Post by Robert Waller on Sept 6, 2023 20:34:34 GMT
Parliamentary byelections can have a lasting impact. This is true particularly of Liberal (Democrat) successes, that can lead to lengthy periods of tenure in what may seem unlikely seats. Newbury, for example, was gained from the Tories with a swing of over 28% in 1993 and held by David Rendel until ‘normality’ was finally restored in 2005. Simon Hughes may not have won Bermondsey except in a somewhat controversial byelection (February 1983), when he secured a swing of over 44% (sic), then held it for 32 years. Another striking example can be found in the Fens of eastern England.
On 26 July 1973 the well known chef, radio (Just A Minute) and television (Chunky dog food) personality, class winner in the 1969 Daily Mail transatlantic air race, and grandson of a famous grandfather, Clement Freud gained the Isle of Ely from the Conservatives. He was to remain in the Commons for 14 years. Speaking personally, of all the byelections I have followed, this was the most memorable. I did not hear the result until a few days later, as I was on my first ever trip abroad, a school tour to and of Switzerland; I found a British newspaper at a stall by the shores of Lake Luzern. Why did I find it so exciting? Maybe it was those circumstances in foreign climes, maybe it was the election of a familiar figure from one of my favourite radio programmes, perhaps it had something to do with the perceived mystery of the Isle of Ely (which I had never then visited): specializing at the time in medieval History, I thought of the story of Hereward the Wake, defying the national government of the day from his fastness in the swamps.
And why am I recalling the electoral history of the Isle of Ely? That is because in the 1983 boundary changes that romantic name was abolished and the large majority of the seat (along with Clement Freud) transferred to North East Cambridgeshire. This is surely a less attractive name, but it was enforced. The city of Ely itself, rising from the Fen lowlands and crowned by the magnificent octagonal lantern atop a great cathedral, was the only significant departure – now placed anonymously in another dully named division, SE Cambridgeshire. Otherwise the constituency largely survived, and still does: it includes the largest town in Freud's seat, Wisbech (population over 31,000); the administrative centre of the former (1889-1965) administrative county of the Isle, March (22,000); and the other towns of Chatteris (10,000), Whittlesey (16,000) and Littleport (8,000).
Most of these communities are now located in the district council of Fenland, and that sums it up – in fact, it would make a far less impersonal name for the parliamentary constituency. (A very good opportunity to make this change was denied in the latest review; see below). This must be the consistently lowest seat in the United Kingdom. Although there are no impenetrable bogs, marshes or swamps any more, as in Hereward’s day, there are no significant hills either, since Ely itself was removed. There is still plenty of water, in the form of rivers, natural (Great Ouse, Nene, Lark) and artificial (New Bedford, Forty Foot or Vermuyden’s Drain …) along with their dykes. Study of a detailed map reveals a network of countless water-courses across most of the constituency. This is still somewhat mysterious, deep, country, as anyone who has read Graham Swift’s 1992 novel Waterland can feel. Roads run dead straight for miles then undertake sudden unexplained sharp kinks. Since their drainage, the Fens have provided much rich and fertile farmland, chiefly arable, extending apparently endlessly under the huge skies.
However it may come as a surprise to look at this seat’s economic and employment statistics. It is actually in the top decile not only for agriculture but for manufacturing - and the percentage in the latter is nearly five times as high, 15% compared with 3%. This is due to the presence of food processing factories such as Metal Box’s largest plant at Wisbech, Shire Garden Buildings who make wooden buildings, Metalcraft of Chatteris, and many more small to medium sized concerns. The Census figures also reveal that overall this is a remarkably working class seat, with a particularly high number in semi-routine occupations, and an extremely proportion educated to degree level along with a very low number of full time students. However why a very high percentage of respondents classified their health as good rather than very good is unclear; surely in this day and age it cannot be to do with a low lying swampy miasma, which is no more than a historical and psychological characterisation of this seat.
