Post by Robert Waller on Nov 2, 2023 16:22:59 GMT
Central is geographically in the middle of the city of Stoke-on-Trent, but in most other regards it is at an extreme, certainly within the Potteries conurbation, and in some ways within the country as a whole. On the boundaries on which the 2019 general election was fought, Central includes two of the six towns that have been characterised as comprising Stoke-on-Trent as a whole (Arnold Bennett missed one): Hanley and Stoke. After the Commission’s review it has three, adding Fenton from the South constituency. It will, though, remain the most socially downmarket seat in Stoke, with the highest proportion of ethnic minority residents, routine and semi-routine workers, and social rented tenants. It is also the most strongly Labour in preference; though in recent general elections that is a strictly relative statement, as, like all the other Potteries seats, this former stronghold was won by the Conservatives in 2019, and would have been on the new boundaries too, by a slightly larger notional margin. This may require some explanation, as by the key indicator of occupational class Stoke-on-Trent Central is now one of the 7 most working class constituencies in the whole of England and Wales.
Labour’s decline in Stoke has been proceeding for several decades. After generations of solid Labour control of the city council, broken only briefly in their dark days of the late 1960s, as the 21st century dawned things fell apart at a municipal level. In 1996 they had all 60 seats, but in May 2000 Labour only won 5 of the 20 city wards, losing to Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and, most of all Independents, many of whom were breakaways from Labour itself. In 2002 the Independents outnumbered Labour for the first time (22-21). However an ostensible far right wing attraction also appeared, with the BNP gaining three more sets in 2006 to bring their total to five, for example. Labour only once managed overall control of the city council in the period 2006-19, in 2014.
Their decline was also reflected in parliamentary performance too. In Central constituency, for example, their share fell from 66.7% in 1997 to 39% in 2010 and 1215 and to 37% in the byelection in February 2017 caused by the resignation of Tristram Hunt, an oddly intellectual and upscale candidate for this very working class and uneducated seat. He had switched to become the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in West London. UKIP finished second in the byelection with a share of nearly 15%, no surprise in a seat where over 70% had opted for Leave a year previously. There was apparently a revival in the ‘Corbyn’ 2017 general election unexpectedly called a few months later, but this was more due to a collapse of the minor parties: while Labour’s share went up 12%, the Conservative increased by 17%. The scene was set for the Tory gain in December 2019, ending over 84 years of Labour grip on Stoke Central. Counting the byelection, this was the 7th successive swing from Labour to Conservative in this seat.
All this electoral evidence suggests a strong element of disillusion with the direction of the Labour party (in both senses of the word direction) on the part of the white working class that make up a majority in Stoke Central. That Gareth Snell only lost by 670 votes in December 2019 is partly due to the existence of a significant ethnic variety in parts of this seat. For example in the 2021 census detail, we find a concentration in west-central Stoke on Trent: Hanley & Etruria MSOA was 41% Asian in population, Shelton & Joiner’s Square 22%. These census areas approximate to two of the most loyal Labour wards in the whole city: the former has not elected any other party since 2008, the latter has always been Labour since its creation in 2011. Only half a dozen wards in all have such a record, and one of them is also in Central - Hartshill Par & Stoke, which also has over 10% Asian residents.
Far less solid for Labour are the more peripheral wards, often with a high proportion of social housing. 50% of Abbey Hulton (in the north east corner of the constituency) and over 57% in Bentilee & Ubberley (its present south eastern edge) were of this category of tenure, even in 2021. The former went UKIP and Independent in 2015.In the recent census 46% in Bentilee & Ubberley were in routine and semi-routine occupations, the highest of any MSAO in the whole city - and there is considerable competition on that variable. 33% in both Abbey Hulton and Bentilee have no educational qualifications, again the highest in the unitary authority area. Even when these wards do elect Labour, as in 2023, the level of enthusiasm may be judged form the turnout figures: 17.2% in Abbey Hulton, 15.7% in Bentilee, Ubberly & Townsend. Guess what? These are the only turnouts below 20% anywhere in a traditionally low-turnout city.
