English local elections 2011

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In Chelmsley Wood, sure. It's a very, very strange place; really should have incorporated it into Brum in the 70s. But generally? Not convinced that central Brighton has much in common with (say) Becontree, Bentilee or Heckmondwike. Especially as the latter type don't seem quite so disaffected these days...

What's the story behind the Green gains in Solihull?  I know one of those wards (Chelmsley Wood) has voted BNP in the past; is it the only place to have voted both Green and BNP?

Solihull Labour made the error of becoming the junior partners to a LibDem-led administration in the borough, and so it seems that the Greens (an established receptacle for protest votes in Chelmsley Wood/Kingshurst for whatever reason: they have another councillor up for re-election next year) benefited as a direct result. The contrast with the rest of the conurbation is... er... noticeable.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Charlemont with Grove Vale, which was quite close (Tory majority 112).

Basically an affluent Birmingham suburb, though is technically part of West Brom. Don't think it's ever gone Labour before.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

although, Having lived in three of the ten wards in B&H with Green cllrs, there's plenty of patches here and there that aren't what you'd expect, some really horrid looking blocks and some blocks that look nice on the outside but are'nt so great once you get in the big doors

I wasn't thinking in terms of affluence and so on, so much as culture; much of Brighton is quite distinct from cultural norms and this shows up in a wide range of statistics (everything from religious identity to consumer habits), which makes it ideal territory for the Greens (or, frankly, for any other radical party outside the labourist - I'm using that word in a non-pejorative sense of course - and fabian norms of left wing electoral politics in Britain). Most of the places where the BNP was (ah... how nice to write...) strong are not like that; if there was a political tradition that went against Labour norms, then it was usually submerged working class Toryism.

But here's an interesting thought. Chemsley Wood is one of the places where the last of the Birmingham slummies were dumped (the other was Castle Vale) forty years ago. The parts of Birmingham where they lived had actually taken to voting for Liberal (in reality pseudo-fascist, but that's enough of that for now) candidates in City Council (and the entirely regrettable Ladywood by-election) elections as a protest vote of sorts. So protest voting there hasn't actually come out of nowhere.

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What's with the sig, btw?

As in what's in it, or is it not displaying properly?

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No, as in, are you a Sunderland fan or summat?

Oh yes. Very much so.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

not to put things too bluntly, but IME, a lot of  the "typical" bnp voters in the Barking, Epping Forest, Thurrock etc sort of area is the kind of working class tories who voted for Labour in 97  and 01 and read the Sun, tarring with a fairly broad broad brush there

I think there's some truth to that, yeah. Though Barking would be a little different, as Becontree was always (and is again, etc) solidly Labour in local elections.

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Pretty much everywhere in the Romford constituency is middle class suburbia, even if no one there has a degree. Which is bizarre, but quite normal for Essex for reasons that I've never entirely understood.

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Chelmsley Wood is very weird, so the alternative explanation is more likely

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Interesting, so how'd that come about (presumably you're not from there)?

To cut a long story short, my Grandad was from West Durham.

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Any suggestions of where to do next? Both in terms of those pretty series of maps like the one for Brum, or just the who-won-where things? Manchester?

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Great work and great work

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Labour were miles off running a full slate in some districts in the East Midlands where they do have a sizeable presence (notably in Northants; Northampton itself very much included. Organisational problems), fwiw.

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Yeah, I've noticed in the rural councils especially, Labour participation tends to vary between very patchy to almost non-existent. Just counting the last few, I seen a number of wards where if Labour had stood a third councillor they would've scooped all three, but in their absence it falls to another party & boosts their vote in the ward by a third.

It's what happens when local parties are allowed to rot away (as they were under the Blair and Brown leaderships; not the first time that such a thing had happened of course - something very similar happened during the first half of the Wilson leadership), basically. Though in many of these areas membership was always low and activists rare/elderly (and extremely left-wing as a general rule!). On the bright side, Labour managed to get a foothold on quite a few districts where they'd previous had no representation and built up decent-sized groups on some where they'd been reduced to a handful of seats (West Norfolk & Kings Lynn, say). Very much phase one of a rebuilding project though.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So is that the reason for the apparently disappointing Labour results in Northants (except Corby, which I suspect should be treated as somewhat semi-detached from Northants for these purposes) in the above figures?  Kettering, Wellingborough and Northampton are all places Labour had MPs in the Blair years, and all look like the Labour revival was weaker than further north.

