Post by andrewp on Feb 20, 2024 15:53:58 GMT
With credit to greenhert for the original profile, with updates and expansion by me.
The county of Dorset evokes an image of a pleasant rural environment of gently rolling countryside. In actual fact the majority of the population of the county live in and around the quite large Bournemouth and Poole conurbation. Only two of the eight parliamentary constituencies in Dorset are predominantly rural in make up and probably conform to the image- North Dorset and this one, the largest Dorset constituency by area, West Dorset.
West Dorset was first created as a constituency in 1885, and has had a comparably stable history. Perhaps the most significant boundary change came way back in 1918 when the county town of Dorchester was added. Since then boundary changes have occurred but the broad shape and area of the constituency has remained stable. There had been no boundary changes at all here since 1983 until 2024 and this time the boundary changes are restricted to changes on the eastern boundary to tidy up to match ward boundaries that were introduced for Dorset’s inaugural unitary authority elections in 2019. They only amount to a few blocks of hundreds of voters being moved in and out of the seat, but being rural areas are more Conservative than average so reduce the Conservative majority by about 1500 votes or 2% but do not make a huge difference. The boundaries more or less match the boundaries of the former West Dorset district council area.
This is a very rural area, with relatively poor transport links in places, there are no motorways in western Dorset and some of the trunk roads are not particularly fast. In some ways parts of this constituency feel more rural and more isolated than parts of Devon further to the West.
West Dorset includes the Jurassic Coast UNESCO World Heritage Site,and the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Its largest town is Dorchester (also encompassing Poundbury and Fordington) and the other towns are, in decreasing size order, Bridport, Sherborne, Lyme Regis and Beaminster.
Dorchester has a rich history for a town whose population only now exceeds 20,000 people: it was first properly settled by the Romans who called it Durnovaria; it was a centre of Puritan emigration to what is now the eastern USA; it was the site of the "Bloody Assizes" trials where George Jeffreys sentenced 300 men to death or transportation for their part in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685; the Tolpuddle Martyrs were also tried here in 1834 and sentenced to transportation in Australia, and Thomas Hardy's novel the Mayor of Casterbridge is set there, Casterbridge being a fictionalised version of Dorchester. Dorchester, rather like Truro in Cornwall, is rather small for a county town, and thus the public sector institutions that one almost always finds in county towns- County Hall, the Courts, Dorset County Hospital, the college- carry a larger than usual influence on the town. 57% of people were employed in the public administration, health and education sector in 2011. This also has a political influence with Dorchester being the strongest part of the constituency for the Liberal Democrats, who have a good local government election record in the town. Just west of Dorchester, is the community of Poundbury, an experimental urban extension to the town that commenced development in 1993, with the keen endorsement of King Charles III and whose layout and style proved quite prototypal for the design of new housing estates in subsequent years and decades. Poundbury itself now has a population of about 4000 and is due to be completed as per its original plans by 2025.
Bridport ( population 13,500) is a rope-making town set near the Jurassic Coast, which is also home to the longest continuously running business in the UK, R J Balson & Son, which apparently can trace its line of butchers back to 1515, and a growing arts scene. Bridport is increasingly a bit cool, with a good range of Independent shops and eateries. Nearby West Bay, originally known as Bridport harbour, was the setting for the recent ITV drama Broadchurch. Bridport is currently split between Liberal Democrat and Green councillors and is politically shifting leftwards.
Lyme Regis, ( population 3700) is on the border with Devon and is the centre of the aforementioned Jurassic Coast. It has been dubbed "the pearl of Dorset" and aside from being a pleasant seaside town, was where Mary Anning discovered the remains of Jurassic-era dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles like Ichtyhosaurus. Lyme is a perfect place for pottering around by the harbour and on the beach. A stone pier, the cobb, curls its way into the sea at Lyme and has been the setting for many TV and film scenes including a famous scenes in the film adaption of John Fowles novel ‘The french lieutenants women’.
Beaminster ( population 3000) was once an important flax and linen town although the lack of a railway line meant its prosperity declined significantly; it is now the home of Clipper, one of the first companies to obtain Fairtrade status in the UK.
