Chelmsford
2010 Results:
Conservative: 25207 (46.17%)
Labour: 5980 (10.95%)
Liberal Democrat: 20097 (36.81%)
BNP: 899 (1.65%)
UKIP: 1527 (2.8%)
Green: 476 (0.87%)
English Democrat: 254 (0.47%)
Others: 153 (0.28%)
Majority: 5110 (9.36%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Conservative: 18180 (39%)
Liberal Democrat: 14413 (30.9%)
Labour: 12396 (26.6%)
Other: 1584 (3.4%)
Majority: 3767 (8.1%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 22946 (44.9%)
Labour: 13236 (25.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 13326 (26.1%)
UKIP: 1544 (3%)
Majority: 9620 (18.8%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 20446 (42.5%)
Labour: 14185 (29.5%)
Liberal Democrat: 11197 (23.3%)
UKIP: 785 (1.6%)
Green: 837 (1.7%)
Other: 693 (1.4%)
Majority: 6261 (13%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 23781 (40.6%)
Labour: 15436 (26.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 17090 (29.2%)
Referendum: 1536 (2.6%)
Other: 734 (1.3%)
Majority: 6691 (11.4%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Simon Burns(Conservative) (more information at They work for you)
Simon Burns(Conservative) (more information at They work for you)Peter Dixon (Labour) Stephen Robinson (Liberal Democrat) born 1966. Regional director of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Former Epping Forest District Councillor, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Epping Forest council (1993-1996) and Essex County Councillor. Contested West Chelmsford in 2001 & 2005.Angela Thomson (Green)Ken Wedon (UKIP) Contested Chelmsford West 2001, 2005.Michael Bateman (BNP) Claire Breed (English Democrat)Ben Sherman (Reduce Tax on Beer)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 96198
Male: 49.2%
Female: 50.8%
Under 18: 22.5%
Over 60: 19%
Born outside UK: 5.9%
White: 96%
Black: 0.7%
Asian: 1.4%
Mixed: 1.1%
Other: 0.7%
Christian: 73.3%
Muslim: 0.9%
Full time students: 3.2%
Graduates 16-74: 20.2%
No Qualifications 16-74: 22.2%
Owner-Occupied: 76.5%
Social Housing: 14.9% (Council: 11.3%, Housing Ass.: 3.6%)
Privately Rented: 6.3%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 5.8%
As the Party Acoounts for 2009 have just been published , it is quite easy to compare the relative strengths of Chelmsford Conservative and LD Constituency Partys
Membership
LD 260 + 37 on 2008
Con 267 – 24 on 2008
Income 2009
LD £ 52,819
Con £ 45,966
Expenditure 2009
LD
Con £ 54,588
Net Current Assets
LD £ 21,164 ( Nil property )
Con £ 76,413 ( £ 47.865 property )
Looks very evenly matched to me .
Ooopps
LD expenditure £ 51,305
“Chelmsford would be an interesting seat under AV. I suspect it would still be a Con hold.”
Almost definitely – under AV it would be under very exceptional circumstances that a candidate polling over 45% under FPTP could be defeated. The LIb Dems here would need to hoover up almost all the second or third preferences and I can’t see that happening from the likes of UKIP or the BNP. Its even doubtful they would get all the Labour second preferences.
A by-election is taking place today in the Chelmsford Central division of Essex CC.
It was a Conservative gain
8% swing since 2009.
Conservative and Labour shares both up 10 points.
Fewer candidates (just 3) than in 2009.
Essex County Council – Chelmsford Central 9th June 2011
Dick Madden Conservative 1496 (43.6%)
Graham Pooley Liberal Democrats 1323 (38.6%)
Russell Kennedy Labour 610 (17.8%)
The Conservatives also seem to have done well here in the local elections last month.
Within this seat’s boundaries I think the Tories gained 8 seats from the Lib Dems, with Labour also gaining 1 seat from the yellows.
Thought I’d beat Harry Porter to it – Lord St John of Fawsley passed away today aged 82.
“Lord St John of Fawsley passed away today aged 82.”
I’m too young to have seen him ‘in action’, as an MP or minister, but from what I’ve read it seems he was a bit of a character.
RIP
He was quite entertaining in the Friday studio discussion on Decison 79.
Simon Burns is doing quite a good job selling the NHS bill.
On Newsnight last week I thought he won over some of the health professionals in the audience discussion
but I may be wishing what I want to believe.
He had a very close shave in 1983. Had he lost this seat it would have been the Tories’ worst result in the south of England.
htttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_hKwISSpFU&feature=related
Maybe I should have worded that differently. He would have been the only Tory MP in England to have lost his seat.
Although the Tories lost Yeovil, it didn’t mean the defeat of an incumbent MP.
Yes, on the 1983 BBC program they were predicting a Lib/Alliance gain there in the early part of the program,
Not quite sure how they worked that out because they actually had the projection almost perfect for the national position..
Clearly they must have been thinking the Tories would win somewhere else that they didn’t
or most likely there were a few seats on each side of the forecast that came out different.
I’m pretty sure they would have been expecting the Tories to have held on to Ross, Cromarty & Skye at the start of the 1983 programme.
Norman St John-Stevas was certainly on the old One Nation wing of the Conservative Party, and it wasn’t long before he fell foul of Mrs Thatcher, though it seemed at the time he was totally loyal in the way he carried out his job as Leader of the House.