In a word: yes. Given the problems Labour had with candidates in Northants, they actually did pretty well, re-establishing themselves in places where there had been wipeouts and building some solid groups where they'd come close to wipeouts (Labour had, for example, been reduced to five seats in Northampton in 2007; now they're up to fifteen. Interestingly enough they actually won a majority of seats within the old county borough; there were less breakthroughs in the newer developments). Anyway, I know it's a cliché but you have to walk before you can run.

Yeah, Corby is different; Labour are well-organised there with high (for the way things are now) Party membership rates and union density in the town.

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By which you mean 'never' or 'since the 1920s'!

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Tim Farron seems to have a huge personal vote.

Which is a remarkable thing when you consider how irritating he is.

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I thought that might be the case, but couldn't be bothered to check; they came very close to winning Boston & Skegness in both 1997 and 2001, though.

And the seat that Boston was in in 1966. The last non-Tory to win a rural Lincolnshire seat was the... er... interesting Denis Kendall.

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I agree. At present there doesn't seem to be the organisation in place that might capitalise on it, and that's not really acceptable. If you look at all of the Lincolnshire constituencies, only Lincoln and Sc**nthorpe have sizeable CLPs. The other Lindsey-via-'Humberside' CLPs have small memberships (Grimsby included), and the rural constituencies have very low rates. And in the districts there's no Union strength to make up for it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, Corby is different; Labour are well-organised there with high (for the way things are now) Party membership rates and union density in the town.

How much does the Scottish influence in Corby have to do with that?

I wouldn't have thought a great deal as there's not much of a tradition of active CLPs in Scotland (large memberships there, when they happen, have tended/still tend to be a sign of branch-stacking as much as anything positive). It's probably because of historical ISTC strength and the fact that the town has been in a marginal constituency for decades.

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Manchester. So, yeah.

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Was that Labour map really necessary?

Haha, quite. The only reason was constituency.

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Was that Labour map really necessary?

Haha, quite. The only reason was consistency.

Fixed that for you

Oh dear. That typo really does say far too much, doesn't it?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

20% in North Norfolk? Confirms a lot of theories, that does. Didn't win any seats, but then the Labour vote there was traditionally quite evenly distributed so that's not a surprise.

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That it'd only collapsed to the depths it had in favour of tactical voting to keep the Libs in (à la S/W)?

Yes, more or less. The interesting question is whether they can actually do anything with that; the County Council elections aren't so far away now and now they have numbers they can use to work out where to target. Though that assumes that they have the organisational ability to actually do that by then.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think it was more of a 1997/2001 thing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Demographic changes would be the obvious answer; Dartford used to be an orbital industrial centre, but is now a primarily a dormitory town. There's no doubt that it's much more Tory than it used to be, and there's little doubt that that's the main reason. There's also been a regional shift over the past forty years that has seen Labour weaken significantly in Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire while they are now much stronger in (for example) Lancashire.

Though I don't know; maybe the BBC made an error as well? The Tories won the Dartford constituency in both 1970 and 1979. Though perhaps there was a strong local machine, like we see in Stevenage now?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bolton. Which also includes Westhoughton, Horwich, Blackrod, etc (but anyone reading this knows that already). The BNP candidate in Tonge with The Haulgh polled 9%, but they ran no one else so get no map.

No prizes for guessing the source of the original outline map.

Anyway. The winning parties map looks oddly pretty with all the colours and shades contrasting and complementing each other to a greater degree than normal.

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The Green map seems to make no sense at all, though I suppose there aren't many places in Bolton that count as 'natural' strong territory for them.

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It's worth noting, of course, that they did nowhere near as well as they did in the General Election.

Anyways, I should make more maps, shouldn't I?