereas the parliamentary constituency of Rochester & Chatham, which existed between 1950 and 1983, was regarded as one of the nation’s key bellwether seats, being won by the party that formed the government in 1964, 1970, February 1974 and 1979, the Gillingham seat remained Conservative throughout that time, retaining a majority of 3,240 even in the Labour landslide year of 1966. This was despite a far from glamorous or affluent physical appearance, or middle class or high status demographic characteristics. Indeed for these decades Gillingham was regarded as one of the most plebeian of all Tory seats. After the flirtation with Tony Blair’s New Labour that affected so many previously unlikely parts of the land, Gillingham would appear to have re-established its previous preferences in recent general elections.
That Gillingham was the sole name of a constituency from 1918 to 2010 might suggest that it is the largest of the Medway towns, as that privilege was not afforded to any of the others apart from Chatham before 1950, which was a historic parliamentary borough. Gillingham in Kent, by the way, is pronounced Jillingham, unlike the much smaller town in north Dorset, which has a hard G. in However the Gillingham municipal borough that existed from 1903 to 1974, and the subsequent non-metropolitan district of the same name, always included other communities that boosted the population, and so did the parliamentary seat. It was therefore only logical that Rainham should finally have been added to the title in 2010, not least because currently there are three Rainham wards with a combined electorate of over 27,000 to only two for Gillingham, containing just 22,000 voters. Borough, district and constituency also included, and still include, Hempstead & Wigmore, Twydall and Watling. There is considerable social and political variation within the seat and between the wards.
Gillingham and Rainham is proposed to remain completely unchanged in the current boundary review.
Gillingham itself is the community nearest to the other Medway towns. Indeed the historic Chatham dockyard was partly set within the boundaries of Gillingham North ward, and provided a major element of the towns’ employment. Watling is situated to the south of Gillingham, away from the river Medway, and as the name implies it straddles the A2 London-Dover road, the ancient Watling Street. Further south still and climbing up into the North Downs along the A278 that is one of the main links of the Medway conurbation to the modern M2 we find Hempstead (west of that A road) and Wigmore (east). But travelling towards Dover on the A2 the next ward is Twydall, and then one reaches the three Rainham wards. Rainham North covers the town’s station, Lower Rainham, Lower Twydall too actually, and a large section of uninhabited marsh and creek terrain at the very mouth of the Medway, culminating in the splendidly named sandbanks of Bishops Saltings and Bishops Ooze. Rainham Central is actually a compact residential area south of the A2, while Rainham South’s main population centre is the Park Wood estate, private (owner occupied) housing built in the 1960s and 1970s.
Housing tenure is usually closely related to voting preference and this is very key to the internal and overall politics of the Gillingham & Rainham division. The three Rainham wards are all strongly owner occupied and Conservative. Taking North, South East and South in turn, the former figures in the 2011 census were 76%, 87% and 79% respectively. The Tory shares in the Medway council elections in May 2019 were 64%, 46% (first but with a strong Independent performance in second place) and 50% (with UKIP as runners-up). The ward boundaries had been redrawn before the May 2023 contests, but the Conservative held all three Rainham wards (now N, SE and SW) again, albeit by smaller margins and with Labour clearly in second place in each. Hempstead/Wigmore is even more owner occupied (91%) and even more Conservative (65%, top candidate in a six party contest in 2023). However if the wards discussed so far elected 10 Conservatives and no others in the all out 2019 and 2023 elections, it should not be thought that the Tories now have it all their own way within this constituency. The other wards chose 11 Labour and no one else. When Adam Gray added up all the votes cast in Gillingham & Rainham in May 2023, Labour were ahead of the Tories, by 40.6% to 35.3%.
Both Gillingham North and South elected slates of three Labour councillors in 2023 by a margin of close to (N) and over (S) thee to one over any other party. But consider the tenure in these wards. In North less than half were owner occupied, in South just over half. In both cases there is a substantial - and in fact growing – private rented sector which was already 44% of the stock in South MSOA in 2021 and 43% in North, boosted by the development of Pier Quays. The new block of flats here north of the A289 and along Pearl Lane seem to have two characteristics. There are the halls of residence to accommodate 1,106 students at the Medway campus of the University of Kent, but this area also has the highest concentration of Black residents (mainly African) after a modest but clear increase from 2.2% in the constituency in 2011 to 5.3% in the 2021 census. The other area where there is a significant minority of Black population is in Gillingham South ward, in the terraced streets around Balmoral Road – the eastwards continuation of which is Priestfield Road, as in the Gillingham football stadium. (Gillingham currently has the only league club in Kent; they reached the heights of the Championship in the early 2000s but are currently in League 2). Meanwhile Twydall had the largest social rented sector in the constituency, mainly in the shape of the Beechings Way council estate, and also elected three Labour representatives in 2023.
