North West Essex

[eastmidlandsright]

Jul 27, 2024 9:10:08 GMT batman said:

I am too. There is normally no Labour presence in this constituency. It's remarkable that we got well over 16,000 votes & such a strong second place.

It isn't that remarkable. There was a massive "anti Conservative" vote up for grabs in this election and where there was no obvious alternative contender a lot of this went to the Labour Party by default.

The result does however indicate that Badenoch is not as popular as her starry eyed supporters seem to think.

[Pete Whitehead]

I think the increase in the Labour share here (17%) was their largest in England

[eastmidlandsright]

Jul 27, 2024 11:21:23 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

I think the increase in the Labour share here (17%) was their largest in England

It looks pretty likely that the controversy surrounding the Reform candidate helped Labour quite a bit. 

[Pete Whitehead]

Jul 27, 2024 11:35:38 GMT eastmidlandsright said:

Jul 27, 2024 11:21:23 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

I think the increase in the Labour share here (17%) was their largest in England

It looks pretty likely that the controversy surrounding the Reform candidate helped Labour quite a bit. 

I'm not sure it made that much difference. The Reform vote is not that much lower than you'd expect it to be in this seat and those who were intending to vote Reform but decided not to because of the 'controversy' would be just as likely to have gone Conservative as Labour. The more important factor seems to have been a substantial squeeze put on the Lib Dem vote which was much greater than in most comparable seats

[eastmidlandsright]

Jul 27, 2024 12:04:32 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Jul 27, 2024 11:35:38 GMT eastmidlandsright said:

It looks pretty likely that the controversy surrounding the Reform candidate helped Labour quite a bit. 

I'm not sure it made that much difference. The Reform vote is not that much lower than you'd expect it to be in this seat and those who were intending to vote Reform but decided not to because of the 'controversy' would be just as likely to have gone Conservative as Labour. The more important factor seems to have been a substantial squeeze put on the Lib Dem vote which was much greater than in most comparable seats

I agree about the squeezing of the Lib Dem vote, and obviously there were likely several factors that led to Labour's good result, but I don't accept that 14% for Reform is "not that much lower than you'd expect" being no different to what UKIP got in 2015. Furthermore they got just shy of 20% in Witham and I would have expected them to be no more than a couple of points behind that in the this seat. While I wouldn't really have expected a Reform underperformance to have benefitted Labour the numbers suggest to me that it probably did. I can understand why Lab/Reform wavering voters might have been more bothered by the controversy than Con/Reform wavering voters. 

[heslingtonian]

Perhaps Conservative MPs and Party members may like to consider why Kemi Badenoch attracted such a large tactical vote against her in her own previously ultra-Conservative constituency before they go and elect her as their next Leader.

Anecdotally I've heard from several people in the local area (some of whom are Conservative supporters) that she's a largely absent constituency MP.

[cathyc]

Jul 27, 2024 12:34:14 GMT eastmidlandsright said:

Jul 27, 2024 12:04:32 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

I'm not sure it made that much difference. The Reform vote is not that much lower than you'd expect it to be in this seat and those who were intending to vote Reform but decided not to because of the 'controversy' would be just as likely to have gone Conservative as Labour. The more important factor seems to have been a substantial squeeze put on the Lib Dem vote which was much greater than in most comparable seats

I agree about the squeezing of the Lib Dem vote, and obviously there were likely several factors that led to Labour's good result, but I don't accept that 14% for Reform is "not that much lower than you'd expect" being no different to what UKIP got in 2015. Furthermore they got just shy of 20% in Witham and I would have expected them to be no more than a couple of points behind that in the this seat. While I wouldn't really have expected a Reform underperformance to have benefitted Labour the numbers suggest to me that it probably did. I can understand why Lab/Reform wavering voters might have been more bothered by the controversy than Con/Reform wavering voters. 

So can I.  But he was dropped by Reform UK Ltd when it was shown that he had previously endorsed the BNP.  The only 'controversy' (but not surprise) being that he was chosen in the first place.

[Andrew_S]

Jul 27, 2024 9:10:08 GMT batman said:

I am too. There is normally no Labour presence in this constituency. It's remarkable that we got well over 16,000 votes & such a strong second place.