The Central seat also, as the name may imply, includes the centres of Hanley and Stoke itself. Perhaps surprising to those who don’t know the Potteries, the former is the more significant ‘central business district’. Hanley has always been known as the retail centre of Stoke-on-Trent, home to most of the high street stores as well, now, of the Potteries Shopping Centre and Hive malls. Stoke has the mainline railway station, the Minster (the nearest thing the city has to a cathedral; it is in the diocese of Lichfield), the university and general hospitals, and the main campus of Staffordshire University – students are a presence in the constituency at just over 10% of the adult population. The hideous local authority civic centre is also here, on Glebe Street (not an ecclesiastical rural idyll but a strip of concrete dominated by the A500 roaring past as it cuts the city in two). The seat extends west to the Newcastle-under-Lyme boundary, to include three more wards: from north to south: Basford & Hartshill, Penkhull & Springfields, and Trent Vale & Oakhill. This reinforces that Stoke-on-Trent doesn’t merely covers the (relatively) well known six towns but a plethora of smaller communities too. In this sense it resembles another sub-region that has similarly moved strongly away from its ancestral Labour heritage: the Black Country, West Midlands rather than North Midlands, but with many social and political similarities.
Much of the industrial history of the Potteries is also represented within the Stoke Central seat. Etruria was the main site of Josiah Wedgwood’s innovative and worldwide famous works for nearly two centuries, before becoming largely derelict after the move of the main factory out of the city to Barlaston in 1950. It now has an informative Industrial Museum, which is entirely appropriate given the decline and fall of the potteries industry, with its potbanks as distinctive as oasthouses in Kent, but a sight less attractive and healthy; my father, a factory inspector working in Stoke in the 1950s, was in an excellent position to appreciate the dangers of the smog that covered the valley in the era before Clear Air Act of 1956 could have an effect, and moved the family (including severely asthmatic daughter) up to the genuinely clean air of the spa town of Buxton, 1,000 feet above sea level. The Spode factory was also here, in Stoke, and also is now the site of a museum. If one looks closely enough one can also still find the canals (Trent & Mersey, Caldon) that were formerly vital industrial communications links. Overall it is hard to extinguish the feeling that the great days of Stoke-on-Trent lie in the fairly distant past.
This links to the fact that the electorate has not been increasing, at least relative to the rest of the UK. In 2021 it was 258,000, and celebrated rising above a quarter of a million since 2011. But it had been 265,000 in 1971 and 1961. Even in 2011 it was 234,000, which placed it far higher up the list if British urban units. In December 2019 the electorate of Central was only 55,424, nearly 20,000 short of the average, and substantial boundary changes have been needed. Central swaps a few thousand electors with North, with Sneyd Green being switched from the latter to the former and Baddeley Green and Baddeley Edge going the other way, being added to North. More significantly, nearly a quarter of the South constituency is added to Central. This is what brings the third of the six towns, Fenton, in. Fenton covers the best part of two city wards: Fenton East & Mount Pleasant, and Fenton West. Sandford Hill, just to Fenton’s east, is also switched, as is Meir Hay , even further east, completing the removal of the ‘top tier’ of Stoke South. The first three of these are very working class and traditionally (though in practice not always) Labour, but Meir Hay, especially the more modern Park Hall section, is one of the most strongly Conservative parts if the whole of Stoke, dominated by private housing estates. There is even Park Hall lake, which will be right at the new south eastern boundary of the Central seat. This area remained safely Tory in May 2023, when Labour recovered across the city as a whole, and is why the notional majority for a hypothetical 2019 contest would have an increased Conservative majority of around 2,000.
