Post by Robert Waller on Dec 19, 2023 14:59:40 GMT
This is largely based on the excellent and thorough previous profile by @europeanlefty, with updates and additions by myself, and help on boundary changes from andrewp
The boundary changes affecting the Devon seat that runs along most of that county’s border with Cornwall that come into force for the 2024 general election are relatively minor. It loses about six thousand voters immediately to the north of Plymouth city around Yelverton and the south-western edge of Dartmoor. These are the two West Devon district council wards of Buckland Monachorum and Burrator. Scarcely in exchange, a tiny portion of Central Devon is added as ward boundaries are brought into line with those of the constituency. Most noticeably, the name of the seat is changed from Torridge & West Devon to ‘& Tavistock’, thus restoring to visible representation a name that graced its own constituency from 1330 until 1974 – indeed having two MPs as an ancient parliamentary borough until 1868; Michael Heseltine started his parliamentary career as member for Tavistock, before having on its abolition to move all the way to Henley in Oxfordshire.
Torridge and Tavistock is Devon’s largest seat by area, covering all of Torridge district and most of West Devon district, with the town of Okehampton and five other wards covering various small rural communities to the east being in Central Devon instead, as well as the two now in SW Devon. The main towns in the seat are Bideford in the north, at the mouth of the river Torridge, Holsworthy in the middle near the Cornish border and, of course, Tavistock to the south. It also still contains much of the Dartmoor national park, including the eponymous Dartmoor ward encompassing Princetown (site of the famed gloomy prison) in the middle of the moor, and Mary Tavy ward stretching to include Peter Tavy and North Brentor. Torridge & Tavistock also contains the famous island of Lundy, although its permanent population and hence its electorate is very small; Lundy was remote enough to double convincingly as St Helena in the BBC’s dramatisation of Napoleon’s final period of exile. It also contains Westward Ho!, famous for being the only place in the UK to have a punctuation mark in its name –it was named after the 1855 historical adventure novel by Charles Kingsley (initially) set in Bideford, and entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to capitalise on its potential for tourists.
Like much of Devon, most of this constituency was and is primarily an agricultural area. That isn’t to say that there has never been any industry of note in the area. Appledore shipbuilders operated out of the drydock in Appledore, on the mouth of the Torridge, from 1855 until 2019 and built over 350 vessels during its 164-year period of operation. Tavistock also has an industrial past, first centred around copper, tin and manganese mining and later around the cloth trade, however both had almost completely died out by the mid nineteenth century. Bideford was Britain’s third largest port by the sixteenth century, and it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh landed his shipment of Tobacco. Some raw materials are still exported from Bideford to other parts of Europe, and some fishing boats still operate out of both here and Appledore.
Today, agriculture remains important to the local economy and possibly not as important as tourism, with the North Devon Coast, the Tarka Trail and Dartmoor all being major attractions for tourists from all over the country and beyond. Accommodation and food services employ 14.6% of workers in the constituency, almost double the national average. Managerial and professional occupations are slightly under-represented in the workforce whilst elementary occupations are slightly over-represented. In spite of Devon’s reputation for wealth, deprivation is a serious problem here. It is the 252nd most deprived seat in England, putting it roughly in line with Eastbourne, and Norfolk North. This also makes it the 4th most deprived seat in Devon and the most deprived of the county’s predominantly rural seats. Although many of its rankings are around its average, it scores significantly higher on barriers to housing and services (83rd in England) and living environment (57th). This is partly due to the high housing prices and lack of housing availability, partly caused by the high number of second home-owners with homes in this area of the country. Average income is significantly below the national average, at £501.9 per week compared to £587 nationally. Owner-occupied households make up 71.2% of the constituency compared to 64.9% nationally, while social renting is only just over half the national average and in the bottom decile of constituencies, and private renting is a little more common than the norm.
There is some variation, with 17.3% of households in Bideford South & East MSOA being socially rented as recorded in the detailed 2021 census figures, and private renting being 29.8% in Bideford North and 21.5% in Clovelly Bay MSOA (and as high as 86.9% in the smaller Output Area covering the estate-owned Clovelly village); Westward Ho! and Tavistock North are also significantly above average for both the seat and the country. Employment deprivation is particularly bad in and around Appledore and Bideford, as the once-plentiful industry has dwindled to almost nothing and many of the jobs have gone with it. Another factor of the area’s deprivation is that just 57.1% of the workforce is employed full time – a full ten points lower than the British average. This is because much of the tourism-related work is seasonal due to the far greater numbers of the tourists visiting in the summer. This also goes some way to explaining the particularly low average incomes.
