Post by Robert Waller on Jan 6, 2024 20:16:25 GMT
This is based on an original by @benjamin, who unfortunately seems to have left this forum - he is the 'I' in the text. I have added material on the boundary changes, more recent election results and further comments in update.
The present incarnation of Edinburgh North & Leith was created in 2005 following boundary changes that affected the whole of Scotland. As its name suggests, it covers a northern part of the city, stretching from the New Town to the Firth of Forth, including Leith. The southern boundary runs along Princes Street Gardens, which are in effect two adjacent public parks in the gorge that separates the New Town from the Old Town, created following the draining of the Nor Lorch in the early 19th century.
As Robert Louis Stevenson put it in 1878: It seems (I do not know how else to put my meaning) as if it were a trifle too good to be true. It is what Paris ought to be. It has the scenic quality that would best set off a life of unthinking, open-air diversion. It was meant by nature for the realisation of the society of comic operas. And you can imagine, if the climate were but towardly, how all the world and his wife would flock into these gardens in the cool of the evening, to hear cheerful music, to sip pleasant drinks, to see the moon rise from behind Arthur's Seat and shine upon the spires and monuments and the green tree-tops in the valley. Alas! and the next morning the rain is splashing on the window, and the passengers flee along Princes Street before the galloping squalls.
Some might argue that the ‘and Leith’ component of the name is superfluous; it is a nod to the fact that Leith was a separate municipal burgh from Edinburgh between 1833 and 1920, and retains something of a distinct identity.
As is typical of Edinburgh, this was a strongly EU Remain-voting area, with 78.2% in 2016, but the partisan split is far more chaotic; all five main parties have areas of strength here, with split-ticketing and large swings common in recent years. With 60% for No in the 2014 referendum, the constituency was marginally more pro-independence than average for Edinburgh, but less so than Scotland as a whole.
The boundaries up to and including the 2019 general election are based on twelve of the pre-2007 FPTP wards, which remain convenient building blocks for dividing the constituency. In the changes decreed by the Scottish Boundary Commission that reported in June 2023, there are some swaps in the north western quadrant of North & Leith with Edinburgh West. Because with over 81,000 electors in 2019 this is one of the few Scottish seats that was more populous than the UK wide quota allowed, slightly more territory is moved out, 8.6% of its electorate, around Craigleith and Blackhall. In partial exchange, further north, part of the Almond ward including more of West Pilton and Muirhouse is included in North & Leith, and along with an extra 3,500 voters the seat now reaches Birnie Rocks on the Firth of Forth.
Broadly, the constituency divides socially and politically into three key sections:
The first is what might be termed ‘Greater Leith’, and covers the former wards of Calton, Broughton, Lorne, Harbour, and Newhaven in the east of the constituency. This corresponds to roughly two thirds of the current Leith Walk and Leith wards.
Beginning at Calton Hill, it follows Leith Walk and Easter Road – to the west of the home ground of Hibernian FC, which is in Edinburgh East - down to the Port of Leith. It is a densely populated area dominated by rows of four-storey sandstone tenements, interspersed with newer social housing blocks, and with more recent private development, especially around the waterfront. The area has sizeable South Asian, Afro-Caribbean and Eastern European populations, with numerous mosques, a mandir, a gurdwara, and a Ukranian Orthodox church. Traditionally a working-class area, there has been considerable gentrification since the 1980s, with sandstone tenements and new build apartments increasingly popular with young professionals. Traditional workers’ pubs can be found next to so-called ‘Swedish hipster bars’, and are sometimes even owned by the same people. The Port of Leith now includes the large 1990s Scottish Government building at Victoria Quay, and the Ocean Terminal shopping centre, home of the Royal Yacht Britannia. Further west is the small port of Newhaven, with an atmosphere more akin to a fishing village than to an area of a major city.
