Post by Robert Waller on Oct 22, 2023 21:49:47 GMT
As the most recent Boundary Commission started its work, Hampshire’s electorate was slightly over the ideal number for its existing 18 constituencies, and Surrey’s was too high for its 11, by a somewhat larger amount. The solution adopted has been to create a cross county boundary constituency, taken more from Surrey in the ratio of nearly 2 to 1. This unites the south western corner of Surrey with part of eastern Hampshire. The whole seat lies within close range of the A3 as it heads from London towards Portsmouth (or vice versa). The communications between the two portions in general are fine – indeed the county boundary runs right through communities in the neighbourhood of Grayshott/Hindhead - and the overall shape regular, so the new Farnham & Bordon appears a logical creation.
The larger section consists of the western section of the South West Surrey constituency (the rest goes into the new Godalming & Ash). Farnham deserves its recognition in the name. Not only was the predecessor of SW Surrey, that existed between 1918 and 1983, called Farnham, but of the 13 wards of the Waverley borough council nominated to be in this seat, no fewer than nine have the prefix ‘Farnham’. Admittedly, not all of these are actually in the elegant small market town on the river Wey, surmounted by its 12th century castle (originally built by Henry of Blois, the formidable and highly political Bishop of Winchester, a key player in the power games within the civil war that wracked the reign of his brother – King Stephen). The ‘Farnham’ wards also include nearby but distinct communities such as, moving in a clockwise direction from the south west, Rowledge Wrecclesham, Upper Hale, Weybourne, Badshot Lea and Runfold in Moor Park ward, and the Bournes, now back to due south of the centre of Farnham itself. Overall the nine wards included by the Boundary Commission (reduced by local government boundary changes to eight by the time of the latest Waverley council elections in May 2023) have an electorate of over 31,000.
It is not easy to identify the political preferences of the Farnham wards from local elections alone, as the local Residents group are overwhelmingly strong. For example they won 13 of the 16 seats between the eight wards in 2023. The only exceptions were lone Liberal Democrats in Moor Park and Weybourne, and a solitary Conservative in Bourne - but in each of these cases the Residents for some reason did not put up a full slate of candidates. The same picture holds for the three county council electoral divisions, all won by the Farnham Residents in 2021, though the Tories were closest in South ward (which includes the Bournes, a very affluent residential area).
Looking historically to an era before the Residents’ hegemony, Farnham was solidly Conservative on the county council contests between 2005 and 2013, and before that the Liberal Democrats held the upper hand between 1985 and 2001. This fits with the pattern in parliamentary election in SW Surrey. It has always been won by the Conservatives since its creation in 1983, but the Liberal Democrats have run them close on occasion – in 1997 Virginia Bottomley’s majority was 2,694 and in 2001 just 861 (and their predecessors the Liberal party were only 2,599 behind when she was first returned in the election in 1984 caused by the death of Harold Macmillan’s son, Maurice). Although the LDs sank to fifth in their disastrous (end of coalition) 2015 election, and were fourth behind not only Labour but as runners-up a strong National Heath Action campaign in 2017, SW Surrey was usually a Conservative – Liberal Democrat struggle and this was re-established in 2019.
This analysis still pertains looking at the non-Farnham parts of SW Surrey included in the new seat. The largest element of this is composed of the two borough wards of the hilly, wooded town of Haslemere, south of Farnham across the A3, indeed almost in Sussex. Usually Conservative, four of the five seats on Waverley council were taken by the Lib Dems in May 2023, and the single Haslemere division was taken by the Liberal Democrats in the county council in May 2021, generally a good year for the Conservatives (by the standards of the rest of the 2020s so far). Between the two towns and just in the Farnham side of the A3 are to be found Hindhead up on the North Downs near the Devil’s Punchbowl, and Frensham, Dockenfield & Tilford, now split by the creation of the Western Commons ward which is indeed itself split between Farnham & Bordon and Godalming & Ash. The Liberal Democrats won the former but not the latter areas in 2019 and 2023.
Turning to the minority, Hampshire, section of this seat, it might be argued by some that Bordon is one of the most anonymous places ever to be dignified by inclusion in the name of a parliamentary constituency. This is in a way literally true. If one peruses the formal constitution of the list of wards provided by the Boundary Commission, one will find no mention of Bordon at all. On the other hand, there are three wards with Whitehill in their name. The answer to this puzzle is that in effect Bordon and Whitehill are one and the same place. Whitehill is the name of the civil parish and has been retained in the nomenclature of the wards of East Hampshire district council. This is because Whitehill is an older name.
