Post by Pete Whitehead on Feb 27, 2024 21:47:09 GMT
Labour’s by-election gain of Mid Bedfordshire in October 2023 was one of the more impressive of their run of gains that year. It did not exhibit the largest swing, nor the biggest increase in the Labour share – those in Tamworth on the same day and Selby a couple of months earlier were larger on both counts. But both those seats (along with Wellingborough, which beat all records with the size of the swing in the February 2024 by-election) had a recent Labour history, all having been won (albeit sometimes on different boundaries) during the Blair years, while Mid Bedfordshire was safely Conservative even in 1997. Based on this amongst other things, the Lib Dems attempted to portray themselves as the only party capable of beating the Conservatives – a tactic which worked for them in North Shropshire but fell flat here. Indeed, Labour had never come very close to winning a seat called Mid Bedfordshire and for the first couple of decades from the creation of Mid Bedfordshire in 1918 it was a Conservative-Liberal marginal, the latter party winning in 1922, 1923 and 1929 and remaining competitive even in a close three-way contest in 1945.
Thus, the talking heads commenting on the by-election could talk of a constituency which the Conservatives had not lost for 80 years and never won by Labour. All that was true, but there’s a strong argument to be made that this was a new seat in 1997, when Bedfordshire gained an extra, sixth seat. Before that year, the largest towns in the Mid Bedfordshire constituency were Biggleswade and Sandy on the A1 and Kempston on the edge of Bedford – none of which are now in this seat.
The largest town in the current seat is Flitwick, mid-way between Luton and Bedford – and that was in Luton North prior to 1997.
The only significant town the pre- and post-97 Mid Beds seats have in common is Ampthill, and the word ‘significant’ is doing some heavy lifting here (it is though the only town in this constituency which was an urban district before the local government reforms of the 1970s).
Only a little over a third of the electorate of the old Mid Beds came into this seat, with far more (though still less than half) going to the ‘new’ North East Bedfordshire (which is therefore the true successor seat to the old Mid Beds). Only a bare majority – 50.4% - of the electorate of this seat came from the old Mid Bedfordshire with almost as many coming in from Luton North and South West Bedfordshire. The figure will be even lower on the new boundaries as all the departing areas have their origin in that seat and over 15,000 depart as this seat was heavily oversized. That said, Flitwick and all the areas which came in from SW Beds had been in the Mid Beds seat prior to 1983 so there is a certain continuity with the seat which existed before then.
As the above paragraphs indicate, this is not a constituency based on any large town, but it is not a far-flung rural seat either. Rather this compact seat, which borders Luton, Bedford and Milton Keynes, is a collection of expanded (and expanding) commuterised villages. Flitwick epitomises the seat in many ways, having been a small village which grew hugely in the post-war years and has continued to in recent years – a new town in many respects, with a rather soulless town centre to match.
Flitwick and Ampthill are so close to each other that their suburbs run into one another and together form a ‘conurbation’ with a population of over 20,000 (Maulden could arguably be included here), bang in the centre of the seat.
It has a railway station on the Thameslink line, linking it to Bedford and Luton and beyond to London, making it attractive to commuters to all these places. Flitwick does have some of the more relatively downmarket parts of this constituency, particularly in the East and Labour have been able to win council seats here in the distant past. Recent local election results have been skewed by a dominance of Independents locally, but Flitwick will have played a major part in delivering Labour’s by-election victory. Ampthill is a much older town with an attractive town centre and generally more upmarket than Flitwick. Ampthill was an area of quite deep-seated Lib Dem strength though this has faded since the coalition – they last won a seat here in 2007 and in the most recent local elections, a Green was elected alongside two Independents in the ward covering the town (which also includes Maulden and Clophill).
The remainder of the council seats in the Central Bedfordshire part of the seat are all held by Conservatives and Independents, with the latter dominant as of 2023. There are no Labour councillors at all in the wards wholly within this seat and they were not even very close to winning any – the closest they came was in Shefford, another expanded village in the East of the constituency, but that is part of the area being removed to Hitchin and that has significance for the general election prospects here. This is not so much because it is a relatively strong Labour area, but because it is the home area of the by-election victor Alistair Strathern, and he is following it to contest Hitchin at the next election, depriving Labour of an element of incumbency bonus here.