One thing that is clear is that the days of Liberal success in this neck of the woods has long gone. Since Clement Freud was finally defeated in 1987, the Tories have built up their majority (over three different second place parties, including the Liberal Democrats in 1992 and 2010 and UKIP in 2015) to seven votes short of 30,000, over Labour, in December 2019. This is the 6th safest Tory lead in percentage terms, and the 5th highest numerically. In that general election the Liberal Democrat share was just 8.1%, and that an improvement over deposit-losing performances in 2015 and 2017.
In local elections too, the Conservatives have been dominant. After the most recent Fenland contests in May 2023, on new boundaries, the Liberal Democrats had two councillors (in Parson Drove & Wisbech St Mary), the Conservatives 35, and no other party any at all; against the trend of the day nationally, the Greens lost their only councillor to a Tory in March West. There were also six Independents, but that was four fewer than in 2019, and one of these losses was Mike Cornwell, the leader of the opposition on Fenland Council, in March North. In May 2021, the Conservatives won all 10 Cambridgeshire county council seats within Fenland as well, though the Lib Dems did win Sutton, which is one of the handful of areas currently within this seat that is in the East Cambridgeshire district. This appearance of a one-party state was probably exacerbated in 2019 by the near 70% Leave vote in the 2016 referendum – a stark contrast with 45% in SE Cambridgeshire, 38% in South Cambridgeshire, and 26% in Cambridge itself. It seemed appropriate that the current MP Steve Barclay was appointed Secretary of State for Exiting the EU in 2018. Maybe Fenland, or the Isle of Ely, is not really in Cambridgeshire after all.
Nevertheless the Boundary Commission still proposed after the inquiry process that the name of this seat should remain as North East Cambridgeshire, not Fenland. This is despite the fact that as it is oversized, like other seats in the county, it confirmed its recommendations that that the East Cambridgeshire council sections (Littleport, Little Downham, and Sutton) should be removed to Ely & East Cambridgeshire, to leave this constituency as coterminous with the Fenland council. Almost any seat would still be vulnerable in a byelection in current circumstances, as in 1973 (when Ripon in North Yorkshire also switched from Tory to Liberal on the same day as Freud’s win). Yet whether named explicitly after the Fen country or not, this successor to the Isle of Ely was highly unlikely to reject the Conservatives in a general election, as was demonstrated in July 2024, when not only did it return Steve Barclay with a relatively comfortable majority of over 7,000, but ranked as the 7th safest of their 121 surviving constituencies.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 22.8% 137/575
Owner occupied 67.3% 233/573
Private rented 20.0% 237/573
Social rented 12.7% 386/573
White 95.9% 137/575
Black 0.8% 356/575
Asian 1.2% 489/575
Managerial & professional 24.1% 502/575
Routine & Semi-routine 32.9% 27/575
Degree level 19.0% 569/575
No qualifications 25.8% 37/575
Students 4.0% 556/575
General Election 2024: North East Cambridgeshire
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Steve Barclay 16,246 41.5 −32.4
Reform UK Chris Thornhill 9,057 23.1 N/A
Labour Javeria Hussain 8,008 20.4 +4.4
Liberal Democrats David Chalmers 2,716 6.9 +0.2
Green Andrew Crawford 2,001 5.1 +1.7
Independent David Patrick 958 2.4 N/A
Workers Party Clayton Payne 190 0.5 N/A
C Majority 7,189 18.4 –38.2
Turnout 39,176 54.8 –8.2
Registered electors 71,511
Conservative hold
Swing 27.7 C to Reform
General Election 2019: North East Cambridgeshire
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Steve Barclay 38,423 72.5 +8.1
Labour Diane Boyd 8,430 15.9 -8.6
Liberal Democrats Rupert Moss-Eccardt 4,298 8.1 +3.6
Green Ruth Johnson 1,813 3.4 +1.5
C Majority 29,993 56.6 +16.7
2019 electorate 83,699
Turnout 52,964 63.3 +0.2
Conservative hold
Swing 8.4 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
North East Cambridgeshire consists of
84.3% of North East Cambridgeshire
(the other 15.7% is transferred to Ely & East Cambridgeshire)
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_081_North%20East%20Cambridgeshire_Portrait.pdf
Notional result 2019 on the new boundaries (Rallings & Thrasher)
On 26 July 1973 the well known chef, radio (Just A Minute) and television (Chunky dog food) personality, class winner in the 1969 Daily Mail transatlantic air race, and grandson of a famous grandfather, Clement Freud gained the Isle of Ely from the Conservatives. He was to remain in the Commons for 14 years. Speaking personally, of all the byelections I have followed, this was the most memorable. I did not hear the result until a few days later, as I was on my first ever trip abroad, a school tour to and of Switzerland; I found a British newspaper at a stall by the shores of Lake Luzern. Why did I find it so exciting? Maybe it was those circumstances in foreign climes, maybe it was the election of a familiar figure from one of my favourite radio programmes, perhaps it had something to do with the perceived mystery of the Isle of Ely (which I had never then visited): specializing at the time in medieval History, I thought of the story of Hereward the Wake, defying the national government of the day from his fastness in the swamps.
