Post by bungle on Dec 21, 2023 11:42:11 GMT
Amber Valley
Across the East Midlands (and parts of Staffordshire) there are a collection of ex-mining and post-industrial constituencies that display similar electoral trends at parliamentary level. These were seats which Labour were supposed to win in 1983, struggled to win until their big result in 1997, held up until 2010, and are now much harder to crack than others which have long been Tory strongholds. For example, South Derbyshire, North West Leicestershire, Cannock Chase and here in this central part of Derbyshire named after a local river - Amber Valley. The 2019 result showed that Amber Valley is now a stronger Tory seat in terms of both % vote share and % majority than, say, Huntingdon. This would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Although Labour is poised to do well in 2024 with a strong pro-Labour swing likely, they are likely to fall short of actually winning in seats like this, leaving superficial analysts scratching their head given the size of the Labour majority here in 1997. To understand this further requires an analysis with more depth than ‘the Boris effect’ or the nebulous ‘red wall’ concept to explain the 2019 performance. There are structural changes here which has taken this seat from notionally Labour on foundation to bellwether marginal and now a strong Conservative performer. This is also reflected in neighbouring seats like Ashfield and Bolsover, as well as those already cited.
As conceived by the boundary commissioners in 1983, Amber Valley CC was comprised of most of the territory of its eponymous local government district which lies to the north and north east of the city of Derby. The local authority district was always too large to fit into a single constituency so various parts to the west of the district around Belper were shaved off into West Derbyshire and have remained divorced from Amber Valley CC to this very day. The constituency instead is anchored by three medium sized towns: Alfreton, Ripley and Heanor, plus a swathe of villages (some pretty, some gritty) surrounding them. Prior to 1983 these three urban conurbations were all grouped together in the Ilkeston parliamentary constituency which, along with its eponymous town, resulted in a safe Labour constituency. In 1983 Ilkeston was placed into Erewash CC and the three towns were then combined with various villages located to their south and west such Kilburn and Horsley along the A38 corridor. These rural areas were originally located in the sprawling and over-sized Belper CC. The Belper seat also provided some further rural hinterland to the west of Alfreton around South Wingfield and Pentrich (home of a notable political uprising due to structural economic change, way back in 1817!) which in modern times has provided some of the most reliable Tory vote in the seat.
Given that the three towns of Alfreton, Heanor and Ripley comprised the substantial majority of the electorate in this new seat it was assumed to be notionally Labour. However, in 1983 the Conservatives won the seat with a majority of 3,000 over Labour, with the Liberal/Alliance taking 20%. In 1987 Labour had high hopes of overturning what was seen as a particularly freak result, but instead the Conservatives scored a further positive swing of 5% and a majority of 9,500. One clue to all of this is how the nature of employment within the main towns had evolved over the previous 20 years. The coal mining and heavy industry here was largely abandoned by the end of the 1960s with only a shadow limping on into the 1980s. With it went its heavily traditional unionised workforce and in its place came light industry, warehouses for distribution and service jobs. Alfreton is adjacent to J28 on the M1 and so empty land outside the town around Somercotes was quickly converted into vast distribution and industrial parks such as at Cotes Park. Thorntons Chocolate are also a large local employer here. For most of the constituency there is now easier access to Nottingham and to the north via the M1 and quick access to Derby via the 1970s dual extension of the A38 from Derby to the M1. Many of the jobs which were either provided locally or could be accessed by car were in those sectors where the Thatcher dream proved intoxicating but, once the poll tax and recession hit in the early 90s, some strong disillusionment had crept in. In 1992 Amber Valley saw an 8% swing to Labour, very little of which could really be explained by the unwinding of the NUM/UDM issue like in nearby Mansfield.
In terms of gleaning an understanding about this seat from local elections, helpfully Amber Valley has some well-defined patterns which often reflect the wider political context. This has been assisted by the borough council still electing by thirds up until 2022. There was an all-out election in 2023 on new boundaries and now it will adopt a quadrennial cycle. Since its creation as a local government unit in 1974 it has frequently switched political control – one year (1991) Labour took back control by winning one ward by one vote. Of late the Conservatives have dominated with control in 20 of the last 24 years, which does indicate some of the more fundamental shifts mentioned earlier. They have largely done this by winning wards within the Amber Valley CC area, as increasingly wards covering Belper and Duffield (located in Mid Derbyshire CC) are electing non-Conservatives. That said, Alfreton town itself and its environs such as Somercotes are reliably Labour (although in 2021 the Tories won both the County division seats and the borough seat of Alfreton, but haven’t come close since). Alfreton’s voting habits will have been influenced by the Brexit cleavage (estimates suggest the constituency was 65% leave) for this is still a relatively deprived area area of artisan terraces and pre-war corporation housing.
