Post by Robert Waller on Dec 16, 2023 14:28:20 GMT
This is a joint effort using the profile on the previous board by rivers10 and my own additions.
The creation of two new seats called Chester North & Neston and Chester South & Eddisbury in the 2023 boundary review has brought an end to one characteristic that Chester used to boast. The City of Chester existed up to and in the 2019 general election as one of only three UK constituencies (along with the City of Durham and Cities of London and Westminster) that had the prefix “City(ies) of” attached. Why it was graced with this somewhat unwieldy name is anybody’s guess, locals, the media and even psephology geeks generally just referred to the constituency as “Chester” and unlike the City of Durham there were no similarly named seats that it needs to distinguish itself from. Now however Chester has suffered something of a doughnut effect in the Boundary Commission’s recommendations and report, although it is not spilt in two in the sense that the ‘North’ section here includes nearly three quarters (73.8%) of the former City of Chester, and this is therefore its successor seat.
It does however also include a substantial chunk taken from the former Ellesmere Port & Neston, about 17,000 voters in all. Looking at a map, the new constituency looks somewhat artificial, with its tow population centres connected by a long thin strip of land. Neston, on the east an of the River Dee estuary, about 11 miles from the centre of Chester by road (the A540 is a straightforward route), is essentially mainly middle class, especially its western suburb of Parkgate along with Ness and Burton to the south, and was traditionally inclined to the Conservatives; however this has no longer been the case in recent years. In the Chester West and Chester council elections of May 2023 Labour beat the Tories by 67%-25% in Neston ward, and by 61%-31% in Little Neston too, having narrowly shaded it in 2019. In up-market (in 2021 its small area OAs were between 50% and 60% professional/managerial) Parkgate an Independent won easily, as they have ever since 2015. In the village ward of Willaston & Thornton the Tories prevailed, as they have in every election in the past 50 years, on this occasion yet again with a comfortable 61% share.
Linking these northern sections to Chester is the rural ward of Saughall & Mollington. From Chester itself are five urban wards, essentially those north of the river Dee as it winds through the city: the peripheral social housing estate of Blacon, the central Chester City & the Garden Quarter (all one ward and quite a mouthful), the northern Upton, Newton & Hoole to the east of the centre, and Great Boughton in the south east corner of the seat still north of the Dee.
Compared with Chester South & Eddisbury, this constituency has a younger age profile (41% over 50 years as against 47%), has far more students (10% to 6%), is less thoroughly middle class (37% professional and managerial vis-a-vis 44%, and 21.5% routine and semi routine workers to 16.6%). It also has slightly fewer owner occupiers (64%) than average, while South & Eddisbury has far more (77%), due both to the presence of significant blocks of social housing and the private rented sector. All this means that North & Neston is very much the better prospect for the Labour party.
Chester is a truly ancient city founded by the Romans whose amphitheatre remains to this day as one of the city’s leading tourist attractions. Chester or “Deva” as it was then known was one of the foremost settlements in Roman Britannia and second only to Eboracum (York) in Northern Britannia. Its importance persisted well into the early modern period as a major regional economic centre straddling the border with Wales and the North West’s foremost trading port a position it lost to Liverpool starting in the late 17th century as the ever larger ships used where unable to effectively navigate the comparatively small River Dee. Today it acts as the county town of Cheshire and houses the headquarters of Cheshire West council.
Superficially Chester would seem like a typical Conservative market town, over 90% White British with its medieval city walls and picturesque Tudor style winding high street, however looks can be deceiving and it is only too easy to mistake Chester as a slice of middle England when it is actually a small city in its own right rapidly diverging in culture and attitudes from the surrounding Cheshire countryside. The City is an attractive commuter destination for university educated professionals from across the North but particularly Liverpool and is home to its own rapidly growing University of Chester. The student population in the city has been growing at pace for years now with many modern blocks of student flats springing up citywide and streets of inner city terraces being converted to student lets. The student population is particularly concentrated on the northern edge of the city centre roughly along an arc that follows the railway line; though there are naturally pockets throughout the city.
