Post by Robert Waller on Nov 22, 2023 20:41:05 GMT
This is based on an original by yellowperil, who is the first person below. I have updated and extended the profile in a number of ways and places, and Pete Whitehead has contributed the essential sections on boundary changes.
Dover is a very special constituency - after all for many people is the front door of the UK, and the White Cliffs a symbol of England. Of course there are in fact many other doors - the other ferry ports like Folkestone or Newhaven, the rail entry point which is now Ashford, and of course the way most people now enter the UK is by air through Heathrow, Gatwick and so on. Nevertheless Dover has always been a special symbol - I think back to WW2, Vera Lynn and all that. Defence plays a dominant part in Dover’s landscape, with not only the huge commanding castle brooding over its centre from the north, but also the Western Heights with extensive and dramatic Napoleonic war fortifications such as the North Centre Bastion, the Drop Redoubt and the Grand Shaft (military, even if it may sound political). It also has a huge parliamentary history - there have been MPs for Dover since the fourteenth century. The fortunes of the place have always been closely linked with the lands on the other side of the channel, which are clearly visible across that narrow stretch of water. I think it would be fair to say the relationship across the water could be described as a love/hate one.
Of course the constituency today is a lot more than just the town and port of Dover. It includes one other significant town in Deal - from 1974 to 1983 the constituency was known as Dover and Deal before reverting to the shorter title. It also includes a rural hinterland, much of it high up on the North Downs, but it is not quite the usual Kent pattern with a bucolic rural hinterland safely Tory to offset any more leftish tendencies in the urban areas. This interior included the most important coal mining area in the south of England: Snowdown colliery (sunk from1908, closed in 1987) was associated with the village of Aylesham, Tilmanstone (1906-86) with Eythorne, and Betteshanger, the last to survive (opened 1924, closed 1989) created a very small housing development in that community, but more miners lived in Deal, especially the Mill Hill neighbourhood. Maybe associated with these factors, Dover constituency in modern times has not always been safely Conservative and has had 3 Labour MPs since the war: John Thomas (1945-50), David Ennals (1964-70) and Gwyn Prosser (1997-2010). They have alternated with the Tory MPs John Arbuthnot (1950-64), Peter Rees (1970-1987), David Shaw (1987-1997) and then Charlie Elphicke (2010-19) though Charlie had two spells when he was perforce sitting as an Independent, and he has now been replaced by his wife Natalie.
In the 2023 parliamentary boundary review, the only change proposed to Dover is to realign with new ward boundaries and to change the name to Dover & Deal (as the seat was known from 1974-83). This involves the addition of around 600 voters in the village of Worth (in Eastry Rural ward) from South Thanet.
A look at the district elections will show pretty clearly how the Lab/Con split in the constituency works out geographically. The constituency is broadly similar to the District except that the two northernmost district wards are in the South Thanet constituency - they are the ancient market town and Cinque Port of Sandwich, and the extensive rural area to the west of Sandwich, which is called Little Stour and Ashstone. This removes two of the district’s strongest Conservative wards from the parliamentary constituency so Dover constituency is always going to be more evenly divided between red and blue than is the district as a whole. In 2015 the district divided 25 Conservative seats to 17 Labour and 3 UKIP (vote share was 40.6%, 32.2% and 18.6% respectively, Lib Dems were on 5.5% and no seats)- so the seat share does represent the vote share pretty well. If you remove the 2 South Thanet wards, then the balance for Dover constituency alone became 19/17/3 and UKIP held the balance of power.
Updating those figures to 2019, after a re-warding exercise which generally reduced the 3-member wards to 2-member,the district figures were 20/12 for Conservatives over Labour, with no other parties gaining any seats, and 16/12 after removing the South Thanet wards. Very broadly , Labour retains strength in certain Dover town wards, notably Buckland, St Radigunds and Tower Hamlets(!),with a split seat in Town & Castle; in the old mining village of Aylesham; and if anything strengthened their presence in Deal where they now held Mill Hill and split seats in both Mid Deal and North Deal. The Deal hinterland is another area with a lot of ex-miners in the population. There is still enough Tory strength in the more rural parts like Alkham, Guston & St Margarets, in Walmer and in the more suburban Dover areas like River and Whitfield, so that together with the split wards, for there to be a reasonably comfortable Tory lead even without including Little Stour and Sandwich. It might be noted that there was some advance in those elections in certain wards by both Lib Dems and Greens, but not enough to actually gain seats, and there were a plethora of independents and others, maybe following the disintegration of UKIP, who again took quite a few votes without taking any seats.