Compared with ancient Farnham, Bordon is a much more modern creation. Never a market town, it developed because of the creation of an army base around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It still has something of the look of a military town, like a smaller version of Aldershot, which is also in the north eastern quadrant of Hampshire: nothing very old, and somewhat rough in appearance, and not just round the edges. The difference is that the military presence has largely disappeared from Bordon itself; though there are still high fences and the distinctive red trimmed road signs at Longmoor, about three miles south just on the other side of the A3, which is still an active training camp including for the Royal Military Police (in 2000 it acted as a boot camp for the cast of Band of Brothers).
Bordon camp’s last military residents moved out in 2015 after many years of running down, and the whole area has now been redeveloped with very modern housing, industrial and leisure facilities – so much so that an attempted exploration with outdated maps and street plans is not to be recommended.* Even the main A325 road north to Farnham has been rerouted to bypass the town to the west. The Bordon/Whitehill/Lindfield area is a single urban unit with a population of around 16,000, equating to 12,000 electors. This makes it larger than Haslemere (12,000 residents in 2021) and not far off the size of the core of Farnham.
The ambience is, however, very different form the latter, which has elements of sophistication and even tweeness. There is nothing of those characteristics in Bordon. 23% of the housing in the Bordon Camp MSOA was social rented in the detailed 2021 census statistics, reflecting the requirement to include some easy-access housing in the new builds, compared with just over 10% social rented across the Farnham area. Only 31% of residents in Bordon Camp hold university degrees compared with an average across the new seat as a whole of 43% and a high of 58% in Farnham Moor Park and Bourne. Most strikingly 27% in Bordon & Lindford are in routine and semi-routine occupations, compared with 8% in Farnham Moor Park & Bourne, 15% in Farnham Wrecclesham, 16% in Upper Hale, 14,5% in Farnham Town and the highest, 18.6%, in Farnham Weybourne & Badshot Lea. The figures in the two Haslemere MSOAs average at 15%.
In one important way, though, there are similarities between Bordon and Farnham. Bordon too sees the success of localists in municipal elections, in its case the ‘Community Group’, which won Lindford and all three Whitehill wards easily in the May 2023 East Hampshire district elections, and also took the single Whitehill, Bordon & Lindford division in the 2021 Hampshire county council election. However, looking back before the emergence of the Community Group, that division was won by the Tories in 2017 – and the Liberal Democrats from 2005 to 2013 inclusive. This same pattern of a two-party contest holds for the district wards too. In the ten previous contests before 2023 in Whitehill Chase, the Conservatives won three times and the LDs seven. In Whitehill Hogmoor & Greatham the score was 6-4 to the Lib Dems, and in the more recently created Whitehill Pinewood, which includes most of the new housing, the Liberal Democrats won every contest before the intervention of Community. This all suggests that when coupled with the SW Surrey section, ‘Bordon’ itself will not weaken the Liberal Democrat challenge in its first general election, despite it being transferred from the massively Conservative East Hampshire constituency.
There are three other East Hampshire district wards included in Farnham & Bordon. One is just to the east of the Bordon conglomeration. This is Headley, which is relatively upmarket but still nothing specially affluent – it did return Conservatives in 2023, though. Proceeding uphill towards Hindhead and the A3, we also move up the social and housing scale somewhat - to Grayshott, which like Headley has an unblemished record of electing Tories for the past 50 years. But these two wards only have a combined electorate of 6,500, and the Conservative only beat the LD in Grayshott by 41 votes in 2023. Finally, Bramshott & Liphook ward straddles the A3 but is dominated by the very pleasant small town of Liphook. This ward was retained comfortably by the Tories in its most recent contest.
Overall, it is difficult to calculate accurate notional results for Farnham & Bordon due the strong localist success in what are, after all, local elections. But it would seem that like the other successor seat in its larger, Surrey, part, Godalming & Ash, this will be a genuine Liberal Democrat target at the forthcoming parliamentary battle. The presence of over 27,000 voters from the safe Tory East Hampshire, however, including places which have remained loyal locally like Headley and Liphook, does make it somewhat surprising that Jeremy Hunt, MP for SW Surrey, chose to be adopted for Godaming & Ash rather than this seat - and then that there are (unproven) rumours in the national press that he may even stand down from there before the next election. In any case it looks as if there will be no incumbent in Farnham & Bordon, and it must be regarded as a key marginal.
