Post by Robert Waller on Nov 3, 2023 17:47:32 GMT
This is very much an updated yellowperil profile, with invaluable contributions on boundary changes from Pete Whitehead, plus some additions by myself.
This constituency name has existed since 1885, and in those 135 years has had just 10 MPs, all but one of them Conservative! The exception was Rev Roderick Kedward, the Liberal who represented the seat from 1929-31, and who still has a memorial stone now erected in the town's cattle market. But suffice to say this generally a very safe Conservative seat.
It should be said though this constituency has changed radically in that time. Originally it was much larger and all deeply rural apart from Ashford itself, a small market town which since the 1840s had also doubled up as a railway town with a 5-line junction and railway works, but the hinterland extending westwards as far as the Wealden towns of Tenterden and Cranbrook and eastwards to include Romney Marsh and two more market towns, Lydd and New Romney. As Ashford grew, the remoter bits of the constituency got lopped off, so only Tenterden and the nearer villages remained with Ashford within the constituency. From 1983 to 2010 the constituency had become coterminous with Ashford Borough, which from a psephological point of view was a happy state of affairs, but continuing growth made that impossible and in 2010 one Ashford rural ward known as Saxon Shore comprising 4 villages perched on the ridge above Romney Marsh, Aldington, Bilsington, Bonnington, and Ruckinge, together with 4 more villages, Smeeth, Brabourne, Brook and Hastingleigh, originally also in Saxon Shore but now forming Bircholt, were transferred into Folkestone and Hythe for Westminster election purposes. Ashford has been conspiring to get them back ever since – and it now looks as if they finally will do so.
!
For those who don't understand the Saxon Shore reference, It refers to the Roman defensive line against the marauding Anglo-Saxons! There was a line of defences around the Kent coast, including Lympne(PORTUS LEMANIS) on this old ridge line above the Marsh, so in the F&H bit of the Saxon shore ,then on through Dover(DUBRIS) and round to the North Kent
coast at Reculver (REGULBIUM). A reminder perhaps that this part of the world has always been repelling the enemy across the water, even when it was the Romans holding off the Anglo-Saxons.
Since 2010 therefore, Ashford constituency comprises
(1) Ashford Town, the unparished bit of the Borough (so far), which subdivides into 4 component parts,
(a) Ashford town proper, basically north of the Great Stour and really the old market town,
(b)South Ashford which grew rapidly after the coming of the railways, and is still largely working class with a significant minority of Asian residents
(c) the village of Willesborough, best known as the home of William Harvey, but which expanded rapidly as Ashford industrialised and became part of urban Ashford, and
(d) Kennington, the village immediately north of Ashford which became a more residential suburb. By 1918 this all comprised the Ashford UDC.
(2) Tenterden Town, a Borough in its own right until Ashford took over, and now reduced to a town council.
(3) Stanhope parish, basically a 1960s London overspill development carved out of Kingsnorth parish. Like South Ashford, this has a much higher proportion of social housing and ethnic minorities than average for the borough and the constutuency, and even a 10% Black population in the census OA centred on Falcon Way.
(4) A group of suburbanised parishes around the edge of Ashford, all of which have a real village core but which now have big residential estates swamping them. They are Boughton Aluph with Eastwell (strictly two parishes but with a combined parish council), Great Chart with Singleton, Mersham, Kingsnorth and Sevington
(5) The remaining parishes which are still largely rural, of which there are still 25, ranging from places like Charing which are substantial villages down to places like Little Chart which really are , well, little, but all of which retain a genuinely rural feel.
There were 132,700 people in Ashford Borough according to the 2021 Census, up 12.5% since 2011.- The population of Ashford town and suburban estates area 82,000 (including Stanhope, for example) and is growing fast- lots of new town centre flats, within the last five years; 8,000 in Tenterden; that would leave 42,000 for the remaining parishes.