That is not a prediction. As elsewhere, by 2023 Labour’s position looked a good deal more healthy, even in Stoke. In May, they made 12 gains and took control of the city council for the first time for 12 years. Within the new bounds of Central constituency Labour won every ward except for Meir Hay North, Parkhall and Weston Coyney, only some of which is to be in the redrawn seat. Overall Adam Gray has calculated that the figures add up to 52.6% Labour, 28.7% Conservative, with the rest Independent and localist; the Liberal Democrats and Greens had no presence here in local elections in 2023. This is by far the strongest showing for Labour anywhere in the Potteries that year, and they are indeed highly likely to regain Central in a 2024 general election. They will not be facing an incumbent MP as Jo Gideon, who was elected at the age of 67, is now a septuagenarian and has announced her retirement, while Gareth Snell, Labour MP from the 2017 byelection onwards, has been readopted.
However it is unlikely that even Central will return to its former status as monolithically Labour in the foreseeable future. The Conservatives, in a thoroughly unpopular period, will probably lose much less proletarian seats than this by larger margins; and those low turnouts may well signify a long term and deeper disengagement from all the main political parties, here in one of the cradles of the industrial revolution, that has become one of the relatively most deprived parts of modern England, a disengagement one involved in politics should celebrate.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 15.0% 445/575
Owner occupied 50.8% 495/575
Private rented 25.0% 110/575
Social rented 24.2% 71/575
White 80.9% 397/575
Black 3.6% 164/575
Asian 10.8% 147/575
Managerial & professional 18.4% 569/575
Routine & Semi-routine 36.1% 7/575
Degree level 22.3% 543/575
No qualifications 25.7% 38/575
Students 10.0% 97/575
General Election 2019: Stoke-on-Trent Central
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Jo Gideon 14,557 45.4 + 5.6
Labour Co-op Gareth Snell 13,887 43.3 - 8.2
Brexit Party Tariq Mahmood 1,691 5.3 N/A
Liberal Democrats Steven Pritchard 1,116 3.5 + 1.5
Green Adam Colclough 819 2.6 + 1.5
C Majority 670 2.1
2019 electorate 55,424
Turnout 32,070 57.9 + 0.9
Conservative gain from Labour Co-op
Swing 6.9% Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Stoke-on-Trent Central consists of
93.4% of Stoke-on-Trent Central
24.3% of Stoke-on-Trent South
5.9% of Stoke-on-Trent North
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/west-midlands/West%20Midlands_470_Stoke-on-Trent%20Central_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional results on new boundaries (Rallings & Thrasher)
Labour’s decline in Stoke has been proceeding for several decades. After generations of solid Labour control of the city council, broken only briefly in their dark days of the late 1960s, as the 21st century dawned things fell apart at a municipal level. In 1996 they had all 60 seats, but in May 2000 Labour only won 5 of the 20 city wards, losing to Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and, most of all Independents, many of whom were breakaways from Labour itself. In 2002 the Independents outnumbered Labour for the first time (22-21). However an ostensible far right wing attraction also appeared, with the BNP gaining three more sets in 2006 to bring their total to five, for example. Labour only once managed overall control of the city council in the period 2006-19, in 2014.
Their decline was also reflected in parliamentary performance too. In Central constituency, for example, their share fell from 66.7% in 1997 to 39% in 2010 and 1215 and to 37% in the byelection in February 2017 caused by the resignation of Tristram Hunt, an oddly intellectual and upscale candidate for this very working class and uneducated seat. He had switched to become the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in West London. UKIP finished second in the byelection with a share of nearly 15%, no surprise in a seat where over 70% had opted for Leave a year previously. There was apparently a revival in the ‘Corbyn’ 2017 general election unexpectedly called a few months later, but this was more due to a collapse of the minor parties: while Labour’s share went up 12%, the Conservative increased by 17%. The scene was set for the Tory gain in December 2019, ending over 84 years of Labour grip on Stoke Central. Counting the byelection, this was the 7th successive swing from Labour to Conservative in this seat.