In the villages immediately to the south and west of Alfreton, such as Wingfield and Swanwick, can be found safe and more conventional Conservative voters. Ironville & Riddings ward – which contains the promisingly named hamlet of Golden Valley – is further south. It is marginal and the winner can often depend on the choice of candidate: the Tories squeaked home in 2022 but lost quite heavily in 2023. The Ripley urban area is highly marginal regardless of who stands – both at county and district level. This reflects that there is a strong mix of housing types and voters and there hasn’t been much change to that (unlike in Belper, for example). As Ripley goes, so will go the country - to paraphrase former Belper MP George Brown - and undoubtedly it went strongly for the Conservatives in 2019 and 2021. As above, they just held on in 2022 by 78 votes but were blown away in 2023 with Labour taking all 5 seats covering the town. There are other wards around here which have historically been marginal in local elections such as Heage & Ambergate – two villages to the north of Belper, the latter being well known as a former triangular railway station. Labour won both seats here in 2023 but only just. The Kilburn area villages (which include Denby and its very popular eponymous pottery) also returned a split slate of Labour and Tory councillors in 2023, but its default is more favourable to the Tories.
The final town in the trio is Heanor. This is a somewhat unprepossessing ex-industrial town close to the Nottinghamshire border where Labour have historically secured support, but increasingly uneasily. The voting patterns here heavily reflect a type of disenchantment and unwinding from Labour. The BNP made inroads here in the 2000s and won both seats in 2008. Heanor then flirted heavily with UKIP in the early 2010s so it was no shock to find that Labour’s “Corbyn + Remain” platform absolutely bombed here. In 2018 the Conservatives won both Heanor seats at a regular election for the first time since 1988 and they will have romped home here in the 2019 GE. Labour clawed themselves back in 2023 winning all the borough seats, but they merely benefitted from FPTP. Reform emerged here with a performance that was their strongest outside of Derby, with one candidate coming within 20 votes of winning a seat in Heanor East. If Reform really target the parliamentary seat, they could do very well around Heanor and take votes that went into the Tory pile last time. The sitting Tory county councillor for Greater Heanor also defected to Reform in 2023, having been suspended for comments supportive of Andrew Bridgen’s anti-vax stance. To the south of Heanor can be found more pleasant rural villages centred around Shipley Park. This has always been a reliable Conservative area (the current MP was councillor here) but the Greens were surprisingly successful here in 2023, taking both seats.
The sensitivity and exposure of many residents of Amber Valley to prevailing economic trends (or perceived causes of it) can help explain its politics. Occasionally there are other drivers. The Labour candidate in 1983 and 1987 was the firebrand left-wing Leader of Derbyshire County Council, David Bookbinder, who delighted in using the council's resources in a myriad of ways to oppose the Thatcher government. Just the mention of his name caused Derbyshire Tory ladies to clutch pearls and demand smelling salts. His pugnacious manner will have put off some moderate voters for whom the Alliance was probably a happier berth; without his name on the ballot paper Labour successfully squeezed the Lib Dem vote in 1992 to below 9%. His Conservative opponent was a young man who delighted in taking up the cudgels against Bookbinder and the County Council throughout the 1980s/early 90s. Philip Oppenheim was a somewhat callow-looking 27 year old when he first won the seat in 1983. He is the son of Sally Oppenheim, former MP for Gloucester and notable Thatcher government minister, with whom he overlapped in the House of Commons. Ultimately he didn’t really amount to much in terms of ministerial preferment, with one Tory diarist offering a character appraisal thus: "he’s self-assured, self absorbed, self-indulgent and apparently fearless. He’s charming…I imagine he is clever too, so he can afford to be lazy". To be fair, the said diarist did say "I rather like him".
