Brighton Kemptown
2010 Results:
Conservative: 16217 (37.97%)
Labour: 14889 (34.86%)
Liberal Democrat: 7691 (18.01%)
UKIP: 1384 (3.24%)
Green: 2330 (5.46%)
TUSC: 194 (0.45%)
Majority: 1328 (3.11%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Labour: 14080 (38.2%)
Conservative: 12867 (34.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 6245 (16.9%)
Green: 2440 (6.6%)
Other: 1274 (3.5%)
Majority: 1213 (3.3%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 13121 (33%)
Labour: 15858 (39.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 6560 (16.5%)
Green: 2800 (7%)
UKIP: 758 (1.9%)
Other: 622 (1.6%)
Majority: 2737 (6.9%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 13823 (35.3%)
Labour: 18745 (47.8%)
Liberal Democrat: 4064 (10.4%)
UKIP: 543 (1.4%)
Green: 1290 (3.3%)
Other: 738 (1.9%)
Majority: 4922 (12.6%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 17945 (38.9%)
Labour: 21479 (46.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 4478 (9.7%)
Referendum: 1526 (3.3%)
Other: 704 (1.5%)
Majority: 3534 (7.7%)
Boundary changes:
Profile: Brighton Kemptown is the eastern part of Brighton and the semi-rural suburbs and villages stretching out to the east of the seat. At its western end it includes Queen`s Park ward, the centre of Brighton`s vibrant gay community, then Kemptown, the council estates of Whitehawk and Moulscoomb and then, beyond the racecourse, more affluent and genteel coastal villages like Woodingdean, Saltdean and the town of Peacehaven. At the north of the seat is Brighton University`s Falmer campus – despite Moulscoomb itself being in the constituency, Moulscoomb campus lies just over the boundary in Brighton Pavilion.
In the past Kemptown was the more Labour leaning of the two Brighton seats, but it is now the more marginal. There is also a strong Green presence here – although not when compared to their strength in Brighton Pavilon.
Current MP: Simon Kirby (Conservative) local entrepreneur and one time owner of a chain of pubs, clubs and restaurants in Brighton. Set up the local Brighton radio station and was involved in the campaign for City status. East Sussex County councillor and former Brighton and Brighton and Hove councillor, former leader of the Conservative group on Brighton council.
Simon Kirby (Conservative) local entrepreneur and one time owner of a chain of pubs, clubs and restaurants in Brighton. Set up the local Brighton radio station and was involved in the campaign for City status. East Sussex County councillor and former Brighton and Brighton and Hove councillor, former leader of the Conservative group on Brighton council.
Simon Burgess (Labour) Vice-Chairman of Labour`s National Policy Forum. Brighton councillor until 2007. Former leader of Brighton and Hove council 2006-2007.Juliet Williams (Liberal Democrat) Ben Duncan (Green) Brighton and Hove councillor. Press assistant to Caroline Lucas.James Chamberlain-Webber (UKIP)
Dave Hill (TUSC) Professor. Former Brighton councillor and East Sussex County councillor. Contested Brighton Pavilion 1979, 1987 for Labour. Contested South East region in 2009 European elections for No2EU.2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 84775
Male: 48.4%
Female: 51.6%
Under 18: 20.6%
Over 60: 23.8%
Born outside UK: 8.7%
White: 95.4%
Black: 0.7%
Asian: 1.5%
Mixed: 1.4%
Other: 1%
Christian: 65.2%
Jewish: 0.6%
Muslim: 1.1%
Full time students: 6%
Graduates 16-74: 20.4%
No Qualifications 16-74: 29.7%
Owner-Occupied: 62.1%
Social Housing: 21.1% (Council: 16.1%, Housing Ass.: 5%)
Privately Rented: 13.4%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 7.7%
It certainly needs legislation to start another boundary review straight after the last one.