As might be expected for rural Devon, this seat is almost entirely white British. 96% of the population was born in the UK and it is over 98% white – no ward is under 95%. This makes it the 2nd most ‘snow-white’ constituency in England and Wales in the 2021 census figures. It is also among the top 20 of seats was far as residents over 65 years of age is concerned (28.7%). The proportion of people with no qualifications is exactly at the midpoint for England and Wales, with 286 constituencies with fewer and 286 with more; but people with degrees are under-represented in the population – the statistics suggest a higher than average number leave school with GCSEs but get no farther in their education. This is linked to the age profile, due to the higher number proceeding to university in the more recent decades. All of this perhaps explains the conservatism of this region, especially regarding immigration, and goes some way to explaining the high leave vote in the 2016 referendum, estimated at 58%.
So, in summary, this is a deprived, but not impoverished, seat with an elderly and almost entirely white population and an economy with a high reliance on agriculture and tourism, in rural Devon. Little wonder then, with this intersection of agricultural right-wing economics, social conservatism, and the area’s conservative culture that this is a safe Conservative seat.
However, it hasn’t always been like that. The seat was created in 1983, largely from the old West Devon seat when suburban Plymouth was removed and replaced by all of the Devon coast west of the Torridge, imported from the North Devon seat. It was Conservative by 12,351 votes or 23% over the Liberals in its first election; this majority narrowed in 1987 and in 1992 the majority shrunk to just 5.8% or 3,614 votes. The incumbent MP defected to the Liberal Democrats in 1995, and in 1997 a new candidate won it for them by just 1,957 votes or 3.3%. They held on 2001 by 2.2% before losing to Conservative Geoffrey Cox in 2005 by 3,236 or 5.5%. His majority was 5.2% in 2010 as UKIP took third with 5.5%, but 2015 proved to be an all-change election in the constituency. The Lib Dem vote fell by 27.1% as they dropped to third behind UKIP but ahead of Labour. Labour nearly doubled their vote to win 10.6%, the Greens gained 5.1% to finish on 7% and hold their deposit. UKIP gained 12.8% to finish second although still shy of 20%. The Tories finally broke 50%, gaining 5.2% to finish with 50.9% and a majority of 32.5%. They increased their majority to 34.8% in 2017, winning 56.5% of the vote as Labour gained 11.1% to finish second for the first time in the seat’s history, the Lib Dems made a modest recovery, UKIP failed to field a candidate and the Green vote evaporated. In 2019, the Lib Dems recovered their second-place spot with 18.3% to Labour’s 17.2% and incumbent Conservative Geoffrey Cox increased his majority to 41.8% with 60.1%, both the largest majority and largest winning share since the seat was created. In 2017 and 2019, this was the safest seat in Devon and Cornwall.
At local elections it is hard fully to identify the internal political mosaic of the constituency as there is a strong independent vote, a smattering of Green and Lib Dem councillors and, as of 2023, the majority of Labour councillors elected at district-level in Devon outside of Exeter – that May Labour broke their duck elsewhere with one elected in South Hams and one in East Devon. Within Torridge & Tavistock they returned one each in Bere Ferrers (at the southern end of the seat beyond Tavistock), Bideford South and Bideford West. Bideford and Appledore both contain a reasonable Labour vote as a result of both their industrial past and the relatively high number of people living in poverty. The Greens won four councillors in May 2023 on Torridge council, all in the Bideford/Appledore/Northam locality and gained a seat in West Devon authority in Tavistock North. Ascertaining where the Lib Dem vote comes from is slightly more difficult, as there are no major areas with favourable demographics or high remain votes. In May 2023 they were strongest at council level in Shebbear, Holsworthy and Great Torrington (Torrington being the name of a predecessor of this constituency and the site of a famous but short lived Liberal triumph in its 1958 byelection),
When they won the seat, it was probably by taking votes in and around Tavistock, a strong area for them at the 2003 elections, and by winning tactical Labour votes in Appledore and Bideford. In 2019, of course, there can be almost no doubt that the Conservatives comfortably win every ward at general elections. The district council elections in 2023 disguise the true Tory strength, not only because of all the Independents but because that was a very bad year for the party. In May 2021 in the Devon County Council contests, for example, the Conservatives won all eight of the electoral divisions wholly or mainly within the lines of Torridge & Tavistock – and won them all easily.