Sherborne ( population 10,300) is a market town in the far north of the constituency and probably associates more with Yeovil in Somerset, which is only 6 miles away, than the rest of West Dorset. It was the site of a famous abbey and King Alfred the Great himself was educated there; Sherborne is also home to Sherborne Castle and Sherborne School, whose alumni include Alan Turing, who cracked Enigma, and actor Jeremy Irons. Aside from Dorchester, Sherborne is the next strongest area of the constituency for the Liberal Democrats
This is a pleasant rural and coastal constituency of small towns, and not surprisingly has an older age profile. What is perhaps surprising, given the lack of seaside retirement resorts that one finds in say Devon or Sussex, is quite how high it ranks for the percentage of people in the older age groups. 32.1% of people are aged over 65, placing the constituency 5th out of 575 in England and Wales. It has a relatively low percentage of people aged 15 and under ( 14.5%) and aged 16-24 (7.7%) placing the constituency in the bottom 25 constituencies nationwide for both of those age groups. 68.8% of homes are owner occupied, 47.3% outright, making this the 12th most owner occupied constituency in England and Wales. It is 96.8% white. This is not a constituency of big employers outside of the public sector and the constituency is in the top 50 for the percentage of people working for small employers. With the county town in its boundaries, West Dorset attracts a higher proportion of degree holders than the rest of Dorset, although Bridport's qualification levels are significantly lower than Dorchester's, and Bridport also has a considerably lower proportion of people in professional, managerial and administrative occupations than either Dorchester or Sherborne.
Locally a lot of West Dorset is competitive between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. In the most recent local elections here, the first to the new Dorset unitary authority, way back in 2019- a good year for the Liberal Democrats against the Conservatives in the West Country- the Liberal Democrats won 11 councillors here to the Conservatives 7, 1 Green and 1 Independent. The Liberal Democrats won 5 out of the 6 seats in and surrounding Dorchester, the 3 seats in and around Sherborne and 2 in Bridport. The rural wards mostly elected Conservatives, although several of the wards were fairly close. Bridport's aforementioned growing arts scene can somewhat account for the Green gain in Bridport in 2019 (the only Green gain/hold outside Weymouth in Dorset in May 2019). Labour are not competitive anywhere in West Dorset except somewhat in Bridport (even then they finished last in May 2019) and the last time any Labour councillors were elected in the former West Dorset district was 1999.
West Dorset has been continuously held by the Conservatives since 1885, although has been a frequent frustration for the Liberals and Liberal Democrats. In its first contest back in 1885 the tone was somewhat set when the Conservatives beat the Liberals by 141 votes. The Conservative majority has only reached 5 figures six times in 139 years of victories since, in the three Thatcher elections in the 1980s and in the three elections since 2015, with Oliver Letwin’s final majority of 19000 in 2017 being the largest ever here. The Liberals and Liberal Democrats have come second here at each election since 1974, and got very close in the three Blair elections, missing out by under 2500 votes each times with MP Oliver Letwin being a high profile target. The Liberal Democrats fell back sharply in 2015 but have recovered somewhat since then. Its most notable recent MP was Letwin, who became Shadow Home Secretary under Michael Howard and later became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under David Cameron. Sir Oliver was one of 21 Conservative MPs to be deprived of the whip for voting against a no-deal Brexit on 3 September 2019, a fortnight after he had announced he would be standing down from Parliament at the subsequent general election of December 2019. The Local Conservatives picked a somewhat different candidate to succeed him, Chris Loder, who subsequently became Conservative MP for this constituency, and the very first West Dorset MP without the privilege of having had a private school background. The Liberal Democrats increased their share by 8% in 2019, almost exclusively at the expense of Labour as the Conservative share held steady, and reduced the Tory majority by about 5000. Swings here have historically been quite low- in 1997 the Liberal Democrats only got a swing of 5.6% here, when they would have gained the seat had they achieved the swing that they achieved in other places. A much closer contest looks certain here in 2024, and they do have some local government success here, but this is still a stiff looking task for the Liberal Democrats.