Labour registered their highest increase in votes outside Scotland in this constituency: 9,134.

11 Scottish seats had larger increases. In percentage terms it had the 5th highest outside Scotland, behind Hitchin, Exmouth, Aldershot, and Finchley.

[nyx]

It has only just struck me how truly bizarre the result was here. It is worth comparing the electoral history of Saffron Walden to that of Chichester as the two constituencies are actually near-identical: they both voted to leave the EU by 51% to 49%, the top three candidates in each constituency have been the same all the way back to 1964 (!) - 2019 Con, LD, Lab in that order; 2017 Con, Lab, LD in that order; 2015 Con, UKIP, Lab in that order; 2010 Con, LD, Lab in that order, and so on... with fairly similar margins in each case.

Both constituencies have no Labour local election presence but mostly just Conservatives, Lib Dems, and independents.

Under the new boundaries, the notional 2019 result in Chichester was Con 58.8%, LD 20.3%, Lab 15.4%. The notional result in North West Essex was Con 61.7%, LD 19.7%, Lab 13.8%. Conservatives marginally stronger, Labour marginally weaker, but close to identical. Both constituencies had high-profile Conservative MPs.

Chichester: as you'd expect, the Lib Dems put up a local councillor as a candidate, squeeze the third-place Labour vote, and win.

North West Essex: the Lib Dems put up a local councillor as a candidate, try to squeeze the third-place Labour vote, and... drop half of their votes, come in fourth place, whilst Labour's 21-year-old candidate from Suffolk brings the party from nowhere to nearly winning the seat? Despite Labour's directing of resources away from non-priority seats.

This was one of only ten constituencies nationally in which the Lib Dems finished second to the Conservatives in 2019 and at least 5% ahead of Labour, but did not win this year. The others being Godalming and Ash, Farnham and Bordon, Romsey and Southampton North, East Hampshire, North Dorset, East Hampshire, East Surrey, East Grinstead and Uckfield, and Sevenoaks. In most of those, they came a strong second place this year.

Was Issy Waite an unusually outstanding campaigner, Smita Rajesh unusually poor, or both? Or some other explanation?

[sanders]

Jul 27, 2024 12:50:46 GMT heslingtonian said:

Anecdotally I've heard from several people in the local area (some of whom are Conservative supporters) that she's a largely absent constituency MP.

Well she was in the cabinet. I don't think this AWOL constituency MP attack line holds water really. We vote for 'Presidents' it seems, for better or for worse. The Lib Dems obsesses over absenteeism as they see it, but when they get in it feels like all they do is stop things happening anyway - I'm thinking about housebuilding. I have three Lib Dem Councillors in a ward that's only returned Lib Dems since 2002 (I only hear from them when they want my vote, I'm afraid to say). Sorry if that sounds hypocritical as a Green Party member. 

[Tony Otim]

Sept 6, 2024 6:21:01 GMT nyx said:

It has only just struck me how truly bizarre the result was here. It is worth comparing the electoral history of Saffron Walden to that of Chichester as the two constituencies are actually near-identical: they both voted to leave the EU by 51% to 49%, the top three candidates in each constituency have been the same all the way back to 1964 (!) - 2019 Con, LD, Lab in that order; 2017 Con, Lab, LD in that order; 2015 Con, UKIP, Lab in that order; 2010 Con, LD, Lab in that order, and so on... with fairly similar margins in each case.

Both constituencies have no Labour local election presence but mostly just Conservatives, Lib Dems, and independents.

Under the new boundaries, the notional 2019 result in Chichester was Con 58.8%, LD 20.3%, Lab 15.4%. The notional result in North West Essex was Con 61.7%, LD 19.7%, Lab 13.8%. Conservatives marginally stronger, Labour marginally weaker, but close to identical. Both constituencies had high-profile Conservative MPs.

Chichester: as you'd expect, the Lib Dems put up a local councillor as a candidate, squeeze the third-place Labour vote, and win.