*I have returned from doing just that today …
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 21.0% 207/575
Owner occupied 73.7% 82/575
Private rented 13.9% 481/575
Social rented 12.4% 414/575
White 93.4% 228/575
Black 0.7% 377/575
Asian 3.1% 332/575
Managerial & professional 44.0% 51/575
Routine & Semi-routine 16.1% 506/575
Degree level 42.8% 82/575
No qualifications 12.2% 533/575
Students 6.3% 217/575
General Election 2019: South West Surrey
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Jeremy Hunt 32,191 53.3 -2.4
Liberal Democrats Paul Follows 23,374 38.7 +28.8
Labour Tim Corry 4,775 7.9 -4.7
C Majority 8,817 14.6 -21.1
Turnout 60,340 76.3 -1.3
Conservative hold
Swing 15.6 C to LD
Boundary Changes
Farnham & Bordon consists of
59.0% of South West Surrey
34.0% of East Hampshire
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_318_Farnham%20and%20Bordon_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
The larger section consists of the western section of the South West Surrey constituency (the rest goes into the new Godalming & Ash). Farnham deserves its recognition in the name. Not only was the predecessor of SW Surrey, that existed between 1918 and 1983, called Farnham, but of the 13 wards of the Waverley borough council nominated to be in this seat, no fewer than nine have the prefix ‘Farnham’. Admittedly, not all of these are actually in the elegant small market town on the river Wey, surmounted by its 12th century castle (originally built by Henry of Blois, the formidable and highly political Bishop of Winchester, a key player in the power games within the civil war that wracked the reign of his brother – King Stephen). The ‘Farnham’ wards also include nearby but distinct communities such as, moving in a clockwise direction from the south west, Rowledge Wrecclesham, Upper Hale, Weybourne, Badshot Lea and Runfold in Moor Park ward, and the Bournes, now back to due south of the centre of Farnham itself. Overall the nine wards included by the Boundary Commission (reduced by local government boundary changes to eight by the time of the latest Waverley council elections in May 2023) have an electorate of over 31,000.
It is not easy to identify the political preferences of the Farnham wards from local elections alone, as the local Residents group are overwhelmingly strong. For example they won 13 of the 16 seats between the eight wards in 2023. The only exceptions were lone Liberal Democrats in Moor Park and Weybourne, and a solitary Conservative in Bourne - but in each of these cases the Residents for some reason did not put up a full slate of candidates. The same picture holds for the three county council electoral divisions, all won by the Farnham Residents in 2021, though the Tories were closest in South ward (which includes the Bournes, a very affluent residential area).
Looking historically to an era before the Residents’ hegemony, Farnham was solidly Conservative on the county council contests between 2005 and 2013, and before that the Liberal Democrats held the upper hand between 1985 and 2001. This fits with the pattern in parliamentary election in SW Surrey. It has always been won by the Conservatives since its creation in 1983, but the Liberal Democrats have run them close on occasion – in 1997 Virginia Bottomley’s majority was 2,694 and in 2001 just 861 (and their predecessors the Liberal party were only 2,599 behind when she was first returned in the election in 1984 caused by the death of Harold Macmillan’s son, Maurice). Although the LDs sank to fifth in their disastrous (end of coalition) 2015 election, and were fourth behind not only Labour but as runners-up a strong National Heath Action campaign in 2017, SW Surrey was usually a Conservative – Liberal Democrat struggle and this was re-established in 2019.
This analysis still pertains looking at the non-Farnham parts of SW Surrey included in the new seat. The largest element of this is composed of the two borough wards of the hilly, wooded town of Haslemere, south of Farnham across the A3, indeed almost in Sussex. Usually Conservative, four of the five seats on Waverley council were taken by the Lib Dems in May 2023, and the single Haslemere division was taken by the Liberal Democrats in the county council in May 2021, generally a good year for the Conservatives (by the standards of the rest of the 2020s so far). Between the two towns and just in the Farnham side of the A3 are to be found Hindhead up on the North Downs near the Devil’s Punchbowl, and Frensham, Dockenfield & Tilford, now split by the creation of the Western Commons ward which is indeed itself split between Farnham & Bordon and Godalming & Ash. The Liberal Democrats won the former but not the latter areas in 2019 and 2023.
Turning to the minority, Hampshire, section of this seat, it might be argued by some that Bordon is one of the most anonymous places ever to be dignified by inclusion in the name of a parliamentary constituency. This is in a way literally true. If one peruses the formal constitution of the list of wards provided by the Boundary Commission, one will find no mention of Bordon at all. On the other hand, there are three wards with Whitehill in their name. The answer to this puzzle is that in effect Bordon and Whitehill are one and the same place. Whitehill is the name of the civil parish and has been retained in the nomenclature of the wards of East Hampshire district council. This is because Whitehill is an older name.
Compared with ancient Farnham, Bordon is a much more modern creation. Never a market town, it developed because of the creation of an army base around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It still has something of the look of a military town, like a smaller version of Aldershot, which is also in the north eastern quadrant of Hampshire: nothing very old, and somewhat rough in appearance, and not just round the edges. The difference is that the military presence has largely disappeared from Bordon itself; though there are still high fences and the distinctive red trimmed road signs at Longmoor, about three miles south just on the other side of the A3, which is still an active training camp including for the Royal Military Police (in 2000 it acted as a boot camp for the cast of Band of Brothers).