Overall, this is a deeply conservative seat in rural Devon that has undergone a transition from a Conservative-Lib Dem marginal typical of Devon and Cornwall, to a safe Conservative seat as a result of the coalition and Brexit. With the seat as safe as it has ever been, and the demographics becoming more Conservative-friendly, it is very hard indeed to see anyone else winning this seat any time soon, even though the national opinion polls and May 2023 council results suggest that the 25,000 majority may well be substantially reduced.
2021 Census New Boundaries (ranks England and Wales)
Age 65+ 28.7% 19/575
Owner occupied 71.2% 147/575
Private rented 19.4% 237/575
Social rented 9.4% 536/575
White 98.2% 2/575
Black 0.1% 569/575
Asian 0.5% 573/575
Managerial & professional 29.5% 372/575
Routine & Semi-routine 25.4% 223/575
Degree level 28.5% 385/575
No qualifications 17.8% 287/575
Students 3.9% 561/575
General Election 2019: Torridge and West Devon
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Geoffrey Cox 35,904 60.1 +3.6
Liberal Democrats David Chalmers 10,912 18.3 +0.6
Labour Siobhan Strode 10,290 17.2 -4.5
Green Chris Jordan 2,077 3.5 +0.8
Independent Bob Wootton 547 0.9
C Majority 24,992 41.8 +7.0
2019 electorate 79,831
Turnout 59,730 74.8 +0.8
Conservative hold
Swings
1.5 LD to C
4.1 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Torridge and Tavistock consists of
92.5% of Torridge and West Devon
0.3% of Central Devon
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-west/South%20West_427_Torridge%20and%20Tavistock_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
The boundary changes affecting the Devon seat that runs along most of that county’s border with Cornwall that come into force for the 2024 general election are relatively minor. It loses about six thousand voters immediately to the north of Plymouth city around Yelverton and the south-western edge of Dartmoor. These are the two West Devon district council wards of Buckland Monachorum and Burrator. Scarcely in exchange, a tiny portion of Central Devon is added as ward boundaries are brought into line with those of the constituency. Most noticeably, the name of the seat is changed from Torridge & West Devon to ‘& Tavistock’, thus restoring to visible representation a name that graced its own constituency from 1330 until 1974 – indeed having two MPs as an ancient parliamentary borough until 1868; Michael Heseltine started his parliamentary career as member for Tavistock, before having on its abolition to move all the way to Henley in Oxfordshire.
Torridge and Tavistock is Devon’s largest seat by area, covering all of Torridge district and most of West Devon district, with the town of Okehampton and five other wards covering various small rural communities to the east being in Central Devon instead, as well as the two now in SW Devon. The main towns in the seat are Bideford in the north, at the mouth of the river Torridge, Holsworthy in the middle near the Cornish border and, of course, Tavistock to the south. It also still contains much of the Dartmoor national park, including the eponymous Dartmoor ward encompassing Princetown (site of the famed gloomy prison) in the middle of the moor, and Mary Tavy ward stretching to include Peter Tavy and North Brentor. Torridge & Tavistock also contains the famous island of Lundy, although its permanent population and hence its electorate is very small; Lundy was remote enough to double convincingly as St Helena in the BBC’s dramatisation of Napoleon’s final period of exile. It also contains Westward Ho!, famous for being the only place in the UK to have a punctuation mark in its name –it was named after the 1855 historical adventure novel by Charles Kingsley (initially) set in Bideford, and entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to capitalise on its potential for tourists.
