Post by Robert Waller on Oct 21, 2023 23:13:49 GMT
With his permission, I have updated yellowperil's profile.
East Worthing and Shoreham has existed as a constituency since 1997. before which Shoreham had been a constituency on its own including all of Adur district. It then had added to it the four most easterly wards of Worthing district i.e. Broadwater,Gaisford, Offington and Selden,and instead lost parts of Arun to Arundel, because Worthing was somewhat over sized. As the two districts of Worthing and Adur now work together very closely with a common management and chief executive, this hardly creates much of a problem, although the two districts have still not managed to bring their local electoral procedures quite into sync- Adur's last elections were in May 2022, but Worthing went to the polls in May 2023.
Adur is of course the district which covers the coastal strip between Worthing to the west and Hove to the east, and Hove is "actually" part of that eponymous city together with Brighton, which now is strongly either Labour (Hove and Kemptown)or Green (Pavilion), the interesting question is how far the Tories will be in retreat here, having become so much reduced within that neighbouring south coast city. With the sharp decline in Conservative fortunes during the 2020s so far, in opinion polls, in local elections in much if the country, and in some spectacular parliamentary byelection defeats, Tim Loughton's seemingly comfortable majority of 7,474 in 2019 has come to look vulnerable. What is more, as this is already a smallish lead compared with the Tory majorities in 2010 and 2015, it was already going rather against the national and regional trend – indeed there may be a very interesting sub-regional movement towards Labour in this coastal part of West Sussex. The picture is not clouded by boundary changes, as along with Crawley this is one of only two seats in Sussex that have been entirely unchanged in the Boundary Commission’s final report published in May 2023.
It might be worth noting that back in the late years of the last century this seat, or maybe rather more its earlier manifestation, was seen as a genuine Lib Dem prospect, at a time when Adur was one of the strongest Alliance/Lib Dem controlled authorities in the country, something of a precursor to places like Eastleigh in that regard. That control lasted from1986 to 1999, and as late as 1996 the Lib Dems held 28 seats out of 39 on Adur council, the opposition then consisting of 3 Conservatives, 2 Residents and 6 Independents! The collapse from that point was almost total, so that by 2003 there were no Lib Dem councillors left at all, as is again the case today. The highest spot since 2003 was in 2010 when they got back to 2 councillors, before subsiding completely once again. Nor is this local fragility confined to the Lib Dems - Conservative representation on this council has varied from a high of 27 to a low of 3, and Labour from 15 to 0. A warning perhaps not to place too much reliance on local election results in establishing a view of local political strength, as so much depends on purely local issues, local personalities, and party machines geared to low turnout elections.
Since the creation of this constituency in 1997, the MP has been Tim Loughton, and he won it with a majority of 5,098 over the Lib Dems. It is just about true to say that he has never been closer to losing since then - his majority over Labour in 2017 was 5,106! However, before that it had mushroomed to 14,949 in 2015, and since then the Labour advance in this constituency has been significant at all levels, if not particularly in the 2019 general election. It is probably fair to say that he has been generally been regarded as something of a maverick and a controversial Tory MP and only briefly held ministerial office as children's minister under Cameron before being dismissed in 2012. He did though briefly chair the important Home Affairs select committee (for a few weeks in 2016, after the resignation of Keith Vaz, another somewhat controversial character).
This is of course a seaside seat, but perhaps not quite a typical south coast resort constituency - it doesn't quite have a resort function at the heart of the place. It does contain a significant boat harbour, and the nearest thing to a proper port between Portsmouth to the west and Newhaven to the east, and some parts have quite an industrial feel. Away from those areas it has a lot of typical south coast dormitory- retirement type developments. Broadly speaking the eastern part -Shoreham itself and Southwick -contains those more industrialised patches while the areas west of the Adur river are smarter and more residential, particularly Lancing and Sompting. At the northern edge, beyond the A27 and heading up towards the South Downs national park, are those two iconic buildings, the great Gothic Revival chapel of Lancing College and the famous Saxon parish church at Sompting. Separating the west of Adur district from the east, apart from the river Adur itself, is the open space of Shoreham airfield, or as it rather grandly now calls itself, Brighton City Airport. As you go westwards from this Lancing and Sompting into East Worthing, in places like Broadwater it becomes a bit more mixed in character again.