There has been talk of a more drastic reduction to 500 but this seems unlikely
“and I expect the boundary comission will again try to start in the centre of the city and work out, rather than just work along the coast from left-to-right”
That wouldnt be possible here as long as county boundaries are still sacrasanct. Hove is surrounded on the north and west sides by West Sussex so if it needed to be expanded there is only one constituency it could take voters from – Pavilion.
The equalisation of constituency sizes the Tories have called for necessarily implies crossing county boundaries (and I think the Tories have explicitly recognised this), and even for the Isle of Wight (where I think we could say the county boundary is unusually well-defined).
Ben,
Even if the next review specifically allows for county boundaries to be crossed, I am sure that the Commisioners will seek to minimise this. Ergo, it is more likely that Hove would expand east into Pavillion than north or west across the county boundary.
I’m not sure if anybody is already aware, but there is a brilliant spreadsheet on the boundary commission website. If you scroll down slightly, you would come across a link entitled ’2010 Electorates’. Click on this and it opens up the spreadsheet.
Paul H-J, I agree that the commissioners will seek to minimise, but I suspect they will do like they have in London, and pair counties, and treat the pairs as a whole. And if they are going to pair, they have to pair Hampshire with IoW (nothing else to pair IoW with), and especially with the urban area continuing interrupted Brighton/Hove/Southwick/Shoreham, I am sure they will pair E&W Sussex, rather than W Sussex with Surrey (so it would be Kent and Surrey paired, giving a possibility of a constituency that crosses the Kent/Surrey border.
Anyway, I can’t see it happening, since I don’t think the LDs will be willing to vote for reducing the inequality in size of constituencies (think Orkney and Shetland), and nobody else in parliament will apart from those Tory turkeys that can be forced to vote for Christmas.
Seems Clegg did commit to reducing the number of MPs in his speech today. So maybe it will happen.
Interesting that the Green % fell here. I presume Pavilion was flooded with activists instead.
You bet, Lancs Observer!
“Pete, on my calculation, the Tories ambition of a 10% reduction in seats and much closer to equal size would result in electorates of 77,200. Brighton Pavilion is already 74,000, so it might not be changed that much (and I expect the boundary comission will again try to start in the centre of the city and work out, rather than just work along the coast from left-to-right). Here, though, there would be a need for more voters to be pulled in from Lewes, since it is currently considerably less than 70,000 electorate. ”
Pavilion may be that kind of size but Hove may not be and Hove can’t extend anywhere other than Pavilion.
I would imagine that Hove would need to expand to become Brighton North & Hove.
The bulk of Brighton Pavilion (not including the Pavilion) would be merged with much of Brighton Kempton to a new Brighton Pavilion and the remaining part of Brighton Kempton may even be extended as far as Newhaven.
Iain, your post is premised on the E/W Sussex border being inviolable: if the proposals (as I understand them) go through, it won’t be.
I see what you are saying but the proposals are unlikely to see Brighton Kempton remaining extended into Peacehaven – and – Hove extended into Shoreham – with Brighton Pavilion unchanged in the middle.
Brighton & Hove is only likely to be twinned with one other authority.
Even so, the boundary commission may even make radical changes to the Brighton constituencies such as Dudley, Plymouth or Milton Keynes – so you could end up with something really outlandish -
Hove and Brighton West
Brighton North
Newhaven & Brighton East
Iain, I get the impression, though, that the Boundary commission pay less attention to boundaries between UAs and the ceremonial county they are in than they do to ceremonial county boundaries (hence Luton South includes parts of Central Bedfordshire UA). B&H will be treated as part of E Sussex, and E Sussex (including B&H) is likely to be twinned with another county.
Ben I have read discussions where people have speculated about the crossing of county boundaries but have not seen anything official. I realise were you to do so your post probably won;t appear until tomorrow but do you have a link to anything more definite? My understanding is there may be some willingness to cross county boundaries in extremis and in particular where the boundary concerned is not a real county boundary (as for example between Cheshire and the Wirral) but that they will not be crossing county boundaries willy nilly. I certainly hope this won’t happen although in the case of East and West Sussex it would not be as objectionable as say crossing the Hertfordshire/Bedfordshire boundary
| think the Inner London Boroughs boundary (former London CC) should remain sacrosant.