The whole of central Chester generally is a mish-mash of different sized terraces ranging from identikit cobbled working class streets to more imposing prestigious Victorian properties home to young professionals, but all with a propensity of support for the Labour party. In May 2023 Labour took 55% in the Chester City and Garden Quarter compared to 18% for the top Conservative. 36% of its residents are full time students, by far the greatest concentration in the city or seat. Further out Labour’s support doesn’t dwindle with the city’s former council estates of Lache and Blacon providing further support. Lache is south of the river and now placed in the Chester South & Eddisbury seat, but in the 2023 Cheshire West & Chester elections Labour massively held Blacon, with 67% compared to 15% for the Conservatives in second place. Blacon has not elected a Tory councillor since 1976. In the details of the 2021 census the MSOAs covering Blacon still recorded 38.5% in the social housing sector.
Chester’s middle class suburbs are much more politically competitive with Great Boughton straddling the A41 and to the north is Upton home of the nationally famous Chester Zoo. These areas were once Conservative bankers made up predominantly of owner occupied suburbia but have been much more politically mixed as of recent times with the areas returning split Labour and Conservative councillors in close fought contests in recent elections. However it is a strong indication of the political transformation in Chester city that Labour won both wards in 2023; they had never won Great Boughton before 2019, nor Upton, except for isolated and partial wins in 1990 and 2015. Yet their margin (top candidate) in Great Boughton was 17% in 2023. The professional and managerial worker proportion is Upton West Census MSOA is well above the national, regional and constituency average at 47% as is that covering Great Boughton (46%). Labour clearly hold a great appeal for the middle classes living in Chester itself in the 2020s.
Conservative strength in the city proper is mainly concentrated in the Handbridge ward covering the city South of the River Dee, including its most affluent neighbourhoods most notably the Curzon Park area predominantly made up of large period properties many of which cost seven figures, and they did retain one councillor there even in May 2023 – but this is now in Chester South & Eddisbury. Tory strength here is complemented by their expected support in the rural areas incorporating the pleasant commuter villages of Capenhurst and Puddington which are sited along with Saughall and Mollington in their eponymous ward –which was indeed the only one from the former City of Chester constituency that the Tories held in the most recent unitary council elections in May 2023, with 60% to Labour’s 32%.
From the above description one would expect Chester either to have a Labour tradition in parliamentary terms or to be a classic marginal - but it could only really claim that mantle for a short period. Its post-war political history has been predominantly as a reliable Conservative seat having returned a Tory MP for every election from 1945 to 1997 and more often than not with comfortable majorities, though it should be pointed out that the Tory majority was never towering here only hitting a 25 point high in the 1955 election and normally hovering somewhere in the mid to high teens. This could be in part attributed to this constituency’s strong Liberal tradition with the Liberal Party consistently having significant representation on the old Chester district council and having put up a candidate for the general election in every contest bar 1959, indeed their candidate for three elections on the run (1979 -1987) was one Andrew Stunell who would later go on to become the Lib Dem MP for Hazel Grove. MPs of note during this period of Tory hegemony include Peter Morrison who was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s PPS and eccentric TV personality Gyles Brandreth.
The tenure of Mr Brandreth would not be a long one however since upon his election in 1992 Chester for the first time looked like a genuine marginal with the Conservative majority falling to a little over a thousand votes. The seat was heavily targeted by Labour in the 1997 election whereupon 87 years of Conservative representation was ended as the seat elected its first Labour MP Christine Russell on an 11.5% swing.
Mrs Russell would be re-elected twice more in 2001 and 2005 when once again the seat became a key marginal with the Labour majority being just 917 votes over the Conservatives. The seat unsurprisingly returned to the Conservative fold in the 2010 election with Stephen Mosley winning the seat. Though like Mr Brandreth Mr Mosley would be a one term Tory MP and he was one of the rare Tory losses in the 2015 election when he was defeated by Labour’s Chris Matheson by just 93 votes making Chester the most marginal seat in the country.
