Post by Pete Whitehead on Dec 16, 2023 19:36:57 GMT
This is neither a new seat nor an entirely new name, but effectively an expanded version of Wolverhampton South West, which gains one ward from each of the other Wolverhampton seats so that it now contains almost half the city (9 of 20 wards).
Wolverhampton South West was created in 1950 but was very similar to a previous incarnation of Wolverhampton West which had existed since 1885. That had usually been a Conservative seat but by small margins and Labour had won it narrowly back in 1906 and again in 1929 before winning convincingly in 1945.
Enoch Powell narrowly won the inaugural contest in South West in 1950 and gradually made the seat safe, culminating in a massive win in 1970.
There were major boundary changes in 1974 with the formerly separate urban district of Tettenhall being added consequent upon the expansion of Wolverhampton County borough in the 1960s. This was a crucial change which enabled the new Conservative candidate Nick Budgen to withstand a huge pro-Labour swing and has kept the Conservatives competitive in recent elections.
Budgen held the seat for almost as long as Powell had before going down to Labour in 1997 on a nationally typical swing. Subsequently, the Conservatives regained the seat very narrowly in 2010, lost it narrowly in 2015 and finally regained it in 2019. This is now a seat that leans Labour in an even year, and it was striking how low the swing was in 2019 compared with neighbouring seats in the Black country (of which this constituency is not truly a part). This has been a low-swing seat in general (excepting 1970/74) and in the last thirty years neither party has achieved 50% of the vote (except Labour once, just, in 1997) and neither party has dipped significantly below 40%. This reflects the tension between the poor, inner-city Labour voting areas and affluent Conservative suburbs which has essentially characterised the seat throughout its history and why the inclusion of Tettenhall is now so crucial to Conservative prospects (Powell’s old seat would be very safe for Labour now).
The seat as it has existed since 1974 (with very little subsequent change until now) can be divided into three areas, namely the inner-city, the southern suburbs and the western suburbs (Tettenhall).
St Peter’s ward is tightly drawn around the ring road in the south, taking in the whole of the city centre – the shopping centre, civic buildings and the University. It then extends North of the ring road, past the famous Molyneux football stadium all the way out to the racecourse. The residential areas in between – Whitmore Reans and Dunstall Hill are without exception heavily deprived, comprising mostly of poor Victorian terraced housing but also with a large component of council housing, much of it in the form of tower blocks. White people are distinctly in a minority and a large proportion of those there are will be students as this contains a number of Halls of residence with many other students renting in the terraced housing. This ward is 30% Asian and also has a 19% Black population. Muslims outnumber Sikhs here which is in contrast with most of the other wards in Wolverhampton. Unsurprisingly, St Peter’s is and has always been a very safe Labour ward often with near monolithic levels of support.
Across the ring road to the South West, Graiseley is not wholly dissimilar though there are differences. By the ring road, around Graiseley Street itself, there are large and grim council tower-block estates. Beyond these in Merridale are dingy terraces of a similar type to be found in Whitmore Reans. In the south of the ward though, in Bradmore, is a relatively pleasant suburban area. Overall, the ward is somewhat whiter than St Peter’s (though White British are still in a minority) and has many fewer Muslims and students.
Graiseley was traditionally a moderately safe Labour ward but one where the Conservatives could win in a good year owing to the presence of the last named area – indeed they could win in a not so good year, suggesting that personal voting counted for more than any other factor. John Mellor gained a seat here in 1987 and managed to hold on until 2003, even winning in the annus horribilis of 1995. Since losing the seat in 2003 though, and with John Mellor’s departure from the scene, the Conservatives have not come close again – not even in 2008 when they were winning the unlikeliest of wards in other parts of the city – and in recent years this has not been much less solidly Labour than St Peter’s.
The last of the ‘inner-city’ wards is somewhat different to the two just discussed. Park ward, which lies between the other two is the classic middle class ‘West End’. There is some inner-city terrain where it borders the city centre at Chapel Ash and Park Dale but also some pleasant Edwardian villas around the large and attractive eponymous park (West Park) and around the Grammar School. The parts of the ward bordering onto Whitmore Reans are grotty but there are very pleasant residential areas around Tettenhall Road and especially in Compton in the South West. Before 2004, the ward extended further out into true suburbia at Finchfield. The removal of that area killed Conservative chances here. This is still a largely middle class ward with a relatively high proportion of graduates but as with so many inner-urban middle class areas of this type it skews heavily to the public sector and this ward was trending away from the Conservatives even before the boundary changes finished the job.