Ignore the borough boundaries, just use their wards as building blocks.
Use all the South Inner London (11.1 to 10) North Inner London (12.7 to 11)
North London (11)
Hammersmith
Kensington & Notting Hill
Chelsea, Fulham & Pimlico
Hyde Park (South Westminster)
Hampstead & Westminster North
Camden Town
Poplar & Limehouse
The City of London, Bethnal Green, & Holborn
Shoreditch & Finsbury
Highbury (Islington North)
Stamford Hill (Hackney North)
South London (10)
Battersea & Earlsfield
Putney & Wandsworth
Tooting & Streatham
Clapham & Vauxhall
Dulwich, Peckham Rye & West Norwood
Southwark & Camberwell
Bermonsey & Deptford
Lewisham North
Lewisham South
Woolwich
Greenwich & Eltham
Tory vote still less than in 1997 despite favourable boundary changes!
Hardly surprising given the demographic change that has taken place in this area.
What should concern the Tories is that their vote is down in seats like Horsham, Wealden and Bexhill&Battle.
Despite losing the Brighton seats and Hastings, Labour’s prospects in East Sussex are much brighter than in nearby Kent. The majorities in these seats are all below 2,000 and only need a national swing to Labour of 2% and above for then to won back. Boundary changes could make one or two of them harder to get back but they will still be represented somewhere in the area.
Only if Hove extended into Brighton and Brighton Pavilion moved eastwards resulting in Brighton Kempton becaming a Newhaven, Peacehaven & Rottendean constituency (hopeless for Labour) – but would make Hove and Pavilion better for Labour.
If Hove extended out the city to the West and Pavilion gained more of East Brighton, resulting in Kempton becoming Peacehaven & Rottendean then I could still see 2 Tory MP’s and 1 Green being elected even with a swing to Labour.
Even with out any boundary changes, why would Caroline Lucas’s majority not increase to nearly 10000? She would be more likely to gain the Lib Dem vote in Pavilion than Labour, and would also benefit from Tory tractical votes (despite being further to the left than Labour).
It is certainly possible that what you suggest could happen. Your latter point largely depends on Ms. Lucas’ effectiveness as an MP. If she does a sterling job, then she may very well buck any national swing to Labour.
It’s also worth remembering that the Brighton area is becoming less favourable to the Conservatives and it will become more difficult for them to win these seats. In fact, East Sussex in general is much weaker for them then the west of the county where they remain as dominant as they’ve ever been.
Yes ….Crawley was Labours best prospect in 1983 but now Hastings & Rye and the three Brighton & Hove seats (in East Sussex) appear more natural now for Labour.
Would this be down to declining UK tourism, more boarding houses becoming DSS bedsits, more strudents and university lecturers.
I have heard Brighton described as London by the sea, but what about Brighton Pavilion being Hampstead & Kilburn by the sea?
The 1992 notional results for Brighton Kempton and Hove both indicated 10000+ Conservative majorities.
As for Pavilion, the Conservative lead Labour by over 51% in a 1969 by election, yet last May the combined Green/ Labour vote was 32000 to the Conservatives 12000 (a very safe Labour seat with the Greens outside the equation). Pavilion has moved so far to the left that not even Labour have appeal here. Lucas would win by at least 6000 on FPTP and AV would only push her majority up to well in excess of 10000.