Like much of Devon, most of this constituency was and is primarily an agricultural area. That isn’t to say that there has never been any industry of note in the area. Appledore shipbuilders operated out of the drydock in Appledore, on the mouth of the Torridge, from 1855 until 2019 and built over 350 vessels during its 164-year period of operation. Tavistock also has an industrial past, first centred around copper, tin and manganese mining and later around the cloth trade, however both had almost completely died out by the mid nineteenth century. Bideford was Britain’s third largest port by the sixteenth century, and it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh landed his shipment of Tobacco. Some raw materials are still exported from Bideford to other parts of Europe, and some fishing boats still operate out of both here and Appledore.
Today, agriculture remains important to the local economy and possibly not as important as tourism, with the North Devon Coast, the Tarka Trail and Dartmoor all being major attractions for tourists from all over the country and beyond. Accommodation and food services employ 14.6% of workers in the constituency, almost double the national average. Managerial and professional occupations are slightly under-represented in the workforce whilst elementary occupations are slightly over-represented. In spite of Devon’s reputation for wealth, deprivation is a serious problem here. It is the 252nd most deprived seat in England, putting it roughly in line with Eastbourne, and Norfolk North. This also makes it the 4th most deprived seat in Devon and the most deprived of the county’s predominantly rural seats. Although many of its rankings are around its average, it scores significantly higher on barriers to housing and services (83rd in England) and living environment (57th). This is partly due to the high housing prices and lack of housing availability, partly caused by the high number of second home-owners with homes in this area of the country. Average income is significantly below the national average, at £501.9 per week compared to £587 nationally. Owner-occupied households make up 71.2% of the constituency compared to 64.9% nationally, while social renting is only just over half the national average and in the bottom decile of constituencies, and private renting is a little more common than the norm.
There is some variation, with 17.3% of households in Bideford South & East MSOA being socially rented as recorded in the detailed 2021 census figures, and private renting being 29.8% in Bideford North and 21.5% in Clovelly Bay MSOA (and as high as 86.9% in the smaller Output Area covering the estate-owned Clovelly village); Westward Ho! and Tavistock North are also significantly above average for both the seat and the country. Employment deprivation is particularly bad in and around Appledore and Bideford, as the once-plentiful industry has dwindled to almost nothing and many of the jobs have gone with it. Another factor of the area’s deprivation is that just 57.1% of the workforce is employed full time – a full ten points lower than the British average. This is because much of the tourism-related work is seasonal due to the far greater numbers of the tourists visiting in the summer. This also goes some way to explaining the particularly low average incomes.
As might be expected for rural Devon, this seat is almost entirely white British. 96% of the population was born in the UK and it is over 98% white – no ward is under 95%. This makes it the 2nd most ‘snow-white’ constituency in England and Wales in the 2021 census figures. It is also among the top 20 of seats was far as residents over 65 years of age is concerned (28.7%). The proportion of people with no qualifications is exactly at the midpoint for England and Wales, with 286 constituencies with fewer and 286 with more; but people with degrees are under-represented in the population – the statistics suggest a higher than average number leave school with GCSEs but get no farther in their education. This is linked to the age profile, due to the higher number proceeding to university in the more recent decades. All of this perhaps explains the conservatism of this region, especially regarding immigration, and goes some way to explaining the high leave vote in the 2016 referendum, estimated at 58%.
So, in summary, this is a deprived, but not impoverished, seat with an elderly and almost entirely white population and an economy with a high reliance on agriculture and tourism, in rural Devon. Little wonder then, with this intersection of agricultural right-wing economics, social conservatism, and the area’s conservative culture that this is a safe Conservative seat.
However, it hasn’t always been like that. The seat was created in 1983, largely from the old West Devon seat when suburban Plymouth was removed and replaced by all of the Devon coast west of the Torridge, imported from the North Devon seat. It was Conservative by 12,351 votes or 23% over the Liberals in its first election; this majority narrowed in 1987 and in 1992 the majority shrunk to just 5.8% or 3,614 votes. The incumbent MP defected to the Liberal Democrats in 1995, and in 1997 a new candidate won it for them by just 1,957 votes or 3.3%. They held on 2001 by 2.2% before losing to Conservative Geoffrey Cox in 2005 by 3,236 or 5.5%. His majority was 5.2% in 2010 as UKIP took third with 5.5%, but 2015 proved to be an all-change election in the constituency. The Lib Dem vote fell by 27.1% as they dropped to third behind UKIP but ahead of Labour. Labour nearly doubled their vote to win 10.6%, the Greens gained 5.1% to finish on 7% and hold their deposit. UKIP gained 12.8% to finish second although still shy of 20%. The Tories finally broke 50%, gaining 5.2% to finish with 50.9% and a majority of 32.5%. They increased their majority to 34.8% in 2017, winning 56.5% of the vote as Labour gained 11.1% to finish second for the first time in the seat’s history, the Lib Dems made a modest recovery, UKIP failed to field a candidate and the Green vote evaporated. In 2019, the Lib Dems recovered their second-place spot with 18.3% to Labour’s 17.2% and incumbent Conservative Geoffrey Cox increased his majority to 41.8% with 60.1%, both the largest majority and largest winning share since the seat was created. In 2017 and 2019, this was the safest seat in Devon and Cornwall.
