Post by Robert Waller on Sept 21, 2023 14:58:23 GMT
This constituency largely survives the fairly substantial boundary changes in its own county and rural Gloucestershire, including a new cross-border seat. South West Wiltshire will lose a fair chunk of largely rural terrain in its south eastern quadrant to Salisbury: Tisbury, the Nadder Valley, and Fovant & Chalke Valley. This involves the departure of around 11,200 voters, 13.6% of the present South West’s electorate. In return it takes a smaller segment, the Wiltshire electoral division of Hilperton, from Chippenham, thus extending SW’s boundaries, slightly counter-intuitively, a little further north east just beyond Trowbridge. The seat’s name will remain the same.
There is an ongoing if somewhat sporadic debate among professional and amateur psephologists about the relative merits of compass point compared with community nomenclature for parliamentary constituencies. As usual in debates, both sides of the argument hold some weight, but one example where the compass point (in this case South West, which is rather rarely used) is definitely more defensible does lie here in Wiltshire. This is because when the seat was created as recently as 2010 it was the linear successor of the Westbury constituency. It is true that a seat had been named after the town of Westbury since 1449, but it had long included much territory outside this historic borough, and had indeed become a ‘county’ constituency in 1885. What is more, Westbury had for a long time not been the largest or most important town in its eponymous division. It was sandwiched between its slightly larger rival (in local sport at least) Warminster and Trowbridge, which has not only twice the population of Westbury but the status of ‘county town’ – yet has never been dignified by being included in the name of a parliamentary unit.
Trowbridge must be one of the lesser known and more unlikely county towns, though there are other counties which follow the common (indeed usual) practice in the United States of not having the largest city as ‘capital’; when Wiltshire county council was established in 1889 Trowbridge was chosen, probably as a compromise between Salisbury and Swindon and due to its railway connections. However it is not geographically central, being tucked on the western edge of the county. There should, arguably, have been a West Wiltshire seat long before the Westbury name disappeared in 2010, and South West Wiltshire now makes more sense given the removal in that review of Bradford on Avon. That delightful town was now to be included in a division that restored the name of Chippenham in addition to North Wiltshire as the county gained a seat; the north-west quadrant of Wiltshire is currently shared between those two constituencies, and after the boundary changes Melksham & Devizes and that cross county boundary South Cotswolds will include parts too, along with a redrawn Chippenham.
South West Wiltshire is now a safe Conservative seat, with a majority of 21,630 over Labour. This is their largest majority in absolute and percentage terms, including Westbury's history too, under universal suffrage. Westbury was always won by a Conservative after 1923, but it was quite close on a number of occasions. Labour were not far behind not only in 1945 but right through the 1950s and 1960s – the largest Tory lead in these decades was 5,826 in 1959. Then the Liberals and Liberal Democrats took up the mantle of chief challenger from February 1974 right up through 2005 to the first SW Wiltshire contest in 2010; Duncan Hames, later MP for Chippenham, was the candidate in 2005 and lost by just over 5,000 votes. Then in 2015 the vote of the junior party in the coalition collapsed and they slumped to fourth place behind UKIP and Labour (this is a more than average Leave area, estimated at around 57%).
However in the long term the Liberal Democrats would seem to be likely at least to recover their second place, even if a challenge for victory looks distant. This is because they do have some success in local government within this constituency, whereas Labour have had no councillors at all for a number of years. In the most recent Wiltshire unitary authority elections in 2021 the Lib Dems did win some urban divisions such as Central, Grove, Lambrok (not a misprint) and Paxcroft, and North and East in Westbury. However the Conservatives won most of the council seats in the extensive rural areas, except where there were Independents, and also both of them in Warminster.
Warminster was once suggested to be the UFO spotting capital of England, but is best characterised as a town strongly influenced by the presence of the Army, with both the Waterloo Lines and Battlesbury Barracks; and the surrounding villages such as Crockerton, Sutton Veny, and the Deverills are much favoured as residences for retirement for senior Army officers. Another place included in the SW Wiltshire seat, though with no voters, is the abandoned village of Imber, used for Army training on Salisbury Plain since the Second World War. As elsewhere, a military presence tends to push the politics of an area slightly to the right; to the right because of the perceived preference for the Conservatives on defence issues, but only slightly because of the low turnout of military personnel, and because it is easy to overestimate the proportion of those in such occupations – SW Wiltshire only ranked 37th amongst seats for jobs in ‘public service and defence’ when these census figures were last published.