Leith and Leith Walk have consistently been amongst the worst wards in Edinburgh for the Conservatives since their creation, with recent local elections dominated by Labour, the SNP and the Greens. In May 2022, Leith Walk elected one SNP councillor, one Labour, one Green and one Liberal Democrat, representing one LD gain from the SNP on 2017; Leith elected one of each in both elections. The Lib Dems used to have some strength here, which would have helped when they came close to winning the constituency in 2010, and 2022 marked a slight recovery – they still only received 12% of the first preference votes in Leith Walk, while the SNP took 30.7%, the Greens 25.9% and Labour 18.7%. As in Glasgow, the Greens did very well in May 2022 in inner-city and ‘trendy’ neighbourhoods. In Leith ward, the 2022 results were rather similar to those in Leith Walk, with the exception that the Lib Dems only polled 4% and did not take a council seat; there are only three available anyway in Leith ward, which were divided between the other three who were successful in Leith Walk, and their first preferences were in the same order: 33% SNP, 26% Green, 21% Labour. The Conservatives finished fifth in Leith Walk and fourth in Leith – two of their three worst performances anywhere in Edinburgh the three in which they polled less than 10%. The received wisdom amongst Yes campaigners is that Leith voted Yes; I cannot comment on the accuracy of this, and it may depend on the boundaries used, but it is fair to say that it had one of the highest concentrations of Yes posters of anywhere in Edinburgh in 2014, and would have been more Yes than the constituency as a whole.
The second major part of this constituency covers the former wards of New Town, Dean, Craigleith, Stockbridge, and Trinity. Mapping this onto the current wards, this covers roughly the northern third of City Centre, most of Inverleith, the eastern third of Forth, and a small part of Corstorphine & Murrayfield.
The famous planned New Town, bordered by Princes Street Gardens to the south and the Water of Leith to the north, is dominated by Georgian architecture. The southern part of it, around Princes Street and George Street, is given over to retail, and is Edinburgh’s central business district. The northern part consists largely of exclusive townhouses and apartments, and, at least in the popular imagination, is home to the old-money rich. To the west of the New Town, nestled beneath the Dean Bridge over the Water of Leith, in a setting strikingly reminiscent of Luxembourg, is the Dean Village. Crossing over the Dean Bridge along Queensferry Road to the northwest, we approach Craigleith and Blackhall - suburban areas dominated by detached and semi-detached bungalows. It is this area that is transferred to Edinburgh West in the boundary changes will become effective for a 2024 general election.
Following the Water of Leith downstream to the northeast takes us past Comely Bank, with its upmarket sandstone tenements, to Stockbridge, home to a Sunday market that is notoriously bourgeois even by Edinburgh standards. Further down the Water, we pass the Stockbridge Colonies, the Grange Cricket Ground (where Scotland internationals have been played), Inverleith Park, and the Royal Botanic Garden, before coming out at Canonmills, with its array of cafés and art shops. Further north, this eventually merges into Trinity, historically the affluent appendage of Leith, with some quite impressive sandstone villas.
It should come as no surprise that this section of the constituency is very fertile for the Conservatives, and they would have been comfortably ahead in 2017. Indeed, the Conservatives had no difficulty winning two council seats in Inverleith in 2017, with the other four main parties fighting it out for the other two; in the end, these went to the SNP and the Lib Dems, with Labour and the Greens losing seats previously held. Then in May 2022 the Tories fell back, their 20% share only generating one council seat, and it was the Liberal Democrats who moved strongly forward, to take easily the highest share of first preferences in Inverleith ward, nearly 34%. The SNP (20%) and Greens (13%) received the other two available council spots, the last named just edging out Labour (12%). The west end of Inverleith ward with over 11,000 of its 23,500 votes is now to be in Edinburgh West parliamentary constituency.
Conservative councillors in City Centre and in Forth were also elected in 2017 largely on the backs of very strong votes in the New Town and in Trinity. That this was a very strong area for No in 2014 is so obvious that it almost doesn’t need stated. It is, however, an area where the Conservatives fell back in 2019, and other parties have pockets of strength. In City Centre ward, for example, the May 2022 shares were split remarkably evenly between all five main parties: the SNP had the most first preferences but with only 24.5%. They were closely pressed by Tories (21.4%), Green (19.8%), Lib Dem (15.1%) and Green (14.6%). Of course not all of the City Centre ward is included in the North & Leith Westminster division: in the Commission’s 2023 report for this constituency it included 7,941 electors in City Centre, but nearly as many are in East & Musselburgh, and there are sections in West and SW too.
