Post by Robert Waller on Dec 7, 2023 15:47:36 GMT
There was a time when Leeds North East was regarded as a safe Conservative constituency. This was for 31 years (1956-87) the seat of Mrs Thatcher’s guru and spiritual forebear and colleague, Sir Keith Joseph, but he saw his majority eroded, even in 1979, the year of Thatcherite take-over of the reins of government. His difficulty concerned social change. North East was held by many to be the best residential quadrant in Leeds, but gradually the parts of the wedge closest to the inner city changed in nature, as the older housing was taken over by students and other multi-occupiers, and members of the non-white communities. It needed a boundary change in 1983, which moved the centre of gravity of the seat further out towards the edge of the city, to keep NE in the ‘safe Conservative’ column for a while longer.
No such relief was provided by the Boundary Commissioners before 1997, for they left the lines unaltered. For years Leeds NE had been gradually moving away from its traditional status as a Tory stronghold, and in Tony Blair’s landslide it fell to Labour for the first time. Nothing so unusual about that, in an election when Labour also gained seats such as Wimbledon, Gillingham and St Albans, that had not previously been seen as realistic targets. But Leeds NE did not return to the Tories after the ‘New Labour’ interlude, and by 2019, when they won scarcely more than 200 seats nationally, Labour had a majority of over 17,000 - and North East ranked as their 60th safest seat. It is the only constituency in Leeds which is entirely unchanged in the 2023 boundary review.
The social and political mix of North East has continued moving in Labour’s favour. There are still very middle-class and affluent neighbourhoods, but many of these are of the nature that no longer find the Conservative party to their taste. The ward which has remained least open to such views is the most northerly – indeed it was named North for a long time – which is Alwoodley. Although it also includes a variety of neighbourhoods (Leeds wards are large and populous, generally with an electorate of between 15,000 and 20,000) some much less upmarket, like most of the high social housing district of Moor Allerton, Alwoodley has never been lost by the Tories. In May 2023 they beat Labour here by 50% to 36%. Its demographic characteristics give some clues to its persistent loyalty, when all the other parts of Leeds NE have been trending strongly leftwards. Not only is the 2021 census MSOA of Alwoodley itself, unlike the Moor Allerton section, 88% owner occupied and 53% professional and managerial in occupation, but it has less than 6% full time students – and its residents are 14% Jewish.
Leeds has long been known for one of the largest Jewish communities in England, after parts of London and Greater Manchester. When Jews stopped off at Leeds, having arrived at east coast ports more than a century or so, they first settled in the Chapeltown/Harehills area. With success and affluence born of hard work and skills, they moved out into Leeds’s northern middle-class area – Moortown, the Allertons, and then beyond, even further north: the highest proportion of all in Leeds in the 2021 census is in the MSOA of Primley Park & Wigton – which is also in Alwoodley ward; Alwoodley MSOA is the second highest. Although there were many Jewish Conservatives (for whom voting for Sir Keith Joseph was logical enough), the Jewish vote had always been somewhat more Labour than average when controlling for class. By the 2019 general election and the Corbyn leadership this was less true, and that may still be the case.
The second of the four wards in the unchanged NE constituency is Roundhay, nearer the city centre than Alwoodley, and logically enough, developed earlier. The major feature is the huge Roundhay Park, which covers over 700 acres and about half of the territory even of a ward as large as these in Leeds – which also includes neighborhoods such as Lidgett Park, Gledhow, Oakwood and Park Villas. The 2021 census MSOAs within Roundhay wards are just as strongly professional/managerial as those in Alwoodley – Roundhay Park & Slaid Hill 56%, Roundhay West 53%, Gledhow 49%; but there are two interesting features.
Firstly, the Roundhay middle classes are more professional than managerial – and more professional than those in Alwoodley. For example Roundhay Park & Slaid Hill is 40% professional and Roundhay 38%, Gledhow 36% - all higher than Alwoodley’s 35.9%; indeed the first named is very close to the highest professional concentration in the whole of Leeds, along with City Centre MSOA and Far Headingley & Weetwood. Secondly, there are more graduates in Roundhay ward than in any other in the city: 59% and 57% in the two Roundhay MSOAs and 54% in Gledhow. This ward is a very popular residential target for senior academics at Leeds University. Roundhay is leafy, with some rather large houses (overall it is about 70% owner occupied, 20% private rented and 10% social rented). But given recent political cleavages on educational grounds, it should not be surprising that Roundhay ward, solidly Conservative from 1973 to 1994, has been won by Labour every year without fail since 2010. In May 2023 Labour took 56% of the vote. The Greens were second with 22% and the Tories trailed in third with 15%.
