Post by Robert Waller on Jan 9, 2024 21:19:49 GMT
Boston & Skegness was created in 1997 from the "Boston part" of Holland with Boston and the southern part of the East Lindsey constituency. In the boundary review confirmed in 2023, the most important of minor changes is the transfer at the northern end of its section of the coast of the ward of Chapel St Leonards from Louth & Horncastle, which will not significantly affect either the political or social balance of this seat.
The town of Boston (not the one in Massachusetts, although that Boston was named after the original Boston in Lincolnshire) is an ancient market town which is home to the largest parish church in England, St Botolph's. In mediaeval times Boston became a significant enough port to join the Hanseatic League. It was a key site of religious nonconformism (Calvinism) during the 17th century and many dissenters from the Church of England emigrated to New England (along with Dutch compatriots; Boston has had strong links with the Netherlands, or what became the Netherlands, for centuries); their descendants still live in the eastern USA today. Recently Boston has achieved notoriety for having the highest Brexit vote in the EU membership referendum (75.6%) despite (?) its significant Eastern European population (largely Lithuanian) and also the highest obesity rate in the UK.
Skegness, meanwhile, is a famous working-class seaside resort in Lincolnshire which was the site of the first Butlin’s camp; Skegness still retains much of this character and with its bingo halls, numerous fish and chip shops of all kinds, and penny arcades it still feels like it is stuck in the 1960s in many respects. Skegness and the nearby villages proved to be almost as pro-Brexit as Boston.
Boston & Skegness is one of the poorest non-metropolitan constituencies in the UK and its demographics match this: 29.1% of the population had no qualifications as recorded in the 2021 census and the proportion of degree holders is 18.1%, the lowest of any of the 575 constituencies in England and Wales (even level 3 qualification rates are low at 14.4%). The no qualification figure reaches a high of 39.7% in Ingoldmells & Chapel St Leonards MSOA (Middle Layer Super Output Area), which may be partly accounted for by age, as almost exactly the same proportion are over 65, but also it hovers around 33% throughout Skegness (average age pattern for the seat) and is also over 30% in Boston Central & North (much younger – only 11% over 65). Overall the proportion of people aged over 65 in Boston and Skegness constituency (24.3%) is significantly higher than average.
Turning to socio-economic class, over 37% are in routine/semi-routine occupations, the 4th lowest anywhere, with the rate of higher managerial professions being less than half the UK average. In Boston Central & North 47.4% are in routine and semi-routine occupations, and in north western Boston, Fenside & Lister Way MSOA, this figure reaches a staggering (for the most recent census) 53%. All three Skegness MSOAS report just under 40% in these lowest categories. There are no MSOAs on the seat that the figures suggest could be predominantly professional or managerial, and at the much smaller OA level, pockets can just be detected on the north eastern edge of Boston around Tollfield Road and the very southern edge of Skegness (Seacroft). But it requires a considerable degree of zoom magnification to find these.
In the centre of Boston there are several OAs where between 33% and 46% of households report having no person for whom English is the main language. In the whole of Boston local authority district 6% state that Polish is their main language, and 11% that another EU language other than Polish is. 52% in Boston Central & North were born in the UK, and 55% in Fenside & Lister Way. This is not the case at the north end of the constituency (Skegness and Chapel St Leonards / Ingoldmells). In the latter, 96.3% were born in the UK, in Skegness between 90% and 96% in the three MSOAs.
Owner-occupation levels are also below average for a constituency nowhere near a metropolitan area. There are high levels of social housing in Skegness South, NW Boston (Fenside & Lister Way) and east Boston (Skirbeck). 45% on Boston Central & North is private rented and the figure is well above average in the Staniland area just east of its town centre too. Finally 70% of households in Skegness as a whole have some dimension of deprivation, and the same figure applies in the Fenside & Lister Way MSOA of Boston. In Chapel St Leonards and Ingoldmells the figure is 75.7%.
Because of the constituency ticking almost every single box of a stereotypical Brexit constituency, after the 2019 general election Boston & Skegness was the second safest Conservative seat in the country behind only its neighbour, South Holland & The Deepings.
