Cambridgeshire South East
2010 Results:
Conservative: 27629 (47.97%)
Labour: 4380 (7.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 21683 (37.64%)
UKIP: 2138 (3.71%)
Green: 766 (1.33%)
Independent: 517 (0.9%)
Others: 489 (0.85%)
Majority: 5946 (10.33%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Conservative: 24532 (47.7%)
Liberal Democrat: 16359 (31.8%)
Labour: 10574 (20.5%)
Other: 0 (0%)
Majority: 8173 (15.9%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 26374 (47%)
Labour: 11936 (21.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 17750 (31.7%)
Majority: 8624 (15.4%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 22927 (44.2%)
Labour: 13714 (26.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 13937 (26.9%)
UKIP: 1308 (2.5%)
Majority: 8990 (17.3%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 24397 (42.9%)
Labour: 15048 (26.5%)
Liberal Democrat: 14246 (25.1%)
Referendum: 2838 (5%)
Other: 278 (0.5%)
Majority: 9349 (16.5%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: James Paice(Conservative) (more information at They work for you)
James Paice(Conservative) (more information at They work for you)John Cowan (Labour) Jonathan Chatfield (Liberal Democrat) Simon Sedgwick-Jell (Green)Andy Monk (UKIP)Daniel Bell (CPA)Geoffrey Woollard (Independent)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 101227
Male: 49.4%
Female: 50.6%
Under 18: 22.7%
Over 60: 20.2%
Born outside UK: 7.1%
White: 97.3%
Black: 0.4%
Asian: 0.7%
Mixed: 0.8%
Other: 0.8%
Christian: 73.6%
Full time students: 1.9%
Graduates 16-74: 25.2%
No Qualifications 16-74: 24.5%
Owner-Occupied: 72.6%
Social Housing: 14.5% (Council: 5.5%, Housing Ass.: 9%)
Privately Rented: 8.2%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 4.4%
There’s something eerily Blairish about the way Ministers who have specific job knowledge
or have got into political difficulties are just dumped.
I just don’t think we’ve got the right people in the right jobs here.
But at the same time it ducks some of the fundamental problems.
“I’m not sure he could have kept up with the pace of being chancellor again in such difficult times.”
Yes perhaps you’re right.
I never thought it was particularly likely either.
“Thing is, Shaun, its a Coalition government, so he couldn’t do the sort of things you would want even if he were minded to.”
Again I agree. And the one good thing about this awful coalition is that it is a lesson as to why we are so lucky to have FPTP and avoid the need for coalition most of the time. The British people I think will not want to elect a second hung parliament when the election comes.
“What’s worse: Admitting failure when you’ve failed and then do something to rectify the situation.
Refuse to admit failure when you’ve failed and do nothing to rectify the situation.”
This is the key difference between the Cameroon apologists and the rest of us in the party. The Cameroon’s seem incapable of admitting failure in the first place. And in any case, there’s nothing practical we could do to solve the problems so best just to get on and hope for the best.
I’m one of those who does not believe that we have to shut up and make do. If the will was there to change, we could get change and perhaps a better outcome.
I would have thought you would have been delighted with the reshuffle Shaun
Ken Clarke has been replaced by the tough-talking Chris Grayling at Justice, Warsi has been removed, Hunt has been promoted and climate change sckeptic Owen Patterson has been appointed as Environment Secretary – which should also mean the resignation of Zac Goldsmith, presuming he is a man of his word – which is a double whammy for yourself
Yes, all those things you mention, Tim, I am certainly delighted with. The cabinet reshuffle itself was slightly more to the right, and that can only be good as a way of balancing the government a little. I’m not at all trying to say that there was nothing of value in the reshuffle.
A new rightwing chap at Justice solves that particular problem; Warsi out of the cabinet; Hunt promoted; Patterson at Environment and John Hayes a junior minister at Climate Change. All good stuff.