But in 1997 the voters very much did not, so they told him to focus instead on his wine bar and Cuban cocktail business. Labour’s Judy Mallaber won the seat by 11,600 on a swing of nearly 12%. Mallaber came from a typical Labour stable of NUPE and local government but also never made ministerial office. In 2010, unlike quite a few of the 1997 Labour intake in Derbyshire, Mallaber decided to fight again and went down by an agonising 536 votes to local Conservative councillor Nigel Mills. Mills retains the distinction of ensuring the MP for Amber Valley and ministerial office remain strangers and that probably wasn’t helped by the rumpus around his being caught playing Candy Crush in a select committee hearing. Mills was an early critic of Boris Johnson and called for him to go as soon as April 2022.
So could Labour get back here? A lot would have to fall right to create the near 19% swing required. Brexit will need to continue to unwind and it will require a mid 90s type situation - some deep unpopularity for the Conservatives and a credible Labour platform. Some may argue this could happen next time but it is a big ask. Amber Valley does contain voters who will look to their pockets rather than being culturally engrained Conservatives so they are happy to seek out alternatives, as the 2023 local elections indicated. That said, a metropolitan pitch by Labour won't chime here at all. The 2023 Boundary Review resulted in no meaningful change to the constituency – just some tidying up of a boundary which sees a handful of voters arrive from Mid Derbyshire CC. So the next election will be a fair comparison with 2019 to see how far the Tory vote unwinds and how much progress Labour can make. However, on current boundaries this is now a long shot for Labour and there are better targets to be had nearby such as Derby North and Erewash.
Linsey Farnworth, borough councillor for Kilburn, Denby and Holbrook, will contest this seat for Labour. Matt McGuinness, a parish councillor in Horsley Woodhouse, will be the Green candidate, having also stood here in 2017. There has been a dearth of Liberal Democrat support in this area since the party was founded but they finally won one seat in the Crich and South Wingfield ward (part Amber Valley, part Derbyshire Dales CC) and the winning candidate, Kate Smith, will contest for the Lib Dems. Persistence paid off at a local level but is unlikely to repeated at a parliamentary level despite having stood here in all elections (except 2010) since 2001. Reform UK will be fielding Alex Stevenson, who is the aforementioned county councillor for Greater Heanor who defected to them in 2023. He also stood here for Veritas in 2005.
Across the East Midlands (and parts of Staffordshire) there are a collection of ex-mining and post-industrial constituencies that display similar electoral trends at parliamentary level. These were seats which Labour were supposed to win in 1983, struggled to win until their big result in 1997, held up until 2010, and are now much harder to crack than others which have long been Tory strongholds. For example, South Derbyshire, North West Leicestershire, Cannock Chase and here in this central part of Derbyshire named after a local river - Amber Valley. The 2019 result showed that Amber Valley is now a stronger Tory seat in terms of both % vote share and % majority than, say, Huntingdon. This would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Although Labour is poised to do well in 2024 with a strong pro-Labour swing likely, they are likely to fall short of actually winning in seats like this, leaving superficial analysts scratching their head given the size of the Labour majority here in 1997. To understand this further requires an analysis with more depth than ‘the Boris effect’ or the nebulous ‘red wall’ concept to explain the 2019 performance. There are structural changes here which has taken this seat from notionally Labour on foundation to bellwether marginal and now a strong Conservative performer. This is also reflected in neighbouring seats like Ashfield and Bolsover, as well as those already cited.
As conceived by the boundary commissioners in 1983, Amber Valley CC was comprised of most of the territory of its eponymous local government district which lies to the north and north east of the city of Derby. The local authority district was always too large to fit into a single constituency so various parts to the west of the district around Belper were shaved off into West Derbyshire and have remained divorced from Amber Valley CC to this very day. The constituency instead is anchored by three medium sized towns: Alfreton, Ripley and Heanor, plus a swathe of villages (some pretty, some gritty) surrounding them. Prior to 1983 these three urban conurbations were all grouped together in the Ilkeston parliamentary constituency which, along with its eponymous town, resulted in a safe Labour constituency. In 1983 Ilkeston was placed into Erewash CC and the three towns were then combined with various villages located to their south and west such Kilburn and Horsley along the A38 corridor. These rural areas were originally located in the sprawling and over-sized Belper CC. The Belper seat also provided some further rural hinterland to the west of Alfreton around South Wingfield and Pentrich (home of a notable political uprising due to structural economic change, way back in 1817!) which in modern times has provided some of the most reliable Tory vote in the seat.
