Chipping Barnet

[stb12]

Chipping Barnet

[Pete Whitehead]

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2019 result

Theresa Villers	Con	25745	44.7%
Emma Whysall	Lab	24533	42.6%
Isabelle Parasram	LD	5932	10.3%
Gabrielle Bailey	Grn	1288	2.2%
John Sheffield	Oth	71	0.1%
Majority		1212	2.1%

2019 Notional result on new boundaries (Thrasher & Rallings)

Con	27777	47.5%
Lab	23568	40.3%
LD	5745	9.8%
Grn	1261	2.2%
Oth	71	0.1%
Majority	4209	7.2%

Ward map boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/london/London_122_Chipping%20Barnet_Landscape.pdf

Feb 14, 2024 19:25:57 GMT Robert Waller said:

2021 Census, new boundaries

Age 65+ 17.0% 374/575
Owner occupied 65.4% 305/575
Private rented 23.4% 137/575
Social rented 11.2% 468/575
White 63.4% 488/575
Black 6.3% 109/575
Asian 16.9% 79/575
Jewish 9.7% 6/575
Managerial & professional 42.8% 72/575
Routine & Semi-routine 13.4% 549/575
Degree level 48.6% 42/575
No qualifications 14.2% 457/575
Students 7.5% 170/575



Boundary Changes
Chipping Barnet consists of
84.7% of Chipping Barnet
11.8% of Hendon
0.3% of Finchley & Golders Green

Candidates:

Conservative - Theresa Villiers (incumbent)
Labour - Dan Tomlinson
Lib Dem - TBA
Reform UK - Hamish Haddow
Green - David Farbey

[Pete Whitehead]

Notional results since 1945. The 2019 result is the 'official' (Thrasher & Rallings) notional - the others are my own work

	Con	Lab	Lib
1945	47.3%	40.4%	12.3%
1950	57.8%	30.2%	11.9%
1951	61.5%	30.4%	8.1%
1955	64.6%	33.0%	2.4%
1959	66.9%	29.5%	3.7%
1964	53.4%	26.0%	20.6%
1966	52.4%	30.7%	16.9%

	Con	Lab	Lib/LD	NF/BNP
1970	58.4%	28.6%	13.0%
1974	49.2%	25.5%	25.2%
1974	49.2%	27.7%	20.7%	2.4%
1979	58.7%	24.7%	14.9%	1.7%
1983	57.0%	15.9%	25.5%
1987	59.1%	18.8%	22.0%
1992	57.5%	25.9%	15.5%

	Con	Lab	LD	Ref/UKIP/ BXP	Green
1997	43.0%	41.1%	12.2%	2.4%
2001	45.7%	40.8%	13.3%
2005	46.3%	33.4%	15.3%	2.1%	2.8%
2010	49.9%	25.4%	19.1%	2.8%	1.9%
2015	50.4%	33.0%	4.3%	7.8%	4.3%
2017	48.4%	43.8%	5.3%		2.3%
2019	47.5%	40.3%	9.8%		2.2%

[greatkingrat]

Mark DURRANT (Liberal Democrats)
David FARBEY (Green Party Candidate)
Hamish HADDOW (Reform UK)
Richard HEWISON (Rejoin EU)
Kay LAUER (Independent)
Dan TOMLINSON (Labour Party)
Theresa VILLIERS (The Conservative Party Candidate)

Kay Lauer stood in Mill Hill ward in 2022 for the Women's Equality Party.

www.barnet.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2024-06/Statement%20of%20Persons%20Nominated%20%E2%80%93%20Chipping%20Barnet%20Constituency_0.pdf

[heslingtonian]

Given the unexpected narrowness of this result (Labour majority of under 3k) I wonder if Theresa Villiers might be tempted to stand again to try to win this back in 2028?

Worth noting that since this seat was created in February 1974, the Conservative vote has always been between a high in 2015 of 25,759 and this year's low of 18,671. That feels remarkably stable given that's 50 years of elections between three very different MPs in Maudling, Chapman and Villiers and at a time when Conservative fortunes in Greater London have declined markedly.