North West Essex: the Lib Dems put up a local councillor as a candidate, try to squeeze the third-place Labour vote, and... drop half of their votes, come in fourth place, whilst Labour's 21-year-old candidate from Suffolk brings the party from nowhere to nearly winning the seat? Despite Labour's directing of resources away from non-priority seats.

This was one of only ten constituencies nationally in which the Lib Dems finished second to the Conservatives in 2019 and at least 5% ahead of Labour, but did not win this year. The others being Godalming and Ash, Farnham and Bordon, Romsey and Southampton North, East Hampshire, North Dorset, East Hampshire, East Surrey, East Grinstead and Uckfield, and Sevenoaks. In most of those, they came a strong second place this year.

Was Issy Waite an unusually outstanding campaigner, Smita Rajesh unusually poor, or both? Or some other explanation?

There is a huge difference in Lib Dem local strength in Chichester (gained overall control in 2023) and Uttlesford (dominated by residents, Lib Dems lost seats in 2023) which will have had a major influence on targetting and resources given to the 2 seats.

[sanders]

This seat has an awful name. Compass point, county - seriously, that's it?

[matureleft]

Sept 6, 2024 6:21:01 GMT nyx said:

It has only just struck me how truly bizarre the result was here. It is worth comparing the electoral history of Saffron Walden to that of Chichester as the two constituencies are actually near-identical: they both voted to leave the EU by 51% to 49%, the top three candidates in each constituency have been the same all the way back to 1964 (!) - 2019 Con, LD, Lab in that order; 2017 Con, Lab, LD in that order; 2015 Con, UKIP, Lab in that order; 2010 Con, LD, Lab in that order, and so on... with fairly similar margins in each case.

Both constituencies have no Labour local election presence but mostly just Conservatives, Lib Dems, and independents.

Under the new boundaries, the notional 2019 result in Chichester was Con 58.8%, LD 20.3%, Lab 15.4%. The notional result in North West Essex was Con 61.7%, LD 19.7%, Lab 13.8%. Conservatives marginally stronger, Labour marginally weaker, but close to identical. Both constituencies had high-profile Conservative MPs.

Chichester: as you'd expect, the Lib Dems put up a local councillor as a candidate, squeeze the third-place Labour vote, and win.

North West Essex: the Lib Dems put up a local councillor as a candidate, try to squeeze the third-place Labour vote, and... drop half of their votes, come in fourth place, whilst Labour's 21-year-old candidate from Suffolk brings the party from nowhere to nearly winning the seat? Despite Labour's directing of resources away from non-priority seats.

This was one of only ten constituencies nationally in which the Lib Dems finished second to the Conservatives in 2019 and at least 5% ahead of Labour, but did not win this year. The others being Godalming and Ash, Farnham and Bordon, Romsey and Southampton North, East Hampshire, North Dorset, East Hampshire, East Surrey, East Grinstead and Uckfield, and Sevenoaks. In most of those, they came a strong second place this year.

Was Issy Waite an unusually outstanding campaigner, Smita Rajesh unusually poor, or both? Or some other explanation?

One of our Lib Dem team may be able to help on this. Chichester was certainly a target seat with a careful candidate selection and early and very obvious commitment of resources - expensive literature delivered regularly. Was this seat ever a target? The signs weren’t as good - in Chichester local government results had shown Lib Dem strength verging on dominance. The notional results suggested a somewhat tougher task here.

But it’s quite hard to visualise where such a large Labour vote came from. It’s the kind of area with a lot of what I’d describe as ‘pained’ Tories. Truss and Johnson would have caused some discomfort. There would be quite a few Tory Remainers who had stuck with the party in 2019 because of the perceived Corbyn alternative. But their normal home would be with a Lib Dem. 

I presume that Labour did indeed initially instruct campaigners to go elsewhere. In some cases those instructions were backed with sanctions - denying use of campaign tools for example. But it’s possible that as the campaign went on, if there was a weak Reform and Lib Dem effort, the temptation would be to let the local team get on with it and see what happened? 

[ricmk]

It's a really interesting comparison with Chichester. This seat (NW Essex) was never on any Lib Dem radar as far as I can tell. It's the sort of seat that clearly had some potential, but I think the local results here just didn't indicate the local party had the strength to run a serious parliamentary effort. And I wonder if the simple emergence of the Residents group was a sign that the local Lib Dems weren't building enough bridges into the community (but note also that Guildford has the same issue and won comfortably.)