Its predecessor constituency, Holland with Boston, actually elected a Labour MP, William Royce, upon its creation in 1918, due to the agricultural vote leaning towards Labour at the time, not to mention the port workers. Mr Royce died in 1924 and Labour lost the seat to the Conservatives at the subsequent by-election, never to regain it. The Conservative MP elected at said by-election, Arthur Dean, only served just under five years before he died in 1929; in the subsequent 1929 by-election it was the Liberals who were victorious even though they finished a poor third in the seat in the 1924 general election. The Liberal MP elected, James Blindell, joined Ernest Simon's National Liberals in 1931 along with many other Liberal MPs; his successor Herbert Butcher retained the National Liberal label right up until his retirement in 1966. Notable Eurosceptic (Sir) Richard Body held the seat then against a strong Labour challenge which failed only by 316 votes. Sir Richard was also a supporter of environmental causes within the Conservative Party, unsurprising given that Holland with Boston contained a large amount of vital fertile farmland, and strongly opposed the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in particular.
When Holland with Boston was abolished in 1997, Sir Richard followed his Bostonian constituents into this Boston & Skegness seat and faced the first serious challenge from Labour for 31 years; Labour missed out by just 647 votes that year and it is clear Sir Richard's Euroscepticism paid off. He retired in 2001 and Labour failed to stop Mark Simmonds from succeeding him as Conservative MP, this time by the even narrower margin of 515 votes. UKIP then grew rapidly as a challenger to the Conservatives and Labour at local level; in 2005 they finished ahead of the Liberal Democrats with 9.6% and in 2010 achieved the highest UKIP vote in the country outside the Speaker's seat of Buckingham.
Boston & Skegness met all the criteria of being a UKIP target seat in 2015 demographically and politically, but even with the additional factor of Mark Simmonds retiring (citing expenses not being enough to maintain a home in London as well as in the constituency), UKIP's Robin Hunter-Clarke (a Lincolnshire County Councillor) failed to defeat the new Conservative MP, Matt Warman, even though he achieved a better vote share than Nigel Farage did in South Thanet, and did better for UKIP than anywhere except Clacton. By May 2015, the large UKIP group on Lincolnshire County Council had already started to split, as elsewhere in the UK in areas strong for UKIP at the time, and in fact the UKIP candidate in Boston & Skegness in 2010, Christopher Pain, stood for the splinter "Independence from Europe" party. In 2017, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall stood here but with Article 50 having been triggered by then the UKIP vote collapsed, mainly to the Conservatives' benefit as the Conservative vote share rocketed to 63.6%. With no non-Conservative Brexit candidate in 2019, Mr Warman boosted the Conservative vote share even further, to 76.6%, which also gave him a tremendous majority of 25,621, or 61.5%, over Labour.
Locally, in 2007, the Boston Bypass Independents won a clear majority on Boston Borough Council on the back of a bypass proposal for Boston which was never in fact constructed; they were almost wiped out in 2011 and they subsequently became the Boston District Independents. In 2015, UKIP gained enough seats to equal those of the Conservatives on Boston Borough Council (13 apiece), but unsurprisingly that group fell apart as well. This should have given the Conservatives a nailed-on gain of overall control of Boston for May 2019, but in fact enough Independents were elected to prevent the Conservatives gaining overall control initially; they did so on a casting vote from the Mayor. The "Skegness part" of the constituency elected five UKIP councillors in 2015; subsequently the localist Skegness Urban District Society won five of the six Skegness seats on East Lindsey District Council (the Conservatives held the other) and an Independent won the UKIP seat in Friskney; it votes strongly Conservative at parliamentary level however as Boston does.
