York Outer

[stb12]

York Outer

[YL]

Almanac profile

Candidates

Darren Borrows (Ind)
Luke Charters (Lab)
John Crispin-Bailey (Reform UK)
David Eadington (Yorkshire Party)
Keith Hayden (Ind)
Andrew Hollyer (Lib Dem)
Mike Kearney (Green)
Hal Mayne (Ind)
Julian Sturdy* (Con)

[YL]

www.york.gov.uk/2024elections#sopn

9 candidates here. York seems to be a hotbed of Independents.

[right]

Time travel candidate Darren Borrows

electionleaflets.org/leaflets/19749/

[greenhert]

Could the Conservatives drop from 1st to 3rd here? Whilst Labour is best positioned to benefit from tactical anti-Conservative votes here this seat's demographics are naturally quite favourable to the Liberal Democrats.

[steve]

Jun 23, 2024 18:22:46 GMT greenhert said:

Could the Conservatives drop from 1st to 3rd here? Whilst Labour is best positioned to benefit from tactical anti-Conservative votes here this seat's demographics are naturally quite favourable to the Liberal Democrats.

It was a Lib Dem target as a newly created seat back in 2010 and they came up short by about 3.5K votes. They got coalitioned - the opposite of tangoed - in 2015 and it's given Labour the chance to step in. In answer to your question I imagine it's possible given the polls and the enduring strength of the Lib Dems at a local level but it depends how many of their supporters vote tactically to remove the incumbent and the impact of Reform on the Conservative vote of course.

[steve]

Jun 22, 2024 21:35:04 GMT right said:

Time travel candidate Darren Borrows

electionleaflets.org/leaflets/19749/

Did he win? It would be useful to know before I vote on the outcome here.

[right]

Jun 24, 2024 0:40:08 GMT steve said:

Jun 22, 2024 21:35:04 GMT right said:

Time travel candidate Darren Borrows

electionleaflets.org/leaflets/19749/

Did he win? It would be useful to know before I vote on the outcome here.

Definitely the best independent candidate yet. I've been complaining about how content free they are, and that would certainly not be fair about him

[Deleted]

Prediction 

LAB 46
CON 24
LD 22
GRN 4
REF 3
OTH 1

The Tories will struggle to win this back (and yes, this was notionally Lib Dem before 2010 like Oxford East, IIR). 

[steve]

Jun 24, 2024 4:30:35 GMT @weld said:

Prediction 

LAB 46
CON 24
LD 22
GRN 4
REF 3
OTH 1

The Tories will struggle to win this back (and yes, this was notionally Lib Dem before 2010 like Oxford East, IIR). 

This seat has the potential to be a Lab/Lib Dems contest in 2028/29, although who knows what our politics will be like by then given what may occur in July.

[YL]

This was one of Labour's more impressive gains, with their vote share up 15.4 percentage points and a majority not far short of 10,000.

It's also now the least deprived Labour seat.

[matureleft]

Jul 9, 2024 7:07:43 GMT YL said:

This was one of Labour's more impressive gains, with their vote share up 15.4 percentage points and a majority not far short of 10,000.

It's also now the least deprived Labour seat.

Yes, staggering, and another of the seats where Reform intervention didn’t alter the result but merely increased the Labour majority.  

Seats like this illustrate the choice of strategy that must be made by the Tories. Go for the Reform voters and their agenda or pursue a more centre-right approach (but with some evidence of competence). 

[Deleted]

Jul 9, 2024 7:39:14 GMT matureleft said:

Jul 9, 2024 7:07:43 GMT YL said:

This was one of Labour's more impressive gains, with their vote share up 15.4 percentage points and a majority not far short of 10,000.

It's also now the least deprived Labour seat.

Yes, staggering, and another of the seats where Reform intervention didn’t alter the result but merely increased the Labour majority.  

Seats like this illustrate the choice of strategy that must be made by the Tories. Go for the Reform voters and their agenda or pursue a more centre-right approach (but with some evidence of competence). 

Not at all staggering. I wish people woiuld this again before being shocked by this and that, or staged by x, y, z result. This seat is doianted by well-payed public sector professionals at York Uni and York St John uni (the later has grown exponentially in recent times and a look at all the students in the city proves that. The days when York had a thriving private sector (Fry's, Rowntree's, Terry's) are long gone and the old factories in York are all yuppy apartments (my grandad worked at Rowntrees 1955 - 88)

[matureleft]

Jul 9, 2024 7:47:05 GMT @weld said:

Jul 9, 2024 7:39:14 GMT matureleft said:

Yes, staggering, and another of the seats where Reform intervention didn’t alter the result but merely increased the Labour majority.  

Seats like this illustrate the choice of strategy that must be made by the Tories. Go for the Reform voters and their agenda or pursue a more centre-right approach (but with some evidence of competence). 

Not at all staggering. I wish people woiuld this again before being shocked by this and that, or staged by x, y, z result. This seat is doianted by well-payed public sector professionals at York Uni and York St John uni (the later has grown exponentially in recent times and a look at all the students in the city proves that. The days when York had a thriving private sector (Fry's, Rowntree's, Terry's) are long gone and the old factories in York are all yuppy apartments (my grandad worked at Rowntrees 1955 - 88)

I see. So that growth has happened in the last 5 years in spite of the tough time that universities have had? And they all live here? 

