Birkenhead
2010 Results:
Conservative: 6687 (18.93%)
Labour: 22082 (62.51%)
Liberal Democrat: 6554 (18.55%)
Majority: 15395 (43.58%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Labour: 20093 (64.1%)
Liberal Democrat: 5933 (18.9%)
Conservative: 5256 (16.8%)
Other: 58 (0.2%)
Majority: 14160 (45.2%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 4602 (16.6%)
Labour: 18059 (65%)
Liberal Democrat: 5125 (18.4%)
Majority: 12934 (46.5%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 4827 (16.7%)
Labour: 20418 (70.5%)
Liberal Democrat: 3722 (12.8%)
Majority: 15591 (53.8%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 5982 (15.2%)
Labour: 27825 (70.8%)
Liberal Democrat: 3548 (9%)
Referendum: 800 (2%)
Other: 1168 (3%)
Majority: 21843 (55.5%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Frank Field(Labour) Born 1942, London. Educated at St Clement Danes Boys Grammar School and Hull University. Prior to his election worker as a teacher and Director of the Low Pay Unit. Hounslow councillor 1964-1968. Contested South Buckinghamshire 1966. MP for Birkenhead since 1979. DHSS spokesman 1983-1984 before becoming Chair of the social services/security select committees for much of the 1980s and 1990s. Following the 1997 election he was made Minister of State for social security, with a brief to “think the unthinkable”. He resigned from the government the following year, reportedly having been refused a promotion to Secretary of State. He has subsequently been a consistent internal critic of the Labour government, leading the rebellion over the 10p tax rate and criticising Gordon Brown`s leadership. He is seen as something of a semi-detached member of the Labour party – he was a young Conservative in his youth, serves on the board of a free-market think tank (Reform), has praised Margaret Thatcher and is occassionally touted as a potential defection to the Conservative party. In 2009 he dropped out of the race to be speaker because of a lack of support from his own side of the House (more information at They work for you)
Andrew Gilbert (Conservative) Solicitor and lecturer. Huntingdonshire district councillor since 2006.Frank Field(Labour) Born 1942, London. Educated at St Clement Danes Boys Grammar School and Hull University. Prior to his election worker as a teacher and Director of the Low Pay Unit. Hounslow councillor 1964-1968. Contested South Buckinghamshire 1966. MP for Birkenhead since 1979. DHSS spokesman 1983-1984 before becoming Chair of the social services/security select committees for much of the 1980s and 1990s. Following the 1997 election he was made Minister of State for social security, with a brief to “think the unthinkable”. He resigned from the government the following year, reportedly having been refused a promotion to Secretary of State. He has subsequently been a consistent internal critic of the Labour government, leading the rebellion over the 10p tax rate and criticising Gordon Brown`s leadership. He is seen as something of a semi-detached member of the Labour party – he was a young Conservative in his youth, serves on the board of a free-market think tank (Reform), has praised Margaret Thatcher and is occassionally touted as a potential defection to the Conservative party. In 2009 he dropped out of the race to be speaker because of a lack of support from his own side of the House (more information at They work for you)
Stuart Kelly (Liberal Democrat) Electrician. Wirral councillor. Contested Ellesmere Port and Neston 2001, Birkenhead 2005.2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 84124
Male: 47%
Female: 53%
Under 18: 25.3%
Over 60: 20.4%
Born outside UK: 3.2%
White: 97.9%
Black: 0.3%
Asian: 0.5%
Mixed: 0.6%
Other: 0.7%
Christian: 79.2%
Full time students: 2.7%
Graduates 16-74: 14%
No Qualifications 16-74: 35.5%
Owner-Occupied: 59.8%
Social Housing: 26.3% (Council: 16.5%, Housing Ass.: 9.8%)
Privately Rented: 11.4%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 16.4%
Most embarrassing all told – can’t quite work out why he doesn’t leave the Labour party to become an independent, given that he shares so little with any wing of the Labour party
I suppose he’s Christian Right in the same way David now Lord Alton was as a Merseyside MP, although he is now an Ind over abortion. In fact, with Ellman, Kennedy and Berger being pro-Israel the Labour MPs on Merseyside are v different from the Heffer, Loyden, Parry, Wareing era. I’m not including Shaun Woodward!
Total candidates in this election = 4,149, beating the previous record of 3,724 in 1997.
Average number of candidates = 6.38, compared to 5.65 in 1997.
LAB HOLD
In working out my predicted majorities in each seat I created a spreadsheet which had actual numbers of votes for each party, in order that I could total them up to get regional and national shares. The figures I had for Birkenhead were Lab 18427 LD 8463 Con 6687. I was out by nearly 2000 on the LD vote and by 3,500 on Labour but the Conservative figure was spot on. Even with 650 different seats the odds on that happening must be fairly small. IN general the seats in this region represented my worst predictions because while I projected a smaller Labour to Conservative swing than in more southerly regions I didnt make it small enough by a long way
Most embarrassing all told – can’t quite work out why he doesn’t leave the Labour party to become an independent, given that he shares so little with any wing of the Labour party
Birkenhead CLP seems to like that sort of thing. In the preface to Edmund Dell’s able but bitter posthumous history of democratic socialism (or, more accurately, his history of the higher echelons of Labour post-1931), Dell says he had ceased to be socialist by the time he entered Parliament in 1964. Reading the book, one wonders how he managed to stick being in the party until the SDP split.
Perhaps for people like Dell and Field, the Labour Party has become like the old 18th Century party labels-more a statement of your family background and traditional loyalties rather than actual support for the party per se.
In those days, it was common for people to call themselves Whigs or Tories and then vote with the other side 99% of the time. They weren’t a Whig because they supported the party, but because that was the label their family were from. And the same is now true of Field.
And, to be fair, the Labour voters of Birkenhead seem to like Frank Field’s willingness to speak his mind.
His share of the vote only fell 1.6% in 2010, an extremely good performance.
“And, to be fair, the Labour voters of Birkenhead seem to like Frank Field’s willingness to speak his mind.
His share of the vote only fell 1.6% in 2010, an extremely good performance.”
Helped of course by this being the only seat where no minor parties or independents stood, which in many similar seats took 10-15% from the Labour total.
more a statement of your family background and traditional loyalties rather than actual support for the party per se.
I’m not sure this applies to all parties in the C18 – to the Rockingham and Foxite Whigs, it does – but I certainly agree with you as far as the C20 is concerned. Class identity was much stronger than ideology was in building a coalition of both parties. That’s posibly why talented working-class people who rose through the unions or the Labour movement, like Richard Marsh, Alf Robens or Frank Chapple, moved to the right in later years. They were tied to Labour and the unions by class and the possibility of self-advancement, not ideology. On the other side, you had Conservatives who were liberal, even progressive, but who felt themselves unable to join Labour because the party only welcomed upper and middle class converts who were firm socialist converts.
In 1983, the BBC election coverage flashed this one up as a Liberal Gain???