Notional result, R & T
Con 31,375 54.3%
LD 18,987. 32.8%
Lab 5,414. 9.4%
Green 2037. 3.5%
The county of Dorset evokes an image of a pleasant rural environment of gently rolling countryside. In actual fact the majority of the population of the county live in and around the quite large Bournemouth and Poole conurbation. Only two of the eight parliamentary constituencies in Dorset are predominantly rural in make up and probably conform to the image- North Dorset and this one, the largest Dorset constituency by area, West Dorset.
West Dorset was first created as a constituency in 1885, and has had a comparably stable history. Perhaps the most significant boundary change came way back in 1918 when the county town of Dorchester was added. Since then boundary changes have occurred but the broad shape and area of the constituency has remained stable. There had been no boundary changes at all here since 1983 until 2024 and this time the boundary changes are restricted to changes on the eastern boundary to tidy up to match ward boundaries that were introduced for Dorset’s inaugural unitary authority elections in 2019. They only amount to a few blocks of hundreds of voters being moved in and out of the seat, but being rural areas are more Conservative than average so reduce the Conservative majority by about 1500 votes or 2% but do not make a huge difference. The boundaries more or less match the boundaries of the former West Dorset district council area.
This is a very rural area, with relatively poor transport links in places, there are no motorways in western Dorset and some of the trunk roads are not particularly fast. In some ways parts of this constituency feel more rural and more isolated than parts of Devon further to the West.
West Dorset includes the Jurassic Coast UNESCO World Heritage Site,and the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Its largest town is Dorchester (also encompassing Poundbury and Fordington) and the other towns are, in decreasing size order, Bridport, Sherborne, Lyme Regis and Beaminster.
Dorchester has a rich history for a town whose population only now exceeds 20,000 people: it was first properly settled by the Romans who called it Durnovaria; it was a centre of Puritan emigration to what is now the eastern USA; it was the site of the "Bloody Assizes" trials where George Jeffreys sentenced 300 men to death or transportation for their part in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685; the Tolpuddle Martyrs were also tried here in 1834 and sentenced to transportation in Australia, and Thomas Hardy's novel the Mayor of Casterbridge is set there, Casterbridge being a fictionalised version of Dorchester. Dorchester, rather like Truro in Cornwall, is rather small for a county town, and thus the public sector institutions that one almost always finds in county towns- County Hall, the Courts, Dorset County Hospital, the college- carry a larger than usual influence on the town. 57% of people were employed in the public administration, health and education sector in 2011. This also has a political influence with Dorchester being the strongest part of the constituency for the Liberal Democrats, who have a good local government election record in the town. Just west of Dorchester, is the community of Poundbury, an experimental urban extension to the town that commenced development in 1993, with the keen endorsement of King Charles III and whose layout and style proved quite prototypal for the design of new housing estates in subsequent years and decades. Poundbury itself now has a population of about 4000 and is due to be completed as per its original plans by 2025.
Bridport ( population 13,500) is a rope-making town set near the Jurassic Coast, which is also home to the longest continuously running business in the UK, R J Balson & Son, which apparently can trace its line of butchers back to 1515, and a growing arts scene. Bridport is increasingly a bit cool, with a good range of Independent shops and eateries. Nearby West Bay, originally known as Bridport harbour, was the setting for the recent ITV drama Broadchurch. Bridport is currently split between Liberal Democrat and Green councillors and is politically shifting leftwards.
Lyme Regis, ( population 3700) is on the border with Devon and is the centre of the aforementioned Jurassic Coast. It has been dubbed "the pearl of Dorset" and aside from being a pleasant seaside town, was where Mary Anning discovered the remains of Jurassic-era dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles like Ichtyhosaurus. Lyme is a perfect place for pottering around by the harbour and on the beach. A stone pier, the cobb, curls its way into the sea at Lyme and has been the setting for many TV and film scenes including a famous scenes in the film adaption of John Fowles novel ‘The french lieutenants women’.
Beaminster ( population 3000) was once an important flax and linen town although the lack of a railway line meant its prosperity declined significantly; it is now the home of Clipper, one of the first companies to obtain Fairtrade status in the UK.