While chocolate is certainly less important than it was it hasn’t disappeared. And the place is HQ to a range of major private sector businesses. What you may be trying to say is there’s less manufacturing here than there was and the private sector is more centred on services (and corporate governance in its various forms) than it was. True, but this is scarcely unique to here.

I’ve heard this line before that a place is full of public service professionals now who all vote Labour. It’s facile and poorly argued.

First, has the squeeze on local government passed people by? They employ substantially fewer people than they did. Most other parts of the public sector (with a very qualified exception of parts of the NHS) have also suffered cuts. And universities (while this will be patchier) have not had an employment bonanza.

Secondly, private sector employment has altered nationwide (not just in a seat like this). We make less. Much of that change happened in the 1980s but it has continued. We have more service sector jobs at all levels. They remain private sector.

Thirdly, and most materially, it’s unclear why such changes must disadvantage the Tory party. I lived in Cambridge through a long period of change. The bit that puzzled me was why the Tory party seemed to alienate the highly educated (and often highly-paid) private sector workers migrating to the area. Surely a low-tax but liberal and internationalist offering would appeal? But that increasingly wasn’t what they got. 

[jamie]

Just clocked how clear the Labour victory was here. Given they won by almost 20% while having few wards that stand out as potential strongholds, it’s hard to actually identify a ward the Tories definitely won here.

[john07]

Aug 5, 2024 16:38:10 GMT jamie said:

Just clocked how clear the Labour victory was here. Given they won by almost 20% while having few wards that stand out as potential strongholds, it’s hard to actually identify a ward the Tories definitely won here.

I assume that the Inner/Outer split in York was an attempt to create one seat for the Tories. An East/West or North/South split would presumably more likely to produce two Labour seats in an average election.

[hullenedge]

Aug 5, 2024 16:48:36 GMT john07 said:

Aug 5, 2024 16:38:10 GMT jamie said:

Just clocked how clear the Labour victory was here. Given they won by almost 20% while having few wards that stand out as potential strongholds, it’s hard to actually identify a ward the Tories definitely won here.

I assume that the Inner/Outer split in York was an attempt to create one seat for the Tories. An East/West or North/South split would presumably more likely to produce two Labour seats in an average election.

Labour was content with the doughnut arrangement. York Outer was notionally Lib Dem in 2005 whereas Central was expected to be a reliable Labour seat. It was the Conservatives who argued for cake slices at every boundary review since 1976.

[YL]

I think both parties came up with counterproposals, but all I can find at the moment is the Commission's report, which briefly describes counterproposals but doesn't give details or say who proposed them. I think Labour wanted to maintain the arrangement where part of the York council area was in Selby constituency, and the Tories wanted York North and York South. The Tories carried the combined area of the two constituencies in both 2010 and 2015 so a different split might have given them two seats in those elections.

IMO given the rules they were operating to the Commission made essentially the right decision. Two seats within the UA was clearly called for by the "don't cross county boundaries" rule, and maintaining something close to the previous City of York constituency was justified under the "minimum change" and "local ties" rules. Hence the doughnut.

EDIT: I've now found the Assistant Commissioner's Report. The above is broadly correct, though it's true that once it was clear that Labour's initial preference to cross the York/North Yorkshire boundary would rejected they were happy with the doughnut.

Archive Commission page for York and North Yorkshire

[Pete Whitehead]

Aug 5, 2024 16:53:03 GMT hullenedge said:

Aug 5, 2024 16:48:36 GMT john07 said:

I assume that the Inner/Outer split in York was an attempt to create one seat for the Tories. An East/West or North/South split would presumably more likely to produce two Labour seats in an average election.

Labour was content with the doughnut arrangement. York Outer was notionally Lib Dem in 2005 whereas Central was expected to be a reliable Labour seat. It was the Conservatives who argued for cake slices at every boundary review since 1976.

Before 2010 the city of York constituency was coterminous with the local authority (although the boundaries were expanded in 1995, the 'new' 1997 constituencies were based on the old districts). I'm surprised if there was discussion as far back as 1976 about splitting the city and diluting both halves with what would have been parts of other districts. And while the Conservatives would certainly have benefited from that kind of arrangement, clearly they were able to win the City of York as was, as they 'should' have done in 1979 and did in 1983 and 1987.

[hullenedge]

Aug 5, 2024 18:27:34 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Aug 5, 2024 16:53:03 GMT hullenedge said:

Labour was content with the doughnut arrangement. York Outer was notionally Lib Dem in 2005 whereas Central was expected to be a reliable Labour seat. It was the Conservatives who argued for cake slices at every boundary review since 1976.

Before 2010 the city of York constituency was coterminous with the local authority (although the boundaries were expanded in 1995, the 'new' 1997 constituencies were based on the old districts). I'm surprised if there was discussion as far back as 1976 about splitting the city and diluting both halves with what would have been parts of other districts. And while the Conservatives would certainly have benefited from that kind of arrangement, clearly they were able to win the City of York as was, as they 'should' have done in 1979 and did in 1983 and 1987.

The original proposal for pre-83 was to lop Foxwood and Micklegate from the City and add them to Selby. This was not well received. The Tories proposed a York East/West. The constituency was left unchanged and Selby had an undersized electorate. York 87 sans those two wards would have voted Labour.