In the most recent elections for Boston borough council in May 2023 there was something of a ‘Boston Independent’ landslide; strictly speaking a new grouping, they made 18 gains and took overall control. This does make interpretation of the significance for a general election very difficult, but for what it is worth the Conservatives retained five councillors, winning only one ward outright, Five Village (sic) at the very south of the borough, and sharing the representation of Kirton & Frampton, Swineshead & Holland Fen and Fenside ward in Boston town. Labour lost both their previous councillors elected in 2019, who sat for Boston wards, Station and Fenside. The Liberal Democrats made one gain, returning to Boston borough council for the first time since 2003, in Kirton & Frampton which is south of the main town.
In the East Lindsey section of his constituency, Independents were successful in May 2023 too with SUDS (Skegness Urban District Society) either wholly or partially winning representation of the three Skegness town wards, St Clements, Scarbrough (only one o) & Seacroft, and Winthorpe – though their presence was overall much less apparent than in the borough of Boston, with the Tories sharing the spoils and topping the poll in the latter two, and elsewhere winning Wainfleet, Croft and Ingoldmells outright. The new addition in the parliamentary boundary changes, Chapel St Leonards, produced split representation between Conservative and Labour – whose sole candidate in that ward was their only winner anywhere in the Boston & Skegness constituency, although they fall short of SUDS by only 14 votes in Skegness St Clements.
Boston and Skegness is a remarkable constituency, at the extreme end of many analytical variables from educational to occupational to recent party preference. The relationship between these elements may surprise some, but tell us much about political developments in England refracted through attitudes to issues relating to economics, immigration and Britain’s relationship with Europe. Local election evidence from May 2023, especially in Boston borough, suggests that there is strong disaffection with all parties at that level, and the mere 60% turnout in December 2019 implies disillusion with the national democratic process. That it should be one of the four seats won by Reform UK in the July 2024 general election did not come as the greatest surprise of the seismic shifts recorded, with a swing of over 40% from the Conservatives to Richard Tice, its Deputy Leader.
2011 Census, old boundaries
Age 65+ 21.6% 71/650
Owner-occupied 63.5% 416/650
Private rented 17.6% 181/650
Social rented 16.5% 305/650
White 97.3% 200/650
White Other 9.0%
Black 0.4% 415/650
Asian 1.2% 469/650
Country of birth EU accession states 2001-11 7.5% 13/650
Managerial & professional 20.2%
Routine & Semi-routine 39.4%
(Semi-routine 21.5% 2/650)
Process, plant, machine operatives 14.3% 4/650
Elementary occupations 18.3% 6/650
Degree level 14.4% 635 /650
No qualifications 34.8% 21/650
Students 5.0% 639/650
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 24.3% 95/575
Owner occupied 61.4% 380/575
Private rented 22.0% 161/575
Social rented 16.7% 224/575
White 95.7% 151/575
White Other 12.8% 55/575
Black 0.5% 449/575
Asian 1.6% 435/575
Managerial & professional 20.9% 549/575
Routine & Semi-routine 37.1% 4/575
Degree level 18.1% 575/575
No qualifications 29.1% 5/575
Students 4.3% 525/575
General Election 2024: Boston and Skegness
Reform UK Richard Tice 15,520 38.4 N/A
Conservative Matt Warman 13,510 33.4 −43.0
Labour Alex Fawbert 7,629 18.9 +3.3
Green Christopher Moore 1,506 3.7 N/A
Liberal Democrats Richard Lloyd 1,375 3.4 −1.4
English Democrat David Dickason 518 1.3 N/A
Blue Revolution Mike Gilbert 397 1.0 N/A
Reform Majority 2,010 5.0 N/A
Turnout 40,455 53.4 −6.0
Registered electors 75,811
Reform UK gain from Conservative
Swing C to Reform 40.7%
General Election 2019: Boston and Skegness
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Matt Warman 31,963 76.7 +13.1
Labour Ben Cook 6,342 15.2 −9.8
Liberal Democrats Hilary Jones 1,963 4.7 +2.9
Independent Peter Watson 1,428 3.4
C Majority 25,621 61.5 +22.9
Turnout 41,696 60.1 −2.6
Conservative hold
Swing 11.4 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Boston and Skegness consists of
99.4% of Boston & Skegness
7.6% of Louth & Horncastle
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/east-midlands/East%20Midlands_005_Boston%20and%20Skegness_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
The town of Boston (not the one in Massachusetts, although that Boston was named after the original Boston in Lincolnshire) is an ancient market town which is home to the largest parish church in England, St Botolph's. In mediaeval times Boston became a significant enough port to join the Hanseatic League. It was a key site of religious nonconformism (Calvinism) during the 17th century and many dissenters from the Church of England emigrated to New England (along with Dutch compatriots; Boston has had strong links with the Netherlands, or what became the Netherlands, for centuries); their descendants still live in the eastern USA today. Recently Boston has achieved notoriety for having the highest Brexit vote in the EU membership referendum (75.6%) despite (?) its significant Eastern European population (largely Lithuanian) and also the highest obesity rate in the UK.
