Birmingham, Hodge Hill
2015 Result:
Conservative: 4707 (11.5%)
Labour: 28069 (68.4%)
Lib Dem: 2624 (6.4%)
Green: 835 (2%)
UKIP: 4651 (11.3%)
Others: 153 (0.4%)
MAJORITY: 23362 (56.9%)
Category: Ultra-safe Labour seat
Geography: West Midlands. Part of the Birmingham council area.
Main population centres: Bordesley Green, Washwood Heath, Hodge Hill, Shard End.
Profile: A seat in urban Birmingham, England`s second city. Hodge Hill is on the eastern side of Birmingham, stretching in towards the city centre, and consists of the wards of Bordesley Green, Hodge Hill, Shard End and Washwood Heath. It is a diverse seat, the more inner city wards like Bordesley Green consist mainly of dense victorian terraces and are heavily Asian and Muslim, moving outwards the Shard End area is made up of post-war estates and tower blocks and is mainly white.
Politics: In 2004 the Liberal Democrats narrowly missed out on gaining this seat in a hard fought by-election, managing a huge 27% swing but ultimately falling short by 460 seats. Since then the constituency has swung back to being the safe Labour territory it had been since its creation in 1983.
| Con: | 4936 (12%) |
| Lab: | 22077 (52%) |
| LDem: | 11775 (28%) |
| BNP: | 2333 (5%) |
| Oth: | 1351 (3%) |
| MAJ: | 10302 (24%) |
| Con: | 3768 (13%) |
| Lab: | 13822 (49%) |
| LDem: | 8373 (29%) |
| BNP: | 1445 (5%) |
| Oth: | 1009 (4%) |
| MAJ: | 5449 (19%) |
| Con: | 5283 (20%) |
| Lab: | 16901 (64%) |
| LDem: | 2147 (8%) |
| BNP: | 889 (3%) |
| Oth: | 1245 (5%) |
| MAJ: | 11618 (44%) |
| Con: | 8198 (24%) |
| Lab: | 22398 (66%) |
| LDem: | 2891 (8%) |
| Oth: | 660 (2%) |
| MAJ: | 14200 (42%) |
*There were boundary changes after 2005
mother of the house….I love that phrase
Will be quite a long time before she gets there however.
According to the Sun Danczuk is also planning to run for Deputy.
Danczuk is too unpopular to get very far
Isn’t the current ‘Mother of the House’ either Margaret Beckett (surprised she didn’t stand down this time) or Angela Watkinson?
Presume BM was referring to what happens when a female qualifies to be father of the house.
Interrupted service doesn’t count so Harman comes ahead of Beckett (elected in 1982 versus 1983). Watkinson wasn’t elected till 2001.
The Washwood Heath ward in this constituency saw Labour poll over 9000 votes (in context the SNP candidate polled around 8650 to win the Western Isles constituency). I know the local and general election electorates are a little different but there were some extraordinarily high numbers in Birmingham with several wards seeing the winner claim more than 8000 votes.
That’s because of how big the wards are in Birmingham and how dominant Labour are in parts of the city.
Not just Labour, one of the Sutton wards saw the Tories rack up in excess of 8000. It does seem that Birmingham’s wards are too big, but with already over 100 councilors splitting wards is probably impractical to hold council meetings. Perhaps it’s time they looked at hiving off some of suburban Brum into new councils?
We’ve had this debate loads of times before. Birmingham is the largest local authority in the country and therefore needs 120 councillors. And the cities boundaries are already tightly drawn with areas such as Rubery and Great Barr being situated in neighbouring authorities.
In fact the Local Boundary Commission is currently working on a proposal to reduce the number of councillors to 100, but to have single member wards, which will be a more normal sized 7000-8000 electors.
And that’s why I think reducing the number of councillors and moving to single member wards is a bad idea. What are you supposed to do if you have a lazy councillor?