My problem is very clearly as I have stated above, the problems that were NOT tackled, and also the additional NEW problems that have been created. Problems that were entirely unnecessary. Ken Clarke could have been given another cabinet post that would have been much less potentially damaging.
A Chief Whip could have been found that would be more appealing to the rebels rather than confrontational.
I’m also worried about some of the junior ministerial changes, with people like Gerald Howarth and Michael Fabricant having gone and others like Nick Boles coming in.
The cabinet reshuffle was largely positive but punctuated with one or two silly errors of judgement. The junior ministerial changes look to me to be quite worrying.
I’m surprised you speak highly of Hunt – I would have thought he was the type of liberal Cameroonian you so dislike
And I don’t see a problem with Andrew Mitchell as Chief Whip – as I remember he is a Tory very much on the right himself, or at least was until he bought into (or pretended to buy into) Cameron’s modernising agenda
Personally I’m glad Duncan Smith stayed at welfare – despite Osbourne presumably ordering Cameron to remove him – although I thinnk by removing Greening Caneron has caused himself some unneccesaary problems and i think the likes of the polluting-friendly Patterson and Hayes at environment are a disasater – and if Goldsmith was really as much of a keen environmentalist as he’d like his constituents to think he is, he doesn’t need to wait until the inevitable U-turn on a new runway Heathrow.
By putting these two in charge Cameron’s shown that evironmentalism is very low on his list of priorities and that those photos of him with the huskies were what the likes of yourself always said they were – a cheap political stunt
‘Ken Clarke could have been given another cabinet post that would have been much less potentially damaging.’
It’s funny that you would say that
Surely the economy is the ideal place for Clarke – he was afterall the best Tory Chancellor since the war, and his economic instincts are far more Tory-friendly than his criminal justice ones
Given the many very serious political issues facing the land, and the world, on which we have such differing & often implacably opposed views, Shaun, I’m surprised that you find room to bemoan the departure from the government of Michael Fabricant!
“On Europe, Hague has turned into a typical UK Foreign Secretary. Pragmatic and say as little as possible!”
This is true. Hague has been a bit of a disappointment really. He seems to have shifted leftwards since being foreign office minister.
Clarke is too old to be Chancellor although if I was Cameron I would still have offered it to him if he wanted it. He is a man of immense economic talent and has a proven track record of running the UK economy unlike Osbourne….but one has to look after ones friends!
Richard – “Refuse to admit failure when you’ve failed and do nothing to rectify the situation” Cam and EdMil seem to be following this mantra
James Paice is to be knighted.
Prediction for 2015-
Paice, Sir James (Tory)- 25, 989 (44.7%, -3.3%)
Lib Dem- 18, 563 (31.9%, -5.7%)
Labour- 11, 134 (19.1%, +11.5%)
Others- 2, 447 (4.2%, -2.5%)
Con hold.
Turnout- 58, 133.
Majority- 7, 426 (12.7%)
Swing- +1.2% From Lib Dem to Con.
Not sure whether James Paice will stand again, after being completely unfairly dropped from the Government,
although I have heard nothing to suggest he isn’t,
I think you may be right that the LDs will hold a share like that given their strength in the Ely area in 2009/10
but the CC elections next year will give us more clues.
I’m of a left-wing disposition as you may well know JJB, but I feel a little bit sorry for the Tories here.
In this seat they should be enjoying five-figure majorities similar to their other Cambs strongholds, but it would appear that the exact polar opposite to North East Cambridgeshire has been happening here.
Unlike in Clement Freud’s old seat where the Tories have reestablished themselves for good, here the Tories have come under threat from the Lib Dems after years of having the safer seat here.
So I would agree that the Lib Dem vote will hold up better than most places- As a consequence, I would expect them to even stay above the result they got in 2005.