Skegness, meanwhile, is a famous working-class seaside resort in Lincolnshire which was the site of the first Butlin’s camp; Skegness still retains much of this character and with its bingo halls, numerous fish and chip shops of all kinds, and penny arcades it still feels like it is stuck in the 1960s in many respects. Skegness and the nearby villages proved to be almost as pro-Brexit as Boston.
Boston & Skegness is one of the poorest non-metropolitan constituencies in the UK and its demographics match this: 29.1% of the population had no qualifications as recorded in the 2021 census and the proportion of degree holders is 18.1%, the lowest of any of the 575 constituencies in England and Wales (even level 3 qualification rates are low at 14.4%). The no qualification figure reaches a high of 39.7% in Ingoldmells & Chapel St Leonards MSOA (Middle Layer Super Output Area), which may be partly accounted for by age, as almost exactly the same proportion are over 65, but also it hovers around 33% throughout Skegness (average age pattern for the seat) and is also over 30% in Boston Central & North (much younger – only 11% over 65). Overall the proportion of people aged over 65 in Boston and Skegness constituency (24.3%) is significantly higher than average.
Turning to socio-economic class, over 37% are in routine/semi-routine occupations, the 4th lowest anywhere, with the rate of higher managerial professions being less than half the UK average. In Boston Central & North 47.4% are in routine and semi-routine occupations, and in north western Boston, Fenside & Lister Way MSOA, this figure reaches a staggering (for the most recent census) 53%. All three Skegness MSOAS report just under 40% in these lowest categories. There are no MSOAs on the seat that the figures suggest could be predominantly professional or managerial, and at the much smaller OA level, pockets can just be detected on the north eastern edge of Boston around Tollfield Road and the very southern edge of Skegness (Seacroft). But it requires a considerable degree of zoom magnification to find these.
In the centre of Boston there are several OAs where between 33% and 46% of households report having no person for whom English is the main language. In the whole of Boston local authority district 6% state that Polish is their main language, and 11% that another EU language other than Polish is. 52% in Boston Central & North were born in the UK, and 55% in Fenside & Lister Way. This is not the case at the north end of the constituency (Skegness and Chapel St Leonards / Ingoldmells). In the latter, 96.3% were born in the UK, in Skegness between 90% and 96% in the three MSOAs.
Owner-occupation levels are also below average for a constituency nowhere near a metropolitan area. There are high levels of social housing in Skegness South, NW Boston (Fenside & Lister Way) and east Boston (Skirbeck). 45% on Boston Central & North is private rented and the figure is well above average in the Staniland area just east of its town centre too. Finally 70% of households in Skegness as a whole have some dimension of deprivation, and the same figure applies in the Fenside & Lister Way MSOA of Boston. In Chapel St Leonards and Ingoldmells the figure is 75.7%.
Because of the constituency ticking almost every single box of a stereotypical Brexit constituency, after the 2019 general election Boston & Skegness was the second safest Conservative seat in the country behind only its neighbour, South Holland & The Deepings.