In the most recent elections in 2023, as in many other parts of the country, Labour made gains in the Dover council area. Altogether they advanced in five of the wards within this constituency. In most of these, it was actually consolidation in previously split wards, where now they won all the council seats; this happened in North Deal, Middle Deal, (Dover) Town & Castle and Aylesham, Eythorne & Shepherdswell. They also flipped, as the Americans would say, the single councillor seat of Maxton & Elm Vale in west Dover. As Labour easily retained the three wards of Buckland, Tower Hamlets and St Radigunds in Dover along with Mill Hill, the working class inland south-western part of Deal once associated strongly with coal mining, it meant that overall they returned 17 councillors, returning to their 2015 number, but now in a council of only 32 seats rather than 45. This meant Labour took control for the first time since their only other period of overall majority, in 1995-99. Perhaps this may portend their first return to power nationally since 1997 in the middle of those years.
Within the Dover & Deal constituency, in May 2023 the Conservatives only won six wards. Four of these are rural: Alkham and Capel-le-ferne south west towards Folkestone and Dover Downs & River which is not actually mainly in Dover, apart from a corner around Crabble (though not the Dover FC ground) but well inland, including villages like Temple Ewell, Lydden (as in Lydden Hill rallycross), Wootton and Shelvin; also Guston, Kingsdon & St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe between Dover and Deal, and Eastry Rural right in the middle of the seat geographically. That left just two more urban wards, Whitfield, the most inland part of the Dover built up area, and Walmer, at the ‘posh end’ of Deal and including its castle, actually the residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports although it was originally constructed as a fortification by Henry VIII.
No party other than the two largest currently has representation on Dover district council, though The Greens finished runners-ip in Guston etc, Walmer and Eastry Rural, the latter being the most impressive as they put up two candidates for two places, rather than just one as in the other two wards mentioned (which makes it easier for people to split their votes and allocate one to them). Indeed in Eastry the top Green was only 53 votes (2.8% in terms of share) behind the second Tory, although they were only 5 votes behind here in 2019. They do look like having a decent chance of gaining their first ever seat in Diver council soon. The Liberal Democrats have not won any local election seats here since 2007 (in Whitfield), and with 89.5% of the vote in December 2019 being shared between Labour and Conservative this constituency is an epitome of a two party contest.
Dover & Deal is far from a middle class or affluent division. In the 2021 census (applied to new boundaries by the ever diligent and invaluable bjornhattan, who should really be credited in all profiles) its proportion of managerial and professional employees is below average and those in routine and semi-routine jobs well above average. The only place where the former exceed 40% is in the Kingsdown & St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe MSOA. The ‘DE’ routine and semi routine concentration is at its highest in the Buckland & St Radigunds (over 36% and Dover West (over 34%) sections of Dover town and is also over 30% in Dover East.
In term of educational qualifications, the constituency is not far out of the 100 with the fewest residents with degrees, with the St Margaret’s area again well above any other (37.6%); while the poorer sections of Dover all had over 20% with no qualifications, and at the more local OA level the highest of all is in parts of Aylesham, the former pit village, with over 32%, and in the social rented section around Bindon Blood Road in the centre of Whitfield (33%), which is peripheral to Dover town. Social renting is at its highest in Buckland and the western, outer, western, sections of St Radigunds and Tower Hamlets, plus the western edge of Dover town centre, along with some parts of Mill Hill and Upper Deal. Overall, social renting is not above average in Dover & Deal, and private renting is close to average, but by contrast the latter is focused on the coastal areas and town centres of both Dover and Deal.