Despite the boundaries including the section of the Plain round Imber and a number of villages including those in the Wylye valley, this is not really a rural seat either – it was outside the top 100 constituencies as far as employment in agriculture was concerned before the boundary changes and will be further down that list after them. Most of the voters live in the towns, Trowbridge, Warminster and, third largest only, Westbury. It was noted that in 2019 Labour did exceptionally badly in towns, and the Conservatives made dramatic and unprecedented breakthroughs. It was not those situated in the south west quadrant of Wiltshire that commentators had in mind; but all the same the Tories reached a historic high here too.
There is likely to be some ebb from that tide. In 2021 the main town clearly swung from Conservative to Liberal Democrat: their four wins in Trowbridge were all gains. As there were no local elections for Wiltshire unitary authority in 2023 we cannot tell whether there would have been as many Tory losses in the more rural section then as there were in so many places. The boundary changes are not the main reason, though it will hurt the incumbent party somewhat to have a higher proportion of urban voters.
Yet an actual change of hand in SW Wiltshire remains highly unlikely. Not only can the Conservative party lose 10% from their share and still have an absolute majority of votes, but they could afford even further slippage due to the divided opposition. Labour was in second place in December 2019 and will now be strong contenders for national government, but it is the Lib Dems who have the local government base (and they will have far more winnable constituencies nearly in which to focus). Even when in the government's dark days in late 2023 the Electoral Calculus site projected Labour winning an overall majority of 180 and the Tories being reduced to their lowest number of seats since 1906, they still had the latter ahead in SW Wiltshire. Such figures are highly questionable anyway, especially as predictions, given that they are largely based on midterm opinion polling. The safest bet is a Conservative hold with a reduced share and Labour and Lib Dems fighting it out for second place.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 22.1% 164/575
Owner occupied 68.2% 224/575
Private rented 17.5% 317/575
Social rented 14.2% 328/575
White 95.0% 183/575
Black 0.8% 358/575
Asian 1.7% 434/575
Managerial & professional 32.5% 292/575
Routine & Semi-routine 27.1% 163/575
Degree level 28.6% 380/575
No qualifications 16.8% 344/575
Students 4.3% 526/575
General Election 2019: South West Wiltshire
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Conservative Andrew Murrison 33,038 60.2 + 0.2
Labour Emily Pomroy-Smith 11,408 20.8 - 5.7
Liberal Democrats Ellen Nicholson 8,015 14.6 + 4.8
Green Julie Phillips 2,434 4.4 + 1.8
C Majority 21,630 39.4 + 5.9
Turnout 54,895 70.4 - 1.6
Conservative hold
Swing 3.0 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
SW Wiltshire will consist of
86.4% of SW Wiltshire
5.1% of Chippenham
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-west/South%20West_416_South%20West%20Wiltshire_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
There is an ongoing if somewhat sporadic debate among professional and amateur psephologists about the relative merits of compass point compared with community nomenclature for parliamentary constituencies. As usual in debates, both sides of the argument hold some weight, but one example where the compass point (in this case South West, which is rather rarely used) is definitely more defensible does lie here in Wiltshire. This is because when the seat was created as recently as 2010 it was the linear successor of the Westbury constituency. It is true that a seat had been named after the town of Westbury since 1449, but it had long included much territory outside this historic borough, and had indeed become a ‘county’ constituency in 1885. What is more, Westbury had for a long time not been the largest or most important town in its eponymous division. It was sandwiched between its slightly larger rival (in local sport at least) Warminster and Trowbridge, which has not only twice the population of Westbury but the status of ‘county town’ – yet has never been dignified by being included in the name of a parliamentary unit.
Trowbridge must be one of the lesser known and more unlikely county towns, though there are other counties which follow the common (indeed usual) practice in the United States of not having the largest city as ‘capital’; when Wiltshire county council was established in 1889 Trowbridge was chosen, probably as a compromise between Salisbury and Swindon and due to its railway connections. However it is not geographically central, being tucked on the western edge of the county. There should, arguably, have been a West Wiltshire seat long before the Westbury name disappeared in 2010, and South West Wiltshire now makes more sense given the removal in that review of Bradford on Avon. That delightful town was now to be included in a division that restored the name of Chippenham in addition to North Wiltshire as the county gained a seat; the north-west quadrant of Wiltshire is currently shared between those two constituencies, and after the boundary changes Melksham & Devizes and that cross county boundary South Cotswolds will include parts too, along with a redrawn Chippenham.
South West Wiltshire is now a safe Conservative seat, with a majority of 21,630 over Labour. This is their largest majority in absolute and percentage terms, including Westbury's history too, under universal suffrage. Westbury was always won by a Conservative after 1923, but it was quite close on a number of occasions. Labour were not far behind not only in 1945 but right through the 1950s and 1960s – the largest Tory lead in these decades was 5,826 in 1959. Then the Liberals and Liberal Democrats took up the mantle of chief challenger from February 1974 right up through 2005 to the first SW Wiltshire contest in 2010; Duncan Hames, later MP for Chippenham, was the candidate in 2005 and lost by just over 5,000 votes. Then in 2015 the vote of the junior party in the coalition collapsed and they slumped to fourth place behind UKIP and Labour (this is a more than average Leave area, estimated at around 57%).