West of Roundhay we find Moortown ward, which also includes Meanwood. Moortown’s Conservative loyalties in Leeds city council elections came to a full stop earlier than in the two previously discussed wards, in 1984. It then had a long spell of Liberal Democrat success, from 1986 to 2008, but has been solidly Labour since 2010, and in May 2023 the Lib Dems were fourth behind Labour (58%), Conservative (18%) and Green (13%). There are substantial minorities of Asian residents in both Alwoodley and Roundhay wards (in the latter to be found most in the southern neighbourhoods of Oakwood and Lady Wood (39%). But the Asian population is more consistently over 20% within Moortown ward, for example in Carr Manor MSOA (over 27%), and the professional and managerial proportions are a little lower (all between 40% and 50%) than Roundhay and Alwoodley.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the fourth and final ward in Leeds North East, Chapel Allerton, is the most distinctive in its nature. It is the most southerly, extending from the neighourhood that gives it its name all the way down the A61 and the Chapletown Road to the edge of the city centre, not far outside the urban motorway, the A54 (M). This section feels decidedly ‘inner city’, includes the Scott Hall and Potternewton districts with their terraced housing, and reaches the fringes of Harehills in its south eastern corner. Informally this whole section is known as Chapeltown, or Leeds LS7; and it has long been known as a neighbourhood populated by immigrants whether Jews in the early 20th century (the Chapeltown Road New Synagogue operated from 1932 to 1985, by when many of its worshippers had moved north to Moortown and beyond), Black incomers mainly from the Caribbean after World War Two, and then Asian (mainly Muslim). In the 2021 census 27% of the residents of Chapel Allerton South & Chapeltown MSOA reported as Asian, and 26% as Black, 7% as Mixed and 36% as White. Only 0.4% are now recoded as Jewish, with 25% Muslim. In that MSOA just 27% were in professional and managerial occupations – though in Chapel Allerton North, covering the heart if Chapel Allerton itself, that figure was 57%, as high as anywhere in the far north of this seat. The dividing lines within the ward on class lines, according to very detailed census Output Area figures, are that the highest professional and managerial figures start north of Potternewton Lane, and the lowest south of Harehills Avenue (note not Harehills Lane).
The same applies to educational qualifications, with 63% in Chapel Allerton North having university degrees - and Chapel Allerton ward as a whole switched from Conservative to Labour in 1980 and has never since slipped back the other way. Its demographics are now very unfavourable to the current Conservative party, and in May 2023 the Labour candidate took 74% of the vote here, with the Greens in second (12%) and the Tories on 6.4%, their fourth lowest in the 33 wards of the city of Leeds. Adding up all the votes cast in the NE constituency in 2023, Labour got 57%, and the Conservatives 23% - these figures are remarkably similar to those in the December 2019 general election. That might sound not too bad for the Tories, but the Greens’ 13% share in the locals and the Lib Dems’ 7% are unlikely to break their way, while the (admittedly and expectedly small) Brexit party vote in 2019 might also be taken into account.
There is, therefore, no evidence that the next general election, expected at some unknown time within 2024, will see anything other than yet another swing to Labour in Leeds North East. This is just the sort of urban, predominantly middle class, constituency that has swung dramatically in the past half century away from the Conservatives, like the Hallam division of the other large Yorkshire city, or Edgbaston in Birmingham. Between the census of 2011 and 2021 the white percentage in NE fell by 6.5%, but the professional and managerial share rose by 1% and those with degrees by 7.5%, though this is still not really a heavily student occupied part of Leeds; that would be the newly drawn Leeds Central & Headingley, which as the highest proportion anywhere in England and Wales. Overall, apart from the problematic issues affecting the support of Jewish voters in recent years, Leeds North East’s long slow odyssey in a direction favourable to the Labour party seems to be continuing.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 16.5% 395/575
Owner occupied 64.6% 320/575
Private rented 19.0% 248/575
Social rented 16.4% 234/575
White 63.8% 486/575
Black 7.2% 91/575
Asian 19.9% 60/575
Jewish 4.1% 10/575
Managerial & professional 43.4% 60/575
Routine & Semi-routine 16.6% 492/575
Degree level 48.2% 45/575
No qualifications 14.7% 440/575
Students 7.2% 185/575
General Election 2019: Leeds North East
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Fabian Hamilton 29,024 57.5 -5.6
Conservative Amjad Bashir 11,935 23.6 -7.4
Liberal Democrats Jon Hannah 5,665 11.2 +7.5
Green Rachel Hartshorne 1,931 3.8 +2.5
Brexit Party Inaya Folarin Iman 1,769 3.5 N/A
Alliance for Green Socialism Celia Foote 176 0.3 +0.1
Lab Majority 17,089 33.9 +1.8
2019 electorate 70,580
Turnout 50,500 71.6 -4.25
Labour hold
Swing 0.9 C to Lab
Boundary Changes and 2019 notionals
N/A, unchanged seat
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/yorkshire-and-the-humber/Yorkshire%20and%20the%20Humber%20Region_515_Leeds%20North%20East_Portrait.pdf
No such relief was provided by the Boundary Commissioners before 1997, for they left the lines unaltered. For years Leeds NE had been gradually moving away from its traditional status as a Tory stronghold, and in Tony Blair’s landslide it fell to Labour for the first time. Nothing so unusual about that, in an election when Labour also gained seats such as Wimbledon, Gillingham and St Albans, that had not previously been seen as realistic targets. But Leeds NE did not return to the Tories after the ‘New Labour’ interlude, and by 2019, when they won scarcely more than 200 seats nationally, Labour had a majority of over 17,000 - and North East ranked as their 60th safest seat. It is the only constituency in Leeds which is entirely unchanged in the 2023 boundary review.