Its predecessor constituency, Holland with Boston, actually elected a Labour MP, William Royce, upon its creation in 1918, due to the agricultural vote leaning towards Labour at the time, not to mention the port workers. Mr Royce died in 1924 and Labour lost the seat to the Conservatives at the subsequent by-election, never to regain it. The Conservative MP elected at said by-election, Arthur Dean, only served just under five years before he died in 1929; in the subsequent 1929 by-election it was the Liberals who were victorious even though they finished a poor third in the seat in the 1924 general election. The Liberal MP elected, James Blindell, joined Ernest Simon's National Liberals in 1931 along with many other Liberal MPs; his successor Herbert Butcher retained the National Liberal label right up until his retirement in 1966. Notable Eurosceptic (Sir) Richard Body held the seat then against a strong Labour challenge which failed only by 316 votes. Sir Richard was also a supporter of environmental causes within the Conservative Party, unsurprising given that Holland with Boston contained a large amount of vital fertile farmland, and strongly opposed the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in particular.
When Holland with Boston was abolished in 1997, Sir Richard followed his Bostonian constituents into this Boston & Skegness seat and faced the first serious challenge from Labour for 31 years; Labour missed out by just 647 votes that year and it is clear Sir Richard's Euroscepticism paid off. He retired in 2001 and Labour failed to stop Mark Simmonds from succeeding him as Conservative MP, this time by the even narrower margin of 515 votes. UKIP then grew rapidly as a challenger to the Conservatives and Labour at local level; in 2005 they finished ahead of the Liberal Democrats with 9.6% and in 2010 achieved the highest UKIP vote in the country outside the Speaker's seat of Buckingham.
Boston & Skegness met all the criteria of being a UKIP target seat in 2015 demographically and politically, but even with the additional factor of Mark Simmonds retiring (citing expenses not being enough to maintain a home in London as well as in the constituency), UKIP's Robin Hunter-Clarke (a Lincolnshire County Councillor) failed to defeat the new Conservative MP, Matt Warman, even though he achieved a better vote share than Nigel Farage did in South Thanet, and did better for UKIP than anywhere except Clacton. By May 2015, the large UKIP group on Lincolnshire County Council had already started to split, as elsewhere in the UK in areas strong for UKIP at the time, and in fact the UKIP candidate in Boston & Skegness in 2010, Christopher Pain, stood for the splinter "Independence from Europe" party. In 2017, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall stood here but with Article 50 having been triggered by then the UKIP vote collapsed, mainly to the Conservatives' benefit as the Conservative vote share rocketed to 63.6%. With no non-Conservative Brexit candidate in 2019, Mr Warman boosted the Conservative vote share even further, to 76.6%, which also gave him a tremendous majority of 25,621, or 61.5%, over Labour.
Locally, in 2007, the Boston Bypass Independents won a clear majority on Boston Borough Council on the back of a bypass proposal for Boston which was never in fact constructed; they were almost wiped out in 2011 and they subsequently became the Boston District Independents. In 2015, UKIP gained enough seats to equal those of the Conservatives on Boston Borough Council (13 apiece), but unsurprisingly that group fell apart as well. This should have given the Conservatives a nailed-on gain of overall control of Boston for May 2019, but in fact enough Independents were elected to prevent the Conservatives gaining overall control initially; they did so on a casting vote from the Mayor. The "Skegness part" of the constituency elected five UKIP councillors in 2015; subsequently the localist Skegness Urban District Society won five of the six Skegness seats on East Lindsey District Council (the Conservatives held the other) and an Independent won the UKIP seat in Friskney; it votes strongly Conservative at parliamentary level however as Boston does.
In the most recent elections for Boston borough council in May 2023 there was something of a ‘Boston Independent’ landslide; strictly speaking a new grouping, they made 18 gains and took overall control. This does make interpretation of the significance for a general election very difficult, but for what it is worth the Conservatives retained five councillors, winning only one ward outright, Five Village (sic) at the very south of the borough, and sharing the representation of Kirton & Frampton, Swineshead & Holland Fen and Fenside ward in Boston town. Labour lost both their previous councillors elected in 2019, who sat for Boston wards, Station and Fenside. The Liberal Democrats made one gain, returning to Boston borough council for the first time since 2003, in Kirton & Frampton which is south of the main town.