However in the long term the Liberal Democrats would seem to be likely at least to recover their second place, even if a challenge for victory looks distant. This is because they do have some success in local government within this constituency, whereas Labour have had no councillors at all for a number of years. In the most recent Wiltshire unitary authority elections in 2021 the Lib Dems did win some urban divisions such as Central, Grove, Lambrok (not a misprint) and Paxcroft, and North and East in Westbury. However the Conservatives won most of the council seats in the extensive rural areas, except where there were Independents, and also both of them in Warminster.
Warminster was once suggested to be the UFO spotting capital of England, but is best characterised as a town strongly influenced by the presence of the Army, with both the Waterloo Lines and Battlesbury Barracks; and the surrounding villages such as Crockerton, Sutton Veny, and the Deverills are much favoured as residences for retirement for senior Army officers. Another place included in the SW Wiltshire seat, though with no voters, is the abandoned village of Imber, used for Army training on Salisbury Plain since the Second World War. As elsewhere, a military presence tends to push the politics of an area slightly to the right; to the right because of the perceived preference for the Conservatives on defence issues, but only slightly because of the low turnout of military personnel, and because it is easy to overestimate the proportion of those in such occupations – SW Wiltshire only ranked 37th amongst seats for jobs in ‘public service and defence’ when these census figures were last published.
Despite the boundaries including the section of the Plain round Imber and a number of villages including those in the Wylye valley, this is not really a rural seat either – it was outside the top 100 constituencies as far as employment in agriculture was concerned before the boundary changes and will be further down that list after them. Most of the voters live in the towns, Trowbridge, Warminster and, third largest only, Westbury. It was noted that in 2019 Labour did exceptionally badly in towns, and the Conservatives made dramatic and unprecedented breakthroughs. It was not those situated in the south west quadrant of Wiltshire that commentators had in mind; but all the same the Tories reached a historic high here too.
There is likely to be some ebb from that tide. In 2021 the main town clearly swung from Conservative to Liberal Democrat: their four wins in Trowbridge were all gains. As there were no local elections for Wiltshire unitary authority in 2023 we cannot tell whether there would have been as many Tory losses in the more rural section then as there were in so many places. The boundary changes are not the main reason, though it will hurt the incumbent party somewhat to have a higher proportion of urban voters.
Yet an actual change of hand in SW Wiltshire remains highly unlikely. Not only can the Conservative party lose 10% from their share and still have an absolute majority of votes, but they could afford even further slippage due to the divided opposition. Labour was in second place in December 2019 and will now be strong contenders for national government, but it is the Lib Dems who have the local government base (and they will have far more winnable constituencies nearly in which to focus). Even when in the government's dark days in late 2023 the Electoral Calculus site projected Labour winning an overall majority of 180 and the Tories being reduced to their lowest number of seats since 1906, they still had the latter ahead in SW Wiltshire. Such figures are highly questionable anyway, especially as predictions, given that they are largely based on midterm opinion polling. The safest bet is a Conservative hold with a reduced share and Labour and Lib Dems fighting it out for second place.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 22.1% 164/575
Owner occupied 68.2% 224/575
Private rented 17.5% 317/575
Social rented 14.2% 328/575
White 95.0% 183/575
Black 0.8% 358/575
Asian 1.7% 434/575
Managerial & professional 32.5% 292/575
Routine & Semi-routine 27.1% 163/575
Degree level 28.6% 380/575
No qualifications 16.8% 344/575
Students 4.3% 526/575
General Election 2019: South West Wiltshire
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Conservative Andrew Murrison 33,038 60.2 + 0.2
Labour Emily Pomroy-Smith 11,408 20.8 - 5.7
Liberal Democrats Ellen Nicholson 8,015 14.6 + 4.8
Green Julie Phillips 2,434 4.4 + 1.8
C Majority 21,630 39.4 + 5.9
Turnout 54,895 70.4 - 1.6
Conservative hold
Swing 3.0 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
SW Wiltshire will consist of
86.4% of SW Wiltshire
5.1% of Chippenham
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-west/South%20West_416_South%20West%20Wiltshire_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
| Con | 27546 | 58.3% | |
| Lab | 10168 | 21.5% | |
| LD | 7787 | 16.5% | |
| Green | 1736 | 3.7% | |
| Con Majority | 17378 | 36.8% |