Sherborne ( population 10,300) is a market town in the far north of the constituency and probably associates more with Yeovil in Somerset, which is only 6 miles away, than the rest of West Dorset. It was the site of a famous abbey and King Alfred the Great himself was educated there; Sherborne is also home to Sherborne Castle and Sherborne School, whose alumni include Alan Turing, who cracked Enigma, and actor Jeremy Irons. Aside from Dorchester, Sherborne is the next strongest area of the constituency for the Liberal Democrats
This is a pleasant rural and coastal constituency of small towns, and not surprisingly has an older age profile. What is perhaps surprising, given the lack of seaside retirement resorts that one finds in say Devon or Sussex, is quite how high it ranks for the percentage of people in the older age groups. 32.1% of people are aged over 65, placing the constituency 5th out of 575 in England and Wales. It has a relatively low percentage of people aged 15 and under ( 14.5%) and aged 16-24 (7.7%) placing the constituency in the bottom 25 constituencies nationwide for both of those age groups. 68.8% of homes are owner occupied, 47.3% outright, making this the 12th most owner occupied constituency in England and Wales. It is 96.8% white. This is not a constituency of big employers outside of the public sector and the constituency is in the top 50 for the percentage of people working for small employers. With the county town in its boundaries, West Dorset attracts a higher proportion of degree holders than the rest of Dorset, although Bridport's qualification levels are significantly lower than Dorchester's, and Bridport also has a considerably lower proportion of people in professional, managerial and administrative occupations than either Dorchester or Sherborne.
Locally a lot of West Dorset is competitive between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. In the most recent local elections here, the first to the new Dorset unitary authority, way back in 2019- a good year for the Liberal Democrats against the Conservatives in the West Country- the Liberal Democrats won 11 councillors here to the Conservatives 7, 1 Green and 1 Independent. The Liberal Democrats won 5 out of the 6 seats in and surrounding Dorchester, the 3 seats in and around Sherborne and 2 in Bridport. The rural wards mostly elected Conservatives, although several of the wards were fairly close. Bridport's aforementioned growing arts scene can somewhat account for the Green gain in Bridport in 2019 (the only Green gain/hold outside Weymouth in Dorset in May 2019). Labour are not competitive anywhere in West Dorset except somewhat in Bridport (even then they finished last in May 2019) and the last time any Labour councillors were elected in the former West Dorset district was 1999.
West Dorset has been continuously held by the Conservatives since 1885, although has been a frequent frustration for the Liberals and Liberal Democrats. In its first contest back in 1885 the tone was somewhat set when the Conservatives beat the Liberals by 141 votes. The Conservative majority has only reached 5 figures six times in 139 years of victories since, in the three Thatcher elections in the 1980s and in the three elections since 2015, with Oliver Letwin’s final majority of 19000 in 2017 being the largest ever here. The Liberals and Liberal Democrats have come second here at each election since 1974, and got very close in the three Blair elections, missing out by under 2500 votes each times with MP Oliver Letwin being a high profile target. The Liberal Democrats fell back sharply in 2015 but have recovered somewhat since then. Its most notable recent MP was Letwin, who became Shadow Home Secretary under Michael Howard and later became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under David Cameron. Sir Oliver was one of 21 Conservative MPs to be deprived of the whip for voting against a no-deal Brexit on 3 September 2019, a fortnight after he had announced he would be standing down from Parliament at the subsequent general election of December 2019. The Local Conservatives picked a somewhat different candidate to succeed him, Chris Loder, who subsequently became Conservative MP for this constituency, and the very first West Dorset MP without the privilege of having had a private school background. The Liberal Democrats increased their share by 8% in 2019, almost exclusively at the expense of Labour as the Conservative share held steady, and reduced the Tory majority by about 5000. Swings here have historically been quite low- in 1997 the Liberal Democrats only got a swing of 5.6% here, when they would have gained the seat had they achieved the swing that they achieved in other places. A much closer contest looks certain here in 2024, and they do have some local government success here, but this is still a stiff looking task for the Liberal Democrats.
Notional result, R & T
Con 31,375 54.3%
LD 18,987. 32.8%
Lab 5,414. 9.4%
Green 2037. 3.5%