The most upmarket part of the seat is probably the Western edge, along the Buckinghamshire border, South and West of the M1 – Woburn famous for its Abbey and Safari Park and Aspley Guise which blends into Woburn Sands across the county boundary and is an upmarket dormitory for Milton Keynes. Further North is Cranfield, home of its eponymous University. Some of the wards here are large and Cranfield shares a ward with Marston Moretaine and other villages in the former brickmaking area of the Marston Vale – Lidlington and Millbrook.
The brickmaking belt spills over into the Bedford borough part of the constituency where it is even more influential. This area includes Wootton and Stewartby – a model village developed by the London Brick Company. Stewartby was at one time the largest producer of bricks in the world. The brickworks is closed now but while it is not heavily in evidence in local elections, there remains a residual Labour vote in the Marston Vale which must have played its part in Labour’s victory.
There are some affluent villages to the East of Flitwick-Ampthill such as Silsoe near Wrest Park and Shillington, but this Eastern part of the seat is much diminished by the boundary changes which remove not only Shefford but the military (RAF) area around Chicksands, Meppershall and Henlow Camp.
In the far South of the seat, bordering Luton is an area which was in South Bedfordshire district before that was merged into Central Bedfordshire. The largest settlement here is Barton-le-Clay – a former Lib Dem stronghold in local elections where like Ampthill they have fallen away since 2011. They were similarly strong in Streatley and Harlington (which was in the old Mid Beds district). Streatley parish includes part of the large new estate of Bushmeads on the edge of Luton, but otherwise these areas are genuinely rural, despite the proximity to Luton. Streatley and Harlington now form part of the enlarged Toddington ward. Toddington is best known for its Motorway service station on the M1. Unlike the rest of the ward, Toddington itself is to the West of the M1 and has had some Labour tendencies. The old (smaller) Toddington ward was one of the few in this constituency where Labour was able to win in a good year (in their very best year of 1995, they won seats also in Flitwick, Ampthill, Maulden, Marston, Shefford and Shillington).
Bedford borough contributes around a fifth of the electorate in the form of the Elstow & Stewartby, Wilshamstead and Wootton wards which have a somewhat different character to the rest of the constituency. Notwithstanding the brickmaking heritage in Stewartby (which is on the periphery), this is now a quite heavily built-up area close to Bedford. Elstow indeed includes areas which are physically part of Bedford, North of the A421.
Much of the rest of the area consists of newly built estates of mixed tenure – there are some very high levels of shared ownership in some of the output areas here. Wootton typifies the area as an old village with some brickmaking history but which is now rather dominated by modern estates. The Wilshamstead ward was dominated by the large new settlement of Wixams.
Bedford exerts much more influence here than Luton does on the equivalent area in the South and consequently there is a substantial non-white population – about 20% overall and particularly high in Elstow where it blends into the very diverse and safely Labour Cauldwell ward of Bedford. Elstow & Stewartby is on most measures the most downmarket ward within this constituency with by some way the highest proportion of routine workers and the lowest proportion of graduates, the highest proportion of social housing (though not especially high) and of both Black and Asian residents.
The combination of rather downmarket Bedford suburbs with the brickmaking heritage of Stewartby might be thought to provide a solid basis for a Labour vote and most likely did in the by-election. It was not much in evidence in local elections though and Elstow & Stewartby was a Lib Dem stronghold where they won almost 80% of the vote in 2019. In 2023 however the ward was merged with Wilshamstead to form a new Wixams & Wilstead ward which was won by the Conservatives. The only Lib Dem councillor in the constituency was elected in Wootton & Kempston Rural which is only partially in the new seat (Kempston Rural together with Stagsden and Turvey are moved from this seat to North Bedfordshire) and where representation was shared with the Conservatives who topped the poll. Overall, the Bedford borough section of the seat was and is fairly closely fought between Conservatives and Lib Dems in local elections, with Labour not much of a presence, but the demographics suggest this would have been one of the better Labour areas in the by-election.
If we accept that this seat in this form has existed since 1997, there have been two Conservative MPs for most of its existence – Jonathan Sayeed (who had lost his Bristol seat in 1992) from 1997 to 2005 and then Nadine Dorries – a former nurse from Liverpool who attracted unusual levels of opprobrium from her political opponents. She did herself few favours with the protracted nature of her departure and this no doubt contributed to the spectacularly poor performance of the Conservatives in the eventual by-election.