Gillingham itself, then, is atypical of the voting patterns of the constituency as a whole. It has far less than the overall 67% owner occupation rate. Its housing is consistently distinctly down-market. It has more students and more ethnic minority residents. Having elected Liberal Democrats in 2003 and 2007 and Independents in 2011, the Gillingham wards have elected none but Labour since 2015. Conservatives are notable by their absence. On the other hand all the Rainham wards have returned solid slates of Conservatives in every election since 2007. Ironically, the current MP, Rehman Chishti, started his career on the council as a Labour member for Gillingham North in 2003 then switched to be one of the Tory victors in Rainham Central in 2007, 2011 and 2015, the second two being after he became MP in 2010.
Generally speaking Twydall has gone along with the Labour wins in Gillingham, and Hempstead & Wigmore with the Conservatives triumphs in Rainham. Watling sits in the middle ground. The impression, therefore, of two warring halves to the seat, roughly Gillingham v. Rainham, would seem to suggest that this seat could again become marginal. However, despite the more balanced municipal election results, the last three general elections need to be explained. Chishti, having gained Gillingham & Rainham in 2010, has since had majorities of 10,530, then 9,430, and in 2019 it shot up to an apparently impregnable 15,119. The clue that can reconcile Labour’s apparent dominance in the Gillingham wards and these one sided parliamentary outcomes lies in the detail: who finished strong runners up in Gillingham North and South in 2015, for example? The answer is UKIP.
This seat is close to Rochester & Strood, one of only two constituencies ever to return a UKIP MP, admittedly in a byelection. But Gillingham & Rainham is estimated to have voted by nearly two to one for Brexit in 2016. We know Medway as a whole did, by 64% to 36%. Therefore it was logical for this seat to have backed the party most determined to carry out that instruction from the people, especially in December 2019. Now that we have left the EU, we can expect the issue to decline as a determinant of electoral choice in this neck of the woods. General Election results may therefore come more into line with the local government pattern.
However a more subtle analysis might see the anti-Europeanism as at least in part a surrogate for deeper dissatisfactions among people like those of which there are so many in this constituency - white, non-professional, non-graduate, homeowners. Labour has not done well among these groups since the days of Tony Blair, and it’s not just a matter of their ambivalence and equivocation over Europe and the referendum result. One feels Keir Starmer will have to move Labour, and convincingly be seen to move Labour, away from their recent directions in order to become truly competitive in seats like these near the mouth of the Medway, to make them winnable again in a general election. It could be argued that the May 2023 local election results here demonstrate that this is possible. Possible, yes. But not certain, as midterm local elections are not choosing the national government, and they do not generate general election turnouts. Thus this will be an extremely interesting seat to watch in 2024, and the picture is not clouded in any way by parliamentary boundary changes.
2011 Census ranks UK present boundaries
Owner-occupied 70.5% 204/650
Private rented 17.5% 184/650
Social rented 10.4% 564/650
White 89.6% 447/650
Black 2.2% 166/650
Asian 5.4% 210/650
Managerial & professional 26.8%
Routine & Semi-routine 26.9%
Degree level 19.1% 546/650
Level 2 qualifications 18.5% 2/650
No qualifications 22.1% 365/650
Students 9.4% 164/650
2021 Census, ranks England and Wales new boundaries
Age 65+ 17.8% 342/575
Owner occupied 67.4% 248/575
Private rented 21.8% 164/575
Social rented 10.8% 488/575
White 84.1% 368/575
Black 5.3% 132/575
Asian 6.4% 236/575
Managerial & professional 29.9% 361/575
Routine & Semi-routine 25.2% 233/575
Degree level 25.2% 488/575
No qualifications 18.7% 235/575
Students 7.1% 191/575
General Election 2019: Gillingham and Rainham
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Rehman Chishti 28,173 61.3 +5.9
Labour Andy Stamp 13,054 28.4 –7.7
Liberal Democrats Alan Bullion 2,503 5.4 +2.6
Green George Salomon 1,043 2.3 +1.2
UKIP Rob McCulloch Martin 837 1.8 –2.5
Independent Peter Cook 229 0.5 New
CPA Roger Peacock 119 0.3 0.0
C Majority 15,119 32.9 +13.6
2019 electorate 73,529
Turnout 45,958 62.5 –4.4
Conservative hold
Swing 6.8 Lab to C
Boundary changes
None, but Medway has changed ward boundaries since the Commission started work, so some new wards will be split between constituencies
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_321_Gillingham%20and%20Rainham_Portrait.pdf
Notional results
n/a
That Gillingham was the sole name of a constituency from 1918 to 2010 might suggest that it is the largest of the Medway towns, as that privilege was not afforded to any of the others apart from Chatham before 1950, which was a historic parliamentary borough. Gillingham in Kent, by the way, is pronounced Jillingham, unlike the much smaller town in north Dorset, which has a hard G. in However the Gillingham municipal borough that existed from 1903 to 1974, and the subsequent non-metropolitan district of the same name, always included other communities that boosted the population, and so did the parliamentary seat. It was therefore only logical that Rainham should finally have been added to the title in 2010, not least because currently there are three Rainham wards with a combined electorate of over 27,000 to only two for Gillingham, containing just 22,000 voters. Borough, district and constituency also included, and still include, Hempstead & Wigmore, Twydall and Watling. There is considerable social and political variation within the seat and between the wards.