One demographic that does help the Conservatives is the age profile. The Dover & Deal seat in 2021 had the 120th highest proportion of over 65s (23.4%) and this figure rose to 38.5% in Kingsdown & St Margaret’s and over 32% in coastal Deal. Overall, though, it is possible to see in the statistics why Labour have been able to win the Dover based constituency in their three high points since the Second World War. On other hand, though, its location in the extreme south east of England as well as Kent, and the recent focus on the cleavage in attitudes to Europe (Dover district voted 62.2% to leave in 2016) have also given the Conservatives advantages. Whether Labour can repeat their former success, even if they do win a 2024 general election, looks moot. On notional figures - as in the actual 2019 result - Labour will need a swing of over 12% to regain the Dover based seat after a 14 year hiatus. But the fading of the Brexit issue and this 2023 local elections results, which gave them a 7% lead overall, 40% to 33% with nearly 22% between the Greens and LDs to squeeze, suggest they have a fighting chance, here behind those iconic white cliffs. Those 'bluebirds’ may have some cause for concern.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 23.4% 120/575
Owner occupied 66.2% 282/575
Private rented 19.5% 230/575
Social rented 14.5% 323/575
White 94.7% 199/575
Black 0.7% 369/575
Asian 2.2% 374/575
Managerial & professional 29.7% 369/575
Routine & Semi-routine 26.4% 196/575
Degree level 25.9% 470/575
No qualifications 19.9% 199/575
Students 4.8% 444/575
General Election 2019: Dover
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Natalie Elphicke 28,830 56.9 +4.5
Labour Charlotte Cornell 16,552 32.6 -7.3
Liberal Democrats Simon Dodd 2,895 5.7 +3.1
Green Beccy Sawbridge 1,371 2.7 +0.9
Independent Nathan Sutton 916 1.8 N/A
Women's Equality Eljai Morais 137 0.3 N/A
C Majority 12,278 24.3 +11.9
2019 electorate 76,355
Turnout 50,701 66.4 -3.3
Conservative hold
Swing 5.9 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Dover and Deal consists of
100% of Dover
0.9% of South Thanet
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_306_Dover%20and%20Deal_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Result - Dover & Deal (Rallings/Thrasher)
Dover is a very special constituency - after all for many people is the front door of the UK, and the White Cliffs a symbol of England. Of course there are in fact many other doors - the other ferry ports like Folkestone or Newhaven, the rail entry point which is now Ashford, and of course the way most people now enter the UK is by air through Heathrow, Gatwick and so on. Nevertheless Dover has always been a special symbol - I think back to WW2, Vera Lynn and all that. Defence plays a dominant part in Dover’s landscape, with not only the huge commanding castle brooding over its centre from the north, but also the Western Heights with extensive and dramatic Napoleonic war fortifications such as the North Centre Bastion, the Drop Redoubt and the Grand Shaft (military, even if it may sound political). It also has a huge parliamentary history - there have been MPs for Dover since the fourteenth century. The fortunes of the place have always been closely linked with the lands on the other side of the channel, which are clearly visible across that narrow stretch of water. I think it would be fair to say the relationship across the water could be described as a love/hate one.
Of course the constituency today is a lot more than just the town and port of Dover. It includes one other significant town in Deal - from 1974 to 1983 the constituency was known as Dover and Deal before reverting to the shorter title. It also includes a rural hinterland, much of it high up on the North Downs, but it is not quite the usual Kent pattern with a bucolic rural hinterland safely Tory to offset any more leftish tendencies in the urban areas. This interior included the most important coal mining area in the south of England: Snowdown colliery (sunk from1908, closed in 1987) was associated with the village of Aylesham, Tilmanstone (1906-86) with Eythorne, and Betteshanger, the last to survive (opened 1924, closed 1989) created a very small housing development in that community, but more miners lived in Deal, especially the Mill Hill neighbourhood. Maybe associated with these factors, Dover constituency in modern times has not always been safely Conservative and has had 3 Labour MPs since the war: John Thomas (1945-50), David Ennals (1964-70) and Gwyn Prosser (1997-2010). They have alternated with the Tory MPs John Arbuthnot (1950-64), Peter Rees (1970-1987), David Shaw (1987-1997) and then Charlie Elphicke (2010-19) though Charlie had two spells when he was perforce sitting as an Independent, and he has now been replaced by his wife Natalie.