The Conservatives still won the last few elections here on the old boundaries but have not come very close since – Compton and Newbridge can sustain enough Conservative support to give that party a significant minority vote but it is not enough to win these days. Rather predictably for a ward of this kind, the Lib Dems had a short run of success in the aftermath of the Iraq war but faded very rapidly following the formation of the coalition government and this ward is now securely in the Labour column.
Taken together the three wards of the ‘inner-city’ can be counted on to vote Labour by at least two to one in general elections and provide a very solid base for winning the constituency, but in order to do so they additionally need at least a large minority in the remainder of the constituency which is quite different in nature.
In the South of the constituency lie the two suburban wards of Penn and Merry Hill. Both historically were very safely Conservative but like Park have tended to weaken somewhat in recent years, if not to the same extent. Penn in particular was an overwhelmingly safe Conservative ward until the 1990s and even then, survived the meltdown of the mid-90s while Merry Hill was lost very narrowly only in 1995. But Labour have won both wards a number of times in the last decade and both were split in the all out elections in 2023. The source of the marginality is different in each case.
Penn is an overwhelmingly owner-occupied ward consisting of generally good quality detached and semi-detached houses of mostly inter-war vintage. The reason for the recent marginality of the ward is the large and growing Asian population, predominantly Sikhs and overall, the ward was over a third non-White in 2021.
Merry Hill is a different case – it is much whiter than Penn and with if anything some even better residential areas, in the North around Finchfield in particular. But it also contains a large and very deprived council estate at Warstones in the centre of the ward.
Wolverhampton has a bit of a history of the Conservatives over-performing at local level relative to their general election performances (though history may be the operative word – this has been less in evidence in recent years than in say the 1990s).
One of the reasons for this would be a differential turnout between the wealthy and the poor areas of a ward like Merry Hill, a differential that would be reduced (though obviously not eliminated) in a general election. At the most recent general election, the Conservatives would have carried the wards of Penn and Merry Hill by a clear but not overwhelming margin – probably in the region of 10-15%. Clearly this would not be enough on its own to overwhelm Labour’s strength in the central areas as it was in Powell’s day.
That task now falls to Tettenhall.
Tettenhall, as mentioned above, was a separate Urban district until 1966 and retains a distinct character, being physically separated from the rest of Wolverhampton by Smestow Brook. It is by far the most upmarket and strongly Conservative district in Wolverhampton and amongst the most in the entire West Midlands. It contains an attractive town centre set around a village green and most of the residential neighbourhoods are highly desirable and include genuine mansions along the A41 is it leaves the city out towards Albrighton, Shropshire. There are similarly wealthy neighbourhoods in Wightwick and Wergs. The Tettenhall Wightwick ward has extended East of the Stour since 2004 to include parts of Wolverhampton’’proper’, but this area, in Castlecroft and parts of Finchfield is of a similar demographic type. There is some council-built housing, but this is generally very respectable by Wolverhampton standards and has been heavily subject to right to buy. Tettenhall is still over 70% white compared to less than 50% in the inner-city wards.
The two Tettenhall wards have been and remain very safe Conservative wards. This was perhaps best illustrated in 2016 when in one of the more amusing electoral incidents, the Conservatives contrived to select two officially endorsed candidates for a single vacancy in Tettenhall Regis. Even with the split vote caused by this (and with UKIP splitting the ‘right-wing’ vote further) the Conservatives still won and this being among their worst election in Wolverhampton in recent years when they lost both Merry Hill and Penn. If they couldn’t lose then it’s hard to see them doing to in the foreseeable future – and Regis is the weaker of the two wards for them. Nevertheless, neither of the wards are quite as monolithic now as they have been in the past – perhaps to be expected given the Conservatives have been in power for a decade, but perhaps also a sign of the same demographic changes that have made Penn marginal starting to occur here too.
Still the Conservatives will have carried the Tettenhall area by around two to one at the most recent general election, mirroring the two to one Labour advantage in the inner-city wards and leaving the more marginal wards of Merry Hill and Penn to decide the issue.
This was on paper the second easiest Conservative gain in the West Midlands going into the last election, after Dudley North. That seat was won by over 30% following a swing of over 15%. Here the swing was less than 5% and the winning margin a modest 1,661. On paper this is now more marginal for the Conservatives than Wolverhampton North East and West Bromwich West and way more marginal than Dudley North and Walsall North. For sure the potential level of swing-back is lower here than in those seats, given the relative inelasticity of the electorate, but then only a small swing is required.