And why am I recalling the electoral history of the Isle of Ely? That is because in the 1983 boundary changes that romantic name was abolished and the large majority of the seat (along with Clement Freud) transferred to North East Cambridgeshire. This is surely a less attractive name, but it was enforced. The city of Ely itself, rising from the Fen lowlands and crowned by the magnificent octagonal lantern atop a great cathedral, was the only significant departure – now placed anonymously in another dully named division, SE Cambridgeshire. Otherwise the constituency largely survived, and still does: it includes the largest town in Freud's seat, Wisbech (population over 31,000); the administrative centre of the former (1889-1965) administrative county of the Isle, March (22,000); and the other towns of Chatteris (10,000), Whittlesey (16,000) and Littleport (8,000).
Most of these communities are now located in the district council of Fenland, and that sums it up – in fact, it would make a far less impersonal name for the parliamentary constituency. (A very good opportunity to make this change was denied in the latest review; see below). This must be the consistently lowest seat in the United Kingdom. Although there are no impenetrable bogs, marshes or swamps any more, as in Hereward’s day, there are no significant hills either, since Ely itself was removed. There is still plenty of water, in the form of rivers, natural (Great Ouse, Nene, Lark) and artificial (New Bedford, Forty Foot or Vermuyden’s Drain …) along with their dykes. Study of a detailed map reveals a network of countless water-courses across most of the constituency. This is still somewhat mysterious, deep, country, as anyone who has read Graham Swift’s 1992 novel Waterland can feel. Roads run dead straight for miles then undertake sudden unexplained sharp kinks. Since their drainage, the Fens have provided much rich and fertile farmland, chiefly arable, extending apparently endlessly under the huge skies.
However it may come as a surprise to look at this seat’s economic and employment statistics. It is actually in the top decile not only for agriculture but for manufacturing - and the percentage in the latter is nearly five times as high, 15% compared with 3%. This is due to the presence of food processing factories such as Metal Box’s largest plant at Wisbech, Shire Garden Buildings who make wooden buildings, Metalcraft of Chatteris, and many more small to medium sized concerns. The Census figures also reveal that overall this is a remarkably working class seat, with a particularly high number in semi-routine occupations, and an extremely proportion educated to degree level along with a very low number of full time students. However why a very high percentage of respondents classified their health as good rather than very good is unclear; surely in this day and age it cannot be to do with a low lying swampy miasma, which is no more than a historical and psychological characterisation of this seat.
One thing that is clear is that the days of Liberal success in this neck of the woods has long gone. Since Clement Freud was finally defeated in 1987, the Tories have built up their majority (over three different second place parties, including the Liberal Democrats in 1992 and 2010 and UKIP in 2015) to seven votes short of 30,000, over Labour, in December 2019. This is the 6th safest Tory lead in percentage terms, and the 5th highest numerically. In that general election the Liberal Democrat share was just 8.1%, and that an improvement over deposit-losing performances in 2015 and 2017.