In the East Lindsey section of his constituency, Independents were successful in May 2023 too with SUDS (Skegness Urban District Society) either wholly or partially winning representation of the three Skegness town wards, St Clements, Scarbrough (only one o) & Seacroft, and Winthorpe – though their presence was overall much less apparent than in the borough of Boston, with the Tories sharing the spoils and topping the poll in the latter two, and elsewhere winning Wainfleet, Croft and Ingoldmells outright. The new addition in the parliamentary boundary changes, Chapel St Leonards, produced split representation between Conservative and Labour – whose sole candidate in that ward was their only winner anywhere in the Boston & Skegness constituency, although they fall short of SUDS by only 14 votes in Skegness St Clements.
Boston and Skegness is a remarkable constituency, at the extreme end of many analytical variables from educational to occupational to recent party preference. The relationship between these elements may surprise some, but tell us much about political developments in England refracted through attitudes to issues relating to economics, immigration and Britain’s relationship with Europe. Local election evidence from May 2023, especially in Boston borough, suggests that there is strong disaffection with all parties at that level, and the mere 60% turnout in December 2019 implies disillusion with the national democratic process. That it should be one of the four seats won by Reform UK in the July 2024 general election did not come as the greatest surprise of the seismic shifts recorded, with a swing of over 40% from the Conservatives to Richard Tice, its Deputy Leader.
2011 Census, old boundaries
Age 65+ 21.6% 71/650
Owner-occupied 63.5% 416/650
Private rented 17.6% 181/650
Social rented 16.5% 305/650
White 97.3% 200/650
White Other 9.0%
Black 0.4% 415/650
Asian 1.2% 469/650
Country of birth EU accession states 2001-11 7.5% 13/650
Managerial & professional 20.2%
Routine & Semi-routine 39.4%
(Semi-routine 21.5% 2/650)
Process, plant, machine operatives 14.3% 4/650
Elementary occupations 18.3% 6/650
Degree level 14.4% 635 /650
No qualifications 34.8% 21/650
Students 5.0% 639/650
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 24.3% 95/575
Owner occupied 61.4% 380/575
Private rented 22.0% 161/575
Social rented 16.7% 224/575
White 95.7% 151/575
White Other 12.8% 55/575
Black 0.5% 449/575
Asian 1.6% 435/575
Managerial & professional 20.9% 549/575
Routine & Semi-routine 37.1% 4/575
Degree level 18.1% 575/575
No qualifications 29.1% 5/575
Students 4.3% 525/575
General Election 2024: Boston and Skegness
Reform UK Richard Tice 15,520 38.4 N/A
Conservative Matt Warman 13,510 33.4 −43.0
Labour Alex Fawbert 7,629 18.9 +3.3
Green Christopher Moore 1,506 3.7 N/A
Liberal Democrats Richard Lloyd 1,375 3.4 −1.4
English Democrat David Dickason 518 1.3 N/A
Blue Revolution Mike Gilbert 397 1.0 N/A
Reform Majority 2,010 5.0 N/A
Turnout 40,455 53.4 −6.0
Registered electors 75,811
Reform UK gain from Conservative
Swing C to Reform 40.7%
General Election 2019: Boston and Skegness
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Matt Warman 31,963 76.7 +13.1
Labour Ben Cook 6,342 15.2 −9.8
Liberal Democrats Hilary Jones 1,963 4.7 +2.9
Independent Peter Watson 1,428 3.4
C Majority 25,621 61.5 +22.9
Turnout 41,696 60.1 −2.6
Conservative hold
Swing 11.4 Lab to C
Boundary Changes
Boston and Skegness consists of
99.4% of Boston & Skegness
7.6% of Louth & Horncastle
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/east-midlands/East%20Midlands_005_Boston%20and%20Skegness_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
| Con | 34406 | 76.4% |
| Lab | 7004 | 15.6% |
| LD | 2180 | 4.8% |
| Ind | 1428 | 3.2% |
| Con Majority | 27402 | 60.9% |