And the effect of the boundary changes is to make the required swing even smaller as the Conservative majority all but disappears. All six seats in the Wolverhampton/Walsall area were undersized but this seat was the most with fewer than 60,000 voters.
The boundary changes add two wards of a different nature, one from each of the other Wolverhampton seats.
Oxley comes in from North East. This is demographically and politically rather typical of that constituency, which means that Labour can normally count on a lead there, but the Conservatives can win in a good year in both local and parliamentary elections. It contains a typical mix of interwar housing further in, both council and privately built and more modern post war housing further out in Pendeford (again including a sizeable contingent of council housing). It is Whiter than average for Wolverhampton and for this seat, but the proportion of Blacks and Asians are hardly negligible. It is still a generally working class area with routine and semi-routine occupations accounting for a third of the population. The Conservatives would have led in this ward by a few hundred in 2019 but in more normal circumstances it would not generally count for much in their favour.
Blakenhall which comes in from South East is a different matter. This is a heavily Asian (mostly Sikh) ward and overwhelmingly Labour - perhaps the strongest of all Labour wards in Wolverhampton and certainly the safest in South East where it would have accounted for all of Labour's majority in 2019 and then some. Blakenhall is actually quite divided socially as the North of the ward in Blakenhall itself comprises poor inner-city terraced housing interspersed with some council estates whereas the South of the ward in Goldthorn Park includes some quite pleasant residential areas. It is not politically divided though as Goldthorn Park is heavily populated by middle class Sikhs who still vote Labour.
Labour would have led by about 2,000 votes in Blakenhall in 2019 which would be about the same as the Conservative lead in the existing seat plus Oxley.
Given the continued slow and gradual, but probably inexorable drift to Labour here, this now looks like a seat that will be in the Labour column in all but the kind of catastrophic conditions for the party that obtained in December 2019.
In most UK cities indeed, a seat of this kind, containing poor inner-city neighbourhoods, a large ethnic minority population, students, and a large public sector middle class, would already be safely in that column.
Wolverhampton council published ward results for the last general election so it is possible to construct a genuine notional result for this constituency:
Wolverhampton South West was created in 1950 but was very similar to a previous incarnation of Wolverhampton West which had existed since 1885. That had usually been a Conservative seat but by small margins and Labour had won it narrowly back in 1906 and again in 1929 before winning convincingly in 1945.
Enoch Powell narrowly won the inaugural contest in South West in 1950 and gradually made the seat safe, culminating in a massive win in 1970.
There were major boundary changes in 1974 with the formerly separate urban district of Tettenhall being added consequent upon the expansion of Wolverhampton County borough in the 1960s. This was a crucial change which enabled the new Conservative candidate Nick Budgen to withstand a huge pro-Labour swing and has kept the Conservatives competitive in recent elections.
Budgen held the seat for almost as long as Powell had before going down to Labour in 1997 on a nationally typical swing. Subsequently, the Conservatives regained the seat very narrowly in 2010, lost it narrowly in 2015 and finally regained it in 2019. This is now a seat that leans Labour in an even year, and it was striking how low the swing was in 2019 compared with neighbouring seats in the Black country (of which this constituency is not truly a part). This has been a low-swing seat in general (excepting 1970/74) and in the last thirty years neither party has achieved 50% of the vote (except Labour once, just, in 1997) and neither party has dipped significantly below 40%. This reflects the tension between the poor, inner-city Labour voting areas and affluent Conservative suburbs which has essentially characterised the seat throughout its history and why the inclusion of Tettenhall is now so crucial to Conservative prospects (Powell’s old seat would be very safe for Labour now).
The seat as it has existed since 1974 (with very little subsequent change until now) can be divided into three areas, namely the inner-city, the southern suburbs and the western suburbs (Tettenhall).
St Peter’s ward is tightly drawn around the ring road in the south, taking in the whole of the city centre – the shopping centre, civic buildings and the University. It then extends North of the ring road, past the famous Molyneux football stadium all the way out to the racecourse. The residential areas in between – Whitmore Reans and Dunstall Hill are without exception heavily deprived, comprising mostly of poor Victorian terraced housing but also with a large component of council housing, much of it in the form of tower blocks. White people are distinctly in a minority and a large proportion of those there are will be students as this contains a number of Halls of residence with many other students renting in the terraced housing. This ward is 30% Asian and also has a 19% Black population. Muslims outnumber Sikhs here which is in contrast with most of the other wards in Wolverhampton. Unsurprisingly, St Peter’s is and has always been a very safe Labour ward often with near monolithic levels of support.