Given that the three towns of Alfreton, Heanor and Ripley comprised the substantial majority of the electorate in this new seat it was assumed to be notionally Labour. However, in 1983 the Conservatives won the seat with a majority of 3,000 over Labour, with the Liberal/Alliance taking 20%. In 1987 Labour had high hopes of overturning what was seen as a particularly freak result, but instead the Conservatives scored a further positive swing of 5% and a majority of 9,500. One clue to all of this is how the nature of employment within the main towns had evolved over the previous 20 years. The coal mining and heavy industry here was largely abandoned by the end of the 1960s with only a shadow limping on into the 1980s. With it went its heavily traditional unionised workforce and in its place came light industry, warehouses for distribution and service jobs. Alfreton is adjacent to J28 on the M1 and so empty land outside the town around Somercotes was quickly converted into vast distribution and industrial parks such as at Cotes Park. Thorntons Chocolate are also a large local employer here. For most of the constituency there is now easier access to Nottingham and to the north via the M1 and quick access to Derby via the 1970s dual extension of the A38 from Derby to the M1. Many of the jobs which were either provided locally or could be accessed by car were in those sectors where the Thatcher dream proved intoxicating but, once the poll tax and recession hit in the early 90s, some strong disillusionment had crept in. In 1992 Amber Valley saw an 8% swing to Labour, very little of which could really be explained by the unwinding of the NUM/UDM issue like in nearby Mansfield.
In terms of gleaning an understanding about this seat from local elections, helpfully Amber Valley has some well-defined patterns which often reflect the wider political context. This has been assisted by the borough council still electing by thirds up until 2022. There was an all-out election in 2023 on new boundaries and now it will adopt a quadrennial cycle. Since its creation as a local government unit in 1974 it has frequently switched political control – one year (1991) Labour took back control by winning one ward by one vote. Of late the Conservatives have dominated with control in 20 of the last 24 years, which does indicate some of the more fundamental shifts mentioned earlier. They have largely done this by winning wards within the Amber Valley CC area, as increasingly wards covering Belper and Duffield (located in Mid Derbyshire CC) are electing non-Conservatives. That said, Alfreton town itself and its environs such as Somercotes are reliably Labour (although in 2021 the Tories won both the County division seats and the borough seat of Alfreton, but haven’t come close since). Alfreton’s voting habits will have been influenced by the Brexit cleavage (estimates suggest the constituency was 65% leave) for this is still a relatively deprived area area of artisan terraces and pre-war corporation housing.
In the villages immediately to the south and west of Alfreton, such as Wingfield and Swanwick, can be found safe and more conventional Conservative voters. Ironville & Riddings ward – which contains the promisingly named hamlet of Golden Valley – is further south. It is marginal and the winner can often depend on the choice of candidate: the Tories squeaked home in 2022 but lost quite heavily in 2023. The Ripley urban area is highly marginal regardless of who stands – both at county and district level. This reflects that there is a strong mix of housing types and voters and there hasn’t been much change to that (unlike in Belper, for example). As Ripley goes, so will go the country - to paraphrase former Belper MP George Brown - and undoubtedly it went strongly for the Conservatives in 2019 and 2021. As above, they just held on in 2022 by 78 votes but were blown away in 2023 with Labour taking all 5 seats covering the town. There are other wards around here which have historically been marginal in local elections such as Heage & Ambergate – two villages to the north of Belper, the latter being well known as a former triangular railway station. Labour won both seats here in 2023 but only just. The Kilburn area villages (which include Denby and its very popular eponymous pottery) also returned a split slate of Labour and Tory councillors in 2023, but its default is more favourable to the Tories.