There has been much speculation as to what caused Mr Mosley’s defeat with one of the wilder theories suggesting he was the lone victim of the much derided “Milifandom” since the seat made national headlines a few weeks prior to the election when during a campaign stop Labour leader Ed Miliband ended up accosted by a local hen party and (with much publicity) posed for selfies with a collection of clearly heavily inebriated women, was mistaken as a stripper and was invited to the bride-to-be’s wedding. As amusing as this incident was sounder heads believe that Mosley’s narrow defeat was more likely due to a combination of Chester’s changing demographics noted upon earlier and the issue of fracking which was due to heavily effect the constituency and almost certainly contributed to the Conservatives loss of the council in the local elections held on the same day.
With a majority of just 93 votes Mr Matheson was thought to be a goner in the 2017 election, Chester was (despite its heavy Remain vote of around 58%) the Conservatives number one target and it was perceived to be all but certain to return to the Tory fold. It was not to be though and in possibly the first proper indication of the seats changed allegiances Mr Matheson retained his seat easily with a hefty 8 percent swing in his favour, well above average for the election and increasing his tiny majority to over 9,000.
The seat once again behaved abnormally in the 2019 election when (with the Tories advancing nationally) the seat saw a well below average swing of just 2.5% to the Tories with the Conservative candidate herself losing vote share. Mr Matheson’s comfortable retention of the seat in what was otherwise a terrible election for Labour is as clear an indication as it comes that this seat is not for the Conservatives what it once was.
The Labour dominance here survived Matheson’s resignation in October 2022 after suspension from the Commons. In the subsequent byelection on 1 December that year the new candidate Samantha Dixon won with a positive swing from the Conservatives of 13.7%, which gave Labour an overwhelming 61% share compared with 22% for the Tories, and left City of Chester looking like a very safe Labour constituency – at the end of its life under that name.
‘Doughnut’ type boundary arrangements do not usually help the Labour party, due to their traditional and long-standing differential strength in urban compared with suburban and rural terrain. However the facts that so much of Chester itself is included in this ‘North’ division, and that there is another relatively friendly urban agglomeration in the shape of greater Neston at the other end of the new barbell-shaped boundaries mean this seat will start off in the Labour column. It should also be pointed out that both Chester and Neston are now very much in the Merseyside sub-region that has swing over heavily to Labour over many decades. Across the whole of the new seat in May 2023, Labour took 51% of the votes cast to 28% for the Tory candidates. The likelihood of this part of Chester, at least, once again returning to the Conservatives in the foreseeable future looks very slim indeed.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 21.6% 182/575
Owner occupied 63.9% 337/575
Private rented 19.9% 210/575
Social rented 16.2% 242/575
White 93.3% 229/575
Black 1.0% 333/575
Asian 3.0% 341/575
Managerial & professional 36.7% 184/575
Routine & Semi-routine 21.5% 366/575
Degree level 39.3% 123/575
No qualifications 14.6% 444/575
Students 9.9% 100/575
General Election 2019: City of Chester
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Chris Matheson 27,082 49.6 -7.2
Conservative Samantha George 20,918 38.3 -2.2
Liberal Democrats Bob Thompson 3,734 6.8 +4.1
Green Nicholas Brown 1,438 2.6
Brexit Party Andy Argyle 1,388 2.5
Lab Majority 6,164 11.3 -5.0
Turnout 54,560 71.7 -5.7
Labour hold
Swing 2.5 Lab to C
By-election 1 December 2022: City of Chester
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Samantha Dixon 17,309 60.8 +11.2
Conservative Liz Wardlaw 6,335 22.2 ―16.1
Liberal Democrats Rob Herd 2,368 8.3 +1.5
Green Paul Bowers 987 3.5 +0.9
Reform UK Jeanie Barton 773 2.7 +0.2
Rejoin EU Richard Hewison 277 1.0 New
UKIP Cain Griffiths 179 0.6 New
Monster Raving Loony Howling Laud Hope 156 0.5 New
Freedom Alliance Chris Quartermaine 91 0.3 New
Lab Majority 10,974 38.6 +27.3
Turnout 28,475 41.2 ―30.5
Labour hold
Swing 13.7 C to Lab
Boundary Changes
Chester North and Neston consists of
73.8% of City of Chester
24.1% of Ellesmere Port & Neston
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/north-west/North%20West_228_Chester%20North%20and%20Neston_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
The creation of two new seats called Chester North & Neston and Chester South & Eddisbury in the 2023 boundary review has brought an end to one characteristic that Chester used to boast. The City of Chester existed up to and in the 2019 general election as one of only three UK constituencies (along with the City of Durham and Cities of London and Westminster) that had the prefix “City(ies) of” attached. Why it was graced with this somewhat unwieldy name is anybody’s guess, locals, the media and even psephology geeks generally just referred to the constituency as “Chester” and unlike the City of Durham there were no similarly named seats that it needs to distinguish itself from. Now however Chester has suffered something of a doughnut effect in the Boundary Commission’s recommendations and report, although it is not spilt in two in the sense that the ‘North’ section here includes nearly three quarters (73.8%) of the former City of Chester, and this is therefore its successor seat.