As we have seen, the local political character of the areas been subject to a lot of sharp changes of direction, but very broadly there is a political correspondence to those general areas. The more easterly wards of Adur like Eastbrook, and the eastern end of Shoreham town, St Mary’s ward and Southlands, are the most inclined to be Labour territory, and in May 2022 they won all three, the first two with majorities of over 25%. Labour also gained Southwick Green in this eastern area from the Conservatives in 2021 and 2022, having previously only ever won it once, at the zenith of Blairite New Labour in 1999.
The safer areas for the Tories are the western part of the coastal strip, Widewater and Churchill wards – each held since 1999 with only occasional UKIP interludes between 2014 and 2016 - and the Sompting wards, Peverel and Cokeham, together with all the more northerly wards stretching up towards the Downs: Manor, Buckingham and Hillside wards. Again very broadly, some of those now very safe Tory wards were once Lib Dem strongholds.
The most volatile wards are those right in the centre of Adur like Mash Barn and St Nicholas. Mash Barn has been won by Labour since 2016 after two UKIP victories. It has one of the few concentrations of social rented housing in the constituency, around Shadwells Road, east Lancing. St Nicolas, which covers Old Shoreham, was gained by the Greens from the Tories in 2021 and held in 2022 – their only two victories ever on Adur council. The one near certainty is that Marine Ward of ‘Shoreham Beach’ is taken by the local Residents Association who are almost completely immovable through all the other wild fluctuations, though the Greens did at least move up to a distant second in 2022.. And then there are times when anything can happen - in the 2000 and 2012 local elections, very good Conservative years in general, the Labour party won only one seat - in Cokeham of all places.
Looking at the four East Worthing wards, in May 2023, three of them (Broadwater,Gaisford and Selden) were comfortable Labour holds, all having been gained from the Conservatives in the late 2010s and held in each local election since, and only Offington remained safely Tory, ever since 1996. In May 2023 the other three were all won by Labour by over two to one.
So, putting together the combined constituency results of 2022/23 for the two authorities, the Tories won 8 wards (Offington, Peverel, Cokeham, Manor, Buckingham, Hillside, Churchill, and Widewater). Labour also won 8 (Broadwater, Gaisford, Selden, Mash Barn, St Marys, Southlands, Southwick Green and Eastbrook). The Greens won St Nicolas. And of course the Residents won Marine.
Therefore this method of assessment suggests that East Worthing & Shoreham should now definitely be regarded as a tight Conservative-Labour marginal. Also, as there are no boundary changes at all, we know that Labour will require a swing of 7% - well within their range according to the opinion polls and other evidence as the next general election nears. It is looking ever more likely that Labour’s strength is moving along the Sussex coast westwards from Brighton through Hove – and will swallow up the Worthing constituencies too.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 22.2% 161/575
Owner occupied 72.7% 109/575
Private rented 16.7% 348/575
Social rented 10.5% 498/575
White 92.6% 248/575
Black 0.9% 343/575
Asian 2.9% 343/575
Managerial & professional 34.3% 249/575
Routine & Semi-routine 22.3% 347/575
Degree level 29.8% 351/575
No qualifications 17.9% 272/575
Students 5.1% 376/575
General Election 2019: East Worthing and Shoreham
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Tim Loughton 27,107 51.0 +2.1
Labour Lavinia O'Connor 19,633 37.0 –2.3
Liberal Democrats Ashley Ridley 4,127 7.8 +3.0
Green Leslie Williams 2,006 3.8 +1.4
Independent Sophie Cook 255 0.5
C Majority 7,474 14.0 +4.4
2019 electorate 75,195
Turnout 53,128 70.7 +0.4
Conservative hold
Swing +2.2 Lab to C
Boundary Changes & 2019 notional results
N/A. no changes
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_312_East%20Worthing%20and%20Shoreham_Landscape.pdf
East Worthing and Shoreham has existed as a constituency since 1997. before which Shoreham had been a constituency on its own including all of Adur district. It then had added to it the four most easterly wards of Worthing district i.e. Broadwater,Gaisford, Offington and Selden,and instead lost parts of Arun to Arundel, because Worthing was somewhat over sized. As the two districts of Worthing and Adur now work together very closely with a common management and chief executive, this hardly creates much of a problem, although the two districts have still not managed to bring their local electoral procedures quite into sync- Adur's last elections were in May 2022, but Worthing went to the polls in May 2023.