Apparently at one Cabinet meeting he got up to leave early. Mrs T asked him “Why are you leaving, Norman?”. He replied that he had to go to a dinner. “But” she replied “I’m going to the same dinner, and I’m not leaving early!”. “Ah” he said, “but Margaret, it takes me far longer to change than it does you.”
Reminds me of that photo-call in 1999.
Thatcher: You should be on my right.
Heath: That would be difficult.
I wonder what the BBC predicted for Richmond and Barnes in 1983, which was even closer than Chelmsford. I have noticed the Liberal performance fell short of expectations in English marginal seats such as these; as I said no English Tory MP lost their seat that year.
We thought at that time that the Liberals would win Richmond & Barnes, but then many of us thought that in 1987 too, and some of us thought that Goldsmith might just miss out in 2010. The sheer level of their activity in certain seats can at times mask the true level of their support in an areas as a whole. I wasn’t, however, around Richmond much in 1983 since I had a vote in Brighton Pavilion, at the time an easy Conservative hold for Julian Amery (I was a postgrad student at Sussex University then).
Re Stevas and the 1983 result I remember the news coverage just prior to the election as it was a cliff hanger with a famous incumbent. It seems he was the problem in the seat. Though Stevas almost lost it when he stepped down the Tories held the seat easily against the same Liberal candidate. It seems his character was a bit too outre for a place like Essex.
Why is there a ward in Chelmsford immediately north of the town centre named “Marconi”?
Marconi was a major factory & employer in Chelmsford.
Stuart Mole was clearly an effective Liberal candidate who stood for this seat on five straight occasions. It was when Norman St John Stevas eventually retired that the Tory majority actually soared, thanks to Simon Burns. The Liberals’ best chance here came in 1983, when they were off by about 200 odd votes.
I think that St John-Stevas was under the impression that he was popular, but in some ways perhaps his face didn’t quite fit here. He was rather a grand MP for a rather workaday constituency.
Indeed. His rather grandiose image and somewhat plush demeanour couldn’t have been any different from the Everyman character that has long defined Chelmsford, being in Essex. He was the wrong type of MP for the seat, unlike Burns. Perhaps explaining why voters flocked to an alternative in Mole.
Burns comes over as fairly posh himself but not as foppish as his predecessor. He has had to work hard here, and by & large I think he has.
Yes, and that is reflected in his majorities. It certainly seems to be the case that Burns has connected better with the voters here, even though he is also a stranger to the area, being from Nottingham.
With AIDS panic raging everywhere, the 80s were not easy times to win an election as a homosexual.
The Liberals had shown this with their “straight choice” victory in Bermondsey a few months before the 83 election.
St John-Stevas’ inclinations were reasonably well known in Chelmsford – although never publicly admitted – and left him highly vulnerable to a very strong Liberal campaign.
Yes HH – the party which claims to be the most pro-gay has often resorted to innuendo to gain votes, I’m afraid. And it isn’t your party or my party.
There was a massive swing of 18.2% from Conservative to Liberal here at the February 1974 election- Mole’s personal vote. Clearly, in seats like these, the best way to try to take the Tories down in their safe seats was to vote Liberal.
Chelmsford is one of those seats where the Liberals can lie dormant for a couple of elections and then suddenly re-appear as a major threat to the Tories.
Orpington is another example.
Locally the Lib Dems have a strong base and hold most of the council seats in the town proper. This seat will never be safe for the Tories although if they work hard enough they can win it comfortably.
In 1997 this would have been a good bet for a Lib Dem gain. In the old “West Chelmsford” seat, the Tories were saved by the countryside areas which were taken out of this seat in 2010.
Southend West is another Essex seat that has long been a Lib Dem target.
“Locally the Lib Dems have a strong base and hold most of the council seats in the town proper.”
No longer the case actually. In 2011 the Conservatives won 18 seats in the wards which make up this seat against 15 LDs and 1 Labour. Even if you remove the parished areas of Great Baddow, Springfield and Galleywood (and the first two at least are totally part of the built up area of Chelmsford) then the Conservatives and LDs were tied on 10 seats each (plus 1 Labour). I suppose if you include county councillors, it is true that the LDs hold all five CC seats wholly within the constituency (or all four covering the town ‘proper’ if you prefer) which would give them a small majority of combined district and county councillors, but ‘most’ to me would imply considerably more than half.
None of which is to say I disagree with your essential point that the LDs will always remain a force here and a threat to the Conservatives tenure, but it is important to have the correct facts out there.
Fair enough. I hadn’t appreciated how much the Lib Dems had moved backwards here in the 2011 elections. I think my statement would have been correct in 2003 and 2007.
Given that the elections here are all-out, it still wasn’t such a bad Lib Dem result in their national “annus horribilis” of May 2011.
This may have been asked before at some point – would this seat have been won by the LDs in 1997?
I don’t think so. That was when the Labour vote surged and there was an, albeit temporary, “Focus burnout” effect. In fact Labour would probably have been second ahead of the LDs in 1997.
The old West Chelmsford was a seat Simon Burns did very well indeed to win in 1997- Probably because his opposition was split between the Lib Dems and Labour, allowing him to hold so easily.
I think it would have been quite close 3 ways in 1997 but probably with the Conservatives ahead. It would be an interesting one to work out notional results for
I agree. Overall though, the Tories did pretty well in Essex in 1997 in the circumstances.
And I think the Tories won all but on1 seat in Essex in 2010. That one seat being Colchester.
Indeed, and that was ironically won by a Liberal Democrat- Bob Russell.