It does however also include a substantial chunk taken from the former Ellesmere Port & Neston, about 17,000 voters in all. Looking at a map, the new constituency looks somewhat artificial, with its tow population centres connected by a long thin strip of land. Neston, on the east an of the River Dee estuary, about 11 miles from the centre of Chester by road (the A540 is a straightforward route), is essentially mainly middle class, especially its western suburb of Parkgate along with Ness and Burton to the south, and was traditionally inclined to the Conservatives; however this has no longer been the case in recent years. In the Chester West and Chester council elections of May 2023 Labour beat the Tories by 67%-25% in Neston ward, and by 61%-31% in Little Neston too, having narrowly shaded it in 2019. In up-market (in 2021 its small area OAs were between 50% and 60% professional/managerial) Parkgate an Independent won easily, as they have ever since 2015. In the village ward of Willaston & Thornton the Tories prevailed, as they have in every election in the past 50 years, on this occasion yet again with a comfortable 61% share.
Linking these northern sections to Chester is the rural ward of Saughall & Mollington. From Chester itself are five urban wards, essentially those north of the river Dee as it winds through the city: the peripheral social housing estate of Blacon, the central Chester City & the Garden Quarter (all one ward and quite a mouthful), the northern Upton, Newton & Hoole to the east of the centre, and Great Boughton in the south east corner of the seat still north of the Dee.
Compared with Chester South & Eddisbury, this constituency has a younger age profile (41% over 50 years as against 47%), has far more students (10% to 6%), is less thoroughly middle class (37% professional and managerial vis-a-vis 44%, and 21.5% routine and semi routine workers to 16.6%). It also has slightly fewer owner occupiers (64%) than average, while South & Eddisbury has far more (77%), due both to the presence of significant blocks of social housing and the private rented sector. All this means that North & Neston is very much the better prospect for the Labour party.
Chester is a truly ancient city founded by the Romans whose amphitheatre remains to this day as one of the city’s leading tourist attractions. Chester or “Deva” as it was then known was one of the foremost settlements in Roman Britannia and second only to Eboracum (York) in Northern Britannia. Its importance persisted well into the early modern period as a major regional economic centre straddling the border with Wales and the North West’s foremost trading port a position it lost to Liverpool starting in the late 17th century as the ever larger ships used where unable to effectively navigate the comparatively small River Dee. Today it acts as the county town of Cheshire and houses the headquarters of Cheshire West council.
Superficially Chester would seem like a typical Conservative market town, over 90% White British with its medieval city walls and picturesque Tudor style winding high street, however looks can be deceiving and it is only too easy to mistake Chester as a slice of middle England when it is actually a small city in its own right rapidly diverging in culture and attitudes from the surrounding Cheshire countryside. The City is an attractive commuter destination for university educated professionals from across the North but particularly Liverpool and is home to its own rapidly growing University of Chester. The student population in the city has been growing at pace for years now with many modern blocks of student flats springing up citywide and streets of inner city terraces being converted to student lets. The student population is particularly concentrated on the northern edge of the city centre roughly along an arc that follows the railway line; though there are naturally pockets throughout the city.