This is now an open seat with Alistair Strathern seeking election next door in Hitchin and in all likelihood and barring a far more catastrophic landslide than occurred in 1997, this will return to the Conservative fold. But the effects of by-elections do carry over to general elections, Labour have shown they can win in this unlikeliest of seats and there was still a sizeable Lib Dem vote which is up for grabs now that they’ve shown they can’t. The next general election result here may turn out to be as interesting in its own way as that of the by-election.
Thus, the talking heads commenting on the by-election could talk of a constituency which the Conservatives had not lost for 80 years and never won by Labour. All that was true, but there’s a strong argument to be made that this was a new seat in 1997, when Bedfordshire gained an extra, sixth seat. Before that year, the largest towns in the Mid Bedfordshire constituency were Biggleswade and Sandy on the A1 and Kempston on the edge of Bedford – none of which are now in this seat.
The largest town in the current seat is Flitwick, mid-way between Luton and Bedford – and that was in Luton North prior to 1997.
The only significant town the pre- and post-97 Mid Beds seats have in common is Ampthill, and the word ‘significant’ is doing some heavy lifting here (it is though the only town in this constituency which was an urban district before the local government reforms of the 1970s).
Only a little over a third of the electorate of the old Mid Beds came into this seat, with far more (though still less than half) going to the ‘new’ North East Bedfordshire (which is therefore the true successor seat to the old Mid Beds). Only a bare majority – 50.4% - of the electorate of this seat came from the old Mid Bedfordshire with almost as many coming in from Luton North and South West Bedfordshire. The figure will be even lower on the new boundaries as all the departing areas have their origin in that seat and over 15,000 depart as this seat was heavily oversized. That said, Flitwick and all the areas which came in from SW Beds had been in the Mid Beds seat prior to 1983 so there is a certain continuity with the seat which existed before then.
As the above paragraphs indicate, this is not a constituency based on any large town, but it is not a far-flung rural seat either. Rather this compact seat, which borders Luton, Bedford and Milton Keynes, is a collection of expanded (and expanding) commuterised villages. Flitwick epitomises the seat in many ways, having been a small village which grew hugely in the post-war years and has continued to in recent years – a new town in many respects, with a rather soulless town centre to match.
Flitwick and Ampthill are so close to each other that their suburbs run into one another and together form a ‘conurbation’ with a population of over 20,000 (Maulden could arguably be included here), bang in the centre of the seat.
It has a railway station on the Thameslink line, linking it to Bedford and Luton and beyond to London, making it attractive to commuters to all these places. Flitwick does have some of the more relatively downmarket parts of this constituency, particularly in the East and Labour have been able to win council seats here in the distant past. Recent local election results have been skewed by a dominance of Independents locally, but Flitwick will have played a major part in delivering Labour’s by-election victory. Ampthill is a much older town with an attractive town centre and generally more upmarket than Flitwick. Ampthill was an area of quite deep-seated Lib Dem strength though this has faded since the coalition – they last won a seat here in 2007 and in the most recent local elections, a Green was elected alongside two Independents in the ward covering the town (which also includes Maulden and Clophill).
The remainder of the council seats in the Central Bedfordshire part of the seat are all held by Conservatives and Independents, with the latter dominant as of 2023. There are no Labour councillors at all in the wards wholly within this seat and they were not even very close to winning any – the closest they came was in Shefford, another expanded village in the East of the constituency, but that is part of the area being removed to Hitchin and that has significance for the general election prospects here. This is not so much because it is a relatively strong Labour area, but because it is the home area of the by-election victor Alistair Strathern, and he is following it to contest Hitchin at the next election, depriving Labour of an element of incumbency bonus here.
The most upmarket part of the seat is probably the Western edge, along the Buckinghamshire border, South and West of the M1 – Woburn famous for its Abbey and Safari Park and Aspley Guise which blends into Woburn Sands across the county boundary and is an upmarket dormitory for Milton Keynes. Further North is Cranfield, home of its eponymous University. Some of the wards here are large and Cranfield shares a ward with Marston Moretaine and other villages in the former brickmaking area of the Marston Vale – Lidlington and Millbrook.