In the 2023 parliamentary boundary review, the only change proposed to Dover is to realign with new ward boundaries and to change the name to Dover & Deal (as the seat was known from 1974-83). This involves the addition of around 600 voters in the village of Worth (in Eastry Rural ward) from South Thanet.
A look at the district elections will show pretty clearly how the Lab/Con split in the constituency works out geographically. The constituency is broadly similar to the District except that the two northernmost district wards are in the South Thanet constituency - they are the ancient market town and Cinque Port of Sandwich, and the extensive rural area to the west of Sandwich, which is called Little Stour and Ashstone. This removes two of the district’s strongest Conservative wards from the parliamentary constituency so Dover constituency is always going to be more evenly divided between red and blue than is the district as a whole. In 2015 the district divided 25 Conservative seats to 17 Labour and 3 UKIP (vote share was 40.6%, 32.2% and 18.6% respectively, Lib Dems were on 5.5% and no seats)- so the seat share does represent the vote share pretty well. If you remove the 2 South Thanet wards, then the balance for Dover constituency alone became 19/17/3 and UKIP held the balance of power.
Updating those figures to 2019, after a re-warding exercise which generally reduced the 3-member wards to 2-member,the district figures were 20/12 for Conservatives over Labour, with no other parties gaining any seats, and 16/12 after removing the South Thanet wards. Very broadly , Labour retains strength in certain Dover town wards, notably Buckland, St Radigunds and Tower Hamlets(!),with a split seat in Town & Castle; in the old mining village of Aylesham; and if anything strengthened their presence in Deal where they now held Mill Hill and split seats in both Mid Deal and North Deal. The Deal hinterland is another area with a lot of ex-miners in the population. There is still enough Tory strength in the more rural parts like Alkham, Guston & St Margarets, in Walmer and in the more suburban Dover areas like River and Whitfield, so that together with the split wards, for there to be a reasonably comfortable Tory lead even without including Little Stour and Sandwich. It might be noted that there was some advance in those elections in certain wards by both Lib Dems and Greens, but not enough to actually gain seats, and there were a plethora of independents and others, maybe following the disintegration of UKIP, who again took quite a few votes without taking any seats.
In the most recent elections in 2023, as in many other parts of the country, Labour made gains in the Dover council area. Altogether they advanced in five of the wards within this constituency. In most of these, it was actually consolidation in previously split wards, where now they won all the council seats; this happened in North Deal, Middle Deal, (Dover) Town & Castle and Aylesham, Eythorne & Shepherdswell. They also flipped, as the Americans would say, the single councillor seat of Maxton & Elm Vale in west Dover. As Labour easily retained the three wards of Buckland, Tower Hamlets and St Radigunds in Dover along with Mill Hill, the working class inland south-western part of Deal once associated strongly with coal mining, it meant that overall they returned 17 councillors, returning to their 2015 number, but now in a council of only 32 seats rather than 45. This meant Labour took control for the first time since their only other period of overall majority, in 1995-99. Perhaps this may portend their first return to power nationally since 1997 in the middle of those years.
Within the Dover & Deal constituency, in May 2023 the Conservatives only won six wards. Four of these are rural: Alkham and Capel-le-ferne south west towards Folkestone and Dover Downs & River which is not actually mainly in Dover, apart from a corner around Crabble (though not the Dover FC ground) but well inland, including villages like Temple Ewell, Lydden (as in Lydden Hill rallycross), Wootton and Shelvin; also Guston, Kingsdon & St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe between Dover and Deal, and Eastry Rural right in the middle of the seat geographically. That left just two more urban wards, Whitfield, the most inland part of the Dover built up area, and Walmer, at the ‘posh end’ of Deal and including its castle, actually the residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports although it was originally constructed as a fortification by Henry VIII.