The whole of central Chester generally is a mish-mash of different sized terraces ranging from identikit cobbled working class streets to more imposing prestigious Victorian properties home to young professionals, but all with a propensity of support for the Labour party. In May 2023 Labour took 55% in the Chester City and Garden Quarter compared to 18% for the top Conservative. 36% of its residents are full time students, by far the greatest concentration in the city or seat. Further out Labour’s support doesn’t dwindle with the city’s former council estates of Lache and Blacon providing further support. Lache is south of the river and now placed in the Chester South & Eddisbury seat, but in the 2023 Cheshire West & Chester elections Labour massively held Blacon, with 67% compared to 15% for the Conservatives in second place. Blacon has not elected a Tory councillor since 1976. In the details of the 2021 census the MSOAs covering Blacon still recorded 38.5% in the social housing sector.
Chester’s middle class suburbs are much more politically competitive with Great Boughton straddling the A41 and to the north is Upton home of the nationally famous Chester Zoo. These areas were once Conservative bankers made up predominantly of owner occupied suburbia but have been much more politically mixed as of recent times with the areas returning split Labour and Conservative councillors in close fought contests in recent elections. However it is a strong indication of the political transformation in Chester city that Labour won both wards in 2023; they had never won Great Boughton before 2019, nor Upton, except for isolated and partial wins in 1990 and 2015. Yet their margin (top candidate) in Great Boughton was 17% in 2023. The professional and managerial worker proportion is Upton West Census MSOA is well above the national, regional and constituency average at 47% as is that covering Great Boughton (46%). Labour clearly hold a great appeal for the middle classes living in Chester itself in the 2020s.
Conservative strength in the city proper is mainly concentrated in the Handbridge ward covering the city South of the River Dee, including its most affluent neighbourhoods most notably the Curzon Park area predominantly made up of large period properties many of which cost seven figures, and they did retain one councillor there even in May 2023 – but this is now in Chester South & Eddisbury. Tory strength here is complemented by their expected support in the rural areas incorporating the pleasant commuter villages of Capenhurst and Puddington which are sited along with Saughall and Mollington in their eponymous ward –which was indeed the only one from the former City of Chester constituency that the Tories held in the most recent unitary council elections in May 2023, with 60% to Labour’s 32%.
From the above description one would expect Chester either to have a Labour tradition in parliamentary terms or to be a classic marginal - but it could only really claim that mantle for a short period. Its post-war political history has been predominantly as a reliable Conservative seat having returned a Tory MP for every election from 1945 to 1997 and more often than not with comfortable majorities, though it should be pointed out that the Tory majority was never towering here only hitting a 25 point high in the 1955 election and normally hovering somewhere in the mid to high teens. This could be in part attributed to this constituency’s strong Liberal tradition with the Liberal Party consistently having significant representation on the old Chester district council and having put up a candidate for the general election in every contest bar 1959, indeed their candidate for three elections on the run (1979 -1987) was one Andrew Stunell who would later go on to become the Lib Dem MP for Hazel Grove. MPs of note during this period of Tory hegemony include Peter Morrison who was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s PPS and eccentric TV personality Gyles Brandreth.
The tenure of Mr Brandreth would not be a long one however since upon his election in 1992 Chester for the first time looked like a genuine marginal with the Conservative majority falling to a little over a thousand votes. The seat was heavily targeted by Labour in the 1997 election whereupon 87 years of Conservative representation was ended as the seat elected its first Labour MP Christine Russell on an 11.5% swing.
Mrs Russell would be re-elected twice more in 2001 and 2005 when once again the seat became a key marginal with the Labour majority being just 917 votes over the Conservatives. The seat unsurprisingly returned to the Conservative fold in the 2010 election with Stephen Mosley winning the seat. Though like Mr Brandreth Mr Mosley would be a one term Tory MP and he was one of the rare Tory losses in the 2015 election when he was defeated by Labour’s Chris Matheson by just 93 votes making Chester the most marginal seat in the country.
There has been much speculation as to what caused Mr Mosley’s defeat with one of the wilder theories suggesting he was the lone victim of the much derided “Milifandom” since the seat made national headlines a few weeks prior to the election when during a campaign stop Labour leader Ed Miliband ended up accosted by a local hen party and (with much publicity) posed for selfies with a collection of clearly heavily inebriated women, was mistaken as a stripper and was invited to the bride-to-be’s wedding. As amusing as this incident was sounder heads believe that Mosley’s narrow defeat was more likely due to a combination of Chester’s changing demographics noted upon earlier and the issue of fracking which was due to heavily effect the constituency and almost certainly contributed to the Conservatives loss of the council in the local elections held on the same day.