It does seem that Paice is one of the more personally likeable Tories & politically fairly centrist by modern standards (especially compared with others in the 1987 intake, who have tended to be more explicitly Thatcherite than he). I don’t know if he is perceived to a good or not-so-good constituency MP so it would be interesting to know how the LDs have grown here. It is worth noting that this area once had quite a large rural Labour vote (the Cambridgeshire rural seat was actually won in 1945), and the constituency which is best known for this phenomenon in England, North Norfolk, has also come under sustained LD bombardment in recent years before being gained in 2001. But in the days of Francis Pym, and much of Paice’s tenure, there really wasn’t any serious threat to the Tories at all, and I’d be interested to know how the LDs have gradually worked themselves into the picture. I’d have thought that the presence of the city of Ely in the constituency must have helped – it was of course not linked with most of this area until 1983.
The Lib Dems have done very well working themselves into areas where voters feel that the leading party has been complacent. That is why the Lib Dems used to be able to win local and national seats in both traditionally Labour and Tory areas.
Whether this will start to unravel now they are in coalition is anyones guess
“it would be interesting to know how the LDs have grown here.”
I would wager that a lot of the explanation is down to the growth of Cambridge and its suburbs….with the result that the liberal/leftish voting behaviour of Cambridge is spilling out into neighbouring seats and gradually diluting the traditional rural Tory vote there. You can see the same phenomenon happening in Cambridgeshire South as here, and to a lesser extent in Huntingdon, resulting in a string of disappointing Tory performances.
Interestingly this seems to be happening exclusively in the seats to the south of Cambridgeshire….perhaps because of the desire of new residents to be closer to London. There seems to be little of this effect in the North Cambridgeshire seats, where the Tories have continued to strengthen, perhaps because they look more to Peterborough than Cambridge and the demographic trends are different.
I personally would expect further slippage in the Tory vote share here and a modest swing from Lib Dem to Labour. The Results’ prediction here probably isn’t too bad.
Taking into account that the long-term swing has been against the Tories here, the majority isn’t going to go up by much and the LD to Con swing won’t be all that big- Which would of course be down to the pro-LD trends in South Cambs.
The reason I would expect Paice’s majority to go up is simple- Labour are well out of the picture here because of the actions of their last candidate, and the Lib Dems will be more than likely to lose more than the Tories here. Therefore I would say an increase in the majority is not unreasonable.
I’m not sure these university /science park voters will stick with the Lib Dems
but some of course will.
Huntingdon has been affected too
but my guess is John Major’s successor has had a few criticisms, fairly or unfairly
although I don’t want to encourage a Tim Jones attack on him.
The May 2012 results showed the Tories not doing too badly in Cambridgshire South.
The town of Ely is definitely quite large now
and as HH says, connections with London are excellent but rather overcrowded.
Of course a lot of this is being tested against a very weakened LD party nationally, and one feels the long term trend is slightly against the Tories here.
But this doesn’t extend into North Cambs or Lincolnshire.
I’d have thought Gloy might have predicted something on here actually
but perhaps with the Labour vote so heavily squeezed in 2010
the LDs are unable to finish the job
with that stupendous momentum.
RE Huntingdon, it’s a safe Conservative seat in any case, yet Djanogly is having to work to build his own following there.
Major had a personal vote in Huntingdon largely because he was Prime Minister. But even before then he was getting increases in his vote shares-
1979 (Huntingdonshire)- 40, 193 (55.35%, +10.28%)
1983 (Huntingdon)- 34, 254 (62.37%, +7.02%)
1987- 40, 530 (63.55%, +1.18%)
1992- 48, 662 (66.16%, +2.61%)
1997- 31, 501 (55.3%, -9.9%)
(I know comparisons between 79 and 83 are invalid, but I’m just trying to gauge Major’s popularity)
Compare that record of Major for the most part increasing the vote with what Djanogly has achieved-
2001- 24, 507 (49.9%, -5.4%)
2005- 26, 646 (50.8%, +0.9%)
2010- 26, 516 (48.9%, -1.9%)
There can’t be too many seats where the Conservative vote share is now lower than 1997. Here is a list of some-
1. Huntingdon
2. Cambridge
3. Burnley
4. Redcar
I think there was an increase in 1983 in Huntingdon but only about 1% or so.