The Borough council results from 2023 will be less useful in telling us about the present political position in the constituency than would normally be the case. There are two reasons for this. First is that the Borough has 42 wards of which a mere 7 are 2-member and the rest all single -member. All those single member wards, all going together every 4 years, means that local elections have been much more genuinely localised than is usually the case, and party structures have been a lot weaker, except to some extent the Tories. The second, and maybe a consequence of the first, is that the strongest opposition to the Conservatives has historically come from the Ashford Independents, who after May 2023 had 9 seats to the Tories 19. However that year Labour won 11 and the Greens 8, which represents a considerable improvement for these other national parties and suggests that the pattern of local politics may be becoming somewhat more competitive and more aligned with wider issues. The Lib Dems, who for one cycle back in the last century were running the council, have now no representation at Borough level at all. They lost their last two seats, in Willesborough, to the Greens back in 2019. The one Independent, as against Ashford Independent, who won in 2019 (in rural Rolvenden) did not stand in 2023, and a Green took over there.
Looking at the geographical pattern in these results, traditionally South Ashford would be Labour, and they have won Beaver and Victoria from that area; Beaver ever since the first contest in the expanded Ashford borough in 1976, Victoria more patchily. Labour also held Stanhope, but they also have one of the two seats in Furley, within Ashford proper and Bockhanger which is within Kennington. In 2023 they gained Bybrook (a heavily social rented neighbourhood on the Kennington side of the M20), Singleton West, Washford, and one seat in Aylesford & East Stour (not the same Aylesford as is paired with Chatham elsewhere in Kent). Traditionally Willesborough would be solidly Lib Dem, and their collapse has let in the Greens there and the AI in some other cases.
Some areas you would expect to be solidly Tory have gone Ashford Independent. Repton and Godinton wards on Ashford’s north western edge, with their newish private housing estates, and Singleton East, which includes the eponymous lake, were the only Conservative victories within Ashford’s built up area in May 2023. They did however hold a great swathe of rural wards to the west of Ashford, such as Weald North and Weald Central and Upper Weald, along with two in Tenterden and also the Isle of Oxney ward south of Tenterden. Among the Green gains in addition to those aforementioned were Downs North in the rural north east of the borough and Park Farm South and Norman within Ashford, all three gains from the Tories. However there are to be very substantial boundary changes, which mean that over a third of the current Ashford seat will depart elsewhere and across the areas within the new Ashford lines, the summation for May 2023 is just under 30% for the Conservatives, 23.8% for each of Labour and Green parties, and 15.5% for the Greens; which takes us back to the original observation that the local results are not completely helpful as a Westminster indicator, apart from suggesting a possible split between the challengers to the incumbent party.
After the Commission’s latest review, Ashford provides the largest element of the new 'Weald of Kent' seat with over 32,000 voters in Tenterden and in the rural North, South and West of Ashford district being detached from the Ashford seat. Tenterden is the largest town and is more or less geographically central and would have provided an apt name, but 'Weald of Kent' it is. The rump of Ashford constituency with 57,000 voters now just covering the town itself and a small rural area to the East, is augmented by 16,000 voters further to the East from Folkestone & Hythe - the Bircholt ward which is in Ashford borough (and was in this constituency prior to 2010) and the Folkestone & Hythe wards of North Downs East and North Downs West, which takes the seat all the way to the entrance of the Channel Tunnel. The Greens gained both the ‘North Downs’ wards in the May 2023 local elections, which only makes the electoral picture in the new Ashford seat even more opaque.
Ashford’s MP since 1997, Damian Green, who at one time (2017) ascended to the heights of First Secretary of State, did not appear to think that the revised boundaries would be altogether helpful, as he initially sought nomination for the new Weald of Kent division but was rebuffed there, Katie Lam being selected, and has settled for remaining with the rump, as it were. The notional figures calculated by Pete Whitehead do clearly suggest Weald of Kent will be much safer, with a hypothetical lead of a mighty 28,000 or 54.6%, which would make it one of the dozen safest Tory seats anywhere.