The final town in the trio is Heanor. This is a somewhat unprepossessing ex-industrial town close to the Nottinghamshire border where Labour have historically secured support, but increasingly uneasily. The voting patterns here heavily reflect a type of disenchantment and unwinding from Labour. The BNP made inroads here in the 2000s and won both seats in 2008. Heanor then flirted heavily with UKIP in the early 2010s so it was no shock to find that Labour’s “Corbyn + Remain” platform absolutely bombed here. In 2018 the Conservatives won both Heanor seats at a regular election for the first time since 1988 and they will have romped home here in the 2019 GE. Labour clawed themselves back in 2023 winning all the borough seats, but they merely benefitted from FPTP. Reform emerged here with a performance that was their strongest outside of Derby, with one candidate coming within 20 votes of winning a seat in Heanor East. If Reform really target the parliamentary seat, they could do very well around Heanor and take votes that went into the Tory pile last time. The sitting Tory county councillor for Greater Heanor also defected to Reform in 2023, having been suspended for comments supportive of Andrew Bridgen’s anti-vax stance. To the south of Heanor can be found more pleasant rural villages centred around Shipley Park. This has always been a reliable Conservative area (the current MP was councillor here) but the Greens were surprisingly successful here in 2023, taking both seats.
The sensitivity and exposure of many residents of Amber Valley to prevailing economic trends (or perceived causes of it) can help explain its politics. Occasionally there are other drivers. The Labour candidate in 1983 and 1987 was the firebrand left-wing Leader of Derbyshire County Council, David Bookbinder, who delighted in using the council's resources in a myriad of ways to oppose the Thatcher government. Just the mention of his name caused Derbyshire Tory ladies to clutch pearls and demand smelling salts. His pugnacious manner will have put off some moderate voters for whom the Alliance was probably a happier berth; without his name on the ballot paper Labour successfully squeezed the Lib Dem vote in 1992 to below 9%. His Conservative opponent was a young man who delighted in taking up the cudgels against Bookbinder and the County Council throughout the 1980s/early 90s. Philip Oppenheim was a somewhat callow-looking 27 year old when he first won the seat in 1983. He is the son of Sally Oppenheim, former MP for Gloucester and notable Thatcher government minister, with whom he overlapped in the House of Commons. Ultimately he didn’t really amount to much in terms of ministerial preferment, with one Tory diarist offering a character appraisal thus: "he’s self-assured, self absorbed, self-indulgent and apparently fearless. He’s charming…I imagine he is clever too, so he can afford to be lazy". To be fair, the said diarist did say "I rather like him".
But in 1997 the voters very much did not, so they told him to focus instead on his wine bar and Cuban cocktail business. Labour’s Judy Mallaber won the seat by 11,600 on a swing of nearly 12%. Mallaber came from a typical Labour stable of NUPE and local government but also never made ministerial office. In 2010, unlike quite a few of the 1997 Labour intake in Derbyshire, Mallaber decided to fight again and went down by an agonising 536 votes to local Conservative councillor Nigel Mills. Mills retains the distinction of ensuring the MP for Amber Valley and ministerial office remain strangers and that probably wasn’t helped by the rumpus around his being caught playing Candy Crush in a select committee hearing. Mills was an early critic of Boris Johnson and called for him to go as soon as April 2022.
So could Labour get back here? A lot would have to fall right to create the near 19% swing required. Brexit will need to continue to unwind and it will require a mid 90s type situation - some deep unpopularity for the Conservatives and a credible Labour platform. Some may argue this could happen next time but it is a big ask. Amber Valley does contain voters who will look to their pockets rather than being culturally engrained Conservatives so they are happy to seek out alternatives, as the 2023 local elections indicated. That said, a metropolitan pitch by Labour won't chime here at all. The 2023 Boundary Review resulted in no meaningful change to the constituency – just some tidying up of a boundary which sees a handful of voters arrive from Mid Derbyshire CC. So the next election will be a fair comparison with 2019 to see how far the Tory vote unwinds and how much progress Labour can make. However, on current boundaries this is now a long shot for Labour and there are better targets to be had nearby such as Derby North and Erewash.
Linsey Farnworth, borough councillor for Kilburn, Denby and Holbrook, will contest this seat for Labour. Matt McGuinness, a parish councillor in Horsley Woodhouse, will be the Green candidate, having also stood here in 2017. There has been a dearth of Liberal Democrat support in this area since the party was founded but they finally won one seat in the Crich and South Wingfield ward (part Amber Valley, part Derbyshire Dales CC) and the winning candidate, Kate Smith, will contest for the Lib Dems. Persistence paid off at a local level but is unlikely to repeated at a parliamentary level despite having stood here in all elections (except 2010) since 2001. Reform UK will be fielding Alex Stevenson, who is the aforementioned county councillor for Greater Heanor who defected to them in 2023. He also stood here for Veritas in 2005.