The brickmaking belt spills over into the Bedford borough part of the constituency where it is even more influential. This area includes Wootton and Stewartby – a model village developed by the London Brick Company. Stewartby was at one time the largest producer of bricks in the world. The brickworks is closed now but while it is not heavily in evidence in local elections, there remains a residual Labour vote in the Marston Vale which must have played its part in Labour’s victory.
There are some affluent villages to the East of Flitwick-Ampthill such as Silsoe near Wrest Park and Shillington, but this Eastern part of the seat is much diminished by the boundary changes which remove not only Shefford but the military (RAF) area around Chicksands, Meppershall and Henlow Camp.
In the far South of the seat, bordering Luton is an area which was in South Bedfordshire district before that was merged into Central Bedfordshire. The largest settlement here is Barton-le-Clay – a former Lib Dem stronghold in local elections where like Ampthill they have fallen away since 2011. They were similarly strong in Streatley and Harlington (which was in the old Mid Beds district). Streatley parish includes part of the large new estate of Bushmeads on the edge of Luton, but otherwise these areas are genuinely rural, despite the proximity to Luton. Streatley and Harlington now form part of the enlarged Toddington ward. Toddington is best known for its Motorway service station on the M1. Unlike the rest of the ward, Toddington itself is to the West of the M1 and has had some Labour tendencies. The old (smaller) Toddington ward was one of the few in this constituency where Labour was able to win in a good year (in their very best year of 1995, they won seats also in Flitwick, Ampthill, Maulden, Marston, Shefford and Shillington).
Bedford borough contributes around a fifth of the electorate in the form of the Elstow & Stewartby, Wilshamstead and Wootton wards which have a somewhat different character to the rest of the constituency. Notwithstanding the brickmaking heritage in Stewartby (which is on the periphery), this is now a quite heavily built-up area close to Bedford. Elstow indeed includes areas which are physically part of Bedford, North of the A421.
Much of the rest of the area consists of newly built estates of mixed tenure – there are some very high levels of shared ownership in some of the output areas here. Wootton typifies the area as an old village with some brickmaking history but which is now rather dominated by modern estates. The Wilshamstead ward was dominated by the large new settlement of Wixams.
Bedford exerts much more influence here than Luton does on the equivalent area in the South and consequently there is a substantial non-white population – about 20% overall and particularly high in Elstow where it blends into the very diverse and safely Labour Cauldwell ward of Bedford. Elstow & Stewartby is on most measures the most downmarket ward within this constituency with by some way the highest proportion of routine workers and the lowest proportion of graduates, the highest proportion of social housing (though not especially high) and of both Black and Asian residents.
The combination of rather downmarket Bedford suburbs with the brickmaking heritage of Stewartby might be thought to provide a solid basis for a Labour vote and most likely did in the by-election. It was not much in evidence in local elections though and Elstow & Stewartby was a Lib Dem stronghold where they won almost 80% of the vote in 2019. In 2023 however the ward was merged with Wilshamstead to form a new Wixams & Wilstead ward which was won by the Conservatives. The only Lib Dem councillor in the constituency was elected in Wootton & Kempston Rural which is only partially in the new seat (Kempston Rural together with Stagsden and Turvey are moved from this seat to North Bedfordshire) and where representation was shared with the Conservatives who topped the poll. Overall, the Bedford borough section of the seat was and is fairly closely fought between Conservatives and Lib Dems in local elections, with Labour not much of a presence, but the demographics suggest this would have been one of the better Labour areas in the by-election.
If we accept that this seat in this form has existed since 1997, there have been two Conservative MPs for most of its existence – Jonathan Sayeed (who had lost his Bristol seat in 1992) from 1997 to 2005 and then Nadine Dorries – a former nurse from Liverpool who attracted unusual levels of opprobrium from her political opponents. She did herself few favours with the protracted nature of her departure and this no doubt contributed to the spectacularly poor performance of the Conservatives in the eventual by-election.
This is now an open seat with Alistair Strathern seeking election next door in Hitchin and in all likelihood and barring a far more catastrophic landslide than occurred in 1997, this will return to the Conservative fold. But the effects of by-elections do carry over to general elections, Labour have shown they can win in this unlikeliest of seats and there was still a sizeable Lib Dem vote which is up for grabs now that they’ve shown they can’t. The next general election result here may turn out to be as interesting in its own way as that of the by-election.