[Peter Wilkinson]

Jul 23, 2024 18:17:53 GMT heslingtonian said:

Given the unexpected narrowness of this result (Labour majority of under 3k) I wonder if Theresa Villiers might be tempted to stand again to try to win this back in 2028?

Worth noting that since this seat was created in February 1974, the Conservative vote has always been between a high in 2015 of 25,759 and this year's low of 18,671. That feels remarkably stable given that's 50 years of elections between three very different MPs in Maudling, Chapman and Villiers and at a time when Conservative fortunes in Greater London have declined markedly.

Though worth noting also that the 50 years of elections have been on four sets of boundaries which, while heavily overlapping, have enclosed very different total areas. Maudling in October 1974 won comfortably with less than a thousand more votes than Villiers got in her 2024 defeat, and Villiers' record total in 2015 was less than 200 more than Chapman's total in 1979 - but, in percentage terms, Villiers' 2015 total was only a bit over 1% higher than Maudling's October 1974 total and over 8% lower than Chapman in 1979.

The reason is that Chipping Barnet between 1979 and 1997 was a lot smaller than it has been more recently - indeed, from 1983, it had one of the lowest electorates in London. Compared with the present constituency, it excluded almost all of Edgwarebury ward, most of Whetstone and what is now the Millbrook Park estate (then the Inglis barracks) in Totteridge and Woodside, only compensated for by a few streets now at the northern end of Woodhouse (in Finchley and Golders Green) - all in all, equivalent to 20% or so of the current constituency by electorate.

The 1997 boundary revisions added a normally fairly safe Conservative ward and should, I think, have made the constituency very marginally more Conservative - however, as Pete Whitehead 's notionals above make rather clear, this was totally swamped by the 1997 national swing to Labour, which more or less remained in place in 2001 and 2005. Then, the other way round, the 2010 boundary revisions added a strongly Labour area (and some more neutral territory) to the constituency - but in an election where there was a pronounced national swing to the Conservatives (even if less in London than elsewhere). And even if the revisions added more Labour voters than Conservative ones to Chipping Barnet, it still did add Conservative ones. So, in thw 2010s, Villiers was able to get votes numerically much the same as Chapman between 1979 and 1992 - but in a constituency that was now about 25% larger, and with vote percentages more closely resembling those of Maudling in the 1974 elections.

The 2024 boundary revisions should have advantaged the Conservatives - it effectively (as Villiers and/or some of her close supporters had evidently realised during the boundary review) removed the Labour area that Chipping Barnet had gained in 2010, replacing it by slightly smaller historically Conservative areas. If this had been an election similar to those of the 2010s, Villiers might have expected to get as many votes as in those elections. As it was, looking at Pete Whitehead 's notional figures, this was not one of Labour's best constituencies - it got (notionally) slightly more votes than in 2019 but slightly fewer than in 2017, not quite enough by itself to win. However, in a version of Chipping Barnet which should notionally have apparently been slightly more Conservative than the 1974 version, Villiers lost enough votes not only to get the numerically lowest Conservative vote in Chipping Barnet history but also substantially the lowest Conservative percentage. The main factor looks to have been the presence of the Reform candidate - but the Reform vote was low by national standards (though high by conparison with central London and in line with other areas of outer London), and seems unlikely to have consisted only of voters who would otherwise have gone out voted Conservative.

In short, the reason why the Conservative vote has generally looked relatively numerically stable over the history of Chipping Barnet looks not to be because it has resisted the general decline of Conservative fortunes in London but because the enlargement of Chipping Barnet from 1997 onwards fairly exactly balanced out against this decline (at least in numerical terms of Conservative votes).

Finally, the result was certainly close enough for Villiers to be rationally able to feel that she could win the seat back again in 2028, should the local Conservative Association or the national Conservative party agree to her making the attempt. However, voters not behaving like automata, she would be unlikely to manage this simply by attracting 2024 Reform voters - she would have in practice have to count on national or local factors decreasing Labour support