The social and political mix of North East has continued moving in Labour’s favour. There are still very middle-class and affluent neighbourhoods, but many of these are of the nature that no longer find the Conservative party to their taste. The ward which has remained least open to such views is the most northerly – indeed it was named North for a long time – which is Alwoodley. Although it also includes a variety of neighbourhoods (Leeds wards are large and populous, generally with an electorate of between 15,000 and 20,000) some much less upmarket, like most of the high social housing district of Moor Allerton, Alwoodley has never been lost by the Tories. In May 2023 they beat Labour here by 50% to 36%. Its demographic characteristics give some clues to its persistent loyalty, when all the other parts of Leeds NE have been trending strongly leftwards. Not only is the 2021 census MSOA of Alwoodley itself, unlike the Moor Allerton section, 88% owner occupied and 53% professional and managerial in occupation, but it has less than 6% full time students – and its residents are 14% Jewish.
Leeds has long been known for one of the largest Jewish communities in England, after parts of London and Greater Manchester. When Jews stopped off at Leeds, having arrived at east coast ports more than a century or so, they first settled in the Chapeltown/Harehills area. With success and affluence born of hard work and skills, they moved out into Leeds’s northern middle-class area – Moortown, the Allertons, and then beyond, even further north: the highest proportion of all in Leeds in the 2021 census is in the MSOA of Primley Park & Wigton – which is also in Alwoodley ward; Alwoodley MSOA is the second highest. Although there were many Jewish Conservatives (for whom voting for Sir Keith Joseph was logical enough), the Jewish vote had always been somewhat more Labour than average when controlling for class. By the 2019 general election and the Corbyn leadership this was less true, and that may still be the case.
The second of the four wards in the unchanged NE constituency is Roundhay, nearer the city centre than Alwoodley, and logically enough, developed earlier. The major feature is the huge Roundhay Park, which covers over 700 acres and about half of the territory even of a ward as large as these in Leeds – which also includes neighborhoods such as Lidgett Park, Gledhow, Oakwood and Park Villas. The 2021 census MSOAs within Roundhay wards are just as strongly professional/managerial as those in Alwoodley – Roundhay Park & Slaid Hill 56%, Roundhay West 53%, Gledhow 49%; but there are two interesting features.
Firstly, the Roundhay middle classes are more professional than managerial – and more professional than those in Alwoodley. For example Roundhay Park & Slaid Hill is 40% professional and Roundhay 38%, Gledhow 36% - all higher than Alwoodley’s 35.9%; indeed the first named is very close to the highest professional concentration in the whole of Leeds, along with City Centre MSOA and Far Headingley & Weetwood. Secondly, there are more graduates in Roundhay ward than in any other in the city: 59% and 57% in the two Roundhay MSOAs and 54% in Gledhow. This ward is a very popular residential target for senior academics at Leeds University. Roundhay is leafy, with some rather large houses (overall it is about 70% owner occupied, 20% private rented and 10% social rented). But given recent political cleavages on educational grounds, it should not be surprising that Roundhay ward, solidly Conservative from 1973 to 1994, has been won by Labour every year without fail since 2010. In May 2023 Labour took 56% of the vote. The Greens were second with 22% and the Tories trailed in third with 15%.