Gillingham and Rainham is proposed to remain completely unchanged in the current boundary review.
Gillingham itself is the community nearest to the other Medway towns. Indeed the historic Chatham dockyard was partly set within the boundaries of Gillingham North ward, and provided a major element of the towns’ employment. Watling is situated to the south of Gillingham, away from the river Medway, and as the name implies it straddles the A2 London-Dover road, the ancient Watling Street. Further south still and climbing up into the North Downs along the A278 that is one of the main links of the Medway conurbation to the modern M2 we find Hempstead (west of that A road) and Wigmore (east). But travelling towards Dover on the A2 the next ward is Twydall, and then one reaches the three Rainham wards. Rainham North covers the town’s station, Lower Rainham, Lower Twydall too actually, and a large section of uninhabited marsh and creek terrain at the very mouth of the Medway, culminating in the splendidly named sandbanks of Bishops Saltings and Bishops Ooze. Rainham Central is actually a compact residential area south of the A2, while Rainham South’s main population centre is the Park Wood estate, private (owner occupied) housing built in the 1960s and 1970s.
Housing tenure is usually closely related to voting preference and this is very key to the internal and overall politics of the Gillingham & Rainham division. The three Rainham wards are all strongly owner occupied and Conservative. Taking North, South East and South in turn, the former figures in the 2011 census were 76%, 87% and 79% respectively. The Tory shares in the Medway council elections in May 2019 were 64%, 46% (first but with a strong Independent performance in second place) and 50% (with UKIP as runners-up). The ward boundaries had been redrawn before the May 2023 contests, but the Conservative held all three Rainham wards (now N, SE and SW) again, albeit by smaller margins and with Labour clearly in second place in each. Hempstead/Wigmore is even more owner occupied (91%) and even more Conservative (65%, top candidate in a six party contest in 2023). However if the wards discussed so far elected 10 Conservatives and no others in the all out 2019 and 2023 elections, it should not be thought that the Tories now have it all their own way within this constituency. The other wards chose 11 Labour and no one else. When Adam Gray added up all the votes cast in Gillingham & Rainham in May 2023, Labour were ahead of the Tories, by 40.6% to 35.3%.
Both Gillingham North and South elected slates of three Labour councillors in 2023 by a margin of close to (N) and over (S) thee to one over any other party. But consider the tenure in these wards. In North less than half were owner occupied, in South just over half. In both cases there is a substantial - and in fact growing – private rented sector which was already 44% of the stock in South MSOA in 2021 and 43% in North, boosted by the development of Pier Quays. The new block of flats here north of the A289 and along Pearl Lane seem to have two characteristics. There are the halls of residence to accommodate 1,106 students at the Medway campus of the University of Kent, but this area also has the highest concentration of Black residents (mainly African) after a modest but clear increase from 2.2% in the constituency in 2011 to 5.3% in the 2021 census. The other area where there is a significant minority of Black population is in Gillingham South ward, in the terraced streets around Balmoral Road – the eastwards continuation of which is Priestfield Road, as in the Gillingham football stadium. (Gillingham currently has the only league club in Kent; they reached the heights of the Championship in the early 2000s but are currently in League 2). Meanwhile Twydall had the largest social rented sector in the constituency, mainly in the shape of the Beechings Way council estate, and also elected three Labour representatives in 2023.
