262 Responses to “Northampton South”

1. Andy JS

   200,000 qualifies as a (small) conurbation IMO.

   December 17th, 2012 at 11:34 pm
2. Andy JS

   I’m compiling a list of towns and cities in England with their populations and it’s frustrating how some Wikipedia articles don’t give separate population figures for towns as opposed to the districts/boroughs that contain them.

   For example if you go on the Basildon page it gives the population as 185,028 which is clearly referring to a wider area than just the town of Basildon itself.

   December 17th, 2012 at 11:38 pm
3. Warofdreams

   Try Wikipedia’s “list of urban areas in the United Kingdom”. It does combine populations for towns and cities which form a conurbation, but there’s no straightforward way around that, other than using district populations. For Basildon (with North Benfleet), it gives 101,492.

   December 17th, 2012 at 11:48 pm
4. Pete Whitehead

   The way around it is to use the ward data from the census when it becomes available. I wouldn’t rely on wikipedia for something like that

   December 18th, 2012 at 12:16 am
5. Warofdreams

   Figures from ward data would be useful, but time-consuming to put together. The Wikipedia article should be perfectly reliable for the 2001 figures it gives – it’s just a sorted version of the ONS figures.

   December 18th, 2012 at 1:18 am
6. Joe James B

   I met Brian Binley in the Carlton Club last summer.
   There was a drinks reception for the Tories from SW London, but also from Hendon.
   He came for a bit.
   Quite a character.
   Perhaps we should define Northampton as a City so we can claim we have a metropolitian area that is 100% Conservative.
   But it’s not big enough really.

   I’m a bit worried I seem to like areas which have Lib Dem problems – Bristol, Bath, SW London, Harrogate, York, Somerset etc. although they have been defeated in some of them and are close to losing more if the LD polls continue like this.

   December 18th, 2012 at 2:13 am
7. Pete Whitehead

   Probably because areas with LD problems on the whole tend to be some of the nicer places (take for example the Vale of White Horse which you have rightly extolled). I seem to have had a tendency to disproportionately live in places with Liberal/LD strength, starting with growing up in Bushey (though the LDs have finally been finished off there) and subsequently Colchester, Cambridge, Watford and St Albans. Even when I lived in Hillingdon I contrived to live in a ward which had a LD councillor at the time (when there were only two of them in the whole borough).
   My family also seemed to have a penchant for holidaying in Liberal areas in the 1970s when there were far fewer such places – Cornwall North, Isle of Wight, Berwick on Tweed (Seahouses) and several summer holidays spent on a farm near Sedbergh which at the time was in the marginal Skipton seat and now part of the horribly safe Westmorland & Lonsdale

   December 18th, 2012 at 8:49 am
8. Pete Whitehead

   Andy I sent you a spreadhsheet of parish datasets last night but not sure if I have your most up to date email. Can you let me know if you got it?

   December 18th, 2012 at 8:52 am
9. Barnaby Marder

   I have holidayed in LD constituencies before now (N Devon, various Cornish ones) but I contrived to holiday in the only Somerset seat which isn’t held by them, and recent UK holidays or short breaks have been in York (safe Labour) and Derbyshire Dales (safe Tory). Next summer takes me to High Peak (Con-Lab marginal), and I have frequently spent short breaks in Brighton which is LD-free. However, unfortunately I have lived most of my adult life in areas where that party is strong, and mine isn’t, my sojourn in Newham being a striking exception.

   December 18th, 2012 at 10:37 am
10. kokopops

    As per the Inverness, Badenoch and Strathspey thread, this is another seat not on the Labour target seat list and again not knowing the area, just wondering the possibility of a Labour gain here, considering that it had a Labour MP as recently as 2005, it won a nearby seat at a recent by-election and the Tory candidate only got 40% of the vote at the last election especially with the Labour vote split between the official Labourcandidate and the former Labour MP, which if combined would hae garnered 31% of the vote and so only needing a 4.5% swing?

    http://www.labour.org.uk/uploads/6b94b880-df0b-ff04-7907-d31fbb040560.pdf

    January 9th, 2013 at 7:47 am
11. Barnaby Marder

    This could be a better longshot for Labour than many, though it is a longshot given the swing that’s needed. The Labour vote may well have the capacity to rebound more than in many psephologically similar seats, since it was clearly particularly badly hit by the combination of an, apparently, very poor & inactive candidate & the candidacy of Tony Clarke. That being said, Labour did not exactly cover itself with glory in the last local elections, which were won clearly by the Tories; and realistically Labour will be throwing resources at Northampton North next door which is a much less difficult gain. I wouldn’t totally rule out a Labour gain as the seat is currently drawn, especially if Brian Binley retires, which given his age isn’t impossible, but there’s no way it should be targetted ahead of North. It’s a longshot and no more. It could even be argued that given the very adverse circumstances Labour didn’t do quite as badly here as they might have done.

    January 9th, 2013 at 8:07 am
12. fromheadlands

    Could Labour win this seat at the next General Election?
    1. If Tony Clarke stands again I think that it is unlikely that Labour could win.
    2. It would help if the local Labour Party was in a healthy state and they had a good candidate.
    3. It is very difficult to estimate how well UKIP will poll in 2015. They could take a significant number of votes from the Conservatives.
    4. The Lib Dem vote will probably be significantly down with more votes going to Labour than to the Conservatives.

    Summary:
    If Labour gets it’s act together,
    Tony Clarke does not stand,
    UKIP takes Conservative votes
    and ex-Lib Dem votes go mainly to Labour
    then Labour could win in 2015.

    February 26th, 2013 at 7:52 pm