Angus
2010 Results:
Conservative: 11738 (30.92%)
Labour: 6535 (17.22%)
Liberal Democrat: 4090 (10.77%)
SNP: 15020 (39.57%)
UKIP: 577 (1.52%)
Majority: 3282 (8.65%)
2005 Results:
SNP: 12840 (33.7%)
Conservative: 11239 (29.5%)
Labour: 6850 (18%)
Liberal Democrat: 6660 (17.5%)
Other: 556 (1.5%)
Majority: 1601 (4.2%)
Boundary changes prior to 2005 electionEM631.
2001 Result
Conservative: 8736 (25%)
Labour: 8183 (23.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 5015 (14.3%)
SNP: 12347 (35.3%)
Other: 732 (2.1%)
Majority: 3611 (10.3%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 10603 (24.6%)
Labour: 6733 (15.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 4065 (9.4%)
SNP: 20792 (48.3%)
Referendum: 883 (2%)
Majority: 10189 (23.7%)
No Boundary Changes:
Profile: A large Scottish rural constituency stretching from the sparsely populated hill farming areas of the Angus Glens in the Grampians, across the largely agricultural Strathmore valley to more built up areas to the North of Dundee. The main towns in the constituency are the market towns of Forfar and Kirriemuir, Brechin and the ports of Montrose and Arbroath (known for both Arbroath smokies and the 1320 declaration of Scottish independence). Industry is mainly agriculture and forestry, though there is also a pharmaceutical industry at Montrose.
Current MP: Michael Weir(SNP) born 1957, Arbroath. Educated at Arbroath High School and Aberdeen University. Married with 2 children. Worked as a solicitor for the J&DG Sheill practice in Brechin prior to his election in 2001. He had previously served as an SNP councillor. (more information at They work for you)
Alberto Costa (Conservative) laywerKevin Hutchens (Labour) Sanjay Samani (Liberal Democrat) Michael Weir(SNP) born 1957, Arbroath. Educated at Arbroath High School and Aberdeen University. Married with 2 children. Worked as a solicitor for the J&DG Sheill practice in Brechin prior to his election in 2001. He had previously served as an SNP councillor. (more information at They work for you)Martin Gray (UKIP)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 81837
Male: 48.4%
Female: 51.6%
Under 18: 22.6%
Over 60: 23.7%
Born outside UK: 2.6%
White: 99.3%
Asian: 0.2%
Mixed: 0.2%
Other: 0.3%
Christian: 65.9%
Full time students: 0%
Graduates 16-74: 16.2%
No Qualifications 16-74: 35.3%
Owner-Occupied: 60.2%
Social Housing: 26.6% (Council: 20.7%, Housing Ass.: 5.9%)
Privately Rented: 9%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 6.3%
Whoops, missed out Wyre and Preston North, so that’s 12, with 3 bits left to play with
Meanwhile, back in – you know – Angus …
Are there notional results for the Holyrood electrions out yet? With the new boundaries its making it tricky to work out what goes where.
If Westminster seats are redistributed to reduce the number of MPs, one may guess that parts of this seat North and/or East of Dundee would become part of a Dundee constituency. I am not familiar with the local election statistics here, but from general impressions I would estimate that the seat would become safer for the SNP.
It is difficult to see where this seat could be expanded to compensate for loss of voters to Dundee. Perhaps it would have to incorporate some of South Aberdeenshire. the alternative would be to bring some of Perthshire into a Dundee seat, but Dundee has considerable more overspill into Angus than into Perthshirethis would not make sense to me in community terms.
Nobody has answered Harry Potter about what seats Brechin was in. In the old days. Before there was an Angus seat (with slight variations of name) would guess it was in Forfarshire, but was there a Burghs seat on the lines of Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth, or Dunfermline Burghs. I did a quick Google and Wikipedia search but nobody has put up the parliamentary history of Brechin onto Wikipedia.
Yes indeed there was, from 1885-1950 a Montrose district of burghs which included Arbroath, Brechin and Forfar and also Inverbervie (in Aberdeenshire). From 1950 to 1983 it was in Angus North & Mearns
Frederic,
Currently this seat does not include those parts of Angus which are in the Dundee East seat. One could forsee that it could regain those (Carnoustie & Monifieth wards) and a small part of Dundee City, leaving Dundee with one seat.
The trouble is that if Angus took back both those areas it would be oversized even without taking any parts of Dundee city. A single Dundee seat would need to include 6 of the 8 wards to be of the right size, so one could see adding The Ferry ward to an Angus seat which would be helpful to the Tories, but any of the other wards would be fatal for them. Basically Angus and Dundee together are too big for two seats but not big enough for the three they currently enjoy. It seems inevitable that some part of rural Angus must be linked either with Pertshire (as happened in the old Tayside North) or with Kincardinshire as also happened in the past.
You could have a Dundee city seat which includes the whole city less The Ferry and North East wards and a Dundee Outer & Arbroath seat (I wouldn’t necessarily favour that name) including those two wards, the Carnoustie and Monifieth wards of Angus and the two Arbroath wards. The remainder of Angus would as I say have to be linked with a neighbouring authority.
Angus North & Mearns would work with Brechin, Forfar, Kirriemuir and Montrose wards of Angus and the Mearns, Banchory, Stonehaven and North Kincardine wards from Aberdeenshire
I may have asked this before. What would the result this year have been in Angus North & Mearns? The Tories must have be close to winning it.
