Braintree
2010 Results:
Conservative: 25901 (52.64%)
Labour: 9780 (19.88%)
Liberal Democrat: 9247 (18.79%)
BNP: 1080 (2.19%)
UKIP: 2477 (5.03%)
Green: 718 (1.46%)
Majority: 16121 (32.76%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Conservative: 21927 (50.4%)
Labour: 12875 (29.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 6365 (14.6%)
Other: 2323 (5.3%)
Majority: 9051 (20.8%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 23597 (44.5%)
Labour: 19704 (37.1%)
Liberal Democrat: 7037 (13.3%)
Green: 1308 (2.5%)
UKIP: 1181 (2.2%)
Other: 228 (0.4%)
Majority: 3893 (7.3%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 20765 (41.3%)
Labour: 21123 (42%)
Liberal Democrat: 5664 (11.3%)
UKIP: 748 (1.5%)
Green: 1241 (2.5%)
Other: 774 (1.5%)
Majority: 358 (0.7%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 22278 (40.1%)
Labour: 23729 (42.7%)
Liberal Democrat: 6418 (11.5%)
Referendum: 2165 (3.9%)
Other: 986 (1.8%)
Majority: 1451 (2.6%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Brooks Newmark(Conservative) (more information at They work for you)
Brooks Newmark(Conservative) (more information at They work for you)Bill Edwards (Labour) Steve Jarvis (Liberal Democrat)Daisy Blench (Green)Michael Ford (UKIP) Paul Hooks (BNP) 2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 87245
Male: 49.3%
Female: 50.7%
Under 18: 23.2%
Over 60: 19.4%
Born outside UK: 4%
White: 98.3%
Black: 0.2%
Asian: 0.5%
Mixed: 0.7%
Other: 0.3%
Christian: 74%
Full time students: 1.6%
Graduates 16-74: 14.7%
No Qualifications 16-74: 27.2%
Owner-Occupied: 73.7%
Social Housing: 17.8% (Council: 15.1%, Housing Ass.: 2.7%)
Privately Rented: 5.9%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 5.3%
I’m a little bemused by the situation in Braintree and also in Witham.
I would have thought that since Witham was the more Conservative part of Braintree, and Witham now has its own seat, the new Braintree seat would be a better prospect for Labour. But according to these figures, the opposite seems to be true.
I never thought that Witham was the more Conservative part of the Braintree seat in the first place. I always believed that Braintree, Bocking and Witham were the most Labour parts of the seat with the Tory vote coming mostly from the bits in between. So I am a little surprised by the marginal nature of the new Braintree and the relative safeness of Witham based on the notional figures.
Not that any of this really matters. As with the Harwich-Clacton pairing in east Essex, the boundary changes have split Labour’s vote to such an extent that both these seats will be solidly Conservative next time.
I’m not bemused now, having seen the book of notional results.
Braintree consists of 65% Braintree and 35% Saffron Walden.
Witham consists of 54% Braintree, 20% Essex North, 16% Maldon, 10% Colchester.
That explains why neither Braintree nor Witham are as marginal as the current Braintree seat is. Both of the new seats have large numbers of electors coming in from much safer Tory seats.
Actually Witham was Labour’s strongest part of the Braintree seat won by the party in 1997 & 2001. Its excision from the seat is what has caused the large increase in the notional Tory majority. Even when the seat was held in 2001, the Tories actually outpolled Labour in the Braintree/Bocking county council wards. Definitely a safe Tory seat now.
I think bothe towns are fairly strong for Labour and must both have voted for the party in the General electyions even as the Tories won there in county council elections.
Both Braintree and Witham formed part of the Maldon seat before 1974 which accounted for Labour’s ability to win that. It was represented by Tom Driberg until 1955
It looks like what the Labour party would have wanted in the boundary changes was for Braintree and Witham to be included in the same seat, but with as little rural acreage as possible. This would have given them a good chance of winning the seat. (This would have been feasible, since the distance between the 2 towns is only 7.3 miles according to RAC Journey Planner, and their combined electorates are about 50,000 voters.)
Before the boundary changes, the 2 towns were indeed in the same seat, but with lots of rural areas also included, which is why the electorate topped 80,000 voters.
What Labour didn’t want was for each town to be in its own seat with lots of Tory areas included in each one, which is what the Boundary Commission has plumped for.
It really says something about Essex that a right-wing American can defeat a sitting Labour MP in a seat as working class as this one.
Bill Edwards selected for Labour here
I was surprised this seat was lost in 1997 (even under the old boundaries).
Tony Newton, who was defeated in Braintree in 1997, was one of the most Liberal Tory MPs, which probably didn’t go down so well here.
Before 1997 the Braintree seat extended further south to take in parts of north Chelmsford, where the Liberals are strong, and acted to split the opposition to the Tories somewhat.
The bits of Chelmsford were removed and brought into into the West Chelmsford seat in 1997, making Labour the clear challengers in the revised Braintree seat.
‘Tony Newton, who was defeated in Braintree in 1997, was one of the most Liberal Tory MPs, which probably didn’t go down so well here.’