Forth ward, which is entirely in North & Leith, includes the disparate elements of Trinity at its east end and in the western two thirds of the current Forth ward, the third, smaller, part of the constituency. This section covers the former Granton and Pilton wards, and consists largely of council housing schemes, including some of the most deprived in Edinburgh (film fans may know them for the role they played in the most downbeat parts of the screen adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, though tourists and higher culture buffs are unlikely to have visited them, though parts have been redeveloped since the 1990s. This is the area strengthened by transfers from Edinburgh West in the latest ‘2023’ boundary changes. Forth ward also includes Granton Harbour, which dates from the 1830s, and now forms part of the Edinburgh Waterfront redevelopment plan with new build apartments.
Overall, there has traditionally been little interest in parties other than Labour and the SNP in this part of the constituency. In May 2022 the SNP were comfortably ahead in Forth ward with 31% of first preferences. However the Liberal Democrats were in second place with 19%, a considerable increase in 2017 when they only managed 8%. Labour slipped slightly from 21% in 2017 to 19% in May 2022 in Forth, and the Trinity section would have provided the basis of the 15% share the Conservatives retained, down from 28% at their 2017 high point. The small West Pilton and Muirhouse section of Almond ward in the parliamentary boundary changes is highly untypical of that ward as a whole, the rest of which is part of the affluent and highly educated Lib Dem stronghold of Edinburgh West. Probably its partisan impact will also be small because this has been very much a low turnout zone.
It should be noted that the Holyrood constituency, Edinburgh Northern & Leith, is not as similar to this constituency as it might appear at first glance. Apart from Trinity, it includes little of the affluent Conservative-leaning part of the constituency, but does incorporate the whole of the Leith and Leith Walk wards in the east, further boosting support for parties other than the Conservatives. In the most recent Scottish Parliament elections n 2021, Northern & Leith was retained by the SNP very easily, with over twice the votes and share of Labour in second place – 47.9% to 23.2%, a numerical majority of 11,569.
Deirdre Brock MP’s majority and percentage lead in December 2019 in North & Leith was only little less than that, and the 2022 city council election results are less encouraging for Labour than in many Scottish constituencies. However it might be remembered that in the 2017 general election she won by only 1,625 votes with Labour second and a very sizeable Tory share of 27%. This was the seat north of the border with the lowest percentage born in Scotland at the time of the last fully available census. If Labour can corral enough of the substantial (and presumably recently much grown) non-Nationalist support, this is a definite possibility, as it were, and this most varied and disparate of all the Edinburgh Westminster seats certainly should be treated as a key marginal in a 2024 general election.
2011 Census, old boundaries
Age 65+ 11.7% 574/650
Owner-occupied 52.3% 566/650
Private rented 29.8% 37/650
Social rented 16.2 % 316/650
White 91.4% 409/650
Black 1.3% 226/650
Asian 5.5% 205/650
Born in Scotland 64.3% 59/59 in Scotland
Managerial & professional 42.8%
Routine & Semi-routine 18.3%
Degree level 49.5% 12/650
No qualifications 14.5% 616/650
Students 11.5% 107/650
2022 Census, new boundaries
Details not yet available
General Election 2019: Edinburgh North and Leith
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
SNP Deidre Brock 25,925 43.7 +9.7
Labour Co-op Gordon Munro 13,117 22.1 -9.0
Conservative Iain McGill 11,000 18.5 -8.7
Liberal Democrats Bruce Wilson 6,635 11.2 +6.6
Scottish Green Steve Burgess 1,971 3.3 +0.3
Brexit Party Robert Speirs 558 0.9
Renew Heather Astbury 138 0.2
SNP Majority 12,808 21.6 +18.7
2019 electorate 81,336
Turnout 59,334 73.0 +1.8
SNP hold
Swing 9.4 Lab to SNP
Boundary Changes
Edinburgh North and Leith consists of
91.4% of Edinburgh North and Leith
4.8% of Edinburgh West
Map
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/edinburgh_north_and_leith_0.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Denver for Rallings and Thrasher)
The present incarnation of Edinburgh North & Leith was created in 2005 following boundary changes that affected the whole of Scotland. As its name suggests, it covers a northern part of the city, stretching from the New Town to the Firth of Forth, including Leith. The southern boundary runs along Princes Street Gardens, which are in effect two adjacent public parks in the gorge that separates the New Town from the Old Town, created following the draining of the Nor Lorch in the early 19th century.