I still don’t really understand the rapid Tory decline in Pavilion since 1992 because Brighton – particularly western Brighton – is a lot nicer now than it was then and considerably more affluent
You might think the student vote had an impact but Brighton has had lots of students since the 1960s and students as a whole are a lot less left-wing today than they were back then
The same applies to gay voters too. There have always been a dispropprtionately large amount of gays
in this seat and like students, gays as a whole seem to be a lot less left-wing today than they once were
And as for the down and outs – if anything there are less of these than there were in 92 and i very much doubt a lot of them vote anyway
I don’t think even on these boundaries (which includes the very Labour ward of Hannover) Labvour would have won in 92
The only explanation I can think of is Sir Derek Spencer who was Tory MP from 92-97. He was an absolutely horrendous constituency MP but people aren’t going to be remembering that when they vote nowadays
I guess it’s just one of many fairly affluent urban areas which seems to have turned its back on ther Tory Party for good
The political contrast with Crawley – which is as grim and crime-ridden today as it ever was – is indeed startling
I think we should not understimate the extent these days to which people in London, and within commuting distance of London, find somewhere to live that matches their social (and therefore to some extent political) identifications. Brighton just isn’t as Tory a place as it used to be.
I have recently pointed out on other threads, e.g. Canterbury, that very high levels of student fees proposed by the Government (and Labour) will not only have implications in terms of affecting students’ voting intentions. It may also have considerable effects on the demographics of a number of constituencies as a result more school leavers go direct into work, if more of them live at home, or indeed if sizeable numbers of British school leavers emigrate to places like the Netherlands for university education (and they will in my estimation probably then emigrate permanently, with dire implications for England). Presumably a reduced student vote here would favour the Conservatives.
Not necessarily so.
Gay Times apparently ran opinion poll ahead of the 1987 general election and found that over 50% of gay voters were going to vote Conservative. I’m unsure whether it was a reputable poll or a self-selecting voodoo poll, but it does back up the view of many that the silent majority of gay voters in the 1970s and 1980s were primarily Conservative voters. Remember that Labour was much more a party of masculine heavy industrial trade unionism in those days, with rampant homophobia.
In the main, gay voters are richer than average and, having no childen and dying younger, receive much less welfare benefit. Thus without the politicisation of sexuality they always were naturally on the Conservative side, especially in the polarised early and mid-80s.
Section 28 in the late-80s, and the numerous debates about the age of consent in the 1990s, politicised gay people in terms of their group identity and pushed them away to Labour and the Lib Dems.
Cameron’s detoxification and a sense of moving on from the rather dated identity battles of the 1990s gave the Conservatives a lead once more amongst polled gay voters in 2010.
Was in reply to Tim
Hanif Kureshi once wrote an article (which appears in one of his books) in which he visited a gay Tory event at the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton in 1988.
Nice to see there’s another Hanif Kureshi fan on here.
I have always loved the Buddha of Suburbia (though I’m biased, as it is set in Beckenham where I live).
Wonder why he visited the gay Tory event. Kureshi is heterosexual and has been married a few times.
Interesting post – H Hemelig
I think I’m right in saying that for the first time ever there are more gay (or at least openly gay) MPs on the Tory side than the Labour side – which you could not have imagined even 15 years ago
Like class, sexuality seems to be less and less of an issue in determining who people vote for but i’m surprised to find out that a silent majority would have been Tory in the 70s and 80s
Still according to the latest poll only over 2% of the polulation (which is the highest in the UK) of Brighton Pavilion is openly gay so on that basis how gay people vote is neither here nor there as to explaining whjy Brighton Pavilion (and Hove and Kemptown too) are so much less Tory now than they once were
Frederick’s right ‘Brighton just isn’t as Tory a place as it used to be’
Thanks Tim.
There were of course a lot fewer openly gay people in the 1980s. Gays were much more likely to be in a solitary closet in Cheltenham or Chelmsford than in a self-identified gay community in London or Brighton. That has all changed now.
Brighton is a relatively cheap, commutable option for the kind of trendies who work in London and used to move to Richmond or Hampstead to raise a family but are now priced out. I’m sure most gay people would still prefer to live in London.
Would the Conservatives have won here on the previous boundaries?