I think that’s probably true, but I still can’t comprehend why voters in a seat like this would want to vote for a Harvard-educated, East Coast elitist American
Jesse Helms he ain’t
Cons Hold= 14,000 maj
Re Tony Newton being a rather liberal Tory, it’s important to distinguish the political culture in North Essex from its distinctly earthier equivalent in the South of the county. There have been fewer Tory right-wingers in the North than the South of the county; another example is Saffron Walden, which has elected very centrist Tory MPs since the 1920s. I got the impression that Newton was very popular in the Conservative Party locally and in the constituency as a whole, and lost purely because of the national & regional swing.
Shaun is right of course re this seat.
I agree with Shaun’s prediction.
Con Hold
Maj 13200
Con maj 12,500
Daisy Blench is standing here for the Green Party.
Full List:
Daisy Eleanor Mary BLENCH – Green
Bill EDWARDS – Labour
Michael FORD – UKIP
Paul Stephen HOOKS – BNP
Steve Jarvis – Lib Dem
No it isn’t I forgot Brooks NEWMARK – Con
CON HOLD
Interesting snippet of information in the ITN Guide to the 1979 election:
“…in the middle of the Oct 74 campaign Keith Kyle [the Labour candidate] had a stroke – which may have made all the difference”
In the event Labour reduced the Conservative majority from 2,001 to 1,090 in October 1974.
Don’t remember that comment,
although I think I recall some reference of it being a marginal.
A swing of about 8/9% in 1979 pushed the Con majority up to about 12,000 in an over-sized division.
This was of course an important seat in 1997, but has reverted to Con, and must be about the least commented seat here.
It is possible that the Labour vote, under these boundaries, is almost as high as it was in 1992 though.
It seems strange that neither Lab nor LD managed to reach 20% of the vote but in fact that happened in quite a lot of Con seats in East Anglia and the South East due to high votes for UKIP. In 1992 I think there were only about 10 Con seats where that was true.
I remember watching an interesting documentary about Keith Kyle’s Election campaign here in Feb 1974.
I have just been Googling for a list of Whips and found one that indicated that although Brooks Newmark is a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury he is unpaid. Is this right?
Am I also right in thinking that the appointment of unpaid ministers increases the number of MPs who, although obviously not on the Payroll, are in receipt of patronage. This has psephological implications in terms of the abilities of MPs to develop a profile as individual backbenchers.
Does this situation arise from the need to have two LIbDem junior whips whilst maintaining the number of Tory ones within a “capped” Government payroll? If so, could it bias who gets appointed as a whip, ie. who can afford to be unpaid? If we have AV and therefore more likely “hung” parliaments, this is a situation that needs looking at. MPs shouldn’t rip off expenses; but they should be paid properly for the work they actually do.
My impression was that middle-ranking and junior MPs have responsibilities in relation both to individual departments’ parliamentary programmes and to whipping MPs by area. How does this relate to the current Whips when there appear to be at least two Tory ones (plus Norman Lamb of the LibDems) from East Anglia, in that Chloe Smith of Norwich North is also a Whip?
I’m just being idly curious as a consequence of just having read comments on this site about the possible attitude of the MP for Beckenham, Bob Stewart, to the Whips.
Finally, given the interests of this site, is anything known about how junior whips do at General Elections compared to speaking MPs? I think there is evidence that Chief Whips do well. No Government Chief Whip has been defeated for over 100 years: SIr Alistari Goodlad held Eddisbury in 1997 in what if I recollect rightly was the most “marginal” seat the Tories saved. Presumably the influence of Chief Whips outweighs their comparative lack of public profile, but does the trade-off work the same way for more junior whips? Although the turnover of Whips is such that it certainly cannot be assumed that the MP here will be a Whip come at the next election.
I would have thought that the most “marginal seats” the Tories saved in 1997 was Aldridge- Brownhills,Meriden,Uxbridge and Bosworth in that order
Lichfield as well – I assume you’re talking about seats where Labour was the challenger. Where the LDs were challenging the Tories held onto seats like Wells, Salisbury, Bridgwater, Westbury, Dorset Mid.
“I would have thought that the most “marginal seats” the Tories saved in 1997 was Aldridge-Brownhills, Meriden, Uxbridge and Bosworth in that order”
Eddisbury had a smaller percentage majority than all of those. Lichfield would have been smaller yet, but there the result was skewed by the effects of the Staffs Mid by-election and the notional results in themselves are slightly dubious
“It seems strange that neither Lab nor LD managed to reach 20% of the vote but in fact that happened in quite a lot of Con seats in East Anglia and the South East due to high votes for UKIP.”
That sort of makes things a tiny bit more like Scotland and Wales.
A party can get a larger majority on a smaller vote share due to a more split opposition with more parties standing.