And as we saw, Lib Dem results were spectacularly good when a seat was targetted, and spectacularly bad when it wasn't, with precious little in-between. The days when the Lib Dems are getting 20% of the vote off a freepost in some places aren't coming back.

[batman]

This seat is, other than it is Conservative-held and pretty much always has been, distinctly dissimilar to most, I'd say pretty much all, of the other Essex seats. The rest of Essex looks to London, Chelmsford, Southend or Colchester as regional centres, but here much of the population looks to Cambridge which is not far away. The Conservatism, despite Badenoch now being the MP, has always tended to be softer & more centrist than in much of Essex, as befits a constituency whose MPs have included Rab Butler & Sir Alan Haselhurst. That however does not on its own explain the collapse of the LD vote & the surge in Labour's. There may be a Cambridge exurb effect in favour of Labour but that was absent in S Cambridgeshire in between, so that would be a fairly lazy explanation. It is hard to explain where it all came from, although there is Labour potential in Saffron Walden to some extent, and possibly at a pinch Takeley & bits of Great Dunmow. If Labour is still ahead in the polls at the next election, they may well be tempted to have a serious pop here, especially if Badenoch is the Tory leader. It's a toughie to understand, for sure.

[batman]

I should perhaps add that in the fairly dim & distant past Labour were relatively close to winning the Saffron Walden constituency, but that was in the days when there was particularly in East Anglia a strong farmworkers' vote for the party. This is of course not a serious factor nowadays, although Labour has won in some extraordinarily rural constituencies this year.

[Pete Whitehead]

Sept 6, 2024 8:32:13 GMT batman said:

I should perhaps add that in the fairly dim & distant past Labour were relatively close to winning the Saffron Walden constituency, but that was in the days when there was particularly in East Anglia a strong farmworkers' vote for the party. This is of course not a serious factor nowadays, although Labour has won in some extraordinarily rural constituencies this year.

Back then of course it also included the Halstead area which is (was) quite strong for Labour and did include, as you say some fairly left wing rural areas like Bumpstead and Yeldham (which famously elected a Communist councillor in the 1960s). Apart from in Saffron Walden itself, Labour would have tended to be weaker in the 'Uttlesford' part of the seat.

[The Bishop]

Sept 6, 2024 7:10:30 GMT sanders said:

This seat has an awful name. Compass point, county - seriously, that's it?

Hard to disagree given that Saffron Walden has such a long pedigree as a constituency name.

[john07]

Jul 27, 2024 12:50:46 GMT heslingtonian said:

Perhaps Conservative MPs and Party members may like to consider why Kemi Badenoch attracted such a large tactical vote against her in her own previously ultra-Conservative constituency before they go and elect her as their next Leader.

Anecdotally I've heard from several people in the local area (some of whom are Conservative supporters) that she's a largely absent constituency MP.

How does that compare to the backlash against Liz Truss?

[nyx]

Sept 6, 2024 8:19:38 GMT ricmk said:

It's a really interesting comparison with Chichester. This seat (NW Essex) was never on any Lib Dem radar as far as I can tell. It's the sort of seat that clearly had some potential, but I think the local results here just didn't indicate the local party had the strength to run a serious parliamentary effort. And I wonder if the simple emergence of the Residents group was a sign that the local Lib Dems weren't building enough bridges into the community (but note also that Guildford has the same issue and won comfortably.)

And as we saw, Lib Dem results were spectacularly good when a seat was targetted, and spectacularly bad when it wasn't, with precious little in-between. The days when the Lib Dems are getting 20% of the vote off a freepost in some places aren't coming back.

Even for other seats not on the Lib Dem radar, they didn't do as poorly as this.

I've just made a scatter plot of Labour lead over Lib Dems in every constituency in England, 2019 on x-axis and 2024 on y-axis, and NW Essex does stand out significantly. Clearly somehow Labour managed to portray themselves as the main challengers- I'm not quite sure how they managed as successfully as they did, more so than elsewhere in the country.