The fall in 1997 was notionally about 4.5%
Unfortunately there are more examples of Con falls in 2010 against 1997 – mainly in Scotland and northern cities
plus a number of London seats where the demographics have gone much further against them,
Also unfortunately places like Twickenham and Solihull
are still slightly below the 1997 share of vote.
although better than in 2005.
On the other hand, there are some places where the Tories are above 1992
or within about 1% of it.
It says a lot when the Conservatives can no longer even get 50% in a seat where they once easily routinely polled well in excess of 60%.
I’m not going to taunt you about Solihull JJB but that was and will always be remembered as an own goal for the Tories!
While I wouldn’t be surprised if they were to win it back come 2015, it has to be said that considering the size of the Conservative majority in 2001, it may take a long time for the Tories to ever be safe here again when they do one day win it back.
Tory vote here has:increased in line with the national average and the lds have no more lab vote to squeeze. 2010 will be as close as the liberals come, 15 to 20 point maj next time round. Djanogly probably is the reason for poor performances in huntingdonshire.
The measley 1% increase cain 2010 can be put down to there being 7 candidates rather than 3.
The C share is about 4.4% (5,000) up in this seat
which is below the national average,
but with a huge tactical Labour vote towards the LDs.
I’d expect the Tories to be doing better here in future (on balance)
but they should not assume so.
I think the C share probably fell a bit more than average here in 1997 – IIRC around 13%
so they are probably about 8% or so down on 1992.
Cambridgeshire as a whole has given the Tories a mixed bag of results of late- At Parliamentary and indeed local level.
Unfortunately for the Tories their majority in both South and South East Cambridgeshire is below what they achieved in 1997.
As discussed, Ely is in this constituency,
where the Libs contribute many of the votes in Cambridgshire SE.
(However, the true successor to the old Isle of Ely is the current Cambridgshire NE).
I’ve been looking back at the results in the old Isle of Ely seat.
It was a Conservative disappointment not to oust the Libs in 1979, in a very good year against the Libs.
I’m not quite sure whether the 1970 result is comparable to those after, but think it is, because there IIRC no boundary changes in Feb 1974,
I hadn’t realised how high the Labour vote was in the original lib gain by-election in 1973
but was aware of the against the national trend Lab>Lib swing in 1979 which damaged the Cons.
General election, June 1970
Electorate 67,226
Turnout 71.9% Conservative hold
Majority 9,606 (19.8%) Major Edward Alexander Henry Legge-Bourke Conservative 28,972 59.9
Rex Edgar O’Hare Labour 19,366 40.1
By-election, 26 July 1973
Electorate 69,069
Turnout 65.8% Liberal gain
Majority 2,483 (6.8%) Clement Raphael Freud Liberal 17,390 38.3
John Burdett Stevens Conservative 15,920 35.0
Barry A. Young Labour 12,153 26.7
General election, February 1974
Electorate 67,913*
Turnout 83.1% Liberal gain
Majority 8,347 (14.8%) Clement Raphael Freud Liberal 27,647 49.0
John Burdett Stevens Conservative 19,300 34.2
Michael Brendon Ferris Labour 9,478 16.8
General election, October 1974
Electorate 68,473
Turnout 77.1% Liberal hold
Majority 2,685 (5.0%) Clement Raphael Freud Liberal 22,040 41.7
Dr Irving Thomas Stuttaford Conservative 19,355 36.7
Michael Brendon Ferris Labour 11,420 21.6
General election, May 1979
Electorate 69,954
Turnout 80.8% Liberal hold
Majority 3,330 (5.9%) Clement Raphael Freud Liberal 26,397 46.7
Dr Irving Thomas Stuttaford Conservative 23,067 40.8
Colin Harry Saunders Labour 7,067 12.5