Three by-elections here last night with Labour gaining two seats from the Conservatives – in Braintree East and Braintree South and the Conservatives holding a third seat in Great Notley and Braintree West. Both the Labour gains were in wards which ahd split representation in 2007 and 2011
In the course of the discussion on the Britain Votes live by-election blog, it was revealed that Braintree (then Urban district) had previously elected a Communist councillor
Google led me to find this very interesting article about the area
htttp://grahamstevenson.me.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=469:harold-quinton&catid=17:q&Itemid=118
One would not tend to associate Thaxted Morris Dancers or the Maldon Town Band with Communism. Clearly the ideological leanings of this area have shifted somewhat in the intervening decades, but the by-elections show the left is far from dead in Braintree itself
I remember reading that in 2001 Labour narrowly held the Braintree constituency (which then included the Labour-inclined town of Witham) even though the aggregate votes in the Braintree & Bocking wards showed a very slight Conservative lead, partly because they include the large private Great Notley development which lies just outside the town of Braintree to its south. One of these by-elections on Thursday was won by Labour with quite a goodly majority & I wonder how these results in the 3 by-elections compare with the party’s high watermark in the late 90s & early noughties.
In the early 1970s Halstead Urban District Council was one of the authorities trying to defy the Government over the Housing Finance Act, a southern outpost of Clay Cross.
I don’t know which wards cover the old Halstead area.
Thats interesting about Halstead. There are two wards covering the town which is the same area as the old UD – Halstead Trinity elected a Labour councillor in 2011 and they’ve been competitve in both wards in the past. This was probably the most strongly Labour part of the Saffron Walden seat before being moved into this one.
Barnaby – I doubt that Labour were able to win the constituency in 2001 without carrying the Braintree-Bocking urban area. It may be that the Conservatives won all the county council divisions covering the town on the same day (well they did – no ‘may be’ about it), but I’m pretty sure each of these included rural areas outside the town (there have been boundary changes and I can’t remember the exact boundaries of the CC divisions at that time).
Suspect that there is more trade union influence here due to Stansted Airport than most of East Anglia.Pensioners fleeing London tend to be coming to Norfolk which is why the Tory County Council is so keen on building around Norwich
Two expected Labour gains in the recent ward by-elections and one expected Tory hold. No news here. Move along.
I only partially agree. One of the 2 Labour gains appears to have been made with a distinctly larger majority than one might expect given the only modest Labour lead nationally and the evidence that sub-regionally the party is doing worse in this part of the world than in, say, the North-West.
Perhaps slightly. But not enough to be worth mentioning. individual ward by-elections tell us very little at that level of analysis.
If it starts to be backed up by other similar results, then I would agree with you however.
Nobody is claiming thes by-elections were earth-shattering results but I think on a site like this people are interested in local government by-elections and I make no apology for mentioning them. In fact I probably wouldn’t have done iff it wasn’t for the fact I had found this rather interesting historical information relating to Braintree which I wanted to share.
There have been rather few comments on this seat. I wonder if this is because some people have not found it as it is listed in the wrong region. On te current boundaries of course it is a safe Conservative seat which may account for the relative lack of comments. But of course on the old boundaries it wasn’t and on the proposed new boundaries it won’t be either. Local election results in the area are therefore of self-evident psephological interest
These are good results for Labour,
in an area which looks somewhat unlikely.
‘These are good results for Labour,
in an area which looks somewhat unlikely.’
I disagree
Labour have been massively underperforming in such places in the last five years or so – more so than others
Look at their results in the Eastern region in 2010 – they were for the most part as bad as what they mamaged in 1983
If they can’t compete in a working class town like Braintree – then they really do have no hope whatsoever of forming the next government
Of course even if they do build on these good results they are still fairly unlikely to win the new seat at the next election – as it will still have enough of a Tory-inclined hinterland to keep it in Tory hands
Thus people shouldn’t make too big a deal of signs of a Labour recovery in such places – things could hardly get worst for them
I agree with Tim to a certain extent – Labour were starting from a poor base. The succesful Labour candidate in Braintree East was regaining a seat he actually lost in 2011 when their performance in Braintree was clearly below par. Labour enjoyed far bigger leads here in 1999 let alone 1995
Former Tory MP and leader of the house Anthony Newton died over the weekend
I’m sorry to hear that.
RIP.
Very sad news.
Tony Newton was a very nice man, who showed that in fact you don’t have to ape Andrew Rosindell to be a popular Tory MP in Essex.
He was a very good leader of the house during a period of many bad tempered cliffhanger commons votes, and scrupulously loyal to John Major without being a slimy sycophant.
Yes I think it’s fair to say that he was always respected on the other side of the house, and it was rare indeed for anyone to say a bad word about him personally. Some noteworthy Tories who lose their seats to Labour in 1997 engendered rather triumphalist reactions, Tony Newton didn’t.
‘He was a very good leader of the house during a period of many bad tempered cliffhanger commons votes’
I remember him once standing in for Major (in 95′ I think) at PM’s Questions
I can’t remember which Labour frontbencher he was up against but he completely ran rings round them
An effective performer who despite reprersenting a gritty Essex town always identified himself with the sane wing of the Tory Party
RIP
Tony Newton did serve the Government and the country well, at a dire time for his party,
and John Major did rely on him a lot.
Halstead has been in this seat since 2010, I think it was in Saffron Walden for all that seats existence until then
Only since 1918. It was in Maldon before that
Thanks