The current Angus seat has an electorate of 62,858 – and the quota is going to be approx 76,000 +- 5%. Therefore, Angus will need to get about 13,000 voters from somewhere. It would seem reasonable to get them from the bits of Angus not in the consituency.
It seems reasonable enough considered in isolation, but the problem is then that you leave the remaining electorate in the Dundee area far too small for two seats but still too large for only one, and the only way that can be expanded is into Perthshire which as Frederic rightly points out defies the natural community ties in the area.
In reply to Andy, I think the Conservatives will have won a plurality within the boundaries of the old Angus North & Mearns this year but it would be close three-ways. This is not the same thing as saying they would actually have won if the seat existed, because different tactical considerations would have come into play and probably eitehr the LDs or the SNP would have clearly established themselves as the party to beat the Tories (most likely thr SNP as the Liberals were never strong in the old seat and didn;t even contest it in 1979)
Pete’s analysis is quite right.
The land between Dundee and Perth is the Carse of Gowrie, which used to be bog. Now that it is reclaimed it is excellent agricultural land, but is no good for housing. So the Western edge of Dundee is effectively a natural frontier.
How many seats will Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire be due after redistribution: will the remainder from the Aberdeen(shire) quota be such as to justify combination with a seat further South?
I suppose another idea might be to bring the communities on the Southern, Fife, bank of the Tay – Newport, Tayport and/or Wormit – in to make up two seats with Dundee. These days they look as much to Dundee as commuter suburbs as to other places in Fife. This might make more sense than combining Dundee and part of Perthshire.
It would interesting to speculate what the politics would be of a Dundee and Northern Fife seat (presumably the seat would be Dundee West, including the City Centre, and then the Fife communities), given that Fife North East is LibDem and that the three main parties in Dundee are Labour, SNP and probably then Tory.
There’s a mistake in my last post. The LibDems are actually just ahead of the Tories in Dundee West; but both of them are around 10%: it’s a two way Labour/SNP contest. The point is that there is no chance that anybody but Labour or SNP would win in a Dundee West and North Fife seat, so would the LibDems of North Fife use their AV to support Labour or SNP as second preference?
Excuse another post on the same thread please!
I’ve just been following up Pete Whitehead’s post about Montrose Burghs. Apparently this seat included the burghs of Montrose, Arbroath, Brechin, Forfar and Inverbervie. When the seat was abolished in 1950, Arbroath and Forfar went into Angus South: the other three burghs went into Angus North and Mearsn.s
Montrose Burghs was Liberal continuously from 1855 to 1930. It is shown on the Wikipedia entry for the parliamentary seat as Independent Liberal from 1930 to 1931, and then as National Liberal until the seat was abolished.
Can anybody enlighten us as to what happened to this seat in the early 1930s? Apparently, the MP from 1924 was Major-General Robert Hutchison, who had previously been MP for Kirkcaldy Burghs from 1922 to 1923. He was a Whip in 1923, and from 1924, and in 1926 he became Liberal Chief Whip. In 1930 he resigned as Liberal Chief Whip (can anyone tell us why? – and if Wikipedia is to be believed he resigned the Liberal Whip also. In 1932 he was made a peer, Lord Hutchison of Montrose of Kirkcaldy in the County of Fife (!!).
The 1932 bye-election appears interesting. Again on the evidence of Wikipedia, Lt. Col, Charles Kerr, DSO, MC, the National Liberal candidate, got 7,693 votes; but Labour’s Rt. Hon. Tom Kennedy got 7,030 votes. Kennedy had been MP for Kirkcaldy Burghs from 1921 to 1922, when he was defeated by Hutchison; but he in turn defeated Hutchison in Kirkcaldy Burghs in 1923. Kennedy was also a whip, and was Labour Cheif Whip from 1927 to 1931, when he lost his seat. Kennedy regained his Kirkcaldy Burghs seat in 1935, which he held until 1944.
There was an SNP candidate, D. Emslie, in the 1932 by-election, getting 1,996 votes.
The only other occasion on which Labour ran the Liberals close in Montrose Burghs was in 1923 (Lib 8,717; Lab 7,032).
I’m not sure what this has to do with contemporary politics; but it is a fascinating spat of Chief Whips and one would like to know more.
I reckon SNP – it’s largely rural and has an SNP councillor along with the 2 lib dem councillors in the ward. There is no history of Labour voting in this area and I doubt that will change though there is clearly some potential for the SNP in the area.
Frederic’s history of the Montrose district of burghs is interesting. I have looked at my own sources and it appears that while the 1932 by-election was the closest Labour came to victory (because of the SNP vote) it was not their highest share. In fact in all four elections of the 1920s their share of the vote was between 42% and 46% in a straight fight with a Liberal and this was higher than they achieved in 1945 which may indicate some long term movement – certainly there may not be that many plaes where Labour’s share was better in 1924 than in 1945, but Scotland was a region where Labour notably underperformed in 1945 relative to England and Wales. It does make me wonder whether Labour support was fairly unifrom across all parts of the seat as if not, it must be possible Labour could have carried one or more of the towns. Looking at recent local elections it appears that Arbroath would be the strongest area for Labour, but that is not saying very much.
Another non-psephological aspect which is of some interest is that four of the towns constituting the Montrose district (and which are all in this Angus seat) feature in the Scottish football league. I had noticed this previously when I used to play the pools. Is there a particular reason for this seemingly unusual concentration of football clubs within one area? (four out of thirty)