Yes, the pared down Ashford seat is far from uniformly affluent, and some of its demographic characteristics are strengthened by the reduction to being more dominated by the urban core. Overall it is now higher up the list of seats in England and Wales on the criterion of semi-routine and routine workers than professional and managerial workers, which was not the case before the boundary changes, and also higher in the rankings for no educational qualifications than hiding academic degrees – though in all these cases Ashford is not far from the national average. The percentage of higher occupational grade employment is at its greatest in some of the newer private housing developments on the edge of Ashford such as Godinton Park and Orchard Heights on its north western edge and Park Farm/Kingsnorth to the south, and highest of all in the somewhat older area in north Ashford around Magazine Road / Malvern Road. But none of these look like true elite territory. Ashford will be a rather ordinary seat overall – but set in the heart of Kent, which does matter in electoral terms.
Even the new Ashford would still need a swing of over 16%, and that all to Labour rather than being diluted by a Green advance as well, say. That 90+ year record of electing Conservatives probably has a better than even chance if continuing, even if that party suffers a clear national defeat. After all, Labour never got to within 5,000 of winning Ashford even in 1997 (or 1945 or 1966 or 2001). Even with the boundary changes, it would be a real feather in their cap were they to do so in 2024.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 17.0% 376/575
Owner occupied 66.5% 275/575
Private rented 19.5% 234/575
Social rented 14.1% 338/575
White 86.0% 345/575
Black 3.0% 182/575
Asian 7.0% 220/575
Managerial & professional 33.3% 308/575
Routine & Semi-routine 23.9% 291/575
Degree level 29.4% 360/575
No qualifications 17.4% 318/575
Students 5.6% 300/575
2019 general election: Ashford
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Damian Green 37,270 62.1 +3.1
Labour Dara Farrell 13,241 22.0 -7.8
Liberal Democrats Adrian Gee-Turner 6,048 10.1 +4.9
Green Mandy Rossi 2,638 4.4 +2.1
Independent Susannah De Sanvil 862 1.4 New
C Majority 24,029 40.1 +10.9
2019 electorate 89,550
Turnout 60,059 67.1 -1.4
Conservative hold
Swing +5.4 Lab to C
Boundary changes
Ashford consists of
63.6% of Ashford
18.6% of Folkestone & Hythe
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_286_Ashford_Landscape.pdf
Notional results 2019 (Rallings & Thrasher)
This constituency name has existed since 1885, and in those 135 years has had just 10 MPs, all but one of them Conservative! The exception was Rev Roderick Kedward, the Liberal who represented the seat from 1929-31, and who still has a memorial stone now erected in the town's cattle market. But suffice to say this generally a very safe Conservative seat.
It should be said though this constituency has changed radically in that time. Originally it was much larger and all deeply rural apart from Ashford itself, a small market town which since the 1840s had also doubled up as a railway town with a 5-line junction and railway works, but the hinterland extending westwards as far as the Wealden towns of Tenterden and Cranbrook and eastwards to include Romney Marsh and two more market towns, Lydd and New Romney. As Ashford grew, the remoter bits of the constituency got lopped off, so only Tenterden and the nearer villages remained with Ashford within the constituency. From 1983 to 2010 the constituency had become coterminous with Ashford Borough, which from a psephological point of view was a happy state of affairs, but continuing growth made that impossible and in 2010 one Ashford rural ward known as Saxon Shore comprising 4 villages perched on the ridge above Romney Marsh, Aldington, Bilsington, Bonnington, and Ruckinge, together with 4 more villages, Smeeth, Brabourne, Brook and Hastingleigh, originally also in Saxon Shore but now forming Bircholt, were transferred into Folkestone and Hythe for Westminster election purposes. Ashford has been conspiring to get them back ever since – and it now looks as if they finally will do so.
!
For those who don't understand the Saxon Shore reference, It refers to the Roman defensive line against the marauding Anglo-Saxons! There was a line of defences around the Kent coast, including Lympne(PORTUS LEMANIS) on this old ridge line above the Marsh, so in the F&H bit of the Saxon shore ,then on through Dover(DUBRIS) and round to the North Kent
coast at Reculver (REGULBIUM). A reminder perhaps that this part of the world has always been repelling the enemy across the water, even when it was the Romans holding off the Anglo-Saxons.