Bordon camp’s last military residents moved out in 2015 after many years of running down, and the whole area has now been redeveloped with very modern housing, industrial and leisure facilities – so much so that an attempted exploration with outdated maps and street plans is not to be recommended.* Even the main A325 road north to Farnham has been rerouted to bypass the town to the west. The Bordon/Whitehill/Lindfield area is a single urban unit with a population of around 16,000, equating to 12,000 electors. This makes it larger than Haslemere (12,000 residents in 2021) and not far off the size of the core of Farnham.
The ambience is, however, very different form the latter, which has elements of sophistication and even tweeness. There is nothing of those characteristics in Bordon. 23% of the housing in the Bordon Camp MSOA was social rented in the detailed 2021 census statistics, reflecting the requirement to include some easy-access housing in the new builds, compared with just over 10% social rented across the Farnham area. Only 31% of residents in Bordon Camp hold university degrees compared with an average across the new seat as a whole of 43% and a high of 58% in Farnham Moor Park and Bourne. Most strikingly 27% in Bordon & Lindford are in routine and semi-routine occupations, compared with 8% in Farnham Moor Park & Bourne, 15% in Farnham Wrecclesham, 16% in Upper Hale, 14,5% in Farnham Town and the highest, 18.6%, in Farnham Weybourne & Badshot Lea. The figures in the two Haslemere MSOAs average at 15%.
In one important way, though, there are similarities between Bordon and Farnham. Bordon too sees the success of localists in municipal elections, in its case the ‘Community Group’, which won Lindford and all three Whitehill wards easily in the May 2023 East Hampshire district elections, and also took the single Whitehill, Bordon & Lindford division in the 2021 Hampshire county council election. However, looking back before the emergence of the Community Group, that division was won by the Tories in 2017 – and the Liberal Democrats from 2005 to 2013 inclusive. This same pattern of a two-party contest holds for the district wards too. In the ten previous contests before 2023 in Whitehill Chase, the Conservatives won three times and the LDs seven. In Whitehill Hogmoor & Greatham the score was 6-4 to the Lib Dems, and in the more recently created Whitehill Pinewood, which includes most of the new housing, the Liberal Democrats won every contest before the intervention of Community. This all suggests that when coupled with the SW Surrey section, ‘Bordon’ itself will not weaken the Liberal Democrat challenge in its first general election, despite it being transferred from the massively Conservative East Hampshire constituency.
There are three other East Hampshire district wards included in Farnham & Bordon. One is just to the east of the Bordon conglomeration. This is Headley, which is relatively upmarket but still nothing specially affluent – it did return Conservatives in 2023, though. Proceeding uphill towards Hindhead and the A3, we also move up the social and housing scale somewhat - to Grayshott, which like Headley has an unblemished record of electing Tories for the past 50 years. But these two wards only have a combined electorate of 6,500, and the Conservative only beat the LD in Grayshott by 41 votes in 2023. Finally, Bramshott & Liphook ward straddles the A3 but is dominated by the very pleasant small town of Liphook. This ward was retained comfortably by the Tories in its most recent contest.
Overall, it is difficult to calculate accurate notional results for Farnham & Bordon due the strong localist success in what are, after all, local elections. But it would seem that like the other successor seat in its larger, Surrey, part, Godalming & Ash, this will be a genuine Liberal Democrat target at the forthcoming parliamentary battle. The presence of over 27,000 voters from the safe Tory East Hampshire, however, including places which have remained loyal locally like Headley and Liphook, does make it somewhat surprising that Jeremy Hunt, MP for SW Surrey, chose to be adopted for Godaming & Ash rather than this seat - and then that there are (unproven) rumours in the national press that he may even stand down from there before the next election. In any case it looks as if there will be no incumbent in Farnham & Bordon, and it must be regarded as a key marginal.
*I have returned from doing just that today …
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 21.0% 207/575
Owner occupied 73.7% 82/575
Private rented 13.9% 481/575
Social rented 12.4% 414/575
White 93.4% 228/575
Black 0.7% 377/575
Asian 3.1% 332/575
Managerial & professional 44.0% 51/575
Routine & Semi-routine 16.1% 506/575
Degree level 42.8% 82/575
No qualifications 12.2% 533/575
Students 6.3% 217/575
General Election 2019: South West Surrey
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Jeremy Hunt 32,191 53.3 -2.4
Liberal Democrats Paul Follows 23,374 38.7 +28.8
Labour Tim Corry 4,775 7.9 -4.7
C Majority 8,817 14.6 -21.1
Turnout 60,340 76.3 -1.3
Conservative hold
Swing 15.6 C to LD
Boundary Changes
Farnham & Bordon consists of
59.0% of South West Surrey
34.0% of East Hampshire
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_318_Farnham%20and%20Bordon_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
| Con | 30376 | 59.4% |
| LD | 16779 | 32.9% |
| Lab | 3487 | 6.8% |
| Green | 479 | 0.9% |
| | ||
| Majority | 13577 | 26.6% |