Adur is of course the district which covers the coastal strip between Worthing to the west and Hove to the east, and Hove is "actually" part of that eponymous city together with Brighton, which now is strongly either Labour (Hove and Kemptown)or Green (Pavilion), the interesting question is how far the Tories will be in retreat here, having become so much reduced within that neighbouring south coast city. With the sharp decline in Conservative fortunes during the 2020s so far, in opinion polls, in local elections in much if the country, and in some spectacular parliamentary byelection defeats, Tim Loughton's seemingly comfortable majority of 7,474 in 2019 has come to look vulnerable. What is more, as this is already a smallish lead compared with the Tory majorities in 2010 and 2015, it was already going rather against the national and regional trend – indeed there may be a very interesting sub-regional movement towards Labour in this coastal part of West Sussex. The picture is not clouded by boundary changes, as along with Crawley this is one of only two seats in Sussex that have been entirely unchanged in the Boundary Commission’s final report published in May 2023.
It might be worth noting that back in the late years of the last century this seat, or maybe rather more its earlier manifestation, was seen as a genuine Lib Dem prospect, at a time when Adur was one of the strongest Alliance/Lib Dem controlled authorities in the country, something of a precursor to places like Eastleigh in that regard. That control lasted from1986 to 1999, and as late as 1996 the Lib Dems held 28 seats out of 39 on Adur council, the opposition then consisting of 3 Conservatives, 2 Residents and 6 Independents! The collapse from that point was almost total, so that by 2003 there were no Lib Dem councillors left at all, as is again the case today. The highest spot since 2003 was in 2010 when they got back to 2 councillors, before subsiding completely once again. Nor is this local fragility confined to the Lib Dems - Conservative representation on this council has varied from a high of 27 to a low of 3, and Labour from 15 to 0. A warning perhaps not to place too much reliance on local election results in establishing a view of local political strength, as so much depends on purely local issues, local personalities, and party machines geared to low turnout elections.
Since the creation of this constituency in 1997, the MP has been Tim Loughton, and he won it with a majority of 5,098 over the Lib Dems. It is just about true to say that he has never been closer to losing since then - his majority over Labour in 2017 was 5,106! However, before that it had mushroomed to 14,949 in 2015, and since then the Labour advance in this constituency has been significant at all levels, if not particularly in the 2019 general election. It is probably fair to say that he has been generally been regarded as something of a maverick and a controversial Tory MP and only briefly held ministerial office as children's minister under Cameron before being dismissed in 2012. He did though briefly chair the important Home Affairs select committee (for a few weeks in 2016, after the resignation of Keith Vaz, another somewhat controversial character).
This is of course a seaside seat, but perhaps not quite a typical south coast resort constituency - it doesn't quite have a resort function at the heart of the place. It does contain a significant boat harbour, and the nearest thing to a proper port between Portsmouth to the west and Newhaven to the east, and some parts have quite an industrial feel. Away from those areas it has a lot of typical south coast dormitory- retirement type developments. Broadly speaking the eastern part -Shoreham itself and Southwick -contains those more industrialised patches while the areas west of the Adur river are smarter and more residential, particularly Lancing and Sompting. At the northern edge, beyond the A27 and heading up towards the South Downs national park, are those two iconic buildings, the great Gothic Revival chapel of Lancing College and the famous Saxon parish church at Sompting. Separating the west of Adur district from the east, apart from the river Adur itself, is the open space of Shoreham airfield, or as it rather grandly now calls itself, Brighton City Airport. As you go westwards from this Lancing and Sompting into East Worthing, in places like Broadwater it becomes a bit more mixed in character again.