Across the ring road to the South West, Graiseley is not wholly dissimilar though there are differences. By the ring road, around Graiseley Street itself, there are large and grim council tower-block estates. Beyond these in Merridale are dingy terraces of a similar type to be found in Whitmore Reans. In the south of the ward though, in Bradmore, is a relatively pleasant suburban area. Overall, the ward is somewhat whiter than St Peter’s (though White British are still in a minority) and has many fewer Muslims and students.
Graiseley was traditionally a moderately safe Labour ward but one where the Conservatives could win in a good year owing to the presence of the last named area – indeed they could win in a not so good year, suggesting that personal voting counted for more than any other factor. John Mellor gained a seat here in 1987 and managed to hold on until 2003, even winning in the annus horribilis of 1995. Since losing the seat in 2003 though, and with John Mellor’s departure from the scene, the Conservatives have not come close again – not even in 2008 when they were winning the unlikeliest of wards in other parts of the city – and in recent years this has not been much less solidly Labour than St Peter’s.
The last of the ‘inner-city’ wards is somewhat different to the two just discussed. Park ward, which lies between the other two is the classic middle class ‘West End’. There is some inner-city terrain where it borders the city centre at Chapel Ash and Park Dale but also some pleasant Edwardian villas around the large and attractive eponymous park (West Park) and around the Grammar School. The parts of the ward bordering onto Whitmore Reans are grotty but there are very pleasant residential areas around Tettenhall Road and especially in Compton in the South West. Before 2004, the ward extended further out into true suburbia at Finchfield. The removal of that area killed Conservative chances here. This is still a largely middle class ward with a relatively high proportion of graduates but as with so many inner-urban middle class areas of this type it skews heavily to the public sector and this ward was trending away from the Conservatives even before the boundary changes finished the job.
The Conservatives still won the last few elections here on the old boundaries but have not come very close since – Compton and Newbridge can sustain enough Conservative support to give that party a significant minority vote but it is not enough to win these days. Rather predictably for a ward of this kind, the Lib Dems had a short run of success in the aftermath of the Iraq war but faded very rapidly following the formation of the coalition government and this ward is now securely in the Labour column.
Taken together the three wards of the ‘inner-city’ can be counted on to vote Labour by at least two to one in general elections and provide a very solid base for winning the constituency, but in order to do so they additionally need at least a large minority in the remainder of the constituency which is quite different in nature.
In the South of the constituency lie the two suburban wards of Penn and Merry Hill. Both historically were very safely Conservative but like Park have tended to weaken somewhat in recent years, if not to the same extent. Penn in particular was an overwhelmingly safe Conservative ward until the 1990s and even then, survived the meltdown of the mid-90s while Merry Hill was lost very narrowly only in 1995. But Labour have won both wards a number of times in the last decade and both were split in the all out elections in 2023. The source of the marginality is different in each case.
Penn is an overwhelmingly owner-occupied ward consisting of generally good quality detached and semi-detached houses of mostly inter-war vintage. The reason for the recent marginality of the ward is the large and growing Asian population, predominantly Sikhs and overall, the ward was over a third non-White in 2021.
Merry Hill is a different case – it is much whiter than Penn and with if anything some even better residential areas, in the North around Finchfield in particular. But it also contains a large and very deprived council estate at Warstones in the centre of the ward.
Wolverhampton has a bit of a history of the Conservatives over-performing at local level relative to their general election performances (though history may be the operative word – this has been less in evidence in recent years than in say the 1990s).
One of the reasons for this would be a differential turnout between the wealthy and the poor areas of a ward like Merry Hill, a differential that would be reduced (though obviously not eliminated) in a general election. At the most recent general election, the Conservatives would have carried the wards of Penn and Merry Hill by a clear but not overwhelming margin – probably in the region of 10-15%. Clearly this would not be enough on its own to overwhelm Labour’s strength in the central areas as it was in Powell’s day.
That task now falls to Tettenhall.