All this electoral evidence suggests a strong element of disillusion with the direction of the Labour party (in both senses of the word direction) on the part of the white working class that make up a majority in Stoke Central. That Gareth Snell only lost by 670 votes in December 2019 is partly due to the existence of a significant ethnic variety in parts of this seat. For example in the 2021 census detail, we find a concentration in west-central Stoke on Trent: Hanley & Etruria MSOA was 41% Asian in population, Shelton & Joiner’s Square 22%. These census areas approximate to two of the most loyal Labour wards in the whole city: the former has not elected any other party since 2008, the latter has always been Labour since its creation in 2011. Only half a dozen wards in all have such a record, and one of them is also in Central - Hartshill Par & Stoke, which also has over 10% Asian residents.
Far less solid for Labour are the more peripheral wards, often with a high proportion of social housing. 50% of Abbey Hulton (in the north east corner of the constituency) and over 57% in Bentilee & Ubberley (its present south eastern edge) were of this category of tenure, even in 2021. The former went UKIP and Independent in 2015.In the recent census 46% in Bentilee & Ubberley were in routine and semi-routine occupations, the highest of any MSAO in the whole city - and there is considerable competition on that variable. 33% in both Abbey Hulton and Bentilee have no educational qualifications, again the highest in the unitary authority area. Even when these wards do elect Labour, as in 2023, the level of enthusiasm may be judged form the turnout figures: 17.2% in Abbey Hulton, 15.7% in Bentilee, Ubberly & Townsend. Guess what? These are the only turnouts below 20% anywhere in a traditionally low-turnout city.
The Central seat also, as the name may imply, includes the centres of Hanley and Stoke itself. Perhaps surprising to those who don’t know the Potteries, the former is the more significant ‘central business district’. Hanley has always been known as the retail centre of Stoke-on-Trent, home to most of the high street stores as well, now, of the Potteries Shopping Centre and Hive malls. Stoke has the mainline railway station, the Minster (the nearest thing the city has to a cathedral; it is in the diocese of Lichfield), the university and general hospitals, and the main campus of Staffordshire University – students are a presence in the constituency at just over 10% of the adult population. The hideous local authority civic centre is also here, on Glebe Street (not an ecclesiastical rural idyll but a strip of concrete dominated by the A500 roaring past as it cuts the city in two). The seat extends west to the Newcastle-under-Lyme boundary, to include three more wards: from north to south: Basford & Hartshill, Penkhull & Springfields, and Trent Vale & Oakhill. This reinforces that Stoke-on-Trent doesn’t merely covers the (relatively) well known six towns but a plethora of smaller communities too. In this sense it resembles another sub-region that has similarly moved strongly away from its ancestral Labour heritage: the Black Country, West Midlands rather than North Midlands, but with many social and political similarities.
Much of the industrial history of the Potteries is also represented within the Stoke Central seat. Etruria was the main site of Josiah Wedgwood’s innovative and worldwide famous works for nearly two centuries, before becoming largely derelict after the move of the main factory out of the city to Barlaston in 1950. It now has an informative Industrial Museum, which is entirely appropriate given the decline and fall of the potteries industry, with its potbanks as distinctive as oasthouses in Kent, but a sight less attractive and healthy; my father, a factory inspector working in Stoke in the 1950s, was in an excellent position to appreciate the dangers of the smog that covered the valley in the era before Clear Air Act of 1956 could have an effect, and moved the family (including severely asthmatic daughter) up to the genuinely clean air of the spa town of Buxton, 1,000 feet above sea level. The Spode factory was also here, in Stoke, and also is now the site of a museum. If one looks closely enough one can also still find the canals (Trent & Mersey, Caldon) that were formerly vital industrial communications links. Overall it is hard to extinguish the feeling that the great days of Stoke-on-Trent lie in the fairly distant past.