Difficult to say. According to the notional figures above the boundary changes reduced the Labour majority by 1524 and the Conservatives only won by 1328. The main change was that part of Hannover & Elm Grove was moved to Pavilion (basically the southern half of the old Tenantry) ward, but there were also some voters moved the other way, also Labour leaning. Given there was a swing of something like 4% from Labour to Conservative in Pavilion, they would not have been as much as 1524 votes ahead in 2010 and this would be an area where they lost much ground to the Green party. On the other hand if these voters had remained in Kemptown they would have been far more likely to stick with Labour than they were in Pavilion. So i’d say on that basis it may have been no more than a couple of hundred in it either way. It should also be pointed out that Thrasher & Rallings disagree about the extent to which the boundary changes reduced Labour’s majority which means that based on their figures the Conservatives would have probably been ahead by a few hundred
I don’t think so. The boundary changes in 1997 increased the Tory majority by a lot more than 1,328 votes. Labour were extremely angry at the time because they thought it might prevent them winning the seat.
I thought you were referring to the major boundary changes that took place in 1997 rather than the minor ones in 2010.
I thought that initially too. Perhaps he was, but I think not as I think it must be obvious that Labour would have won easily on the pre-97 boundaries
Brighton Kemptown – Local Election Breakdown
14 seats of Brighton and Hove make up Kemptown, and they voted on Thursday as follows:
Labour: 20,883 6 seats (+1 on 2007)
Con: 17,953 5 seats (-1 on 2007)
Green: 14,729 3 seats (no change on 2007)
LD: 1,660 0 seats (no change)
4 wards of Lewes make are in Kemptown, they voted:
Con: 7,698
Lab: 3,376
LD: 2,504
Green: 0 – no candidates fielded
As predicted by many, the East of Brighton (East Brighton, Moulsecoomb and Bevendean, Rottingdean Coastal and Woodingdean wards) are joined to Lewes in boundary recommendations to form ‘Lewes and East Brighton’ with an electorate of 78,782.
Looking at the 2007 local elections (in my quest to understand how AW has arrived at his notionals-what local elections did he use?, how did he treat wards not contested by a party?, etc), I notice at http://present.brighton-hove.gov.uk/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?XXR=0&ID=30&RPID=1965327
a 2007 result for Woodingdean that seems to show 3LD candidates for 2 seats! Did they really? Can anyone shed light on this?
I’m sure Woodingdean has 3 councillors, it always has in the past. (Usually Conservative ones except in 1994-5.)
No it is a two member ward now. The figures I have show that Nellie Jones was in fact a Green candidate, so there were two of each
Thanks, Pete,
It did strike me that the most likely explanation was that someone listed as a LD was in fact a Green.
Looks as though Sally Bercow wants to try and get selected for this seat (according to the IoS).
Of course that may be dependent on the BCE going for the (sensible) LD/Pete Whitehead plan in Sussex.
A pretty good result for Labour in the East Brighton ward yesterday:
Lab 1596 (56.5%; +9.9)
Con 531 (18.8%; -2.5)
Grn 436 (15.4%; -6.2)
UKIP 148 (5.2%; +5.2)
LD 59 (2.1%; -5.2)
TUSC 55 (1.9%; -1.3)
Lab Hold
This isn’t one of the Greens’ better areas in the city, but it seems to be the first time their hitherto stupendous momentum has been halted for quite a long while. The ward includes the Whitehawk council estate & some other smaller council-built developments but also some quite high-class owner-occupied areas. However, the Tories’ strongest areas in the old Marine ward aren’t in this one which has restricted their opportunities. All in all, some good cheer for Labour & the first that the party has enjoyed for a number of years, although the general election results were far from disgraceful despite the loss of all 3 seats.
I wonder with a lowish ld vote and the greens being a big possibility for disaffected Lds combined with the new maps personal vote whether this could be a surprising hold.
Greens have selected Davy Jones as their candidate for the next general election.
Clearly he’s seeking to make monkees out of Labour