With a majority of just 93 votes Mr Matheson was thought to be a goner in the 2017 election, Chester was (despite its heavy Remain vote of around 58%) the Conservatives number one target and it was perceived to be all but certain to return to the Tory fold. It was not to be though and in possibly the first proper indication of the seats changed allegiances Mr Matheson retained his seat easily with a hefty 8 percent swing in his favour, well above average for the election and increasing his tiny majority to over 9,000.
The seat once again behaved abnormally in the 2019 election when (with the Tories advancing nationally) the seat saw a well below average swing of just 2.5% to the Tories with the Conservative candidate herself losing vote share. Mr Matheson’s comfortable retention of the seat in what was otherwise a terrible election for Labour is as clear an indication as it comes that this seat is not for the Conservatives what it once was.
The Labour dominance here survived Matheson’s resignation in October 2022 after suspension from the Commons. In the subsequent byelection on 1 December that year the new candidate Samantha Dixon won with a positive swing from the Conservatives of 13.7%, which gave Labour an overwhelming 61% share compared with 22% for the Tories, and left City of Chester looking like a very safe Labour constituency – at the end of its life under that name.
‘Doughnut’ type boundary arrangements do not usually help the Labour party, due to their traditional and long-standing differential strength in urban compared with suburban and rural terrain. However the facts that so much of Chester itself is included in this ‘North’ division, and that there is another relatively friendly urban agglomeration in the shape of greater Neston at the other end of the new barbell-shaped boundaries mean this seat will start off in the Labour column. It should also be pointed out that both Chester and Neston are now very much in the Merseyside sub-region that has swing over heavily to Labour over many decades. Across the whole of the new seat in May 2023, Labour took 51% of the votes cast to 28% for the Tory candidates. The likelihood of this part of Chester, at least, once again returning to the Conservatives in the foreseeable future looks very slim indeed.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 21.6% 182/575
Owner occupied 63.9% 337/575
Private rented 19.9% 210/575
Social rented 16.2% 242/575
White 93.3% 229/575
Black 1.0% 333/575
Asian 3.0% 341/575
Managerial & professional 36.7% 184/575
Routine & Semi-routine 21.5% 366/575
Degree level 39.3% 123/575
No qualifications 14.6% 444/575
Students 9.9% 100/575
General Election 2019: City of Chester
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Chris Matheson 27,082 49.6 -7.2
Conservative Samantha George 20,918 38.3 -2.2
Liberal Democrats Bob Thompson 3,734 6.8 +4.1
Green Nicholas Brown 1,438 2.6
Brexit Party Andy Argyle 1,388 2.5
Lab Majority 6,164 11.3 -5.0
Turnout 54,560 71.7 -5.7
Labour hold
Swing 2.5 Lab to C
By-election 1 December 2022: City of Chester
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Samantha Dixon 17,309 60.8 +11.2
Conservative Liz Wardlaw 6,335 22.2 ―16.1
Liberal Democrats Rob Herd 2,368 8.3 +1.5
Green Paul Bowers 987 3.5 +0.9
Reform UK Jeanie Barton 773 2.7 +0.2
Rejoin EU Richard Hewison 277 1.0 New
UKIP Cain Griffiths 179 0.6 New
Monster Raving Loony Howling Laud Hope 156 0.5 New
Freedom Alliance Chris Quartermaine 91 0.3 New
Lab Majority 10,974 38.6 +27.3
Turnout 28,475 41.2 ―30.5
Labour hold
Swing 13.7 C to Lab
Boundary Changes
Chester North and Neston consists of
73.8% of City of Chester
24.1% of Ellesmere Port & Neston
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/north-west/North%20West_228_Chester%20North%20and%20Neston_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
| Lab | 27137 | 50.3% |
| Con | 20746 | 38.5% |
| LD | 3337 | 6.2% |
| Brexit | 1502 | 2.8% |
| Green | 1202 | 2.2% |
| | ||
| Majority | 6391 | 11.9% |