As we have seen, the local political character of the areas been subject to a lot of sharp changes of direction, but very broadly there is a political correspondence to those general areas. The more easterly wards of Adur like Eastbrook, and the eastern end of Shoreham town, St Mary’s ward and Southlands, are the most inclined to be Labour territory, and in May 2022 they won all three, the first two with majorities of over 25%. Labour also gained Southwick Green in this eastern area from the Conservatives in 2021 and 2022, having previously only ever won it once, at the zenith of Blairite New Labour in 1999.
The safer areas for the Tories are the western part of the coastal strip, Widewater and Churchill wards – each held since 1999 with only occasional UKIP interludes between 2014 and 2016 - and the Sompting wards, Peverel and Cokeham, together with all the more northerly wards stretching up towards the Downs: Manor, Buckingham and Hillside wards. Again very broadly, some of those now very safe Tory wards were once Lib Dem strongholds.
The most volatile wards are those right in the centre of Adur like Mash Barn and St Nicholas. Mash Barn has been won by Labour since 2016 after two UKIP victories. It has one of the few concentrations of social rented housing in the constituency, around Shadwells Road, east Lancing. St Nicolas, which covers Old Shoreham, was gained by the Greens from the Tories in 2021 and held in 2022 – their only two victories ever on Adur council. The one near certainty is that Marine Ward of ‘Shoreham Beach’ is taken by the local Residents Association who are almost completely immovable through all the other wild fluctuations, though the Greens did at least move up to a distant second in 2022.. And then there are times when anything can happen - in the 2000 and 2012 local elections, very good Conservative years in general, the Labour party won only one seat - in Cokeham of all places.
Looking at the four East Worthing wards, in May 2023, three of them (Broadwater,Gaisford and Selden) were comfortable Labour holds, all having been gained from the Conservatives in the late 2010s and held in each local election since, and only Offington remained safely Tory, ever since 1996. In May 2023 the other three were all won by Labour by over two to one.
So, putting together the combined constituency results of 2022/23 for the two authorities, the Tories won 8 wards (Offington, Peverel, Cokeham, Manor, Buckingham, Hillside, Churchill, and Widewater). Labour also won 8 (Broadwater, Gaisford, Selden, Mash Barn, St Marys, Southlands, Southwick Green and Eastbrook). The Greens won St Nicolas. And of course the Residents won Marine.
Therefore this method of assessment suggests that East Worthing & Shoreham should now definitely be regarded as a tight Conservative-Labour marginal. Also, as there are no boundary changes at all, we know that Labour will require a swing of 7% - well within their range according to the opinion polls and other evidence as the next general election nears. It is looking ever more likely that Labour’s strength is moving along the Sussex coast westwards from Brighton through Hove – and will swallow up the Worthing constituencies too.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 22.2% 161/575
Owner occupied 72.7% 109/575
Private rented 16.7% 348/575
Social rented 10.5% 498/575
White 92.6% 248/575
Black 0.9% 343/575
Asian 2.9% 343/575
Managerial & professional 34.3% 249/575
Routine & Semi-routine 22.3% 347/575
Degree level 29.8% 351/575
No qualifications 17.9% 272/575
Students 5.1% 376/575
General Election 2019: East Worthing and Shoreham
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Tim Loughton 27,107 51.0 +2.1
Labour Lavinia O'Connor 19,633 37.0 –2.3
Liberal Democrats Ashley Ridley 4,127 7.8 +3.0
Green Leslie Williams 2,006 3.8 +1.4
Independent Sophie Cook 255 0.5
C Majority 7,474 14.0 +4.4
2019 electorate 75,195
Turnout 53,128 70.7 +0.4
Conservative hold
Swing +2.2 Lab to C
Boundary Changes & 2019 notional results
N/A. no changes
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_312_East%20Worthing%20and%20Shoreham_Landscape.pdf