Gillingham itself, then, is atypical of the voting patterns of the constituency as a whole. It has far less than the overall 67% owner occupation rate. Its housing is consistently distinctly down-market. It has more students and more ethnic minority residents. Having elected Liberal Democrats in 2003 and 2007 and Independents in 2011, the Gillingham wards have elected none but Labour since 2015. Conservatives are notable by their absence. On the other hand all the Rainham wards have returned solid slates of Conservatives in every election since 2007. Ironically, the current MP, Rehman Chishti, started his career on the council as a Labour member for Gillingham North in 2003 then switched to be one of the Tory victors in Rainham Central in 2007, 2011 and 2015, the second two being after he became MP in 2010.
Generally speaking Twydall has gone along with the Labour wins in Gillingham, and Hempstead & Wigmore with the Conservatives triumphs in Rainham. Watling sits in the middle ground. The impression, therefore, of two warring halves to the seat, roughly Gillingham v. Rainham, would seem to suggest that this seat could again become marginal. However, despite the more balanced municipal election results, the last three general elections need to be explained. Chishti, having gained Gillingham & Rainham in 2010, has since had majorities of 10,530, then 9,430, and in 2019 it shot up to an apparently impregnable 15,119. The clue that can reconcile Labour’s apparent dominance in the Gillingham wards and these one sided parliamentary outcomes lies in the detail: who finished strong runners up in Gillingham North and South in 2015, for example? The answer is UKIP.
This seat is close to Rochester & Strood, one of only two constituencies ever to return a UKIP MP, admittedly in a byelection. But Gillingham & Rainham is estimated to have voted by nearly two to one for Brexit in 2016. We know Medway as a whole did, by 64% to 36%. Therefore it was logical for this seat to have backed the party most determined to carry out that instruction from the people, especially in December 2019. Now that we have left the EU, we can expect the issue to decline as a determinant of electoral choice in this neck of the woods. General Election results may therefore come more into line with the local government pattern.
However a more subtle analysis might see the anti-Europeanism as at least in part a surrogate for deeper dissatisfactions among people like those of which there are so many in this constituency - white, non-professional, non-graduate, homeowners. Labour has not done well among these groups since the days of Tony Blair, and it’s not just a matter of their ambivalence and equivocation over Europe and the referendum result. One feels Keir Starmer will have to move Labour, and convincingly be seen to move Labour, away from their recent directions in order to become truly competitive in seats like these near the mouth of the Medway, to make them winnable again in a general election. It could be argued that the May 2023 local election results here demonstrate that this is possible. Possible, yes. But not certain, as midterm local elections are not choosing the national government, and they do not generate general election turnouts. Thus this will be an extremely interesting seat to watch in 2024, and the picture is not clouded in any way by parliamentary boundary changes.
2011 Census ranks UK present boundaries
Owner-occupied 70.5% 204/650
Private rented 17.5% 184/650
Social rented 10.4% 564/650
White 89.6% 447/650
Black 2.2% 166/650
Asian 5.4% 210/650
Managerial & professional 26.8%
Routine & Semi-routine 26.9%
Degree level 19.1% 546/650
Level 2 qualifications 18.5% 2/650
No qualifications 22.1% 365/650
Students 9.4% 164/650
2021 Census, ranks England and Wales new boundaries
Age 65+ 17.8% 342/575
Owner occupied 67.4% 248/575
Private rented 21.8% 164/575
Social rented 10.8% 488/575
White 84.1% 368/575
Black 5.3% 132/575
Asian 6.4% 236/575
Managerial & professional 29.9% 361/575
Routine & Semi-routine 25.2% 233/575
Degree level 25.2% 488/575
No qualifications 18.7% 235/575
Students 7.1% 191/575
General Election 2019: Gillingham and Rainham
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Rehman Chishti 28,173 61.3 +5.9
Labour Andy Stamp 13,054 28.4 –7.7
Liberal Democrats Alan Bullion 2,503 5.4 +2.6
Green George Salomon 1,043 2.3 +1.2
UKIP Rob McCulloch Martin 837 1.8 –2.5
Independent Peter Cook 229 0.5 New
CPA Roger Peacock 119 0.3 0.0
C Majority 15,119 32.9 +13.6
2019 electorate 73,529
Turnout 45,958 62.5 –4.4
Conservative hold
Swing 6.8 Lab to C
Boundary changes
None, but Medway has changed ward boundaries since the Commission started work, so some new wards will be split between constituencies
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_321_Gillingham%20and%20Rainham_Portrait.pdf
Notional results
n/a