No party other than the two largest currently has representation on Dover district council, though The Greens finished runners-ip in Guston etc, Walmer and Eastry Rural, the latter being the most impressive as they put up two candidates for two places, rather than just one as in the other two wards mentioned (which makes it easier for people to split their votes and allocate one to them). Indeed in Eastry the top Green was only 53 votes (2.8% in terms of share) behind the second Tory, although they were only 5 votes behind here in 2019. They do look like having a decent chance of gaining their first ever seat in Diver council soon. The Liberal Democrats have not won any local election seats here since 2007 (in Whitfield), and with 89.5% of the vote in December 2019 being shared between Labour and Conservative this constituency is an epitome of a two party contest.
Dover & Deal is far from a middle class or affluent division. In the 2021 census (applied to new boundaries by the ever diligent and invaluable bjornhattan, who should really be credited in all profiles) its proportion of managerial and professional employees is below average and those in routine and semi-routine jobs well above average. The only place where the former exceed 40% is in the Kingsdown & St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe MSOA. The ‘DE’ routine and semi routine concentration is at its highest in the Buckland & St Radigunds (over 36% and Dover West (over 34%) sections of Dover town and is also over 30% in Dover East.
In term of educational qualifications, the constituency is not far out of the 100 with the fewest residents with degrees, with the St Margaret’s area again well above any other (37.6%); while the poorer sections of Dover all had over 20% with no qualifications, and at the more local OA level the highest of all is in parts of Aylesham, the former pit village, with over 32%, and in the social rented section around Bindon Blood Road in the centre of Whitfield (33%), which is peripheral to Dover town. Social renting is at its highest in Buckland and the western, outer, western, sections of St Radigunds and Tower Hamlets, plus the western edge of Dover town centre, along with some parts of Mill Hill and Upper Deal. Overall, social renting is not above average in Dover & Deal, and private renting is close to average, but by contrast the latter is focused on the coastal areas and town centres of both Dover and Deal.
One demographic that does help the Conservatives is the age profile. The Dover & Deal seat in 2021 had the 120th highest proportion of over 65s (23.4%) and this figure rose to 38.5% in Kingsdown & St Margaret’s and over 32% in coastal Deal. Overall, though, it is possible to see in the statistics why Labour have been able to win the Dover based constituency in their three high points since the Second World War. On other hand, though, its location in the extreme south east of England as well as Kent, and the recent focus on the cleavage in attitudes to Europe (Dover district voted 62.2% to leave in 2016) have also given the Conservatives advantages. Whether Labour can repeat their former success, even if they do win a 2024 general election, looks moot. On notional figures - as in the actual 2019 result - Labour will need a swing of over 12% to regain the Dover based seat after a 14 year hiatus. But the fading of the Brexit issue and this 2023 local elections results, which gave them a 7% lead overall, 40% to 33% with nearly 22% between the Greens and LDs to squeeze, suggest they have a fighting chance, here behind those iconic white cliffs. Those 'bluebirds’ may have some cause for concern.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 23.4% 120/575
Owner occupied 66.2% 282/575
Private rented 19.5% 230/575
Social rented 14.5% 323/575
White 94.7% 199/575
Black 0.7% 369/575
Asian 2.2% 374/575
Managerial & professional 29.7% 369/575
Routine & Semi-routine 26.4% 196/575
Degree level 25.9% 470/575
No qualifications 19.9% 199/575
Students 4.8% 444/575
General Election 2019: Dover
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Natalie Elphicke 28,830 56.9 +4.5
Labour Charlotte Cornell 16,552 32.6 -7.3
Liberal Democrats Simon Dodd 2,895 5.7 +3.1
Green Beccy Sawbridge 1,371 2.7 +0.9
Independent Nathan Sutton 916 1.8 N/A
Women's Equality Eljai Morais 137 0.3 N/A
C Majority 12,278 24.3 +11.9
2019 electorate 76,355
Turnout 50,701 66.4 -3.3
Conservative hold
Swing 5.9 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Dover and Deal consists of
100% of Dover
0.9% of South Thanet
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_306_Dover%20and%20Deal_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Result - Dover & Deal (Rallings/Thrasher)
| Con | 29117 | 56.9% |
| Lab | 16696 | 32.6% |
| LD | 2927 | 5.7% |
| Grn | 1404 | 2.7% |
| Oths | 1053 | 2.1% |
| Majority | 12421 | 24.3% |