As Robert Louis Stevenson put it in 1878: It seems (I do not know how else to put my meaning) as if it were a trifle too good to be true. It is what Paris ought to be. It has the scenic quality that would best set off a life of unthinking, open-air diversion. It was meant by nature for the realisation of the society of comic operas. And you can imagine, if the climate were but towardly, how all the world and his wife would flock into these gardens in the cool of the evening, to hear cheerful music, to sip pleasant drinks, to see the moon rise from behind Arthur's Seat and shine upon the spires and monuments and the green tree-tops in the valley. Alas! and the next morning the rain is splashing on the window, and the passengers flee along Princes Street before the galloping squalls.
Some might argue that the ‘and Leith’ component of the name is superfluous; it is a nod to the fact that Leith was a separate municipal burgh from Edinburgh between 1833 and 1920, and retains something of a distinct identity.
As is typical of Edinburgh, this was a strongly EU Remain-voting area, with 78.2% in 2016, but the partisan split is far more chaotic; all five main parties have areas of strength here, with split-ticketing and large swings common in recent years. With 60% for No in the 2014 referendum, the constituency was marginally more pro-independence than average for Edinburgh, but less so than Scotland as a whole.
The boundaries up to and including the 2019 general election are based on twelve of the pre-2007 FPTP wards, which remain convenient building blocks for dividing the constituency. In the changes decreed by the Scottish Boundary Commission that reported in June 2023, there are some swaps in the north western quadrant of North & Leith with Edinburgh West. Because with over 81,000 electors in 2019 this is one of the few Scottish seats that was more populous than the UK wide quota allowed, slightly more territory is moved out, 8.6% of its electorate, around Craigleith and Blackhall. In partial exchange, further north, part of the Almond ward including more of West Pilton and Muirhouse is included in North & Leith, and along with an extra 3,500 voters the seat now reaches Birnie Rocks on the Firth of Forth.
Broadly, the constituency divides socially and politically into three key sections:
The first is what might be termed ‘Greater Leith’, and covers the former wards of Calton, Broughton, Lorne, Harbour, and Newhaven in the east of the constituency. This corresponds to roughly two thirds of the current Leith Walk and Leith wards.
Beginning at Calton Hill, it follows Leith Walk and Easter Road – to the west of the home ground of Hibernian FC, which is in Edinburgh East - down to the Port of Leith. It is a densely populated area dominated by rows of four-storey sandstone tenements, interspersed with newer social housing blocks, and with more recent private development, especially around the waterfront. The area has sizeable South Asian, Afro-Caribbean and Eastern European populations, with numerous mosques, a mandir, a gurdwara, and a Ukranian Orthodox church. Traditionally a working-class area, there has been considerable gentrification since the 1980s, with sandstone tenements and new build apartments increasingly popular with young professionals. Traditional workers’ pubs can be found next to so-called ‘Swedish hipster bars’, and are sometimes even owned by the same people. The Port of Leith now includes the large 1990s Scottish Government building at Victoria Quay, and the Ocean Terminal shopping centre, home of the Royal Yacht Britannia. Further west is the small port of Newhaven, with an atmosphere more akin to a fishing village than to an area of a major city.