Since 2010 therefore, Ashford constituency comprises
(1) Ashford Town, the unparished bit of the Borough (so far), which subdivides into 4 component parts,
(a) Ashford town proper, basically north of the Great Stour and really the old market town,
(b)South Ashford which grew rapidly after the coming of the railways, and is still largely working class with a significant minority of Asian residents
(c) the village of Willesborough, best known as the home of William Harvey, but which expanded rapidly as Ashford industrialised and became part of urban Ashford, and
(d) Kennington, the village immediately north of Ashford which became a more residential suburb. By 1918 this all comprised the Ashford UDC.
(2) Tenterden Town, a Borough in its own right until Ashford took over, and now reduced to a town council.
(3) Stanhope parish, basically a 1960s London overspill development carved out of Kingsnorth parish. Like South Ashford, this has a much higher proportion of social housing and ethnic minorities than average for the borough and the constutuency, and even a 10% Black population in the census OA centred on Falcon Way.
(4) A group of suburbanised parishes around the edge of Ashford, all of which have a real village core but which now have big residential estates swamping them. They are Boughton Aluph with Eastwell (strictly two parishes but with a combined parish council), Great Chart with Singleton, Mersham, Kingsnorth and Sevington
(5) The remaining parishes which are still largely rural, of which there are still 25, ranging from places like Charing which are substantial villages down to places like Little Chart which really are , well, little, but all of which retain a genuinely rural feel.
There were 132,700 people in Ashford Borough according to the 2021 Census, up 12.5% since 2011.- The population of Ashford town and suburban estates area 82,000 (including Stanhope, for example) and is growing fast- lots of new town centre flats, within the last five years; 8,000 in Tenterden; that would leave 42,000 for the remaining parishes.
The Borough council results from 2023 will be less useful in telling us about the present political position in the constituency than would normally be the case. There are two reasons for this. First is that the Borough has 42 wards of which a mere 7 are 2-member and the rest all single -member. All those single member wards, all going together every 4 years, means that local elections have been much more genuinely localised than is usually the case, and party structures have been a lot weaker, except to some extent the Tories. The second, and maybe a consequence of the first, is that the strongest opposition to the Conservatives has historically come from the Ashford Independents, who after May 2023 had 9 seats to the Tories 19. However that year Labour won 11 and the Greens 8, which represents a considerable improvement for these other national parties and suggests that the pattern of local politics may be becoming somewhat more competitive and more aligned with wider issues. The Lib Dems, who for one cycle back in the last century were running the council, have now no representation at Borough level at all. They lost their last two seats, in Willesborough, to the Greens back in 2019. The one Independent, as against Ashford Independent, who won in 2019 (in rural Rolvenden) did not stand in 2023, and a Green took over there.
Looking at the geographical pattern in these results, traditionally South Ashford would be Labour, and they have won Beaver and Victoria from that area; Beaver ever since the first contest in the expanded Ashford borough in 1976, Victoria more patchily. Labour also held Stanhope, but they also have one of the two seats in Furley, within Ashford proper and Bockhanger which is within Kennington. In 2023 they gained Bybrook (a heavily social rented neighbourhood on the Kennington side of the M20), Singleton West, Washford, and one seat in Aylesford & East Stour (not the same Aylesford as is paired with Chatham elsewhere in Kent). Traditionally Willesborough would be solidly Lib Dem, and their collapse has let in the Greens there and the AI in some other cases.
Some areas you would expect to be solidly Tory have gone Ashford Independent. Repton and Godinton wards on Ashford’s north western edge, with their newish private housing estates, and Singleton East, which includes the eponymous lake, were the only Conservative victories within Ashford’s built up area in May 2023. They did however hold a great swathe of rural wards to the west of Ashford, such as Weald North and Weald Central and Upper Weald, along with two in Tenterden and also the Isle of Oxney ward south of Tenterden. Among the Green gains in addition to those aforementioned were Downs North in the rural north east of the borough and Park Farm South and Norman within Ashford, all three gains from the Tories. However there are to be very substantial boundary changes, which mean that over a third of the current Ashford seat will depart elsewhere and across the areas within the new Ashford lines, the summation for May 2023 is just under 30% for the Conservatives, 23.8% for each of Labour and Green parties, and 15.5% for the Greens; which takes us back to the original observation that the local results are not completely helpful as a Westminster indicator, apart from suggesting a possible split between the challengers to the incumbent party.