At local elections it is hard fully to identify the internal political mosaic of the constituency as there is a strong independent vote, a smattering of Green and Lib Dem councillors and, as of 2023, the majority of Labour councillors elected at district-level in Devon outside of Exeter – that May Labour broke their duck elsewhere with one elected in South Hams and one in East Devon. Within Torridge & Tavistock they returned one each in Bere Ferrers (at the southern end of the seat beyond Tavistock), Bideford South and Bideford West. Bideford and Appledore both contain a reasonable Labour vote as a result of both their industrial past and the relatively high number of people living in poverty. The Greens won four councillors in May 2023 on Torridge council, all in the Bideford/Appledore/Northam locality and gained a seat in West Devon authority in Tavistock North. Ascertaining where the Lib Dem vote comes from is slightly more difficult, as there are no major areas with favourable demographics or high remain votes. In May 2023 they were strongest at council level in Shebbear, Holsworthy and Great Torrington (Torrington being the name of a predecessor of this constituency and the site of a famous but short lived Liberal triumph in its 1958 byelection),
When they won the seat, it was probably by taking votes in and around Tavistock, a strong area for them at the 2003 elections, and by winning tactical Labour votes in Appledore and Bideford. In 2019, of course, there can be almost no doubt that the Conservatives comfortably win every ward at general elections. The district council elections in 2023 disguise the true Tory strength, not only because of all the Independents but because that was a very bad year for the party. In May 2021 in the Devon County Council contests, for example, the Conservatives won all eight of the electoral divisions wholly or mainly within the lines of Torridge & Tavistock – and won them all easily.
Overall, this is a deeply conservative seat in rural Devon that has undergone a transition from a Conservative-Lib Dem marginal typical of Devon and Cornwall, to a safe Conservative seat as a result of the coalition and Brexit. With the seat as safe as it has ever been, and the demographics becoming more Conservative-friendly, it is very hard indeed to see anyone else winning this seat any time soon, even though the national opinion polls and May 2023 council results suggest that the 25,000 majority may well be substantially reduced.
2021 Census New Boundaries (ranks England and Wales)
Age 65+ 28.7% 19/575
Owner occupied 71.2% 147/575
Private rented 19.4% 237/575
Social rented 9.4% 536/575
White 98.2% 2/575
Black 0.1% 569/575
Asian 0.5% 573/575
Managerial & professional 29.5% 372/575
Routine & Semi-routine 25.4% 223/575
Degree level 28.5% 385/575
No qualifications 17.8% 287/575
Students 3.9% 561/575
General Election 2019: Torridge and West Devon
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Geoffrey Cox 35,904 60.1 +3.6
Liberal Democrats David Chalmers 10,912 18.3 +0.6
Labour Siobhan Strode 10,290 17.2 -4.5
Green Chris Jordan 2,077 3.5 +0.8
Independent Bob Wootton 547 0.9
C Majority 24,992 41.8 +7.0
2019 electorate 79,831
Turnout 59,730 74.8 +0.8
Conservative hold
Swings
1.5 LD to C
4.1 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Torridge and Tavistock consists of
92.5% of Torridge and West Devon
0.3% of Central Devon
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-west/South%20West_427_Torridge%20and%20Tavistock_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
| Con | 32708 | 59.8% |
| LD | 9809 | 17.9% |
| Lab | 9761 | 17.9% |
| Green | 1843 | 3.4% |
| Ind | 547 | 1.0% |
| Con Majority | 22899 | 41.9% |