Tettenhall, as mentioned above, was a separate Urban district until 1966 and retains a distinct character, being physically separated from the rest of Wolverhampton by Smestow Brook. It is by far the most upmarket and strongly Conservative district in Wolverhampton and amongst the most in the entire West Midlands. It contains an attractive town centre set around a village green and most of the residential neighbourhoods are highly desirable and include genuine mansions along the A41 is it leaves the city out towards Albrighton, Shropshire. There are similarly wealthy neighbourhoods in Wightwick and Wergs. The Tettenhall Wightwick ward has extended East of the Stour since 2004 to include parts of Wolverhampton’’proper’, but this area, in Castlecroft and parts of Finchfield is of a similar demographic type. There is some council-built housing, but this is generally very respectable by Wolverhampton standards and has been heavily subject to right to buy. Tettenhall is still over 70% white compared to less than 50% in the inner-city wards.
The two Tettenhall wards have been and remain very safe Conservative wards. This was perhaps best illustrated in 2016 when in one of the more amusing electoral incidents, the Conservatives contrived to select two officially endorsed candidates for a single vacancy in Tettenhall Regis. Even with the split vote caused by this (and with UKIP splitting the ‘right-wing’ vote further) the Conservatives still won and this being among their worst election in Wolverhampton in recent years when they lost both Merry Hill and Penn. If they couldn’t lose then it’s hard to see them doing to in the foreseeable future – and Regis is the weaker of the two wards for them. Nevertheless, neither of the wards are quite as monolithic now as they have been in the past – perhaps to be expected given the Conservatives have been in power for a decade, but perhaps also a sign of the same demographic changes that have made Penn marginal starting to occur here too.
Still the Conservatives will have carried the Tettenhall area by around two to one at the most recent general election, mirroring the two to one Labour advantage in the inner-city wards and leaving the more marginal wards of Merry Hill and Penn to decide the issue.
This was on paper the second easiest Conservative gain in the West Midlands going into the last election, after Dudley North. That seat was won by over 30% following a swing of over 15%. Here the swing was less than 5% and the winning margin a modest 1,661. On paper this is now more marginal for the Conservatives than Wolverhampton North East and West Bromwich West and way more marginal than Dudley North and Walsall North. For sure the potential level of swing-back is lower here than in those seats, given the relative inelasticity of the electorate, but then only a small swing is required.
And the effect of the boundary changes is to make the required swing even smaller as the Conservative majority all but disappears. All six seats in the Wolverhampton/Walsall area were undersized but this seat was the most with fewer than 60,000 voters.
The boundary changes add two wards of a different nature, one from each of the other Wolverhampton seats.
Oxley comes in from North East. This is demographically and politically rather typical of that constituency, which means that Labour can normally count on a lead there, but the Conservatives can win in a good year in both local and parliamentary elections. It contains a typical mix of interwar housing further in, both council and privately built and more modern post war housing further out in Pendeford (again including a sizeable contingent of council housing). It is Whiter than average for Wolverhampton and for this seat, but the proportion of Blacks and Asians are hardly negligible. It is still a generally working class area with routine and semi-routine occupations accounting for a third of the population. The Conservatives would have led in this ward by a few hundred in 2019 but in more normal circumstances it would not generally count for much in their favour.
Blakenhall which comes in from South East is a different matter. This is a heavily Asian (mostly Sikh) ward and overwhelmingly Labour - perhaps the strongest of all Labour wards in Wolverhampton and certainly the safest in South East where it would have accounted for all of Labour's majority in 2019 and then some. Blakenhall is actually quite divided socially as the North of the ward in Blakenhall itself comprises poor inner-city terraced housing interspersed with some council estates whereas the South of the ward in Goldthorn Park includes some quite pleasant residential areas. It is not politically divided though as Goldthorn Park is heavily populated by middle class Sikhs who still vote Labour.
Labour would have led by about 2,000 votes in Blakenhall in 2019 which would be about the same as the Conservative lead in the existing seat plus Oxley.
Given the continued slow and gradual, but probably inexorable drift to Labour here, this now looks like a seat that will be in the Labour column in all but the kind of catastrophic conditions for the party that obtained in December 2019.
In most UK cities indeed, a seat of this kind, containing poor inner-city neighbourhoods, a large ethnic minority population, students, and a large public sector middle class, would already be safely in that column.
Wolverhampton council published ward results for the last general election so it is possible to construct a genuine notional result for this constituency:
| Con | 23587 | 46.1% |
| Lab | 23542 | 46.1% |
| LD | 2359 | 4.6% |
| BxP | 1437 | 2.8% |
| Grn | 188 | 0.4% |
| Majority | 45 | 0.1% |