After the Commission’s latest review, Ashford provides the largest element of the new 'Weald of Kent' seat with over 32,000 voters in Tenterden and in the rural North, South and West of Ashford district being detached from the Ashford seat. Tenterden is the largest town and is more or less geographically central and would have provided an apt name, but 'Weald of Kent' it is. The rump of Ashford constituency with 57,000 voters now just covering the town itself and a small rural area to the East, is augmented by 16,000 voters further to the East from Folkestone & Hythe - the Bircholt ward which is in Ashford borough (and was in this constituency prior to 2010) and the Folkestone & Hythe wards of North Downs East and North Downs West, which takes the seat all the way to the entrance of the Channel Tunnel. The Greens gained both the ‘North Downs’ wards in the May 2023 local elections, which only makes the electoral picture in the new Ashford seat even more opaque.
Ashford’s MP since 1997, Damian Green, who at one time (2017) ascended to the heights of First Secretary of State, did not appear to think that the revised boundaries would be altogether helpful, as he initially sought nomination for the new Weald of Kent division but was rebuffed there, Katie Lam being selected, and has settled for remaining with the rump, as it were. The notional figures calculated by Pete Whitehead do clearly suggest Weald of Kent will be much safer, with a hypothetical lead of a mighty 28,000 or 54.6%, which would make it one of the dozen safest Tory seats anywhere.
Yes, the pared down Ashford seat is far from uniformly affluent, and some of its demographic characteristics are strengthened by the reduction to being more dominated by the urban core. Overall it is now higher up the list of seats in England and Wales on the criterion of semi-routine and routine workers than professional and managerial workers, which was not the case before the boundary changes, and also higher in the rankings for no educational qualifications than hiding academic degrees – though in all these cases Ashford is not far from the national average. The percentage of higher occupational grade employment is at its greatest in some of the newer private housing developments on the edge of Ashford such as Godinton Park and Orchard Heights on its north western edge and Park Farm/Kingsnorth to the south, and highest of all in the somewhat older area in north Ashford around Magazine Road / Malvern Road. But none of these look like true elite territory. Ashford will be a rather ordinary seat overall – but set in the heart of Kent, which does matter in electoral terms.
Even the new Ashford would still need a swing of over 16%, and that all to Labour rather than being diluted by a Green advance as well, say. That 90+ year record of electing Conservatives probably has a better than even chance if continuing, even if that party suffers a clear national defeat. After all, Labour never got to within 5,000 of winning Ashford even in 1997 (or 1945 or 1966 or 2001). Even with the boundary changes, it would be a real feather in their cap were they to do so in 2024.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 17.0% 376/575
Owner occupied 66.5% 275/575
Private rented 19.5% 234/575
Social rented 14.1% 338/575
White 86.0% 345/575
Black 3.0% 182/575
Asian 7.0% 220/575
Managerial & professional 33.3% 308/575
Routine & Semi-routine 23.9% 291/575
Degree level 29.4% 360/575
No qualifications 17.4% 318/575
Students 5.6% 300/575
2019 general election: Ashford
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Damian Green 37,270 62.1 +3.1
Labour Dara Farrell 13,241 22.0 -7.8
Liberal Democrats Adrian Gee-Turner 6,048 10.1 +4.9
Green Mandy Rossi 2,638 4.4 +2.1
Independent Susannah De Sanvil 862 1.4 New
C Majority 24,029 40.1 +10.9
2019 electorate 89,550
Turnout 60,059 67.1 -1.4
Conservative hold
Swing +5.4 Lab to C
Boundary changes
Ashford consists of
63.6% of Ashford
18.6% of Folkestone & Hythe
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_286_Ashford_Landscape.pdf
Notional results 2019 (Rallings & Thrasher)
| Con | 28759 | 59.2% |
| Lab | 11548 | 23.8% |
| LD | 5176 | 10.7% |
| Grn | 2234 | 4.6% |
| Oth | 862 | 1.8% |
| Majority | 17211 | 35.4% |