In local elections too, the Conservatives have been dominant. After the most recent Fenland contests in May 2023, on new boundaries, the Liberal Democrats had two councillors (in Parson Drove & Wisbech St Mary), the Conservatives 35, and no other party any at all; against the trend of the day nationally, the Greens lost their only councillor to a Tory in March West. There were also six Independents, but that was four fewer than in 2019, and one of these losses was Mike Cornwell, the leader of the opposition on Fenland Council, in March North. In May 2021, the Conservatives won all 10 Cambridgeshire county council seats within Fenland as well, though the Lib Dems did win Sutton, which is one of the handful of areas currently within this seat that is in the East Cambridgeshire district. This appearance of a one-party state was probably exacerbated in 2019 by the near 70% Leave vote in the 2016 referendum – a stark contrast with 45% in SE Cambridgeshire, 38% in South Cambridgeshire, and 26% in Cambridge itself. It seemed appropriate that the current MP Steve Barclay was appointed Secretary of State for Exiting the EU in 2018. Maybe Fenland, or the Isle of Ely, is not really in Cambridgeshire after all.
Nevertheless the Boundary Commission still proposed after the inquiry process that the name of this seat should remain as North East Cambridgeshire, not Fenland. This is despite the fact that as it is oversized, like other seats in the county, it confirmed its recommendations that that the East Cambridgeshire council sections (Littleport, Little Downham, and Sutton) should be removed to Ely & East Cambridgeshire, to leave this constituency as coterminous with the Fenland council. Almost any seat would still be vulnerable in a byelection in current circumstances, as in 1973 (when Ripon in North Yorkshire also switched from Tory to Liberal on the same day as Freud’s win). Yet whether named explicitly after the Fen country or not, this successor to the Isle of Ely was highly unlikely to reject the Conservatives in a general election, as was demonstrated in July 2024, when not only did it return Steve Barclay with a relatively comfortable majority of over 7,000, but ranked as the 7th safest of their 121 surviving constituencies.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 22.8% 137/575
Owner occupied 67.3% 233/573
Private rented 20.0% 237/573
Social rented 12.7% 386/573
White 95.9% 137/575
Black 0.8% 356/575
Asian 1.2% 489/575
Managerial & professional 24.1% 502/575
Routine & Semi-routine 32.9% 27/575
Degree level 19.0% 569/575
No qualifications 25.8% 37/575
Students 4.0% 556/575
General Election 2024: North East Cambridgeshire
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Steve Barclay 16,246 41.5 −32.4
Reform UK Chris Thornhill 9,057 23.1 N/A
Labour Javeria Hussain 8,008 20.4 +4.4
Liberal Democrats David Chalmers 2,716 6.9 +0.2
Green Andrew Crawford 2,001 5.1 +1.7
Independent David Patrick 958 2.4 N/A
Workers Party Clayton Payne 190 0.5 N/A
C Majority 7,189 18.4 –38.2
Turnout 39,176 54.8 –8.2
Registered electors 71,511
Conservative hold
Swing 27.7 C to Reform
General Election 2019: North East Cambridgeshire
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Steve Barclay 38,423 72.5 +8.1
Labour Diane Boyd 8,430 15.9 -8.6
Liberal Democrats Rupert Moss-Eccardt 4,298 8.1 +3.6
Green Ruth Johnson 1,813 3.4 +1.5
C Majority 29,993 56.6 +16.7
2019 electorate 83,699
Turnout 52,964 63.3 +0.2
Conservative hold
Swing 8.4 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
North East Cambridgeshire consists of
84.3% of North East Cambridgeshire
(the other 15.7% is transferred to Ely & East Cambridgeshire)
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_081_North%20East%20Cambridgeshire_Portrait.pdf
Notional result 2019 on the new boundaries (Rallings & Thrasher)
| Con | 32934 | 73.9% |
| Lab | 7155 | 16.1% |
| LD | 2992 | 6.7% |
| Grn | 1503 | 3.4% |
| Majority | 25779 | 57.8% |