Leith and Leith Walk have consistently been amongst the worst wards in Edinburgh for the Conservatives since their creation, with recent local elections dominated by Labour, the SNP and the Greens. In May 2022, Leith Walk elected one SNP councillor, one Labour, one Green and one Liberal Democrat, representing one LD gain from the SNP on 2017; Leith elected one of each in both elections. The Lib Dems used to have some strength here, which would have helped when they came close to winning the constituency in 2010, and 2022 marked a slight recovery – they still only received 12% of the first preference votes in Leith Walk, while the SNP took 30.7%, the Greens 25.9% and Labour 18.7%. As in Glasgow, the Greens did very well in May 2022 in inner-city and ‘trendy’ neighbourhoods. In Leith ward, the 2022 results were rather similar to those in Leith Walk, with the exception that the Lib Dems only polled 4% and did not take a council seat; there are only three available anyway in Leith ward, which were divided between the other three who were successful in Leith Walk, and their first preferences were in the same order: 33% SNP, 26% Green, 21% Labour. The Conservatives finished fifth in Leith Walk and fourth in Leith – two of their three worst performances anywhere in Edinburgh the three in which they polled less than 10%. The received wisdom amongst Yes campaigners is that Leith voted Yes; I cannot comment on the accuracy of this, and it may depend on the boundaries used, but it is fair to say that it had one of the highest concentrations of Yes posters of anywhere in Edinburgh in 2014, and would have been more Yes than the constituency as a whole.
The second major part of this constituency covers the former wards of New Town, Dean, Craigleith, Stockbridge, and Trinity. Mapping this onto the current wards, this covers roughly the northern third of City Centre, most of Inverleith, the eastern third of Forth, and a small part of Corstorphine & Murrayfield.
The famous planned New Town, bordered by Princes Street Gardens to the south and the Water of Leith to the north, is dominated by Georgian architecture. The southern part of it, around Princes Street and George Street, is given over to retail, and is Edinburgh’s central business district. The northern part consists largely of exclusive townhouses and apartments, and, at least in the popular imagination, is home to the old-money rich. To the west of the New Town, nestled beneath the Dean Bridge over the Water of Leith, in a setting strikingly reminiscent of Luxembourg, is the Dean Village. Crossing over the Dean Bridge along Queensferry Road to the northwest, we approach Craigleith and Blackhall - suburban areas dominated by detached and semi-detached bungalows. It is this area that is transferred to Edinburgh West in the boundary changes will become effective for a 2024 general election.
Following the Water of Leith downstream to the northeast takes us past Comely Bank, with its upmarket sandstone tenements, to Stockbridge, home to a Sunday market that is notoriously bourgeois even by Edinburgh standards. Further down the Water, we pass the Stockbridge Colonies, the Grange Cricket Ground (where Scotland internationals have been played), Inverleith Park, and the Royal Botanic Garden, before coming out at Canonmills, with its array of cafés and art shops. Further north, this eventually merges into Trinity, historically the affluent appendage of Leith, with some quite impressive sandstone villas.
It should come as no surprise that this section of the constituency is very fertile for the Conservatives, and they would have been comfortably ahead in 2017. Indeed, the Conservatives had no difficulty winning two council seats in Inverleith in 2017, with the other four main parties fighting it out for the other two; in the end, these went to the SNP and the Lib Dems, with Labour and the Greens losing seats previously held. Then in May 2022 the Tories fell back, their 20% share only generating one council seat, and it was the Liberal Democrats who moved strongly forward, to take easily the highest share of first preferences in Inverleith ward, nearly 34%. The SNP (20%) and Greens (13%) received the other two available council spots, the last named just edging out Labour (12%). The west end of Inverleith ward with over 11,000 of its 23,500 votes is now to be in Edinburgh West parliamentary constituency.
Conservative councillors in City Centre and in Forth were also elected in 2017 largely on the backs of very strong votes in the New Town and in Trinity. That this was a very strong area for No in 2014 is so obvious that it almost doesn’t need stated. It is, however, an area where the Conservatives fell back in 2019, and other parties have pockets of strength. In City Centre ward, for example, the May 2022 shares were split remarkably evenly between all five main parties: the SNP had the most first preferences but with only 24.5%. They were closely pressed by Tories (21.4%), Green (19.8%), Lib Dem (15.1%) and Green (14.6%). Of course not all of the City Centre ward is included in the North & Leith Westminster division: in the Commission’s 2023 report for this constituency it included 7,941 electors in City Centre, but nearly as many are in East & Musselburgh, and there are sections in West and SW too.