West of Roundhay we find Moortown ward, which also includes Meanwood. Moortown’s Conservative loyalties in Leeds city council elections came to a full stop earlier than in the two previously discussed wards, in 1984. It then had a long spell of Liberal Democrat success, from 1986 to 2008, but has been solidly Labour since 2010, and in May 2023 the Lib Dems were fourth behind Labour (58%), Conservative (18%) and Green (13%). There are substantial minorities of Asian residents in both Alwoodley and Roundhay wards (in the latter to be found most in the southern neighbourhoods of Oakwood and Lady Wood (39%). But the Asian population is more consistently over 20% within Moortown ward, for example in Carr Manor MSOA (over 27%), and the professional and managerial proportions are a little lower (all between 40% and 50%) than Roundhay and Alwoodley.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the fourth and final ward in Leeds North East, Chapel Allerton, is the most distinctive in its nature. It is the most southerly, extending from the neighourhood that gives it its name all the way down the A61 and the Chapletown Road to the edge of the city centre, not far outside the urban motorway, the A54 (M). This section feels decidedly ‘inner city’, includes the Scott Hall and Potternewton districts with their terraced housing, and reaches the fringes of Harehills in its south eastern corner. Informally this whole section is known as Chapeltown, or Leeds LS7; and it has long been known as a neighbourhood populated by immigrants whether Jews in the early 20th century (the Chapeltown Road New Synagogue operated from 1932 to 1985, by when many of its worshippers had moved north to Moortown and beyond), Black incomers mainly from the Caribbean after World War Two, and then Asian (mainly Muslim). In the 2021 census 27% of the residents of Chapel Allerton South & Chapeltown MSOA reported as Asian, and 26% as Black, 7% as Mixed and 36% as White. Only 0.4% are now recoded as Jewish, with 25% Muslim. In that MSOA just 27% were in professional and managerial occupations – though in Chapel Allerton North, covering the heart if Chapel Allerton itself, that figure was 57%, as high as anywhere in the far north of this seat. The dividing lines within the ward on class lines, according to very detailed census Output Area figures, are that the highest professional and managerial figures start north of Potternewton Lane, and the lowest south of Harehills Avenue (note not Harehills Lane).
The same applies to educational qualifications, with 63% in Chapel Allerton North having university degrees - and Chapel Allerton ward as a whole switched from Conservative to Labour in 1980 and has never since slipped back the other way. Its demographics are now very unfavourable to the current Conservative party, and in May 2023 the Labour candidate took 74% of the vote here, with the Greens in second (12%) and the Tories on 6.4%, their fourth lowest in the 33 wards of the city of Leeds. Adding up all the votes cast in the NE constituency in 2023, Labour got 57%, and the Conservatives 23% - these figures are remarkably similar to those in the December 2019 general election. That might sound not too bad for the Tories, but the Greens’ 13% share in the locals and the Lib Dems’ 7% are unlikely to break their way, while the (admittedly and expectedly small) Brexit party vote in 2019 might also be taken into account.
There is, therefore, no evidence that the next general election, expected at some unknown time within 2024, will see anything other than yet another swing to Labour in Leeds North East. This is just the sort of urban, predominantly middle class, constituency that has swung dramatically in the past half century away from the Conservatives, like the Hallam division of the other large Yorkshire city, or Edgbaston in Birmingham. Between the census of 2011 and 2021 the white percentage in NE fell by 6.5%, but the professional and managerial share rose by 1% and those with degrees by 7.5%, though this is still not really a heavily student occupied part of Leeds; that would be the newly drawn Leeds Central & Headingley, which as the highest proportion anywhere in England and Wales. Overall, apart from the problematic issues affecting the support of Jewish voters in recent years, Leeds North East’s long slow odyssey in a direction favourable to the Labour party seems to be continuing.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 16.5% 395/575
Owner occupied 64.6% 320/575
Private rented 19.0% 248/575
Social rented 16.4% 234/575
White 63.8% 486/575
Black 7.2% 91/575
Asian 19.9% 60/575
Jewish 4.1% 10/575
Managerial & professional 43.4% 60/575
Routine & Semi-routine 16.6% 492/575
Degree level 48.2% 45/575
No qualifications 14.7% 440/575
Students 7.2% 185/575
General Election 2019: Leeds North East
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Fabian Hamilton 29,024 57.5 -5.6
Conservative Amjad Bashir 11,935 23.6 -7.4
Liberal Democrats Jon Hannah 5,665 11.2 +7.5
Green Rachel Hartshorne 1,931 3.8 +2.5
Brexit Party Inaya Folarin Iman 1,769 3.5 N/A
Alliance for Green Socialism Celia Foote 176 0.3 +0.1
Lab Majority 17,089 33.9 +1.8
2019 electorate 70,580
Turnout 50,500 71.6 -4.25
Labour hold
Swing 0.9 C to Lab
Boundary Changes and 2019 notionals
N/A, unchanged seat
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/yorkshire-and-the-humber/Yorkshire%20and%20the%20Humber%20Region_515_Leeds%20North%20East_Portrait.pdf