This links to the fact that the electorate has not been increasing, at least relative to the rest of the UK. In 2021 it was 258,000, and celebrated rising above a quarter of a million since 2011. But it had been 265,000 in 1971 and 1961. Even in 2011 it was 234,000, which placed it far higher up the list if British urban units. In December 2019 the electorate of Central was only 55,424, nearly 20,000 short of the average, and substantial boundary changes have been needed. Central swaps a few thousand electors with North, with Sneyd Green being switched from the latter to the former and Baddeley Green and Baddeley Edge going the other way, being added to North. More significantly, nearly a quarter of the South constituency is added to Central. This is what brings the third of the six towns, Fenton, in. Fenton covers the best part of two city wards: Fenton East & Mount Pleasant, and Fenton West. Sandford Hill, just to Fenton’s east, is also switched, as is Meir Hay , even further east, completing the removal of the ‘top tier’ of Stoke South. The first three of these are very working class and traditionally (though in practice not always) Labour, but Meir Hay, especially the more modern Park Hall section, is one of the most strongly Conservative parts if the whole of Stoke, dominated by private housing estates. There is even Park Hall lake, which will be right at the new south eastern boundary of the Central seat. This area remained safely Tory in May 2023, when Labour recovered across the city as a whole, and is why the notional majority for a hypothetical 2019 contest would have an increased Conservative majority of around 2,000.
That is not a prediction. As elsewhere, by 2023 Labour’s position looked a good deal more healthy, even in Stoke. In May, they made 12 gains and took control of the city council for the first time for 12 years. Within the new bounds of Central constituency Labour won every ward except for Meir Hay North, Parkhall and Weston Coyney, only some of which is to be in the redrawn seat. Overall Adam Gray has calculated that the figures add up to 52.6% Labour, 28.7% Conservative, with the rest Independent and localist; the Liberal Democrats and Greens had no presence here in local elections in 2023. This is by far the strongest showing for Labour anywhere in the Potteries that year, and they are indeed highly likely to regain Central in a 2024 general election. They will not be facing an incumbent MP as Jo Gideon, who was elected at the age of 67, is now a septuagenarian and has announced her retirement, while Gareth Snell, Labour MP from the 2017 byelection onwards, has been readopted.
However it is unlikely that even Central will return to its former status as monolithically Labour in the foreseeable future. The Conservatives, in a thoroughly unpopular period, will probably lose much less proletarian seats than this by larger margins; and those low turnouts may well signify a long term and deeper disengagement from all the main political parties, here in one of the cradles of the industrial revolution, that has become one of the relatively most deprived parts of modern England, a disengagement one involved in politics should celebrate.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 15.0% 445/575
Owner occupied 50.8% 495/575
Private rented 25.0% 110/575
Social rented 24.2% 71/575
White 80.9% 397/575
Black 3.6% 164/575
Asian 10.8% 147/575
Managerial & professional 18.4% 569/575
Routine & Semi-routine 36.1% 7/575
Degree level 22.3% 543/575
No qualifications 25.7% 38/575
Students 10.0% 97/575
General Election 2019: Stoke-on-Trent Central
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Jo Gideon 14,557 45.4 + 5.6
Labour Co-op Gareth Snell 13,887 43.3 - 8.2
Brexit Party Tariq Mahmood 1,691 5.3 N/A
Liberal Democrats Steven Pritchard 1,116 3.5 + 1.5
Green Adam Colclough 819 2.6 + 1.5
C Majority 670 2.1
2019 electorate 55,424
Turnout 32,070 57.9 + 0.9
Conservative gain from Labour Co-op
Swing 6.9% Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Stoke-on-Trent Central consists of
93.4% of Stoke-on-Trent Central
24.3% of Stoke-on-Trent South
5.9% of Stoke-on-Trent North
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/west-midlands/West%20Midlands_470_Stoke-on-Trent%20Central_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional results on new boundaries (Rallings & Thrasher)
| Con | 19113 | 47.1% |
| Lab | 17418 | 42.9% |
| BxP | 1731 | 4.3% |
| LD | 1526 | 3.8% |
| Grn | 802 | 2.0% |
| Con Majority | 1715 | 4.2% |