Forth ward, which is entirely in North & Leith, includes the disparate elements of Trinity at its east end and in the western two thirds of the current Forth ward, the third, smaller, part of the constituency. This section covers the former Granton and Pilton wards, and consists largely of council housing schemes, including some of the most deprived in Edinburgh (film fans may know them for the role they played in the most downbeat parts of the screen adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, though tourists and higher culture buffs are unlikely to have visited them, though parts have been redeveloped since the 1990s. This is the area strengthened by transfers from Edinburgh West in the latest ‘2023’ boundary changes. Forth ward also includes Granton Harbour, which dates from the 1830s, and now forms part of the Edinburgh Waterfront redevelopment plan with new build apartments.
Overall, there has traditionally been little interest in parties other than Labour and the SNP in this part of the constituency. In May 2022 the SNP were comfortably ahead in Forth ward with 31% of first preferences. However the Liberal Democrats were in second place with 19%, a considerable increase in 2017 when they only managed 8%. Labour slipped slightly from 21% in 2017 to 19% in May 2022 in Forth, and the Trinity section would have provided the basis of the 15% share the Conservatives retained, down from 28% at their 2017 high point. The small West Pilton and Muirhouse section of Almond ward in the parliamentary boundary changes is highly untypical of that ward as a whole, the rest of which is part of the affluent and highly educated Lib Dem stronghold of Edinburgh West. Probably its partisan impact will also be small because this has been very much a low turnout zone.
It should be noted that the Holyrood constituency, Edinburgh Northern & Leith, is not as similar to this constituency as it might appear at first glance. Apart from Trinity, it includes little of the affluent Conservative-leaning part of the constituency, but does incorporate the whole of the Leith and Leith Walk wards in the east, further boosting support for parties other than the Conservatives. In the most recent Scottish Parliament elections n 2021, Northern & Leith was retained by the SNP very easily, with over twice the votes and share of Labour in second place – 47.9% to 23.2%, a numerical majority of 11,569.
Deirdre Brock MP’s majority and percentage lead in December 2019 in North & Leith was only little less than that, and the 2022 city council election results are less encouraging for Labour than in many Scottish constituencies. However it might be remembered that in the 2017 general election she won by only 1,625 votes with Labour second and a very sizeable Tory share of 27%. This was the seat north of the border with the lowest percentage born in Scotland at the time of the last fully available census. If Labour can corral enough of the substantial (and presumably recently much grown) non-Nationalist support, this is a definite possibility, as it were, and this most varied and disparate of all the Edinburgh Westminster seats certainly should be treated as a key marginal in a 2024 general election.
2011 Census, old boundaries
Age 65+ 11.7% 574/650
Owner-occupied 52.3% 566/650
Private rented 29.8% 37/650
Social rented 16.2 % 316/650
White 91.4% 409/650
Black 1.3% 226/650
Asian 5.5% 205/650
Born in Scotland 64.3% 59/59 in Scotland
Managerial & professional 42.8%
Routine & Semi-routine 18.3%
Degree level 49.5% 12/650
No qualifications 14.5% 616/650
Students 11.5% 107/650
2022 Census, new boundaries
Details not yet available
General Election 2019: Edinburgh North and Leith
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
SNP Deidre Brock 25,925 43.7 +9.7
Labour Co-op Gordon Munro 13,117 22.1 -9.0
Conservative Iain McGill 11,000 18.5 -8.7
Liberal Democrats Bruce Wilson 6,635 11.2 +6.6
Scottish Green Steve Burgess 1,971 3.3 +0.3
Brexit Party Robert Speirs 558 0.9
Renew Heather Astbury 138 0.2
SNP Majority 12,808 21.6 +18.7
2019 electorate 81,336
Turnout 59,334 73.0 +1.8
SNP hold
Swing 9.4 Lab to SNP
Boundary Changes
Edinburgh North and Leith consists of
91.4% of Edinburgh North and Leith
4.8% of Edinburgh West
Map
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/edinburgh_north_and_leith_0.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Denver for Rallings and Thrasher)
| SNP | 25773 | 43.8% |
| Lab | 12790 | 21.7% |
| Con | 10362 | 17.6% |
| LD | 7364 | 12.5% |
| Green | 1920 | 3.3% |
| Brexit | 508 | 0.9% |
| Oth | 138 | 0.2% |
| Majority | 12983 | 22.1% |
